Go to London. It rang like a bell in her head. “I’ve stopped being daring.”
“So you keep saying, but I don’t believe that for a moment. Do you have any idea how daring it was to throw faux courtship rituals aside and tell your suitors to treat this house party as it really is—a business negotiation?”
“Practical, that.”
“Pft. Daring. Now, Lady Jane Crenshaw, I dare you to go to London.”
She could say no. She should say no. She did not want to say no. “Quick, Lillian, we must beat the snow.”
Chapter 21
December 25, 1818
Uncle Neville mixed the tincture, then downed the potion in practiced, steady movements.
He sank into the pillows of his bed with a sigh. “Why'd you do it, Georgie?” His breath rattled, and his frail body looked more skeleton than flesh. His hair, which had been darker than George’s when he’d become George’s guardian, was stark white and sparse. Too long wisps escaped a slip of cloth that tied it back from his face.
“It's killing you, Uncle,” George said. He’d thought his uncle dead when he’d returned home yesterday. The trip had taken longer because of the weather, and he’d found Neville unconscious, barely breathing, his mind and body consumed by fever for several days. Thank God, the fever seemed to have broken.
But Neville was broken, too. A tear rolled down his paper cheek. “It's the only thing that makes life livable.”
George struggled to find the right words and only found the pleas of the young boy he used to be. “You’re improving, Uncle. You must continue with the treatment. A little less every week. You’re doing so well. Please.”
Neville’s face contorted with so many emotions at once, his expression remained unreadable. “I’ll try,” he ground out. “For now. You should have told me.” Water pooled in his misty eyes. “You can’t play with a man’s life like that, Georgie. My mind is not yours to control.”
What was George to say to that? Apologize? Agree? Lecture? George had to control Neville’s life because the man could not do so himself.
Neville waved his hand limply in the air. “No matter. Will you read to me? Please?”
George swallowed his dismay and opened the book his uncle clutched between his clawed fingers. His uncle was supposed to have been better than before. He seemed worse. Martha’s letter had merely reported a calm before a storm.
“You know the one I want,” Uncle Neville said from somewhere far away.
“Yes.” George knew exactly the one he wanted. He didn't even have to look at the page. He’d read it so many times, his head and heart and even his lips alone had memorized every damned word. It had been the very first poem he'd read to his uncle, the first time the man had gotten it into his head that poetry and the hallucinatory flights of laudanum were perfect bedfellows.
George closed his eyes.
In Xanadu did Kublai Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree.
His voice rang flat, monotonous, as his uncle’s breathing slowed to a terrifying crawl. When George was sure he was asleep, he stopped reading. His heart, a shriveled thing in his chest, pinched with every painful beat. At least he still knew he had a heart, that it could hurt, that leaving Jane had not ripped it completely from his chest.
He leaned his elbows on his thighs and dropped his head between his knees. He pulled in ragged breath after ragged breath until the air in the room became thick and heavy, then he stood on shaking legs and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. He needed to move. To hit or stab something. But it was Christmas day. He could not go to Jackson’s or Angelo’s. Yet he needed to forget, to punish himself.
He closed the bedroom door quietly behind him and took the stairs almost at a run, desperate to escape, to release the dark energy coursing through him. A long walk would have to do. The front door’s handle was cool beneath his touch.
“George. Where are you off to?”
“Damn.” George swung around. “A walk, Martha. I must. I’ll be back in time for the festivities.” He gave a small laugh. He did not feel festive.
His sister wrapped her arms round him in a warm, familiar hug. “I feel responsible for Neville. I should not have told him we had lessened his dose.”
“He was bound to find out, though, wasn’t he?” George pressed his fingers to his temples. “Perhaps we should not have kept the treatment from him.” He pulled from the hug. “We should have let him know what we were doing.”
“He would have refused to go along.”
True. How many times had they tried to pry him away from the drug, only for Neville to hold tight as if clutching to life itself? Too many.
“You're tired, George. You need sleep, not a walk.” Martha rubbed her eyes. George, tired? What about her? Her green eyes were shadowed with exhaustion and the skin beneath them looked fragile. A strand or two of her mahogany hair shone silver. Too much weighed her down. She had too little fun, too little to celebrate. Too many responsibilities.
