Chapter 10: Delirium and Memory
He stood in the cold hallway, the warm kitchen air at his back, and felt the world crystallize around Grace’s whispered words.
Thin white lines.
Beaten with a whip.
The images slammed into him, one after another, with the force of physical blows. Teresa, younger, covering her younger brother with her body. Taking the lash meant for her brother. Again. And again. The stubborn set of her jaw in the library wasn’t just defiance; it was a habit carved into her spine. The way she’d taken the pain in her arm without a sound—that wasn’t just courage. It was endurance, learned in a brutal classroom.
He felt sick. The brandy he hadn’t drunk churned in his stomach. His hand, the one that had grabbed her, curled into a fist so tight his nails bit into his palm.
He didn’t enter the kitchen. He turned and walked away, his boots making no sound on the runner. He climbed the stairs, each step heavy, and went to his study. He poured a drink and drank it this time, the liquor burning a path down his throat that did nothing to warm the cold hollow inside him. The decanter clinked too loudly against the glass.
Hours passed. The manor settled into the deepest part of the night. He should have slept, but the chair by the empty fireplace held him in a kind of paralysis. The ledgers on his desk were gibberish. The maps were just paper. All of it—the Marquis, the revenge, the meticulous, dusty catalogue of his grief—felt obscenely trivial. A rich man’s hobby, played out while real monsters used whips on children in drawing rooms.
A faint sound pulled him from the stupor. A soft shuffling, like bare feet on stone.
He was at his door in two strides, opening it silently.
She was a phantom in the candlelit gloom of the long hallway. Teresa. Pale as the linen shift she wore, which clung to her damp with fever-sweat. Her dark hair was a tangled river down her back. She was walking, but her eyes were open, seeing nothing fixed in the waking world. They were glazed, reflecting the jumping candle flames like still, green pools. Her feet were bare on the cold floor.
A jolt of pure, undiluted fear went through him. Not fear of her. Fear for her. Because he had seen this before. Charlotte, his daughter, would sleepwalk when she had a high fever. She’d drift from her bed, small and vulnerable, navigating the house by some dream-logic that terrified him. He’d learned then not to startle her awake.
“Teresa,” he said, his voice low and calm, a tone he hadn’t used in five years.
She didn’t react. She took another step, one hand trailing lightly against the wallpapered wall as if for balance. A low murmur escaped her lips, too indistinct to catch.
He moved quickly, positioning himself between her and the head of the stairs. She couldn’t go that way. He stepped into her path, careful not to touch her. “Teresa. You’re dreaming. You need to go back to bed.”
She stopped. Her unfocused eyes seemed to look through him. A fine tremor ran through her. “I have to go,” she whispered, the words slurred and thick. “He said I have to go.”
“Who said?” Patrick kept his voice soft, conversational, as he began to gently steer her by blocking her path, causing her to turn back the way she’d come.
“Father.” The word was a plea. She kept slowly moving, changing direction, trying to find a different path that he was not blocking, but he kept stepping into any path she took that was not to her rooms. “He lost …cards. The debt… one night … only one night with the man … from the mill.” Her breathing hitched, becoming ragged. “Stanley... You mustn’t tell … He’ll try … to stop it… he’ll get hurt.”
Patrick’s blood turned to ice. He kept herding her slowly back toward her room. “No one is going to the mill. You’re safe here.”
“But he paid already.” Tears welled in her unseeing eyes and spilled over, cutting clean tracks through the fever-flush on her cheeks. “The man… waiting…in the carriage. Rings ... hands were… fat.” She shuddered violently. “Please. Don’t make me go with him.”
Every word was a shard of glass grinding into a fresh wound. This wasn’t delirium born of infection. This was memory, rising like poison from a forgotten well. The cruel, transactional arithmetic of it—a father’s debt settled with his daughter’s body for a measured parcel of time—unmade something in him. He thought of his own daughter, of the unthinkable violation of such a threat, and a rage so absolute it was quiet settled in his bones.
“Look at me,” he said, his voice still soft but firm. He stopped their slow procession, stepping around to face her. He took her face gently in his hands, forcing her glassy gaze to his. “Teresa. Look. It’s Patrick. Patrick Jane. You are at Blackwood Manor. There is no carriage. No man from the mill. Your father is dead. He can’t sell anyone.”
Her eyes swam, trying to focus. For a second, he saw a flicker of recognition. “Jane…?”
“Yes.”
The recognition dissolved into fresh terror. She tried to pull back. “No, you lie. You’re his friend from the club. I’ve seen you. With the laughing eyes.” She was crying in earnest now, silent, desperate tears. “Please. I’ll do anything else. I can copy ledgers. I’m very neat.”
The utter hopelessness of that bargain—her skill, her neatness, offered up to avoid a more vile service—shattered him. He pulled her into his arms, not as a lover, but as a shield. He wrapped them around her, ignoring the scorching heat of her skin, and held her tight against his chest. “Hush,” he murmured into her hair. “Hush. No one is taking you anywhere. I’d burn the mill down before I let that happen. Do you hear me?”
She went rigid, then slumped against him, the fight leaving her in a rush. The sobs shook her frail frame. He simply held her, one hand cradling the back of her head, the other solid against her back, against the scars he now knew lay beneath the damp linen. Each one a testament. Each one a betrayal.
Slowly, he began to walk again, carrying most of her weight. He got her to her door, nudged it open with his foot, and brought her to the bed. Martha, dozing in the chair, startled awake.
“She was walking,” Patrick said, his voice rough. Guiding Teresa to lay down with a care that felt alien to his own hands. “The fever. She was talking.”
Martha was already up, wetting a cloth. “The doctor said it might happen. The mind boils over.”
Teresa’s eyes were closed now, but her hand, burning hot, shot out and grabbed his wrist with surprising strength. Her eyes flew open, clearer for a moment. “You promise?” she breathed, the child’s terror still there, clinging to the edges. “You promise you won’t let him take me?”
He looked from her burning green eyes to Martha’s grief-stricken face, then back. He covered her small, fierce hand with his own. “On my life,” he said, and the words were an oath, solid and true in the quiet room. “No one will ever take you against your will again. Not while I live.”
She studied his face, searching for the lie. She must have seen something she could believe, because her grip loosened. The clarity faded, replaced by exhausted delirium. “Your eyes aren’t laughing now,” she mumbled, and her hand went slack, falling back to the quilt.
Patrick stood. He looked at Martha. “Stay with her. Call me if she stirs. For anything.”
He left the room. He didn’t go back to his study. He went downstairs, through the silent house, and out the front door into the sharp, pre-dawn air. The sky was charcoal gray, bleeding to indigo in the east. He breathed in the cold, letting it scour the sickness from his lungs.
Cho was there, emerging from the stable block, his expression unreadable in the gloom. He had likely heard every footstep in the night.
Patrick walked to the low stone wall at the edge of the courtyard and stared out at the sleeping village in the valley below.
“Cho,” he said, his voice carrying clearly in the still air.
Cho came to stand beside him, a silent, solid shadow.
“We’re not going to France next month.”
Cho didn’t respond. He waited.
Patrick nodded toward the village, his jaw tight. “We’re going to London instead to hire as many thief-takers as we can find.” He turned his head, and the first cold light of dawn caught in his blue eyes, which held no charm, no roguish glint, only a flat, determined ice. “It seems I’ve been neglecting my duties as Lord of the Manor. Time to reassert the local… property laws.”
He wasn’t talking about land.
He was talking about a debt, one owed to a woman currently fighting for her life in a room above them. One he owed to every person who resided in the village on his land under the thumb of men like her father. A debt he intended to collect, with interest, in the only currency men like that understood: fear, ruin, and the absolute, unflinching application of power.
“And Cho,” Patrick continued, leaning forward and gripping the low stone wall in front of him, “Send someone to the Lisbon Estate and find out which miller Teresa’s father used to gamble with.” Cho nodded and turned back toward the stables. The miller from Teresa’s past was about to discover that revenge was never too cold to be served with a vengeance.
Inside, the manor held its breath.
Teresa’s fever broke the next day, a tide receding and leaving her stranded in a wrecked body. For hours, she drifted in a limp, sweat-drenched haze, aware only of the gentle hands of Grace or Martha tipping cool water against her lips, spooning bland broth that tasted of nothing and everything. Her world shrank to the patch of ceiling above her bed, the feel of clean linen, the profound, humiliating weakness that made lifting her head an impossible labor.
“Just a little more, Miss Lisbon,” Grace would murmur, her voice a steady anchor in the fog.
Days blurred. The deep, fiery ache in her arm dulled to a persistent, manageable throb. One morning, she woke and the room didn’t spin. The light from the window was just light, not a piercing lance. She moved her good hand, stared at her own fingers, and felt a shaky ownership return to her limbs.
“I believe a bath is in order,” Grace announced later that afternoon, her tone brooking no argument. She and Martha brought in the copper tub, filling it with kettle after kettle of steaming water until the room grew humid and fragrant with a sprinkle of dried lavender.
When the water was ready, Grace moved to help Teresa undress.
“I can manage,” Teresa said, her voice a dry rasp. The refusal was instinct, a deep-seated reflex to shield her body, its history, from any eyes.
She tried to stand on her own, pushing up from the bed. Her legs, unsteady after days abed, buckled immediately. She pitched forward. Grace’s strong hands caught her under the arms, holding her upright with an effortless strength that was both a comfort and a shock.
“Easy now,” Grace said, her grip firm.
Teresa tried to pull away, a flush of hot shame rising to her cheeks that had nothing to do with fever. “Please, I—”
“I’ve already seen them, Miss.” Grace’s voice was so soft it was almost lost in the rustle of Teresa’s shift. She didn’t let go. “When we were fighting the fever. I had to.”
The words hung in the lavender-scented air. Teresa went utterly still. The secret she had carried since girlhood, the landscape of her shame etched into her skin, was known. The fight drained out of her, leaving her hollow and exposed in Grace’s steady grasp.
Grace’s hands gentled, becoming supportive rather than restraining. “You need to let me help you. Just this once. Let someone bear the weight.”
Teresa closed her eyes. A single, traitorous tear escaped, tracking a hot path down her temple. She gave a small, almost imperceptible nod.
Grace helped her from the shift with a clinical, respectful efficiency. She did not stare. She did not gasp. She simply guided Teresa into the blessed warmth of the bath, one careful step at a time. The hot water was a shock and a balm, enveloping her, soaking into her sore muscles. She sank down until it touched her chin.
While Teresa attended to her personal hygiene with a cloth and soap, her movements slow and careful around her bandaged arm, Grace worked quietly around her. She stripped the sweated-through sheets from the bed with brisk snaps of linen. She laid out a clean chemise and a soft, blue night-rail on the freshly made bed. The domestic rhythm of the tasks, the normalcy of it, was a kind of kindness in itself.
Finished, Teresa stood on trembling legs, and Grace wrapped her in a large, warmed towel, patting her dry with a tenderness that made Teresa’s throat tight. She helped her into the fresh nightclothes, the fabric soft against her clean skin.
“Sit here,” Grace said, guiding her to the dressing table. She picked up a bone comb. “Let’s see to this hair.”
Teresa sat, watching in the mirror as Grace began to work through the long, wet tangles. There was no yanking, only a patient, persistent easing of each knot. The pull on her scalp was oddly grounding, a tactile connection to the present. The silence between them was not empty; it was full of the unspoken understanding that had passed in the steamy room.
Grace parted the dark, cleansed hair with her fingers and began to weave it into a single, thick plait. Her hands were sure and quick. “There,” she said finally, securing the end with a bit of plain ribbon. She tucked the braid up and under a simple linen nightcap. “That’ll keep it from knotting up again.”
Getting back into the high bed was the final feat. Grace pulled the covers back, and Teresa slid between them, the sheets cool and crisp and smelling of sunlight and wind. A deep, bone-weary exhaustion settled over her instantly, heavier than any blanket.
Her eyes were already closing as Grace adjusted the quilt around her. A disjointed thought floated to the surface of her swimming mind. She should ask after Patrick. She had a vague, fever-blurred memory of blue eyes that weren’t laughing, a voice making a promise in the dark.
But the thought, like a feather on a stream, was swept away by the current of her fatigue, lost to sleep seconds later.
Downstairs, Patrick stood at the window of his study, a cold cup of coffee forgotten on the desk. He watched Cho in the courtyard below, speaking with a wiry groom who would ride to the Lisbon estate with discreet questions. The machinery of retribution was now in motion, a quiet, focused counterpoint to the fragile recovery happening in the room above.
He had not gone up. He’d heard the activity, the brought baths, the quiet movements. His promise in the hallway felt like a live thing in the room with him, separate from the older, colder vow he carried for the Marquis. This one was immediate, visceral.
It demanded a different kind of strength, one that wasn’t about confrontation but about restraint, about providing the quiet space for wounds—old and new—to knit. He turned from the window, his gaze drifting to the ceiling, as if he could see through the plaster and beams to where she slept, clean and finally at peace.
The house, for the first time in years, did not feel empty. It felt charged, waiting. Not for the next ghost to walk the halls, but for the waking world to begin again, forever altered by the secrets the darkness had finally surrendered.