Addicted

“It’s what you have done, Lindsay,” Anais replied. “You have done this.”

“Let me explain,” he muttered, staggering closer. “I was with Wallingford. I was…slipped something…that is, I took something that made me confused. I thought Rebecca was you. I believed, Anais, that it was truly you.”

“How could you think such a thing? We look nothing alike.”

“Nor are we the same size.” Rebecca’s voice dripped with venom.

Lindsay shot Rebecca a murderous glare as he held on to the wall, supporting his wavering frame. “Anais, listen to me. It was a drug. I’m not drunk. I swear it. It was a mistake. I thought it was you. Believed it was you…believe me, Anais.”

“Lies,” Anais whispered brokenly as she fixed her blurry gaze on Lindsay. “Everything you said, everything you told me…it was nothing but lies. What we did, that was a lie, too. You were just amusing yourself with me—God, how you must have laughed at me, falling for your seductions so easily.”

“Don’t say that, Anais.”

“What, that you were bored silly that night so you thought you’d take me—plain, undesirable spinster that I am—out to the stables for a little amusement? You probably thought you were doing me a favor by sleeping with me. You must have really felt sorry for me that night to put up with such an inexperienced wallflower like me—especially when you could have had…” Anais glanced at Rebecca and felt her throat squeeze shut. “When you could have had someone beautiful, someone as desirable as her.”

“I wanted you—I want you,” he corrected with a frown. “You know that. Just remember how it was, Anais.”

“I remember all too well. I remember a woman who is not beautiful, a woman with a round body that is too full in the belly and the hips, a woman who thought she was beautiful enough for someone like you. Obviously I was an evening of sport until you could move on to better and prettier things.” God, to think of the way she had blindly believed him. Never questioning his sincerity, actually believing that he had not proposed after making love to her because he wanted it to be special like he claimed. And she had fallen for it.

“No, this is a mistake. It’s not what it seems,” he began, taking a staggering step toward her while using his hand against the wall for support.

Anais felt her lips twist with disgust. He looked so very much like his father, stumbling toward her, fumbling with the fastenings of his trousers, his curling hair in disarray, his shirttails hanging outside his trousers. She could hardly look at him without wanting to vomit. This was not the Lindsay of her childhood. This was not the man she had lain with two nights ago. This was a stranger—a dissipated wastrel she had never seen before.

“No, please. Don’t look at me like that, Anais. Don’t look at me like you do him. I’m not like him,” he roared, staggering toward her. “Listen to me and let me explain. I don’t want Rebecca. I don’t want anyone but you.”

Anais was suddenly aware of a strong presence beside her. Without looking, she knew that it was Lord Broughton. His arm around her waist was strong and comforting and she sagged against his side.

“Broughton! Thank God…tell her—tell her about the drug…” Lindsay pleaded, lurching toward them. “Broughton knows…he was with me—”

“For as long as I live I shall remember you this way,” Anais gasped through trembling lips as she tried to stem her sob of pain. “Never have you resembled him more than you do now. You’ve broken my heart.” She covered her mouth once more, praying she would be able to leave before she completely broke down. “I wish I had never let you touch me.”

“No, Anais,” he said, his voice pleading. “Christ, no, don’t say that!”

But she turned from him, and Garrett, who was just as shocked by Rebecca’s betrayal, reached for her and took her into his arms.

“I’m sorry,” Lindsay cried. “Christ, don’t leave!”

Anais closed her eyes, blocking out the sound, hating the words she had heard him say so many times before. Such meaningless, empty words. Such a meaningless act. What a fool she had been. A hopeless, romantic fool.

“I will not lose you!” Lindsay roared as she turned and walked away, still holding fiercely onto Garrett’s arm. “You cannot run from me, Anais. I will find you. Anais!” Her name, ripped from the depths of Lindsay’s tortured soul, echoed throughout the hall and Anais shivered, still hearing him calling her name even after the carriage wheels had set into motion.

4

Ten months later

“Anais, you must come downstairs, at least for a cup of tea. It is Christmas Eve, you cannot possibly spend it up here in your room, oh—” Ann’s voice broke off when she came waltzing into the room and spotted Anais lying in bed with Robert Middleton’s ear to her breast.

“I’m sorry,” Ann mumbled, clearly horrified that she had walked in on her sister in such an intimate position.

“Don’t be silly, Ann. Dr. Middleton was just finishing with me, were you not, sir?”

“Indeed I was, Lady Anais.” He straightened away from her. “I shall check in with you tomorrow to see how you are faring.”

“Surely you do not need to call on me tomorrow?’ Tis Christmas morn, and you have a wife and child that you will not wish to leave.”

He reached for her hand, clasping it tightly in his warm one. “I shall see you tomorrow, Lady Anais. Sleep well and remember you are not to exert yourself.” He snapped shut the wooden cylinder he had used to listen to her chest. “It’s utterly amazing. Your heart sounds much stronger than it did two days ago. If you keep this up, you shall be wandering about the woods in no time.”

“Thank you, Dr. Middleton.”

“Just Robert,” he murmured as he placed his hat over his dark blond hair. “We have, after all, known each other since we were in swaddling clothes.”

“Thank you, Robert,” Anais replied, knowing he would not be happy until she did so. And truth be told, she did feel silly acting so formal around him. She had known him all her life. He was Garrett’s younger brother after all.

“Send word to The Lodge if you need me. And remember, you are not to be near drafts or the cold air. The cold makes it harder for the heart to pump the blood. Your heart doesn’t need the strain. I’m afraid you shall have to miss out on the church service this evening. Your condition is delicate, you must not take any risks.”

“Mother says that she believes you are much too young to attend me,” Anais said, laughing at him and his boyish pout.

“No doubt she puts more stock in that old physician of hers, the one whose medical books were written in the time of the Bible.”

“She’s threatened to send him to me.”

“Whatever you do, don’t let him bleed you, Anais.”

“I won’t, Robert.”

“Well, then, if that is all, I shall be on my way. The weather, it appears, has taken a turn for the worst.”

“Never know what winter will bring in Worcestershire.”

He nodded and reached for his brown pigskin bag. “It’s much the same in Edinburgh. Well, then, good night, Anais, and happy Christmas to you.”

“To you, too. Wish Margaret the same and give your daughter a kiss for me.”

“I shall,” he said, beaming a wide smile at the mention of his child. “I certainly shall. Happy Christmas, Lady Ann,” he said, inclining his head as he passed her sister.

Ann came over to the bed and sat down beside her after Dr. Middleton had closed the door. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize he was still here. He was up here for a very long time.”

Anais shrugged and picked at the loose thread of the woolen blanket that covered her. She couldn’t help but notice how pale her fingers still looked and how her veins, so blue and cold, could be seen through her skin, as if her flesh was nothing but transparent tissue that was used for papier-mâché.

“You are improving?” Ann captured her gaze. “You must be, for you look much better than you did a month ago when you returned from France. Lud, you looked on death’s door when Lord Broughton carried you in. I vow, it was providence indeed that you met up with him in Paris, for Aunt Millie would have been in hysterics had she to deal with you alone, and in a foreign city.”

“It was very fortunate that I met up with his lordship,” she muttered, not wanting to talk about Garrett and the events that had taken place.

“Has Dr. Middleton told you what your delicate condition is? He’s mentioned it several times to Mama and Papa, but he is rather vague to its cause.”

Anais let her sister see her impatience. “I have told you, Ann, that it is nothing more than a bit of fever and malaise.”

Ann arched an intelligent, blond brow, clearly not believing what she was hearing, but letting the rebuke slide. “Mother told Father that it is most likely your womanly organs rotting away in spinsterhood that is causing your heart to fail. But father believes that you’ve caught some sort of virulent brain fever from the French.”