Page 93 of Beyond the Grave
"Put him in the tower room then help Gus," Lincoln told Seth at the base of the staircase.
Seth gave the stairs a baleful look. "All the way up there!"
"Do it."
"Want me to lock him in?"
"No!" I cried. "He's not a prisoner."
"Don't lock the door," Lincoln said, "but someone will have to keep watch. He'll be confused when he wakes."
With a sigh, Seth trudged up the stairs. Buchanan's loose arms dangled down Seth's back and the hands smacked into his knees with each step.
"Go get some sleep," Lincoln said to me.
"You expect me to relax so soon after our adventure? Hardly."
"Then help yourself to a brandy while I assist with the horses."
I eyed the stairs. "I wonder if Cook will be mad if I wake him to tell him all about it."
"You'll know if he serves you cold soup tomorrow." He strode off and I followed. I wasn't ready to put myself to bed, so I might as well assist in the coach house too.
Lincoln helped Gus unharness the horses from the coach while I insured they had enough food and water. When Seth joined us, we led them to the stables and brushed them down while they munched oats and apples.
My nerves still hadn't settled by the time we finished. I couldn't get the image of the dead man covered in blood out of my mind. When I'd thought it was Lincoln lying there… I shook my head and rubbed my temples. It didn't bear thinking about.
"They must have decided to fill McIlroy's bed after all," I said. The four of us sat in the library with glasses of brandy as the clock struck two. The liquid burned my throat as it went down, but then it warmed me from the inside out.
"It's free again," Seth said, swirling the liquid in his glass. "Poor chap. Killed himself," he told Gus. "Razor blade to the wrists. He must have smuggled it in."
"Blimey," Gus muttered. "Man's got to be desperate to do that."
"Or mad," I muttered.
"We thought it was you lying there," Seth said to Lincoln. "Charlie was beside herself."
I would have kicked Seth if Lincoln's hooded gaze hadn’t slid to me.
"I saw everything," he said.
"Why were you hiding?" I asked.
"I was waiting for the nurse and orderlies to leave. The moment I walked in, the patient began shouting that he was going to kill himself."
"It's not like you to hide, sir," Seth noted. "Usually you'd knock them all out or…worse."
"I'm turning over a new leaf." Lincoln stretched out his legs and crossed the ankles. "I thought it best to wait for them to leave so as not to raise the alarm."
Gus snorted. "That didn't work."
"Clearly."
"It was bedlam in there." Seth chuckled at his lame joke, earning a groan from Gus.
"Your new leaf turning is all well and good," I told Lincoln, "but in this situation, my nerves would have preferred you to knock them out and rejoin us as soon as possible."
"If they'd taken too long, I would have." He sounded frosty, as if the entire debacle could be blamed on my nerves. But I was not a silly female suffering from hysteria, thank you very much.
