Page 11 of The Lawrence Browne Affair
“No more talking,” Lawrence muttered. “I’ll send another message.” This time he transmitted the alphabet. No more waistcoats, no more friendly conversation.
The alphabet transmission took bloody near forever, but it went through without a short circuit. Tomorrow he would try with longer wires and see if he could replicate this small success. Perhaps if he were farther away from Turner, everything would return to normal.
Just then, an ungodly noise came from outside, shouting mingled with what sounded like the death cry of a wounded animal. “What the devil is that?” he asked.
Turner was on his feet and at the window in a flash. “It looks like a cart got mired and overturned. The driver and your cook are unhitching the horse and—lord, she’s giving him quite the dressing down. She has a lot to say about the man’s intellect and parentage, and something about ‘in broad daylight,’ although I can’t imagine she’d prefer a cart to overturn at midnight. I almost feel bad for the poor bastard. Do you think you could go and help them set the cart upright?”
Lawrence managed to choke out a rough, “No.” His heart was louder than the horse’s panicked neighing, louder than the cook’s scolds. Damn it. Curse his blasted brain. It was only noise—jarring and incessant but only noise. For God’s sake, nobody liked the cries of a wounded animal, nobody liked the distressed shrieking of a woman, but as far as Lawrence knew he was the only one who was provoked into fits by these commonplace disturbances.
Instinctively, he dropped his hand to his side, groping for Barnabus, who seemed to have an instinct for knowing when he was needed. But the dog was in exile this afternoon, Turner having insisted that one errant wag of Barnabus’s tail would result in all three of them being killed and Penkellis burning to the ground. Lawrence struggled to fill his lungs with air.
Turner still watched the show out the window. “I understand that it’s beneath you, but really I only have the one pair of boots, and I’m not ruining them. Besides, you’re nearly twice my size, so you’d be of more use to them than I’d ever be.”
“I said no,” Lawrence ground out. “I cannot.”
Turner looked over his shoulder and appeared to notice what kind of condition Lawrence was in. His eyes went wide. “No, I don’t suppose you can.” He stepped away from the window. Likely he’d come up with a pretext for leaving. But instead, he crossed the room and crouched beside Lawrence’s chair.
Lawrence didn’t dare look up. He felt a hand on his shoulder, just the lightest touch, but so unexpected and so unfamiliar that it sent him careening closer to absolute panic. “Are you all right? No, that’s a silly question, of course you aren’t. What do you usually do when you’re, ah, discomposed?” Turner’s voice was as cool as ever, as if there was nothing alarming about being in close proximity to Lawrence. As if this was all totally normal and Lawrence wasn’t having an episode right here in front of his secretary.
Lawrence shook his head.
Turner squeezed Lawrence’s shoulder. Surely the gesture was simply meant to be reassuring, and it might even have worked on someone whose world wasn’t already tilting off its axis.
“I need to lie down.” He stood up immediately, intending to shut himself in his bedchamber until he felt reasonably sane. But because he could not manage the simplest blasted thing without disaster, he knocked over his chair and lost his footing. He was going to crash into the table, ruining days of work. Suddenly he found himself supported by a pair of wiry arms.
All Lawrence’s thoughts dissolved into a sea of Turner’s confounded scent and the warm puff of the man’s breath against his neck.
“Whoa, there,” Turner said. “Steady now.” His grip shifted to Lawrence’s arms, the hot trail of his touch plunging Lawrence into further confusion.
Lawrence should have looked away, stepped away, done anything to get away, but he bloody obviously wasn’t thinking straight that morning. Instead, as he righted himself, he found himself gazing down into the other man’s face, close enough to see the shadow of a beard on Turner’s jaw. What was that expression—not pity, not annoyance. Concern?
Lawrence suddenly felt a flush of heat. He slid his fingers under the collar of his shirt, trying to free his burning skin. He ought to have gone outside to chop firewood or mend a fence minutes or hours ago. Hell, he ought to be locked in an institution where he could quietly go mad without anyone to bear witness.
Turner pressed one of his hands against the small of Lawrence’s back, steering him towards the sofa. There was more strength in the secretary than he might have expected in such a slender man.Not a gentleman,he remembered, but he was too rattled to think about what that meant.
“I’m fine,” Lawrence said, a bald-faced lie.
“Quite,” Turner agreed, gamely playing along. “Sit anyway.”
Lawrence sat.
And then he felt a gust of fresh air, a blessed relief. Turner had opened a window.
“There we go.” Turner’s cool, clipped London voice came from across the room. “And how about this one too? Your cook has everything under control, and there’s no more commotion.” More cold air as Turner threw the remainder of the windows open.
It took him a few seconds before he remembered to breathe, before he could make himself believe that this moment would pass—at least this time. In the future, he’d be carried away by stray feelings and dangerous notions as surely as his father and brother had been, and it would end the same for him as it had for them: madness, followed by death.
He tried to watch the motes of dust caught in the breeze that blew through the open windows. He forced himself to listen to something other than the drumming of his heart—the crows calling to one another outside, the wind whipping through the bare branches of the trees around Penkellis, the ivy scratching against the windows. Beneath his clammy fingers was the familiar rough, pilled damask upholstery of the sofa. After some time, his heart resumed something like a normal rhythm and his thoughts slowed down.
Slumping, he tipped his head against the back of the seat. “Damn,” he said.
“Indeed,” Turner said. He was somewhere nearby, a slim silhouette off to the side, but Lawrence did not allow himself to look. “Do loud noises bring on these episodes? Or is it something else?”
Lawrence shook his head. Noise was only the beginning. “I need things to be predictable,” he said, all too conscious of how pathetic that must sound. But Turner only nodded and looked thoughtful. “You ought to leave,” Lawrence said. “Go back to London.”
Silence. “Am I being sacked?” There was an edge in the man’s voice.
He ought to say yes, and he might have, but for some reason he didn’t want to insult Turner. “No. What I mean is that you’re free to leave. I’m not safe to be near. Surely you can see that for yourself.”
