And there it was. The truth he had barely dared admit to himself, spoken instead to a stranger who had every reason to hate him.
“Enough of that.” Mrs. Clark pulled his hands out of his hair.
“I try to stop.” Still, he was speaking. Against his judgement. Against his will. Poison flowing out of him. “Every day, I try to stop.”
“You must reduce the dosage gradually.”
“I try that too. But I don’t. And ... and the moment I feel anything I just take more anyway.”
Mrs. Clark rose from the stile and lowered herself into the meadow. “This isn’t my problem either.”
“You’re the one who fucking brought it up.”
“For Thomas’s sake.” She shook some clinging clematis blossoms from her skirts. “Now I’m going to join Hope. Stay away from us, Micha. It’s the least you owe me.”
She gathered up her skirts and, with a step as light as a girl’s, ran through the flowers towards her daughter.
Micha watched them only for a moment and then turned for home, Mrs. Clark’s words echoing unwanted in his mind. He tried to imagine the future she had half-suggested could be his. If only he were strong enough to take it.
A few weeks of hell. And then a lifetime. A lifetime without opium, with Thomas.
It felt, in the last balmy evening of autumn, possible.
Though, of course, his resolution faltered in the silence of the house, when the first shivery cravings crept upon him. A little more, a little more, what could it hurt? Reduce gradually. He could start tomorrow.
He would start tomorrow.
Chapter 17
Thomas arrived in London very late that evening, having ridden some forty or fifty miles as though pursued by the devil himself. George was neither at the lodgings he kept on Half Moon Street nor at the townhouse. Brimstone was near to dropping from exhaustion, so Thomas saw him stabled and, on the hope rather than the likelihood of finding his brother, set out for the Army & Navy Club in Pall Mall.
The hour was beyond merely unsociable by the time Thomas stepped between the Corinthian columns and richly decorated arches of George’s club. The interior was as lavish and ornate as the exterior, and Thomas, travel-stained and dishevelled as he was, was not well received. He waited in the echoing hallway, at the foot of the sweeping stone staircase, until George, at last, came sauntering down it. He was with a couple of rakish-looking young men Thomas vaguely recalled from his brother’s regiment.
“Thom!” cried George, with an expansive gesture. He was clearly the worse for drink. “Tell me you bring good news. Is the marquess dead?”
Thomas had barely slept. He had ridden all day. He had prepared a speech. Prepared it a hundred times, a thousand, with every mile that fell to Brimstone’s hooves. And then he had abandoned it, for what could he say, what use were words, when all he had were questions?
Why? What happened to you? Who are you?
And now even they were lost in the scalding rush of pain, fury, love, and loss. Was this careless, brittle stranger really all that remained of hisbrother George? The boy who had broken his arm trying to rescue the stable cat from a tree. And had broken the other one, taking a fence too hard and too fast on a horse too big for him.
It was one thing to grieve the dead, but the living too?
Thomas stepped smartly across the entrance hall, his footfalls echoing upon the marble, opened his mouth to speak, and, instead, found himself delivering a straight left to his brother’s face. Thomas had boxed for Cambridge in his youth, and though he had not practised in years, his skills had not entirely atrophied. There was a horrific crunch of cartilage. George staggered back, cursing incoherently through a rush of blood, his hands coming up to shield his nose.
There was a ripple of shock and outrage through the attendants. Somebody dropped a tray of drinks. George’s friends just gaped.
“What the deuce?” snarled George. “Are you deranged?”
Thomas was, if anything, even more appalled. He had fallen, instinctively, into a guard position, and now he dropped his hands. “I ... I’m so sorry. I don’t know ... why I ... I’m so sorry.”
George glared at him through blood-smeared fingers. Then, still clutching his face, he ducked low and charged, tackling Thomas about the waist. Thomas might have boxed, but he was unprepared and undefended and the army had taught George efficiency and brutality. The two of them crashed heavily to the floor, Thomas underneath. The impact, coupled with his brother’s weight, knocked the breath from his body. For a moment, he was too dazed to react. George straddled his chest, bracing himself on an elbow. Thomas flung up a hand to protect himself, but it was too late. His brother brought back his arm and slammed his fist into Thomas’s face, once, twice, three times. A dull rust-coloured pain billowed through Thomas’s head, his vision blurring bloody, then black. Struggling under George, he managed to get his arm between them, just enough to ward off the worst of the blows.
“George,” he gasped. “Enough. Please.”
But Thomas knew of old that it would do little good. His brother, in the grip of any strong emotion, was not easily restrained or subdued.He showed absolutely no sign of having heard Thomas or even that he still recognised who he was. Thomas could have been any assailant, from any battlefield. There was no time to think, and George was lost to reason. Thomas caught his brother’s other arm by the elbow and twisted up with his hips, flinging George to one side.
Through the smudges of pain that muted all his senses, Thomas could hear, albeit distantly, a commotion. Voices. Running feet.
