Perilous Pleasures (9 page)

“I must be chaste.” His voice was a mere whisper. “If I don't stay chaste, I'll never earn the Final Teaching. That woman's son would have
lived
if I'd known the things the Dark Lord knows. He would have lived! Would you have me give
that
up just to satisfy my appetites? To be merely a man as other men? Surely you couldn't respect a man who would be so selfish.”

“Oh, I could respect such a man well enough,” she said sharply, “if he offered me that protection you seem to think is a woman's due. I've never known it. But I'm only a courtesan's daughter, so I don't expect men to be as gods. It's no wonder if I should prefer a man who offered me his kindness to one who could raise the dead.”

“Unless you, too, faced death—while he stood by helplessly.” His eyes locked into hers. “Then you would hate him. As the boy hated me in his last moments. As Charlotte must have done.”

As he whispered his sister's name, Zoe felt an unworthy burst of envy for her, dead so long, and yet so well-beloved. He'd been so loyal to her. No one would ever speak of Zoe with such yearning. No one would ever reproach himself for letting
her
down.

But this wasn't the time for self-pity. “You did your best,” she reminded him. “Can't you forgive yourself for being human?”

“I can't forgive myself for being an animal.” He stabbed the bronze knife savagely into the hard-packed soil. “When you touched me just now, it wasn't comfort I wanted from you, even knowing it was my lust for you that made me useless to the boy. I'm cursed. I've known it all my life. Why do you have to tempt me like this?”

“Tempt you?” Zoe shot back. “You're impossible! I didn't tempt you. I reached out to comfort you. You looked like a child who'd hurt himself, a small and helpless child who had no mother. I could never resist helping anything motherless.”

“Oh, but I
have
a mother,” he said quietly. “Though no female weakness ever inclined her to comfort me when I cried.”

“Not even when you fell and hurt yourself?”

“Especially not then. She'd beat me if I cried, telling me it wasn't manly.”

“How monstrous! Even my mother would kiss away my tears—if she was there to see them.” She bit her tongue, wishing she hadn't mentioned her mother, knowing how much he hated her.

But he ignored it. He waved his hand dismissively. “Women are allowed tears, but a man must be strong. My mother only did what was proper. My father died shortly before my birth. He left her the entire burden of turning me into a man.”

“And that was how she did it? By teaching you that a man must not show pain?”

“Of course. A man must hide his pain and carry on.”

No wonder he needed to be like a god! Only a god could bear to live with every human feeling bottled up inside. “Was anger the only emotion she permitted?”

He opened his mouth to reply but stopped before the words came out. He thrust his bronze knife back into its sheath, stood up and stalked away. His boots rasped against the hard-packed farmyard earth. Then he turned and faced her. “Perhaps it was. I'd never thought about it. Anger is manly.”

He was thinking about it now. She took a step toward him. “Your mother was wrong. Even a man needs comfort now and then. It's for that comfort, you know, as much as for the slaking of their lusts, that men turn to women.”

“It is?”

“Yes,” she said. “It is. A courtesan's daughter hears much about such things. But perhaps your mother, being a lady, and innocent of the ways of the world, didn't know that.”

Chapter 6

T
hey returned together to the inn, where Ramsay paused only to order her a good dinner before barricading himself in his chamber without speaking another word. The next day, they resumed their journey, turning off the Great North Road at Newcastle and riding west on the old Roman Road that ran along Hadrian's Wall and passed through windswept moors and barren uplands. After their confrontation in the farmyard, Lord Ramsay chose to spend the long hours of their journey riding with the postilion. During the few periods when he did ride in the chaise with her, he stared moodily out of the window.

But there was no repeat of the rudeness that had marred the last day they had traveled together. If anything, he seemed to be going out of his way to be overly polite. He helped her in and out of the carriage—touching her gingerly on the sleeve with his gloved hand. When they stopped, he made sure she had a comfortable room and tipped the inn's maidservant well to ensure she was taken care of.

Zoe could tell he was still struggling with the incomprehensible physical attraction to her he had so crudely demonstrated in the chaise and reproached her with in the farmyard. She didn't fool herself that it meant anything. He'd said himself his passions were strong, and he'd been celibate for much too long. She knew full well that to a starving man even turnips are a feast.

But it disturbed her to think he might be driven by something akin to the desire that made her want to stroke the stubble that gilded his austere cheeks, to run her hands down that muscular chest of his, and to feel once again the excitement that had filled her when she'd lain pressed against his naked body. She didn't underestimate its power. He was right to fear it, and she did not doubt that if he were to give in to it, it would end in disaster. He already hated her for being the child of the woman who had murdered his sister. He'd hate her even more if he let her steal from him the powers that meant so much to him.

She mustn't let it happen. There was no reason to give herself to him. If he gave in to his lust, it wouldn't satisfy the hunger that tormented her. Far from it. It would destroy her to satisfy her body's hunger without a deeper union of the soul.
That
was what Ramsay had made her hunger for. And that he would never give her.

So she must force herself to go back to thinking of him as the angry man who had wrested her from her mother. The rest of what she felt for him—that sense that the two of them were bound by something greater—was only a delusion of the kind that tormented foolish virgins who gave themselves to a man for the very first time. It was the virgin's sickness—whatever Zoe might have thought she glimpsed with him in those rare moments when he'd seemed to open his heart to her.

It would soon pass. Her mother had told her it always did—and that it would pass more swiftly if she took care not to give in to it. Still, when Zoe thought he wasn't looking, she'd steal glances at Lord Ramsay's handsome features. Though all too often, just when she thought him unaware of her scrutiny, their gazes would meet and lock together, and then, embarrassed, they both would turn away.

T
he second day after her ill-fated attempt at flight, they crossed the Scottish border and passed through Gretna Green, though they didn't alight in the town so famous for runaway marriages. Then they turned westward. The road was much rougher now that they'd left behind the smooth gravel of the coaching road. Despite the chaise's being sprung in the most modern manner, its continual jolting made Zoe's wound ache. When they finally stopped to change horses and refresh themselves, she examined it, only to find that it had opened and was weeping a bloody discharge that had soaked through the bandage. No wonder it throbbed with the dull relentless pain that seemed to beat with her anxious pulse.

She didn't look forward to riding through the night with her wound paining her so much, but to her relief, when she came down to dinner, Ramsay told her they would have to spend the night in the tiny village where they were stopped. One of the large wheels of the chaise was not properly seated on its axle. A wheelwright would have to attend to it. She hid her relief, knowing how important it was to him to reach their destination swiftly, but it was substantial. At last she'd be able to get some rest, away from the infernal rocking of the carriage.

When the maid came to help her prepare for sleep, Zoe called for hot water and made a poultice to suck the bad humors from her wound. But the next day it was, if anything, more painful. She grimaced as she walked into the private parlor where the innkeeper had laid out an unappealing breakfast of warmed-over rabbit and bacon for her and her companion.

“Surely your ankle isn't still paining you?” Ramsay looked up from his plate.

“Not my ankle, but the wound in my leg. It's opened up again.”

His brow furrowed. “How long has it been bothering you?”

“It's always ached, ever since I injured it, but since it started bleeding again, it's become much worse.”

“Bleeding? When did that start?”

“From the way the bandage looks, I should think yesterday or the day before.”

“Your wound's been bleeding for two whole days and you didn't tell me?” His voice rose. “Why didn't you say something? Had I known, I'd have examined it.”

“After all you've said on the subject of how little you wish to be reminded that I
have
a body, I was hardly going to ask you to inspect my thigh.”

“But if mortification sets in you might lose the leg.” He looked horrified.

“I applied a poultice last night in the inn.”

“But today the leg is worse?”

“Yes. I'm afraid it is.”

A
dam set down his knife and fork, fighting the feeling of doom that swept over him. He should have known better than to let some dirty inn wife dress her wound.

“Come here.” He beckoned her toward him.

Zoe began to rise, then winced and plumped down again on the plain wooden chair. When he met her eyes he saw fear in them—a fear that, uncharacteristically, she was making no effort to suppress.

His heart began to pound. “I must examine your leg,” he said. “There's no time to waste.”

Zoe gave him a withering look. “What, and expose your purity to more of my corruption? You could hardly bear the sight of my ankle, and this injury is most certainly
not
to my ankle.”

“I know very well where the injury is,” he said gruffly. “But I'm not so lost to my duty as a physician that I can't overcome my own weakness when a patient's health is at stake.”

“Well,” she said slowly, “if you'll promise that you won't accuse me of trying to seduce you, I'll let you examine the wound. The pain is almost unbearable, and I've become rather attached to this leg. I'd be very unhappy to lose it.” She smiled weakly at these last words as if to make a joke of them, but when she saw no humor reflected back from his eyes, her smile faded, and a tinge of fear colored her pale cheek.

He fought against the stabbing fear that gripped him. Fear had no place in a surgeon's heart—and he must find the surgeon within him now and set aside all else. Zoe's life might depend on it. He motioned to her to stretch out on the long, stiff-backed, old-fashioned wooden bench that stood against one wall of the private parlor where they'd broken their fast. When she had arranged herself as comfortably on it as she could, he lifted her skirt until the bandage was revealed. Then he began unwrapping it. As the cloth tore away from her wound, she gasped. An echoing pain shot through his body.

What had happened to his professional objectivity? It always hurt when a dressing was removed, and he had seen worse wounds. Yet he couldn't bear that Zoe should feel any pain. Irritated with his descent into sentimentality, he gave the bandage a quick tug. She stifled a shriek, but the rest of the bandage came off, and he could finally see what lay under it.

It was worse than he'd feared. He need no longer worry that the sight of her naked thigh would fill him with lust, not with the stench of putrefaction that wafted up from the festering wound the bandage had hidden. Though it had scabbed over, the scab had broken, and an ugly mixture of blood and pus oozed out around its edges. But it wasn't just the stench and the angry green pus that showed him just how badly his neglect had harmed her. The thin red streaks that radiated out along the flesh just above the wound were what every doctor feared: the first sign of blood poisoning.

Zoe might lose her leg. He wasn't at all sure he could save it. If she
had
weakened his healing powers with her ill-advised attempt to seduce him, she would be the one to pay the price. He might have appreciated the irony had he still been bent on revenge, but he could feel nothing now but horror at what his neglect had done to her.

“Is it bad?” She sounded worried.

He nodded, barely able to speak. “The humors have turned putrid.”

A look of fear flashed across her face. “Will you have to take off my leg?”

“It hasn't come to that,” he said, trying to reassure himself as much as her. In truth he probably would, and even then, she might not live. Once wound poison had reached the heart, the patient would often die. Every surgeon knew that. Still, he must give her hope. Hope was often the strongest medicine the physician could offer.

But as he had that thought, he was struck with another dreadful realization. Hope might be the
only
medicine he could offer her. He'd left London in such haste that he hadn't thought to bring with him his collection of materia medica. He had no laudanum to dull her pain, no calomel to raise the fiery humor. And out here in the wilds of Galloway, they might be many hours away from an apothecary. Yet his only hope of saving her leg and perhaps her life lay in immediate surgery.
Without laudanum
.

He gritted his teeth. The pain she'd felt when he'd removed the bandage from her wound would be nothing compared to what she'd feel at the touch of his scalpel. The alcohol the inn could supply was a poor soporific, and besides, it was so prone to depress the vital functions that it would be dangerous to give it to a woman as slender as Zoe. But what was his alternative? He must operate.

He addressed his patient in what he hoped was a calming tone. “If we're to save your leg, I'll have to open the wound and drain the evil humors.”

Though he'd expected her to protest, she only bit her lower lip and nodded.

“Good, then. I'll have to go fetch my instruments. Go to your chamber and do what you must to prepare yourself. I'll meet you there in a few moments.”

He turned away from her, not trusting that he could control his features any longer. He mustn't frighten her by betraying his own dismay. She'd need all her courage to fight off the poison that threatened her life. And she had courage aplenty, though it hurt to remember how many opportunities
he'd
given her to display it. She deserved better than the fate he'd condemned her to.

How wrong he'd been to even think of making her pay for her mother's crime. For he could no longer think of her as the harlot's daughter, but only as herself—brave, compassionate, intuitive Zoe, the strongest woman he'd ever known, and one he'd have been proud to claim as a friend had circumstances been different.

But they hadn't been different, and with what he had done to her, she'd be justified in taking revenge on
him
, though the thought of her hating him sent another surge of pain shooting through his heart.

He struggled to regain the composure he would need to save her.
You must put aside all human emotions if you are to prevail over the powers of death.
Hadn't that been the first thing the Dark Lord had taught him? He must remember it.

Taking a deep breath, he strode into his own chamber and rummaged through his things looking for the instrument case he always kept with him. It held the scalpel he'd need to cut the poisoned flesh out from her wound. It was only as he was unfolding the leather case that he remembered that his scalpel was steel. Cold iron. It had been weeks now since he had touched anything of iron, ever since he'd received the Dark Lord's letter announcing that he'd chosen Adam as his heir and giving him the long list of the things he must do to prepare for the Final Teaching. To touch the iron-bearing scalpel now would drain away all the power he'd built up through his abstention. It might even make him unfit to receive the Final Teaching.

He pushed the instrument case away. He'd use the bronze knife.

But then he remembered what the instructor at the medical school in Vienna had taught him—that the touch of bronze could itself cause a festering wound. Steel cut cleanly, as bronze did not.

But, of course, the ancients had used bronze, hadn't they? And most of the patients he'd seen the Dark Lord operate on had survived—a much larger proportion of them, as he'd often recalled uneasily in Vienna, than those who yielded themselves up to Von Faschling's speedy steel blade. Surely Adam didn't need to pollute himself in order to heal Zoe? He must stay pure so he could assume the Dark Lord's powers, and once he did, he'd be able to save so many more lives and atone, at last, for what he'd done to Charlotte. How could he give all that up—to save Isabelle's child?

Pick up the bronze blade
, he told himself,
and have done with it
. He'd hone the edge carefully. Surely that would be good enough to avoid contagion.

He grasped the handle of his bronze knife. The old familiar feelings flowed through him at its touch. He felt his teacher's strength, and the strength of all the unknown Dark Lords who had come before him. They beckoned him to join them. After all these years of sacrifice he was so close to becoming what he'd always dreamed of being.