I pressed a hand to my forehead, feeling sick. “Your sister told us about the Duke of Montlake’s daughter and how she’d gone missing several years ago,” I explained. “She also mentioned that she had the falling sickness.”
Something flickered in his eyes. I thought it was anger. “She told me she’d been abducted from her father’s estate. That Dr. Sloane had examined her a few months before, but her father had refused his suggested treatment. So Sloane had kidnapped her.” His mouth tightened into a thin line. “To be honest, I was actually relieved to hear the duke had not been so heartless as to consign his daughter to such a fate.”
Unlike his own father. But that knowledge was a raw wound that even Will seemed unwilling to touch. I wasn’t certain any of us would ever understand the old Lord Dalmay’s decision.
“I’d long ago learned to accept that Sloane was willing to do anything to further his desires, no matter how vile. He had no regard for us as people.” His voice was hollow and bitter.
I turned to study the sky behind us. Dark clouds had rolled in, blocking out the last rays of the setting sun, so that the sky to the west was as dark as that in the east. The remaining light was fading fast, and I knew we had little time before the prickling dots of rain I felt sporadically hit my face began in earnest. But I had one more question to ask him before I had to insist he climb down off the battlements and come with me. A question I’d wanted to ask from the first, but never had the courage to until now.
“Will,” I murmured, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear that the wind had pulled free from its pins.
He must have heard the caution in my voice, for he turned to look at me in guarded expectation.
“What exactly happened to you in there? I’ve seen your drawings, but . . . what . . . was he doing to you?”
Will’s eyes went a little unfocused, and I removed my right hand, the same hand that he had crushed in his grasp only hours before, from holding his to touch his lower back. I would have hugged him, but his waist was level with my shoulders, making any embrace much too awkward to attempt.
When he finally answered it was with a hard shake of his head. “No. No, I won’t tell you about that.”
The horror and dread in his voice made my heart clench. Part of me wanted to argue, but it was clear that it was too awful for him to relive, so I did not press him. Especially when another part of me wasn’t sure I wanted to know. Just because I had the courage to ask did not mean I had the courage to listen.
“But you should know, if you don’t already,” Will added, making me peer up at him through the gloom in curiosity. His next words were choked. “That Mary Wallace was taken up by Sloane as well.”
My heart beat faster in my chest. “How do you know for sure?”
He stared down at me in rebuke. “The same way you do. The bindings, the bruises, the marks left from bloodletting. It all begins the same.”
“Why the bloodletting?”
“To weaken us,” he replied, confirming my suspicions. “Then the routine varies.”
“Depending on what sort of brain abnormality he thinks you have?” I guessed.
He nodded, and then his face crumpled in pain. “I befriended her. She was so sweet and kind. And she understood me, like no one had before. And I brought her to his attention.” He shook his head. “I may as well have killed her, like I killed Meg.”
“You couldn’t have known.”
“I should have. It was my mistake to think I was free of him. He’s always watching. He always will be.” He looked down at me, his eyes bright with fear. “I shouldn’t even be talking to you. Especially not here.”
I blinked up at him. The idea that Dr. Sloane might come for me next sent a cold shiver down my spine. “He wouldn’t be interested in me,” I protested, trying to convince myself as much as him. “You had battle fatigue, and Lady Margaret had the falling sickness, and Miss Wallace second sight. He’s only concerned with oddities. And I’m not . . .”
I broke off. I had been stared at and whispered about since I was old enough to pay attention to such things, probably before. Our nursery maid, a woman whom I knew had loved me without question, had even called me her “odd little duck” with quiet affection. I just never seemed to respond the way I was supposed to, especially in social situations. I had different interests from other women, and I had the somewhat disturbing ability to lose myself in my art, to the extent that no one and nothing else existed. I had also learned, from painful experience, to blunt my emotions when needed, something my late husband had alternately praised and ridiculed me for, but that was more a skill of survival than a desire to be stoic. I still felt the pain and fear and despair; I’d simply learned not to react.