Chapter 25
Henry is addicted to laudanum. She had heard Elias say the words and felt their impact upon her heart but did not at first grasp the magnitude of the problem. Even after they had brought Henry up to bed, checked his head for injuries and left him to rest, she struggled to understand how it had come to this.
“Maybe ye should sit, lass,” Elias said.
She shook her head as she paced the upstairs corridor. “You said he was trying to get clean, right?”
“Aye, I did.”
“That it had been three weeks since his last dose?”
“No,” Elias said quietly. “Three weeks of weaning from the drug and a little over twelve hours since his last dose.”
“Oh.”
Elias had told her the entire story. Henry suffered from insomnia and neurosis, a fancy word for anxiety. The traumas of his familial past had led him down this path, and it was not the first but the second time he had fought the addiction. The revelation forced her to make a decision.
At its core, the decision was simple.
To help or to run?
Beneath the simplicity of the question, her emotions made it complex. She was angry with him and the world for the injustices she had faced. She could stay in that mindset. She could be frustrated and resentful, remaining trapped in an endless cycle of asking whyme. Or she could forgive him. She could find her way to trust again. Despite her anger at him for choosing to fall this low, she was also overwhelmed by guilt for deliberately hurting him with her words, and, most of all, she was horrified he was getting sicker by the hour. Could she live with herself if he died from the shock of withdrawal, knowing he had come all this way to tell his truth but she had rejected it?
God, no.
That would be life-shattering.
Reeling with a newfound fear, she left Elias to go to Henry. The door to his room stood open, and she tiptoed in.
He lay in bed with his back to her. A wet spot marked his shirt between his shoulder blades.
Guilt froze her. The sight of him sick was all she needed to realize she didn’t want to be someone who held a life-long grudge. She wanted to deal with her traumas and walk away from them with her head held high. What’s more, she wanted Henry to do the same.
Still, it hurt.
A small part of her still distrusted him. What should she do? Help or run? Forgive or hate?
He rolled onto his back. Face flushed pink, he looked at her with a furrowed brow.
“You do not need to stay for this,” he said.
“I’m staying,” she said without a second thought.
“It will get ugly.”
“We’ve both been through worse.”
He shut his eyes and breathed in. A shiver went through his body.
“Are you cold?” she said.
“Quite cold.”
She hurried to the closet and pulled out a thick woolen blanket from the bottom drawer.
“You do not need to care for every symptom. They will be volatile, changing every minute,” he said.
Her brows pulled together. The urge to cry came, and she busied herself with tucking the blanket around his body.
“You said you’re cold, and we’ll care for that now.” She brought the edge of the blanket beneath his chin. “As soon as you get hot, I’ll come in and fan you, or douse you in a bucket of ice-cold water.”
With a huff, she sat at the end of his bed.
“Has Elias told you?” he said.
“He has.”
“I did not tell you because the addiction was in my past.”
“You don’t have to explain,” she said lamely.
“But I do,” he said. “I want you to understand where this comes from.”
“Laudanum is a widely available medicine here, like ibuprofen in my world. Both are pain meds, prescribed by doctors or available in pharmacies. The only difference is that laudanum is made from opium, because it’s 1881, where modern medicine is only beginning.” She looked at him. “I do understand, Henry.”
“It is an unspoken fact in my society that it leads to addiction,” he said.
“Because opium is highly addictive.”
“Do you judge me for falling prey to it?”
She lowered her head. “I don’t judge you for that.” She swallowed through the tightness in her throat. “It’s just a lot to take in. First, your tale with your father, and now this? I don’t know how to react or what to say.”
“I don’t expect you to do or say anything. If you have questions, I will answer them. If you want to speak, I will listen. If you want to run, I will not stop you. You are free to do as you please.”
The ball in her throat was expanding by the second, preventing her from speaking. A tear fell onto her trembling lower lip.
“Except crying. Do not cry, please,” he said.
“What happened to doing what I please?”
“Crying was not part of that deal.”
“I’ll cry if I want to.”
He gave a tight-lipped smile. “Stubborn one.”
She forced a breath into her lungs, wiped the tears from her face and stood.
“How long until the worst starts?” she said.
“Come nightfall, I’ll be a monster.”
“Implying that you’re not one now?”
His laugh took her by surprise. A flurry of feelings overwhelmed her. The pull between them vibrated, and it seemed their hearts beat as one, the thumping growing more intense by the second. Judging by his longing gaze, he felt the same.
“How I’ve missed that cracking wit,” he said in a hushed tone.
A strangled noise came from her lips. She swallowed. Her heart was racing uncomfortably, each thud a heavy reminder of her conflicted feelings for the man lying sick in bed. The urge to cause him pain was wearing off; the urgency to help had taken over. It crawled through the shattered remnants of her heart, filling her with the determination to push toward forgiveness.
“You haven’t eaten, have you?” she said.
“Not since yesterday.”
“Right. Eggs and toast it is, then.”
He gave her a knowing look. Eggs and toast. The first meal she’d cooked for him at Bondieux House. Maybe she was trying to bury the metaphorical hatchet again. Maybe it was her way of retracing the steps of their relationship to the points of familiarity to make them both feel whole, even if it captured a mere second of comfort in the sea of pain.
“I will vomit it up in a few hours,” he said.
“Then it will give you the energy to vomit more profusely,” she added.
“How kind of you.”
“Get some rest,” she said. “I’ll be back shortly.”
His face, which had been pulled tight in silent pain, softened. The edges of his lips curled, revealing the set of dimpled ridges she had once loved.
Once loved? Or still loved?
As she left his room, she considered the question. It was obvious that, buried somewhere beneath all that hurt, love remained. She had known it the moment she saw Henry by Elias’s front gate. The rush of endorphins, the jolt of excitement, the brief urge to run to him. It had only lasted a few seconds because, at that point, the bad outweighed the good. In that pile of bad, whatever remained of her love for Henry would need to be dug out and dusted with a fine brush. Something of that magnitude would take time. And that was okay.
She didn’t need to love him right away … or ever again. She didn’t have to fall back into his arms and pretend everything was okay. They both needed time. Time to come to terms with one another’s stories and to find themselves before they could meet in the middle. But first, they would focus on his battle of withdrawal.
As she made her way to the kitchen, she practically floated. For the first time in a while, she felt light. The realization that she’d finally taken the first steps to forgiveness dawned on her. God, did it ever feel right.
***
Exactly four hours later, Henry vomited up eggs and toast.
He clenched the sides of the bucket, spat up the remaining bile and exhaled a shuddering breath. Shame did not even begin to describe how he felt at Eva seeing him like this. With a groan, he fell back into bed.
The thin cotton sheets stuck to his feverish skin. Everything was either too wet or too cold or too hot. He wanted to bathe in the sea. He wanted to sit by a fire with a book in his lap. He wanted anything but this hell.
“You done spewing?” Eva said.
“For now.”
“On a scale of one to ten, how nauseous are you?”
He shot her a look. Why did that matter? Nausea was nausea and he would sooner spew all the same. “Eleven,” he muttered.
She groaned and buried her face into her knees. Sitting in a chair in the far corner of his bedchamber, she was wrapped in that tartan blanket again.
Damn those McKenzie colours on her figure.
If he could stand, he would rip that tartan right off her. But she doesn’t belong to you anymore. He exhaled like a raging bull. Irritation coursed through his veins. He craved a hit of laudanum.
A spasm forced him onto his side, away from Eva. His fingers clutched the damp sheets, tugging and pulling with every cramp that shot across his stomach. He tried to think of a happier time, but each memory led him back to the day Eva had been kidnapped. A jolting pain tore through his chest. Was that a symptom of withdrawal or heartache? It all felt the same.
Footsteps shuffled to the window, which was tugged open. A cool breeze billowed into the room.
A shiver crawled up his spine.
“I told you to keep the window closed,” he said.
“You need fresh air—”
“But I am freezing, and everything I’m wearing is blazing wet.”
“Tell me how I can help,” she said.
“Leave.”
“What?”
“I hate that you’re seeing me like this.”
The bed dipped as she sat by his side. “I told you I wasn’t leaving. So, tell me how I can make you more comfortable.”
He kept his focus on the ceiling.
“Henry?”
“Close the window,” he said.
She sighed, returned to the window and closed it. “What next?”
He shut his eyes. “I do not know,” he muttered. Take my hand, lie with me and whisper that you love me. “I do not bloody know.”
Another sigh. More footsteps across the floorboards and the creaking of the bedframe as she sat next to him once more.
“Can you sit up?” she said.
“What for?”
“You said you were wet.”
Reluctantly, he rolled onto his back to look at her.
Her large hazel eyes drew him in, and he struggled to keep his composure. She was holding a cloth. She wanted to wash him. To be cared for like an infant was humiliating, but he was too exhausted to keep fighting.
Her hands grasped his forearms and pulled him up.
“Will you continue acting like a stubborn dog that doesn’t want a bath, or will I need to call upon my imp buddies to set you straight?” she said.
Her attempt at humour quelled his irritation.
As best he could, he straightened into a sitting position on the edge of the bed. The motion sent his head into a dizzy spiral. He leaned toward the bucket and waited.
“Henry?” Eva said.
“I’m at an eleven, remember?” he said, breathing through the nausea.
She made a sound of disgust.
“I think it passed,” he said.
“Okay,” she exhaled. “Let’s do this quickly. I want out of the splash zone.”
She helped him remove his shirt, which was not easily done with his trembling limbs. When his torso was freed from the sticky material, she ran a cool damp cloth over his chest.
He shivered.
She dipped the cloth into the bowl of water at his bedside and returned to him. Her skirt fluttered against his knees. The cloth slowly rubbed the back of his neck. Then, her hands brushed through his hair, causing his head to tip back.
He looked directly into her eyes.
She ran the damp cloth across his forehead, cheeks, down the bridge of his nose, over his lips and around the edges of his bearded jaw.
“Did you sport a beard in New York?” she said quietly.
“No.”
Her finger gently swiped the length of his jaw line. “Hmm, part of your disguise, then?”
A warmth pulled from his belly to his toes. Was she flirting or distracting him? He narrowed his eyes. He would try an inside joke. It was a risk, to be sure.
“I thought it fitting to disguise myself as Bigfoot, given my desire to become an elusive species in the wilderness,” he said.
Her face blanked. But then, she bit her lower lip. The corners of her eyes squinted, her nose crinkled and the edges of her mouth tipped up.
It was not quite a smile, but it filled him with joy all the same.
“Arms,” she said.
He raised them, and she slipped a fresh shirt over his head. As he lay back down, she brought a glass to his lips.
“Drink,” she said.
“Someone is rather demanding,” he muttered. “And I can’t face ingesting anything—”
“I don’t care what you can face; you will do as I say. You’re losing too much fluid.”
He hesitated, then took the glass. “Have you ever seen a person go through withdrawal?”
“I have,” she said, placing the cloth on the rim of the water bowl. “But only in documentaries and TV shows. Usually, detox is done in hospitals or rehab centres with professionals, but since it’s 1881, I highly doubt that’s an option. Especially when doctors are prescribing opium in the first place.”
He tilted his head against the headboard. “Documentaries and TV shows. Tell me what those are, please.”
“Only if you drink.”
“I will spew.”
She took a few steps back. “I’m out of the splash zone. Drink the water, Henry.”
He looked at the clear liquid. A flashback of the night at Elias’s place in London came to mind. That glass of water had also looked innocent…
She approached him and gestured for the glass, then took a sip.
“See, only water,” she said.
He took hold of the glass again. How had she known his thoughts? Was his distrust so clearly written across his face? He brought the glass to his mouth and drank it in one draft. As soon as the liquid hit his stomach, the urge to vomit came. He reached for the bucket.
Quick to bring her palms to her ears, she spun around.
When he was finished, he set down the bucket and, exhausted, fell back into bed.
She peered over her shoulder with one half-squinted eye. “You done?”
“I’m done,” he groaned.
A wave of trembles took hold of his body. He tried to stop them by gripping the sheets, but not even his fingers had the strength to hold on. The shaking was unstoppable.
“I apologize,” he said.
“For what?”
“For everything. I need you to know this. I need you—” He stopped speaking before the urge to cry overtook his senses. He would not cry. Not now. Not ever. “Forgive me for distrusting you with the water.”
Something akin to remorse flashed across her face.
“If you need to distrust, I will be here to silence your anxieties,” she said quietly. “Besides, someone has to tell you how much of a bampot you’re being.”
Bampot. Gaelic for idiot.
Jealousy poked at his heart. “Has he been kind to you?”
“Who?”
“Elias.”
An emotion he did not recognize flashed across her face. “He has,” she said, turning from him. “Rest. I will be downstairs washing your clothes.”
A rushing noise was in his ears as he watched her leave the room with his soiled clothes. She could have said anything, and he would have been happy to hear her voice, but she chose to say that. I will be here to silence your anxieties. God, what a beautiful thing to say. The tenderness of it filled him with the compassion he had yearned for since their separation.
He had told her he wanted her to leave, but that had been a lie. Hadn’t he told himself to stop lying? He did not want her to go. Not truly. Because the moment she left, all joy was sucked from the room.
He shut his heavy eyes.
He should not rely on one person to bring him joy. Only he had the power to fix himself.