And now . . . look at what had become of him.
Tears burned the backs of my eyes, their salty bitterness curdling my tongue. I pressed my forehead against the cool glass of the window, knowing it would leave a smudge, but not caring. I needed to feel the shock of cold against my skin. Gritting my teeth, I fought against the sob building inside me. It pressed hard on my chest. If I wept it would do no one any good, least of all Will. But in spite of my struggles, a single tear escaped to etch a trail down my cheek.
I swiped the wetness away angrily, and then turned to slam the flat of my palm against the window casing. It smarted, but I welcomed the pain.
Damn the old Lord Dalmay! How could he do this to his son? What kind of unfeeling bastard locks away his own flesh and blood in such a cesspit and then proceeds to erase him from his life?
And Lady Hollingsworth along with all the other loose tongues here at Dalmay House should be ashamed of themselves. After everything Will had been through—his service during the war, his unjust confinement—he should be given a hero’s welcome, not spoken of in disgust and shunned like some criminal.
My breath sawed in and out of my chest, rasping like a wounded animal, and I was forced to grip the drapes on either side of me and press my face to the cool glass again, trying to slow my racing heart. My breathing calmed, but the tightness in my chest remained, squeezing my breast every time I closed my eyes and saw Will’s haunted face.
If only I could turn back the clock, return to the summer Will acted as my drawing master. Return to the months before he was locked away. Maybe I could convince Lord Dalmay not to fear his son. Or persuade Will to go to his brother in London. Surely there was some way we could have stopped it all from happening. If only I could fix this. If only I could make it right.
I lifted my face from the windowpane, staring out at the shadowy landscape before me dusted with silvery moonlight.
There had to be something I could do. Some way that I could help him get back what he’d lost, to return him to himself, to the man he was before he’d been confined to that asylum. Before all of those years of torment had been inflicted on his still-fragile mind.
Knowing that I still had not beaten my own demons, it seemed somewhat na?ve to think I could help Will to defeat his, but it felt even more wrong not at least to try, to offer whatever support or guidance I could. Too many people had turned away from Will—during the years prior to his confinement, when he struggled to escape the exhaustion and melancholia that had followed him home from war, and in the months since his release from Larkspur Retreat. I couldn’t be one of them. Not when I had experienced a similar shunning I was just beginning to fight my way back from.
For all the things Will had done for me that summer as my drawing master and more, he deserved my friendship and my loyalty. To turn my back on him now would be a betrayal. I wasn’t sure I could live with myself if I behaved so callously.
Of course, I didn’t know exactly what I could do for him. Despite the years of enforced tutelage by my late husband studying the intimate workings of the human body, I was not medically trained. I had no idea how to treat a man suffering from the manias and melancholia Will endured. But Michael must have consulted a physician—someone with experience with this sort of thing, someone who knew how to care for patients like Will. I could follow their direction.
I worried my lower lip between my teeth. Unless the physician had told Michael to return his brother to the asylum. That seemed to be the answer for anything that baffled a medical man, and the more arrogant the man, the more adamant his protestations that nothing could be done. At least, that had been my experience. And as Sir Anthony’s wife, I’d had plenty of opportunities to witness prideful displays from him and his colleagues.
In any case, Michael had told us his brother had improved significantly in the nine months since his release, so continuing on the present course must be better than sending him back. Perhaps all Will needed was more time and everyone’s patience, and his mind would heal itself. If he was sketching those frightening images on spare sheets of paper and his walls to purge his mind of them, then maybe he was already making great strides to mend himself. Maybe if I encouraged his efforts, let him know I understood, he could rid himself of those haunting memories once and for all.
I rubbed my fingers against my right temple, knowing full and well it wasn’t quite so simple. Was I not still plagued by the images from my past? Pacing the floors of my room on some nights, unable to sleep?
My fingers tightened their grip around the drapes, wrinkling the costly velvet.