Page 3 of Hold Me Fast
The boy threw himself at her as soon as she closed her bedchamber door. He clawed at her gown, increasingly frantic as the buttons refused to open for him. “Patience, my lord,” she soothed. “Lie down on the bed, and I shall prepare myself for you.”
He blinked at her, swaying on his feet, his surge of energy draining away.
“Lie down on the bed, my lord,” she repeated. She would sleep in the dressing room tonight. It would not be the first time.
She found the gin where she had hidden it, in a bag concealed within the folds of the new gown Guy had chosen for her to wear for a command performance at one of Society’s balls. Thank whatever deity looked after harlots and drunkards for this season’s fuller gowns.
She rinsed out the mug that held her toothbrush and poured the gin. Just a couple of fingers. She would be watched more closely now that he had her booked for so many performances. This would have to last until she could bribe or blackmail someone into supplying her with another bottle.
Without it, she would be dependent on Guy for each dose. He knew she needed a small drink of laudanum before a performance—on stage or in a drawing room. Just enough to quiet the jitters. Then, afterward, if he was pleased with her performance, there would be something more powerful as a reward.
Tamsyn had tried to give up the substances that Guy insisted Tammie needed. More times than Tammie could count. Twice, she refused until he forced it down her throat. Once, she managed to evade her minders and hide until the craving turned to cramps and nausea, then vomiting as pain seized her whole body, then bad dreams so bizarre they exceeded anything that she’d experienced while under the influence.
In one of those, the monsters that invaded the refuge she’d found proved to have been sent by Guy. Or perhaps the monsters were unreal, and Guy’s men retrieved her while she was unconscious.
Whichever it was, Tammie woke up in the house Guy was renting at the time, in the half-floating, half-dreaming state that said he had already given her something.
Tammie never allowed Tamsyn to run away again. Giving up opium and alcohol was hard enough, but worse was being brought back when she’d thought she was free.
It hurt too much to think about it. Tammie poured another two fingers. “You have had more than enough today,” Tamsyn scolded. “You will pass out if you drink that, too.”
“Fair point,” Tammie conceded.
She slid open the door. The boy was sound asleep on the bed, flat on his back, snoring. Tammie moved him so he lay on his side, with a pillow behind his back to keep him from rolling. There. If he vomited, it would go on the sheets instead of drowning him. She patted his cheek. “Run as fast as you can, my lord,” she whispered. “The Earl of Coombe is not your friend. He is not anyone’s friend.”
Even if he had heard, he would not listen. She returned to the dressing room, tossed down the gin, stretched out on the maid’s pallet, and waited for oblivion.
*
The rehearsal wentterribly. Tammie blamed Guy, for the dose of laudanum he gave her, while the usual size, must have been adulterated, for it was not enough to stop the jitters. Guy, though, blamed Tammie. The screaming fight that ensued was a mistake Tammie would not have made had she been in what passed for her normal mind, for it ended in the usual way.
As had happened so often in the past, Guy found her anger exhilarating. He locked her dressing room door, subdued her, and took her, laughing at her attempts to resist him. Afterward, he handed her to one of his followers. “Take her home and lock her in her bedchamber,” he commanded. “You can have her if you like. But don’t give in to her demands for opium or alcohol or anything else. She doesn’t deserve it after that rehearsal and that tantrum.”
It was Fergie, which was some sort of good fortune. Some of the others enjoyed a display of strength to the point of violence even more than Guy—yes, and over the edge, too. But Fergie was a straightforward sort of a lover. A quick tup and he would leave her alone.
Sure enough, he took her straight home, marched her up to her bed chamber, stripped her, and enjoyed her, though he wasn’t best pleased with Tammie’s refusals to respond.
“Give me opium and I’ll give you the best time you’ve ever had,” she told him, but Fergie was a loyal acolyte to Guy and would not agree. He finished, left her naked in her bed, and shut the door behind him.
Tammie lay there for a while, feeling sicker and sicker. She needed a dose of something. There must be something she could do. After a while, it occurred to her she had not heard the rattle of the key in the lock. A cautious test, and she found that Fergie had forgotten to lock the door.
Almost, she slipped out then and there, but a stray breeze reminded her she had no clothes on. She dressed, some instinct prompting her to wear the drabbest clothes she could find. Out of habit, she slipped the ring Jowan had once given her into the tiny pocket that she sewed into the side seams of all her gowns.
Money. She would need money to buy alcohol or—if she could find it—opium.
With opium and oblivion as her goal, she found the strength to sneak quietly into Guy’s chambers. He would not be home for hours, but there was always a risk his valet might be within. Marco frightened her even more than Guy. He had an affinity for pain—giving, not receiving, and on the two occasions Guy had given Tammie into his hands, she had been frightened into silent obedience for months.
Her good fortune held. Not only was Guy’s room empty, but he had left a small fortune in coins scattered across his dressing table. She stuffed as much as she could into her reticule. “It isn’t theft,” she muttered. “He never gives me my share of what I earn.” He said it all went into a savings account for her, and into investments. But Tammie doubted he intended her to ever see a penny of it.
Looked at from a certain light, all the money on the dressing table and more was hers.
She met no one as she crept down the stairs. The butler was in the front hall. She had to wait for him to be called elsewhere before she could hurry across the tiles and out the door. The risk of being stopped lessened once she was down the steps and walking along the footpath, just another lady, anonymous in her bonnet.
She wouldn’t find what she craved here in Mayfair. She needed the docks. She needed one of the places she had heard Guy’s acolytes speak of. If she understood correctly, she had quite a walk ahead of her. A hack would be faster, but it would also be a risk—someone to question who might bring Guy upon her.
She did not know the going rate for opium, but perhaps she had enough. She could only hope. And walk.
Chapter Two
