Married By Morning (The Hathaways #4)(20)

Finally Catherine was allowed to go to Leo’s room, while Win and Beatrix went to wait downstairs. She found Amelia, Cam, and Merripen all crowded around the bedside. Leo was shirtless, and heaped with blankets. It shouldn’t have surprised her that he was arguing simultaneously with the three of them.

“We don’t need his permission,” Merripen said to Cam. “I’ll pour it down his throat if necessary.”

“The hell you will,” Leo growled. “I’ll kill you if you try—”

“No one is going to force you to take it,” Cam interrupted, sounding exasperated. “But you have to explain your reasons, phral, because you’re not making sense.”

“I don’t have to explain. You and Merripen can take that filthy stuff and shove it up your—”

“What is it?” Catherine asked from the doorway. “Is there a problem?”

Amelia came out into the hallway, her face taut with worry and vexation. “Yes, the problem is that my brother is a pigheaded idiot,” she said, loudly enough for Leo to hear. She turned to Catherine and lowered her voice. “Cam and Merripen say the wound isn’t serious, but it could become very bad indeed if they don’t clean it properly. The piece of timber slipped in between the clavicle and the shoulder joint, and there’s no way of knowing how deep it went. They have to irrigate the wound to remove splinters or clothing fibers, or it will fester. In other words, it’s going to be a bloody mess. And Leo refuses to take any laudanum.”

Catherine regarded her with bafflement. “But … he must have something to dull his senses.”

“Yes. But he won’t. He keeps telling Cam to go ahead and treat the wound. As if anyone could do such painstaking work when a man is screaming in agony.”

“I told you I wouldn’t scream,” Leo retorted from the bedroom. “I only do that when Marks starts reciting her poetry.”

Despite her consternation, Catherine almost smiled.

Peering around the doorjamb, she saw that Leo’s coloring was terrible, his sun-browned complexion lightened to an ashy pallor. He was trembling like a wet dog. As his gaze met hers, he looked so defiant and exhausted and miserable that Catherine couldn’t stop herself from asking, “A word with you, my lord, if I may?”

“By all means,” came his sullen reply. “I would so love to have someone else to argue with.”

She entered the room, while Cam and Merripen moved aside. With an apologetic expression, she asked, “If I might have a moment of privacy with Lord Ramsay…?”

Cam gave her a quizzical glance, clearly wondering what influence she thought she could have with Leo. “Do what you can to persuade him to drink that medicine on the bedside table.”

“And if that doesn’t work,” Merripen added, “try a hard knock on the skull with that fireplace poker.”

The pair went out into the hallway.

Left alone with Leo, Catherine approached the bedside. She winced at the sight of the stake embedded in his shoulder, the lacerated flesh oozing blood. Since there was no bedside chair to sit on, she perched carefully on the edge of the mattress. She stared at him steadily, her voice soft with concern. “Why won’t you take the laudanum?”

“Damn it, Marks…” He let out a harsh sigh. “I can’t. Believe me, I know what it’s going to be like without it, but I have no choice. It’s…” He stopped and looked away from her, setting his jaw against a new spate of shivering.

“Why?” Catherine wanted so badly to reach him, to understand, that she found herself touching his hand. When no resistance was offered, she became emboldened and slid her bandaged fingers beneath his cold palm. “Tell me,” she urged. “Please.”

Leo’s hand turned and enclosed hers in a careful grip that sent a response through her entire body. The sensation was one of relief, a feeling of something fitting exactly into place. They both stared at their joined hands, warmth collecting in the sphere of palms and fingers.

“After Laura died,” she heard him say thickly, “I behaved very badly. Worse than I do now, if you can conceive it. But no matter what I did, nothing gave me the oblivion I needed. One night I went to the East End with a few of my more depraved companions, to an opium den.” He paused as he felt Catherine’s hand tighten in reaction. “You could smell the smoke all down the alley. The air was brown with it. They took me to a room filled with men and women all lying pell-mell on pallets and pillows, mumbling and dreaming. The way the opium pipes glowed … it was like dozens of little red eyes winking in the dark.”

“It sounds like a vision of hell,” Catherine whispered.

“Yes. And hell was exactly where I wanted to be. Someone brought me a pipe. With the first draw, I felt so much better, I almost wept.”

“What does it feel like?” she asked, her hand clutched fast in his.

“In an instant, all is right with the world, and nothing, no matter how dark or painful, can change that. Imagine all the guilt and fear and fury you’ve ever felt, lifting away like a feather on a breeze.”

Perhaps once Catherine would have judged him severely for indulging in such wickedness. But now she felt compassion. She understood the pain that had driven him to such depths.

“But the feeling doesn’t last,” she murmured.