It was too early to think that something was wrong. He'd keep working, keep believing in her and in himself. Together they could slay the medical dragons, together they would triumph. Dr. Carrick and his most challenging patient, changing the face of medical science.
"Together, Selena," he whispered, taking her hand in his. "Together, we'll get through this. You'll be fine."
He closed his eyes and imagined Harvard again, his triumphant return to medicine.
It would happen because he demanded it. She would awaken and she would be injured?of course, she'd be terribly injured?but not irreparably damaged. He would work with her, test her, devote his life to her. Anything to heal her.
And if he had to, he'd create her.
Pushing back in his chair, he got to his feet. "I'll be right back, Selena. I promised the rabble I'd give them a report."
They were all in the drawing room.
He paused at the door, hating the thought of opening it. In the six years since his return, he'd kept himself as removed from these people as possible. They were only here to assuage his guilt, anyway. He'd wanted Maeve to be less lonely, and he'd willfully misinterpreted her requests for companionship. She'd wanted Ian with her. In answer to her need, he'd turned Lethe House into a private asylum and opened their home to people like his mother, pretending that that was good enough. He'd tried to give her a family instead of being her family. They didn't need a doctor, this group of misfits and lunatics that society had washed from their collective conscience. Oh, occasionally Ian prescribed a headache powder or directed Edith to dress a wound or stitch a cut, but nothing more taxing than that. He was their
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keeper, nothing more, and it was more than enough for the families of these poor unfortunates. For Lethe House provided what the families wanted, what proper Victorian society demanded: pretense. And that's what everyone?including Ian?did so easily. Shut these people away and pretend they didn't exist.
He went inside and immediately regretted it. The room made him think of his father, the memories wafting back into his subconscious as subtly as the fragrance of the old man's cigar. As a young boy, he'd come into this room often, slipping into the darkness and curling onto the crushed velvet of the settee, to wait for his father to come home.
She didn 't know who I was at supper tonight. Why is she like that, Papa .. . why?
&
nbsp; Neither this room nor his father had ever held an answer to Ian's questions. And now he was here again, seeking answers to questions he couldn't even name, waiting once more.
It was a studiously powerful room. A huge mahogany fireplace dominated the burgundy and black chamber. On its carved mantel, a trio of silver candleholders housed bloodred candles, their flames reflected in the immense seventeenth-century mirror that hung above it. Ornately framed paintings covered every square inch of the claret-painted walls, red and black Aubusson rugs covered most of the planked flooring.
The chamber was dark and somehow bloody, just as his father had intended it to be. A man's room in a man's house, full of hunting trophies and pictures of dying soldiers. Even the knickknack tables were thick and heavy and held ashtrays instead of vases.
No woman had ever had a hand in decorating this house, and it showed in every room.
"How is she, Doctor?"
Ian heard Andrew's question and he ignored it as he poured himself a Madeira.
"Why, I would say she's damned poor, Andrew,"
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Johann drawled. "Unless, of course, you think 'basket' was what she meant to answer. And there is the possibility that she's named, most coincidentally, Ian."
"Shut up, Johann," Ian said, not taking his gaze from the red and gold highlights in his glass.
"Ah, Dr. Carrick," Johann said with a dramatic sigh, "once again you comfort me. I can only imagine the help you'll be when the syphilis actually kills me."
Finally, Ian looked up and saw Johann in the rippling, silvered glass. "You've been 'dying' for years. I think you enjoy the drama of it."
A flash of honest emotion?maybe anger, maybe pain?flashed through Johann's eyes. "I promised someone I would keep breathing. Even if I didn't want to." He paused for a second, drew in a deep, shaking breath, then forced a smile. "Of course, that's not something the mighty Carrick could ever understand."
"Dr. Carrick?" Andrew said.
Ian knew that he had to answer them. If he didn't, Andrew would just keep asking and asking. It was either turn and run, or turn and answer. And he was too damned tired to run.
He turned around slowly, faced the group of people clustered in the eastern corner of the room. Andrew stood stiff and at attention, his arms pressed close along his sides. Johann leaned against the wall, his shoulder insolently pressed into the painting of a battle. Dotty was hiding amidst the velvet curtains that separated this room from the parlor?apparently the broom closet was full tonight. Queen Victoria was sitting on the dainty settee, her threadbare skirts splayed out around her. Lara lurked in the shadowy background alongside Maeve.
He sighed at the sight of his mother. She sat in a rocking chair, clutching a stuffed squirrel, laughing quietly to herself, twirling that damned scrap of fabric through her fingers.