Page 83 of The Defiant One
"You don't see."
"Very well, I don't see."
He bent his head to his hand, kneading his brow. "I'm sorry. I'm irritable. I'm tired. I'm not good company."
"Then let's go back home, Andrew. I was wrong to drag you outside when you really ought to be catching up on days of missed sleep."
"Don't apologize, the fresh air did me good. You do me good, though most of the time I don't seem to realize, let alone show it." He finished his coffee and, plunking some coins on the table, got to his feet. "Come, let's go. I promise to try and be in a better mood."
He offered his elbow, nodded to an acquaintance who sat at a nearby table reading a newspaper, and escorted her outside.
"Bloody hell," he muttered.
Celsie groaned. "It's Lady Brookhampton."
"Why, hello, Andrew! Celsie!" The countess, her feet in iron pattens to protect her shoes from the mud, lifted her skirts and hurried across the street toward them. "I was wondering how married life was treating you . . . You're looking a bit peaked there, Andrew!" She smiled slyly. "Your new bride tiring you out?"
Andrew's eyes went strangely flat, the way they always did when he was reining in his anger. "If you will excuse us, madam —"
"I still think it was perfectly heinous, the way the duke tricked the two of you into marriage! Why, all of London is talking about it. Oh, it must be dreadful, pretending civility toward one another when you have anything but a love match."
Celsie smiled and moved closer to Andrew, impulsively slipping her arm around his waist. "What makes you think we don't?" she asked with false sweetness.
"Come now, Celsie, everyone at your doggie ball saw the way you two were glaring at each other. But oh, never mind that, I have just heard the most incredible rumor concerning your brother! Why, everyone's talking about how he's taken a sudden fancy to Miss Sarah Madden, whose papa — frightfully bourgeois, I'm afraid — is desperate to buy into the aristocracy." She leaned closer, her eyes gleaming, her voice dropping to a conspiring, excited whisper. "She's an heiress, you know. A very significant heiress with a dowry the size of London. More wedding bells in the future, if I'm allowed any predictions! I say, is your husband all right?"
Celsie turned.
"Andrew?"
He was staring at something across the street. Puzzled, Celsie followed his fixed gaze. There was nothing over there but endless buildings and a few people walking the pavement, going in and out of the shops and about their business. She tugged at his arm. He remained rigid and unmoving.
Lady Brookhampton took a step backward. "I say, I think you'd better get him to a doctor," she advised, frowning. "He's as white as the snow in Scotland."
"Andrew?" Celsie said again, her voice rising with dread.
He was still staring across the street, totally oblivious to the fact that she had spoken, to the fact that Lady Brookhampton was staring at him, to the fact that a group of well-dressed gentlemen, their laughing, twittering ladies on their arms, had also paused and were now eyeing him most peculiarly. Around them, people were beginning to whisper.
He didn't hear them. "Dear God . . . Indians. Do you see them, Celsie? Coming out of the shop there — look." He seized her arm and pulled her close to him. "Look!"
Celsie looked. She saw only a very ordinary looking old lady, stooped and frail, leaving a pawnshop and clutching a canvas bag in one gnarled hand. The woman was not even in the line of Andrew's fixed gaze. A kind of sick panic seized her. Oh no. Not again. Not here —
"Andrew," she said nervously, pulling at his arm as she tried to get him to move. "There is nobody there. You're only suffering from lack of sleep. Come, let's go home."
But Andrew knew he was suffering from far more than just lack of sleep. Just as a sleeper may realize he's dreaming, but still be caught up in the reality of the dream, Andrew knew he was having one of his episodes . . . though what he saw was terrifyingly real to him.
And what he saw were Indians. Mohawks, probably, from the New World, their heads shaved and leaving only a wedge of purple hair sticking straight up like the helmets of Roman soldiers, silver rings in their noses and eyebrows, their bare arms thrust through strange waistcoats of black leather bristling with little cones of steel.
From far away he heard his own voice, felt Celsie tugging at his shoulder.
"Andrew. Andrew, let's go —"
"But don't you see them?" He stared at her. Stared through her. "Bloody hell, they've spotted us; get behind me, Celsie, they may be dangerous!"
"Andrew, let's go home, now —"
"Damn it, Celsie, don't just stand there, get behind me!"
He grabbed his sword, yanked her behind him, and charged forward to protect her, but his foot slipped off the edge of the pavement and he went sprawling into the muddy street, the wheels of a passing carriage just missing his outflung arm. A lady screamed. The group of gentlemen came running. Alarmed shopkeepers came charging outside, Lady Brookhampton stood staring down at him in horror, and all around, people began to murmur in shocked, speculative whispers.
