“Do you know what’s causing these lapses?” I asked, determined to find an answer.
Dr. Winslow offered me a grim smile of apology. “I do not, Lady Darby. But the symptoms, when they come over him, present themselves suspiciously like that of a case of extreme, short-term battle fatigue—confusion, detachment, failure to recognize his surroundings and relate to those around him. This makes me wonder if he’s not responding by instinct to some stimulus.”
He shifted forward in his seat, leaning toward us. “He says he feels as if he’s trapped inside the asylum again, that it becomes his world. I can’t get him to tell me anything else. But if that is the case, then something must be taking him back there. A sight, a sound, a smell, a circumstance—something that connects to a memory. Like when you hear a song that reminds you of your childhood. Or smell a flower that reminds you of your wife’s perfume.”
“Whatever it is,” Gage remarked, “it must be a very powerful memory.”
Dr. Winslow nodded. “I agree.”
“Could they be brought on by a display of force?” Michael asked, glancing up from his contemplation of the rug. The dread tightening his features made the breath stutter in my lungs. “Early on you warned me against using force to make Michael do anything. You said that physically compelling his compliance might remind him of the asylum.”
Dr. Winslow tapped his chin, considering the matter. “Yes. It’s possible. You said in the beginning that something as simple as urging his lordship to remove his clothes so that he might bathe could drive him to either fight you or sink into one of his melancholic stupors.” He stopped to look at Michael, who was clenching and unclenching the spindly arms of his chair. “Do you think one of your servants is using unnecessary force with your brother?”
“I don’t know.” He sounded agonized by the thought. “I don’t . . . want to believe Mac or Donovan would do such a thing, but . . . what else can it be?”
Gage, Dr. Winslow, and I shared a look of mutual uncertainty, none of us having an easy answer for him. The idea that either of these men, who had been hired specifically to care for William, might be abusing his power over him and driving him into these episodes made me sick to my stomach.
Dr. Winslow shifted forward in his seat. “Well, I’m sure you all have much to discuss. If you have no further questions for me, I should be on my way home.”
A glance at the west-facing windows told us the sun had already set, casting red light over the long streams of clouds left in its wake.
“You know how to reach me should you have need of me,” he told Michael as he bent to gather up his black satchel. “The only advice I can leave you with is to try and discover what’s causing these melancholic incidents, if, in fact, anything external is causing them at all. Then we can progress from there.”
“But do you think that’s what’s halting his recovery?” I asked, stopping the doctor before he could rise to his feet. “I mean, if we can stop these episodes, do you think he can truly begin to heal? To lead a normal life again?”
He sank back into the cushions of his chair, and the look he fastened on me was one dreaded by every person who has ever been given grave news about a loved one. It was the look that, peering through the stair banisters as a child, I had seen the physician give my father when he explained my mother would not recover from her illness. And the look the doctor who examined Sir Anthony after his apoplexy had given me when he explained my husband was dead.
“Stopping these episodes will help, yes. But I’m afraid Lord Dalmay has been too damaged by his confinement and treatment at Larkspur Retreat. His mind was already fragile from his efforts to overcome his memories of the war, and I have long suspected they exploited that. So, no, Lady Darby, I do not think he will ever lead a ‘normal’ life again.”
“But he’s made so much progress already,” I protested. “Does that not encourage you?”
“Of course it does . . .” he started to say, but I talked over him.
“He’s drawing again. That’s what he did after he returned home. After the battle of Waterloo, and being part of the occupation force. Not immediately,” I admitted. “But once he started transposing the memories from his mind to canvas and paper he began to improve. Is that not what he’s doing now? And once he gets them all out . . .” I broke off, unable to find words in face of the sympathy I now saw reflected in Dr. Winslow’s eyes. I didn’t want his sympathy. I wanted him to cure William.
Gage had shifted over to the settee sometime during my speech and taken hold of my hand. I allowed him to do so, needing the comfort, wherever it came from.
“He’s drawing the same images over and over,” the doctor told me.
I glanced at Michael in surprise.