Now, hovering over Longhurst as he examined Trenwyth, Imogen despaired to note that the duke’s breath was every bit as fast and shallow as Icarus’s had been long ago. This time, when Longhurst palpated the wrist, Cole’s body jerked and spasmed, but only a raw sound escaped. It was as though he couldn’t produce the air for a scream any longer.
Time was running out, she thought with despair.
Longhurst looked up at her, his eyes as serious as she’d ever seen them. “Prepare the anesthesia and surgical kit,” he ordered hoarsely. “And hope that it is not too late.”
CHAPTER SIX
Over the years, the definition of hell made many transitions in Cole’s perspective. As a young man, it had been a nebulous place of dubious origin. Some underworld created by old and religious men to threaten those with rebellious spirits and inquiring minds into submission. His mother had been fond of the place as a probable destination for his eternal soul, and had taken every opportunity to inform him thus.
As a soldier, hell had become a tangible thing. The battlefield. Where weapons forged in fire ground men forged of earth into so much meat. Cut living flesh down to nothing but elements and offal that, once dried, returned to dust.
It had been impossible for Cole to imagine anything more hellish, until the smoke had cleared on April 20, 1877. The April Uprising. Hell had become an endless, punishing march to an Ottoman prison somewhere between Bulgaria and Constantinople. A year became an eternity of tedium interrupted by bouts of torture. Where Cole had learned that a youth spent in pursuit of the most exquisite pleasure could be balanced in such a short time with equally exquisite pain. That torment could be as consuming as an orgasm, the veins in his body dilating to allow the pain to flow into his every limb, to set fire to his every nerve. Suspending his muscles with the helpless, pulsating sensation until his body was no longer his own. No matter how valiantly he fought it, groans and screams spilled from him as freely as his blood.
In hell, he’d lost an intrinsic part of himself.
And then he’d lost his hand.
He’d endured, because despite whatever fresh terror the day would hold, the night would bring her …
Ginny.
A ridiculous name, really. Rather boozy and lowbrow, come to think of it. Didn’t suit her at all. The sultry, exotic waif with a riot of shimmering ebony curls. Eyes lined with dark kohl that sparkled like tiger’s eye gems from her porcelain skin. She’d been long, lean, and sinuous, but her grace and sensuality hadn’t been the practiced, come-hither seductions of most of the women in her profession. She hadn’t draped herself over him like a smothering blanket of perfume and sex, one hand on his cod and the other in his purse. No. She’d been wary and uncertain, like a baby doe he’d had to coax to eat from his …
Well, never mind from what.
On nights when the cold would seep deeper than his bones, into his very soul, he would remember how warm it had been inside her. How she’d clung to him, and buried her face against his neck. How she’d shuddered with release over him before he took her, those cat’s-eyes wide with wonder.
When his gaolers would cut him, would ask him questions he could not answer in a tongue he did not speak, creating reasons to torture him, he would detach himself.
And find her.
He’d go to her in that room, the room the color of blood, and he’d lie in her arms. Her small limbs, as delicate and feeble as a bird’s, somehow sheltering him from his pain. Her voice, a tentative whisper, would soothe him and sometimes strengthen him. He’d remember how fiercely she’d given him permission to grieve.
To feel.
Ginny. A prostitute. A creature of a cold and often brutal profession. And yet she’d shown him more genuine warmth than he’d been privy to in a lifetime. She’d been more than a whore to him that night.
She’d been a friend.
And during his year in hell, she’d become something indescribably more precious than that. Not a saint, per se, but a sanctuary. Her features—blurred by a dim lantern, makeup, and a bottle of whisky—were made even more opaque by time and tribulation. But the memory of her soft lips, her dark hair, and unparalleled touch had climbed inside of him. Had created her own place in a heart growing ever more bitter and bleak.
Ginny. He would find her, he vowed. He’d duck into the Bare Kitten out of the damp London night, and there she’d be. Her face would melt into a smile, because she knew he’d come for her. To claim her. To take her away from a life of objectification and mistreatment.
He’d only have to endure. To survive.
Today, hell was no longer a place, but a state of being. His prison no longer consisted of four walls guarded by unspeakably cruel men, and yet he remained confined.
Trapped.
He could have battled the blinding pain in his wrist. Pain had been a foe he’d vanquished well and often. He’d conquered all that threatened to destroy him. The despair of another sunrise lost to a place so foreign and cruel. The insidious fear that the world you knew had forgotten you in this place, and you no longer had a home. The horror and disbelief of looking down at a body that was once yours, and not at all recognizing it.
But the heat of fever had taken him prisoner, pulled him away from himself and thrust him into an inescapable delirium. Then, with the inevitability of mortality, the chills followed, seizing him up in such force, his bones surged and rattled. Reality became nebulous, and time a fabrication of madness, until the more he tried to cling to the memory of Ginny, his Ginny, the more she became a diaphanous specter.