Lewis heard the roar as he rounded the corner at the top of the stairs. For a moment, he thought it came from below, his father still raging about insubordination from the wife who’d been his pawn for so many years.
Then came a shriek and a man’s voice. Gideon. His heart pounded against his ribs as he ran.
The corridor stretched longer with each stride. A nightmarish eternity passed before he reached her door. Yes, it was Gideon, spewing curses at Anna.
How had he gotten in? The door was locked, as it was supposed to be. “Anna!”
He shoved his key into the lock with fumbling fingers and threw the door wide.
In the quick glance he allowed himself, he did not see Anna. But Gideon stood by the dressing table, his trousers around his knees. His head swiveled toward the door, hunched between his shoulders like a bull. There was wet blood on his shirt.
Lewis had seen plenty of ugly expressions on his brother’s face, but none to match this. No mockery mitigated its cruelty. In one hand he held something small and sharp. There was blood on that too.
Lewis wasted no time thinking about fair play. He hit him head first in the gut.
Gideon went down like a sick horse at the knacker’s. Unfortunately, his head missed the hearth, hitting the floorboards with a thunk. He fought frantically but there was no science behind it, just flailing arms and fists. He got in a blow to the chin that made Lewis bite his own tongue, and once he managed to roll Lewis off him by pushing his feet against the floor. He did a bit of damage then, but unable to get his knees under him his leverage was limited. Blood dripped from somewhere.
Lewis soon pinned him to the floor again, with his choice of targets. He used them all, taking special pleasure in knocking out that loose tooth. In between punches, he beat his brother’s head against the floor.
He heard a horrified gasp behind him and Anna’s slurred, desperate voice from the bed. “Stop, Lewis, please stop.” Wiping blood from his mouth, he straightened his back and turned to her.
She stood on the bed in her bare feet and that flimsy nightdress, gripping the bedpost. Her eyes were wide with shock, her face as white as snow on the moors. Except for one red cheek and blood dribbling from a swollen lip.
Lewis couldn’t breathe. “He hurt you.”
She shook her head. It looked more like a spasm. “Not much.”
He slapped Gideon’s cheek—no response. Safe for the moment. Lewis scrambled to his feet.
His mother rushed through the doorway with a double candelabra, eyeing the half-dressed body of her elder son. His father, two steps behind her, said “Phaw. Cover up that mess.”
“What’s the blood?” asked Mother. “Is it his?”
Lewis squatted and pulled Gideon’s collar aside, following the trail to the little hole in the side of his neck. It still bled, sluggish but steady.
“I stabbed him,” said Anna. Lewis forgot about Gideon and slowly rose, staring at her.
“You what?” Her voice faint, Mother stood with a hand to her heart.
“With my scissors. I stabbed him.”
“Oh, Anna.” His sweet girl, driven to such measures. He reached up and took hold of her waist to lift her down.
For a moment, he thought he would have to climb up there and peel her fingers from the bedpost. Finally, she let go and he lowered her to the floor. Beneath a smear of blood, one cheek was an ugly red. The stinking rat punched her.
She clung to him instead of the bedpost, shaking like that evening in Leeds. But he could not spend the time she needed. Not yet.
“Father, get the footmen and grooms. Fredricks too. And do it fast. He won’t stay this way for long.” He wanted to shout his orders, but he kept them quiet for Anna’s sake.
Father got the message. He took one more horrified glance at Gideon and scurried off down the hall.
Anna wrenched away calling out, “Doris!” He held on to her but she shoved him, hit him in her frenzy. He caught her wrists—she cried out in pain.
He checked her hands, her wrists, and found the red welt encircling the left one. He folded her in his arms, trying to calm her.
She pulled against his hold, gasping. “I must go to Doris. He went to see her tonight. He said… He said she has his chin. Please, please let me go.” Panicked tears ran down her cheeks.
She was not going anywhere in her current state, and he could not go.
“Mother will go. Mother, check the nursery and see that everything is well. And come right back.”
He sat with Anna on his lap, murmuring endearments into her ear while he kept an eye on his brother. What a bizarre juxtaposition. He must get Gideon’s hands tied, but he’d had no possible opportunity. The men had better come soon.
His mother returned with a nod of reassurance. Putnam came with her, all aghast, and wrapping Anna in her heavy robe, swore that Gideon had never been there. “We never leave her alone, never!”
“Are you sure?” Anna asked, desperate. “Did you see her? Did you touch her?”
“Both,” Mother told her. “She’s breathing and sleeping peacefully.” And to Lewis, “What else can I do?”
“Sit with Anna in my room. Hold her hand or something.” He didn’t know what sort of comfort his mother was capable of, but she and Putnam together would manage fine.
He set Anna on her feet. The tears had stopped, at least. “Go with Mother, sweetheart. Putnam’s coming too.”
“And you?” Her voice quavered.
“In a few minutes.”
He saw them across the corridor while Putnam hurried about, collecting a warm nightdress and bed slippers, the blue blanket, all Anna would need. She gave Gideon’s body a wide berth. “Shouldn’t be any need to lock the door,” he told her as she left, “but do it anyway.”
Gideon moaned as Lewis rolled him over and pulled his wrists together. The drapery cords made more luxurious bonds than he would have liked, but he jerked them good and tight. “That’s for Anna, you vermin.” He found two keys in his brother’s pocket, one of them a skeleton key. How long had he had it? Since childhood, for all Lewis knew.
He didn’t bother to pull the trousers over his brother’s buttocks.
The Aubreys did not have a dungeon. The nearest thing to a dungeon in all of Wrackwater Bridge was a cold little room in Sir John’s cellar that he used on rare occasions, as justice of the peace, to bind over minor offenders.
Aubrey Hall had only a storeroom off the kitchens with two tiny windows near the ceiling for ventilation, and a sturdy locked door to prevent pilfering of its contents.
They hauled Gideon in there, groaning and grumbling, added a hard chair, a chamber pot, and some blankets. Fredricks did some cursory clean-up on his master’s face—Lewis’s as well. There was plenty of food if Gideon got hungry, but Lewis bet his headache would win out over his hunger. No one seemed much concerned for his comfort. Certainly not Lewis.
He left his own groom on guard outside the door. He’d been hired only last week, but he had worked at a neighbor’s for some years. Lewis trusted him.
He found his father in the library, as it was called, hidden from sight in a high-backed chair that he’d angled away from the door. When Lewis spoke, he rose only high enough to peer over it before sauntering forward as casual as you please. As if to deny, by his easy bearing now that all danger had passed, that he was a coward.
“He’s locked up safe, is he?” No pretense of concern for Mama or anyone else. He’d raised his son to be just like himself. But the student had surpassed him, and he cared only for the repercussions to himself. A coward and a self-centered jackstraw.
It was more than an hour before Lewis returned upstairs. Anna lay curled in his narrow bed, her head on his mother’s lap, the blanket he’d given her clutched in one hand beneath her chin. So beautiful, so vulnerable. Her injured cheek faced up—it must hurt to lie on it.
“How is she?” He spoke quietly, but her eyes blinked open and she licked her swollen lips.
“Lewis,” she said, hardly louder than a sigh. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
He tilted his head to the horizontal, matching hers, and her eyes lit up with amusement. Perhaps Gideon had not wrecked his world entirely.
Out in the corridor, he apprised his mother of Gideon’s circumstances. She too looked exhausted, and no wonder. Midnight had passed long ago.
“Thank you, Mother. I didn’t know what to expect from you.”
She blinked away tears. “I didn’t know either. But I…” She trailed off, perhaps lost as he was in their wretched past. Anna would have hugged her—he managed a pat on her shoulder.
When he returned to his room, Putnam was waiting for him. “You collect your things, sir, and leave her to sleep. I’ll stay with her. The babe nursed while you were gone, so she’s set for now.”
“No, I’m not leaving her again. Do you know… Did she say… Did he get inside? Did he hurt her there?”
“He did not,” Putnam said. “Or I’d be getting a knife from the kitchen and stabbing him myself. Not that what he did isn’t bad enough.”
Lewis put an arm around her and bent down to kiss her cheek. “Go get some sleep.”
“Sleep! I don’t know as that’ll come anytime soon. But she’ll drop off easy enough. If you’re thinkin’ of doing what he did not, you’d best think again.”
“Of course not. What do you think I am?”
She patted his arm. “A gentleman, sir, that’s what.” She trundled up the stairs, and he shut his door. Locked it too.
Anna sat propped against the headboard, watching him. “Is it still not safe, then?”
“It is. But I’m through taking risks where you’re concerned.”
He sat on the bed beside her. “I’m sorry, Anna. I’ll not easily forgive myself for allowing this to happen.”
“He…he had a key.” She gazed down at her fingers, pulling little fibers from the blanket.
Lewis nodded. “A skeleton key. I don’t know how he got it, but it’s mine now.”
“You were supposed to come back.” Her voice quavered.
He sighed. “I know. Father caught me.”
“G-Gideon said you were arguing.”
“About Mother. That’s the least of my worries right now.” He tipped her chin up to examine the damage to her face. He cupped her cheek with his palm, barely touching the delicate skin his brother had so abused. “Does your mouth hurt?”
“A bit. It’s hard to speak properly.”
He fought to keep his voice level. “I should have killed him.”