Something in Mark changed after the other night. He was almost unrecognizable with how much he smiled and laughed.
He'd been right that visiting the marriage bed was too soon—she'd slept most all of the next day. But, he often let his hand linger a hint too long or steal a kiss when no one was looking or just lie in bed unclothed together and talk at night.
"I love you."
Her head whipped around as he kept an arm firmly around her waist, slowly walking together to the yard. As a smile bloomed on his lips, a flush swept up her cheeks. "I love you, too. You've become a rake the past few days. Whatever has gotten into you?" Holding his free hand tight helped to lean on him to try walking today.
The man glanced down each side of the hall, eased her against the wall, and braced his hands on each side. "You," he replied, his husky voice falling a full octave and his eyes dark with desire. "I had weeks to learn what life would be like without you, and I don't want to miss another moment with you."
A shy laugh bubbled up, and she set a hand on his chest to push him back when someone came down the hall. "You'll ruin my reputation, sir."
"Then I shall have to make an honest woman of you. It'd mean you'll be bound to me for life." The corner of his mouth pulled up.
"That sounds like dreadful punishment." It was hard to suppress the smile.
"Tanya?" he cut in and leaned closer.
Goodness, he made it impossible to look away from his lips with the spell he wove. "Hm?"
"When you're well, we're going to dance."
Her eyes flew up to his. He'd never danced with her, but his reputation in England said he'd been a very suave dancer and a heartthrob at the balls before Anna's illness.
He cracked a smile. "You'll need to wear sturdy boots while I learn how to dance with my leg, but it occurred to me while sitting in the hospital that I've never danced with you."
Just like that, he melted her heart. "I'd love to, but I have no idea how to dance." The confession should've been embarrassing—to admit to being so unbred—but somehow there was confidence that even Devil Debonairo wouldn't find fault in it, much less the softie Mark Johnson.
"Then I shall teach you." His lips brushed over hers and he pulled back just enough to look into her eyes. "I realized how many things we've never done, and I don't want to look back one day and regret everything we didn't do."
The smile grew. "And what other things are on your list, Dr. Johnson?"
"Making love in a hayfield."
"Oh," she laughed and trailed a finger over his short beard.
"Lying in a field on a summer night and watching the stars together."
"Mm," she sighed and her eyes fell to his mouth as he leaned in closer.
"Taking you and the children for a Sunday picnic."
A soft sigh of agreement.
He came even closer and whispered, "Drawing you in our bed." The man leaned in for a kiss.
But her shocked gasp halted him. "Mark, whatever are you suggesting?" It was so forbidden, but somehow also so romantic.
The man looked embarrassed, until he saw the twinkle in her eyes. Then he gave a rakish smile. "I'll burn it after so no one would ever see it. Tell me that you wouldn't like me admiring you for hours as I try to capture your beauty on paper," he purred.
A shiver of delight. "And what shall we do with the children as you turn into an artist for hours?"
His smile grew. "Grandparents are a beautiful thing."
She laughed. "Perhaps. But not until I'm much, much better." Being drawn in a thin, ill state wouldn't be romantic.
"You underestimate how beautiful I think you are." Then he finally gave a deep kiss.
"Tanya, I need clamps, now!" Mark shouted from the surgical table two months later.
She dug through the stock room of Price's clinic.
The lumberyard worker had taken a saw to the chest and was bleeding out too fast.
"Phillips, where are the damn clamps?" she yelled to the very inexperienced surgeon that Price had just hired on. Apparently Mark was to serve as the man's mentor.
"Bottom shelf, I think!" He frantically helped Mark try to stabilize the man.
There. Swiping them, she ran to the pot of boiling water and dropped them in. "You never leave surgical supplies sitting out where they won't be sterile when you need them!" she snapped.
Price had outdone himself with replacing the barbaric barber with a wet-behind-the-ears surgeon just out of medical school who had never worked alone on a live patient. The lumberyard was not a place for someone inexperienced to run the clinic.
"Tanya, I need them now," Mark ordered.
Draining the water, she dumped the tools into cold water and then scrubbed her hands and snatched them out.
"Right here." Mark moved over a bit, his fingers pinching off arteries as makeshift clamps.
She secured the two arteries and grabbed sutures to begin whipping them in while Mark worked on repairing a heart tear.
"What should I do?" The physician, only a year or two younger than Mark, looked completely baffled.
"Monitor respirations. I don't have time to teach you right now," Mark snapped.
She glanced up and met Dr. Phillips's eyes, feeling the sting of humiliation for him. "With an arterial stitch..." she began to explain and nodded for him to come watch her sew.
After the patient was bandaged and resting, Mark washed the blood off his hands. "Tanya, sit and rest."
She took Mark's surgery stool that he often used to prop up his leg. Sitting felt wonderful. It was the second day back at work, and with the thyroid medication dosage still being slowly increased to avoid hyperthyroidism again, fatigue still seemed to set in rather easily.
"You've been here teaching for two weeks, yet my surgeon doesn't seem to know his head from his ass yet," a male voice said from behind.
Both men spun at the same time as her. Mr Price stood in the doorway and puffed on a cigar.
Mark's curse under his breath could be heard across the room. "What do you want?" His tone openly conveyed his dislike of the man.
"I want to know that you'll have my surgeon up to snuff in ten weeks. We did, after all, have a deal." Mr. Price gave her a long look up and down to make his point that her life saved had been what Mark had earned in the deal.
"How could I forget? You remind me every day." The words grounded out between Mark's teeth.
Her eyes flew to Mark in surprise. He wasn't a man who would take well to be indebted, much less having it rubbed in his face. "It takes years to train a surgeon, not three months, and there will be some patients so grave that training would come at the cost of death. This was one of those."
Mr. Price didn't even look at her but gave a dismissive wave. "She knew what to do, and she's quite uneducated."
She bristled; Mark's eyes threw barbs. "Yet she's far more intelligent and skilled than your university-trained surgeon, no offense," Mark added to Dr. Phillips.
"None taken."
Mark's attention returned to Price as he dried his hands and folded his arms over his chest, his tone dripping with dwindling patience. "She's trained with me for years, and her brain is a sponge that never needs to be taught twice. That galls the shit out of you because you can't have her here to run your clinic like the expert she is, because you give shitty wages," he spat.
Price crossed the room in the blink of an eye and stood toe-to-toe with Mark. "Shall I recall your loan and clinic right now?"
The blood drained to her toes. Mark had put up his own clinic as collateral for the loan, even though Price knew very well that Mark wouldn't go back on his word? It was a power play meant to keep Mark under control.
She stood and folded her hands to keep from throttling the man. "You have a fatal flaw in your plan, Mr. Price."
He turned his head and gave a condescending glare.
"It isn't the building where my husband holds our practice," she explained, "but the patients. Unless you're willing to move your lumberyard, my husband could set up a tent outside your property limits and still have your men and families come. So go ahead and take the clinic." She shrugged. "We'll simply set up on the right or left side of it."
A slow smile of relief erased the stress from Mark's face.
And Price's face turned from red to purple. He stormed over and leaned down to breathe in her face, "Watch your mouth, Injun. I'm not as much of a half-wit as you seem to think. I've heard the rumors of what you are. You think I couldn't report you and your relatives to the authorities and have you hauled away?"
Heavy footsteps approached. Price was suddenly grabbed by the shoulder and spun around. Mark's fist slammed into the man's face and sent him sprawling on his backside. In the next heartbeat, Mark aimed a pistol at the man.
"Legally this state recognizes Native Americans as property, you half-wit," he hissed. "Try anything against my family, and I won't wait for the authorities to protect what's legally mine. Get out of this clinic."
"I'm calling in the loan!"
"Do it. We're not going to be indebted to shit like you." Mark grabbed her hand and walked out.
She held his hand tight and trotted to keep up with his long, angry strides. "Does he get the house too?"
"No, I only gave him the right to shut down the clinic, not take possession," he growled.
"Mark, I can't go that fast," she panted, the exhaustion hitting fast.
He stopped and scooped her up. "Sorry." Then he resumed walking.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make things worse."
The man simply shook his head. "Things would've worsened on their own eventually. Tell me that you're a typical wife and hide a stash of money from me?"
She gave a regretful look. "Unfortunately, I trust you to not gamble or drink it away, so I don't even have a cent hidden. I take it that there's a clause allowing us to buy the clinic back?"
He nodded. "We have forty-eight hours to come up with five thousand dollars."
Her eyes widened. "Five thousand? We went through five thousand in New York?"
"We weren't just paying for us—we paid travel and expenses for the surgeon, as well." He sighed. "Tanya, I know I've said in the past that I should handle financial burdens, but I need your genius mind to help come up with ways we can get that money fast. And no pickpocketing," he ordered. "The last thing we need is for you to be arrested."
"My lord, we have a hundred dollars saved," Brigands offered at the kitchen table that afternoon as Grandfather, Grandmama, Brigands, and Teresa gathered to help come up with ideas.
"Thank you, but I got Tanya and I into this mess, so I'll get us out," Mark sighed.
Someone knocked at the front door. Mark got up and answered it.
"Doc, Dr. Phillips said I should come to you for sutures," a woman said. "I cut my finger making lunch."
She frowned from her seat at the table. Dr. Phillips wasn't skilled at much, but he was skilled at stitching.
"He said you don't have thread on hand, so he sent me with supplies."
Bless his heart, Dr. Phillips knew they couldn't use the clinic so he was sending patients their way to get paid.
"Of course," Mark said, a glance over his shoulder revealing that he had the same thought. "The clinic is closed, but I can do it in the library."
A steady stream of patients arrived all day, keeping Mark busy enough that he didn't notice her, Teresa, and Grandmama slip away.
"It's much cooler," Grandmama said, with a hesitant smile.
"This will be so much easier to take care of. My husband has never been fond of convention," Teresa preened and shook her head.
She chewed her lip and held the heavy coin purse. "Mark will be angry. He was upset the last time I sold my hair."
"Pish posh, his anger lasted a split moment and then he expressed his favor of your short hair," Teresa smiled.
A flush rose up. Mark had been overcome with lust when she'd last cut her hair years ago. "I suppose nearly two hundred dollars isn't something to sneeze at, but we won't possibly come up with almost five thousand dollars in two more days."
When they walked in, the men were sitting around the kitchen table counting funds from the day. They all looked up and froze.
Brigands was the first to regain his tongue. He rose with a smile and walked over to Teresa. "I think a pixie has stolen my beautiful wife." He touched the locks and then pecked a kiss on Teresa's cheek, seeming to genuinely not mind her short hair.
Tears glistened in Grandfather's eyes. "Lily, you haven't cut it since we lost our child."
Grandmama gave a watery smile. "She'd rather her baby have it in a time of need than for it to sit on my head." She walked over to Grandfather, who smiled and hugged her.
Mark tore his eyes from them, guilt even more prominent in his eyes. Then he looked at her. "I once forbid you to cut your hair," he said in a thick voice. "It's the one feature you've never found fault in, and it took you three years to get it back."
She started walking toward him as he stood and started to come toward her. "Three more years isn't so long. Summer is coming, and I'm tired of being hot."
"But you have trouble with getting cold now that you've switched to hypothyroidism." He stopped before her and touched the shorn locks.
A sad smile tugged. "It didn't fetch as good of a price this time because it's brittle from not being well. It wasn't so pretty anymore anyways."
Tears filled his eyes as he stroked her hair. "It's still beautiful. The shine will return as you get better," he whispered and pressed a kiss to her brow. "I didn't want you to do this because of the mess I caused."
"A mess that happened because it was your last option when trying to help me." She set the bag of coins in his hand. "Almost two hundred dollars."
"How much did you make treating patients today?" Grandmama asked in hope.
Mark looked up with a defeated sigh. "Not even two hundred dollars."
Charles came down the stairs with an armful of toys. "Della and I don't want these. They can go back, Papa." He knelt at the bottom of the stairs and spread them out, with a proud smile.
Her heart twisted, and Mark turned away for a moment and brushed at his eyes. Then he walked over to Charles and knelt down. "Thank you, son, but you and Della don't have to give up your toys. You go take those back up and play with your sister."
A sad look overcame Charles. "You don't want me to help?"
"When you're older. Right now you don't need to worry about money. Even if Mr. Price takes the clinic, we still have our house and food and toys."
Charles flung his little arms around Mark's neck. "It'll be alright, Papa." Then he gathered the toys and climbed the stairs.
Mark didn't get up for a minute, as if worried about the children being impacted by this. Then he stood and turned. "Tanya, the agreement said we couldn't practice in there. It didn't say we couldn't sell everything in there."
"But who would we sell it to, and how would we run a practice? It took years to build up supplies."
"I'll take what we can to the university and there's another practice on the way. We have a hundred in savings, too."
While Mark took the horse and cart to go sell everything, she went into the beloved library and surveyed all of the medical journals and books collected since the house had been built. With a heavy sigh, she began to gather them into a box to sell at the mercantile.
It was after dark when the front door unlocked and Mark stepped inside.
She stood up from where she'd been sitting on the stairs waiting. "I didn't hear the horse and cart."
He looked exhausted and had a slight limp. "I sold them on the way home."
"The horse?" Her heart fell. "But he's so good with the children and big enough for us to ride him together." And uniquely beautiful as a gypsy horse, too.
Mark sat in a chair at the kitchen table. "The farmer promised to not resell him for two weeks so we might have a chance to buy him back." He looked at the pile of money on the table. "Where'd this come from?"
She bit her lip and walked over. "I sold some books, an extra dress, some extra pots, and clothes the children don't fit anymore. It bought us another three hundred because some of the books were rare."
He set a fat wad of money on the table. "Six hundred." Then he leaned his head on the table. "Twelve hundred and we have nothing else to sell." He straightened, but his shoulders drooped like a defeated man. "Go buy back what you sold tomorrow."
"No."
He looked up. "Tanya, I'm sorry. We won't be able to come up with nearly another four thousand in two days. I thought I could make working for Price for three months work—"
"There's nothing to be sorry for, Mark. We'll get past this, just like we always have." She sat and rested a hand over his on the table. "Let's go to bed and see if we have any new ideas tomorrow."
"Mark?" A weak shake on the shoulder in bed from a soft hand.
Tanya. Darkness enveloped the room. It must be the middle of the night. "What's wrong?" Rubbing the eyes helped to wake up. He turned on the lantern on the nightstand.
She was curled up tight on her side and held her belly, with a slight glistening of dampness across her brow. "It's been two hours and the bleeding is getting worse."
His eyebrows rose, and he swung his leg over the side of the bed to put on the prosthetic. Her times had become so erratic with the hypothyroidism now.
She gasped and clutched the sheets, as if an unbearable wave of pain hit.
Finishing the last buckle, he shot around the bed and scooped her up. And held back the panic upon spotting the large pile of bloody rags in a basin on the floor. "You can't handle this much blood loss. You're to wake me the moment you have bleeding before your time, understood?" He hurried to the clinic door.
"We can't."
"I'm not watching you hemorrhage." He leaned down with her in his arms and turned the knob. The door didn't budge. Anger surged. "The damn ass bolted it from the inside?!" There wasn't even a lock from the inside. Price had to have boarded the damn door shut.
"Mark, it'll be fine." She trembled in his arms.
He eased her onto the floor to sit against the wall. "It's not fine. There's goddamn medicine right on the other side of the damn door." Turning, he threw his shoulder against the door.
It hardly budged.
She looked so terribly white. "Phillips will have something," she breathed.
There wasn't time to race her down the road and break into that clinic instead. The prosthetic wasn't strong enough to brace with to kick down the door. So, he backed up a few steps and barreled forward.
And fell through when it busted open.
"Mark?" She sounded like she was in so much pain.
Climbing awkwardly to his feet, he got up. "I'm coming."
"Keep a strong grip on my arm," he ordered minutes later as he worked from the side of the exam table to control the bleeding. He glanced over, concern in his eyes. "Do you feel dizzy? You're so pale."
Every muscle wanted to relax and sleep tried to come. It was too hard to make out his words. Her grip loosened.
He barked something when her hand slid off his arm, the energy too much to move. Ringing blocked out his voice and he disappeared behind black spots.
Her eyes tried to roll back, but she fought it. She didn't respond and her eyes glazed over. Yanking up her nightdress more, he started a transfusion in her thigh and let his hands fly trying to stop the bleeding. A sickening moment of panic set in. It'd been two months since being intimate...the perfect time for it to be a miscarriage that probably his deformed seed had caused.
Wait, she'd had her time two weeks ago...and wasn't there another before that? Dear god, the hypothyroidism would kill her through too much blood loss of two or three heavy menses a month. She'd be dead before the right thyroid dosage would be found at this rate.
Sunlight filtered in. This wasn't the bedchamber. The clinic. Why was she in a clinic bed? Mark sat in a chair beside the bed, slouched over the bed in slumber.
She moved to touch his hair to wake him. Something stopped her arm. A bandage around the wrist that was tied to the bed, acting as a restraint. The other wrist was tied down too. Panicked heartbeats drowned out his deep breathing. Who had tied her down? How did she get here? Shooting upright, the blanket fell to reveal complete nakedness. A gasp of panic. What had happened?
Mark jerked awake and immediately began untying the knots at her wrists. "It's alright. It's alright, sweetheart. You lost a lot of blood from menses last night, and when I brought you in here for treatment, you kept trying to wander outside. It made the bleeding worse. Your nightdress was soaked in blood, but you were too disoriented to leave alone so I stripped you. Once you fell asleep, I tied your wrists so you wouldn't wander away and hemorrhage if I fell asleep," he rushed out and freed one wrist. Then he started on the other.
The hyperventilating wouldn't stop. Being restrained and stripped was too much like that night all those years ago. The bandage on the other wrist began to loosen. Shooting out of bed on the side opposite of Mark, she backed up until her legs hit the other bed.
He stood and reached out a hand.
For some reason, that motion made every muscle jerk with a start. Gulping air didn't stop the slamming heartbeat that hurt with its force.
His hands slowly raised in surrender. "I won't touch. It's only me, Tanya. The outside doors are locked, and nothing happened," he said in a low, soothing tone. "Deep breaths so you don't faint. You're starting to bleed again. I need you to lie down, but I won't touch." He took a slow step back from the bed.
It took a moment for his words to sift through the hysteria. Bleeding? Her eyes dropped. A trail of blood ran down her leg.
Nakedness. It had been forgotten about until now, and for some reason it caused shame, fear, panic, pain, and a thousand terrible emotions all at once. Bursting into tears, she sank to the ground and curled her legs to her chest and wrapped her arms over her head to find the dark, numb place to hide from these horrific emotions that had been dead for so long. Mark was the only sanctuary from this hell, but he was too far away for salvation and yet the trigger for this damnation. Rocking didn't help as the sobs tore out.
Instead of numbness, the dark hell pulled harder, wrapping its suffocating arms around in a shell that would be impossible for Mark to penetrate. The sun vanished in this blackness of despair that promised to squeeze the soul until the very last breath slipped out and left nothing behind but an empty shadow of a living body with nothing but a heart numbed to stone inside. It was more terrifying than anything ever imagined.
Warm, gentle hands slowly glided around. Arms brushed and pulled to hold her against a strong chest that vibrated with the soft undulations of a heartbeat. Soft murmurs slowly became audible over the sobs. Despair's grasp slowly loosened until it grew possible to breathe again. Soft lips spread love over her brow. Sunlight began to pierce through the darkness, like after a summer storm. The terror began to retreat. Her fingers wrapped around those arms that sheltered from hell, and held on tight.
"Shhh, I love you, my Tanya. You're alright," he whispered, his words finally seeping in. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to fall asleep so you'd be frightened. I love you, sweetheart. It's alright," he cooed over and over.
Climbing into his lap, her arms slipped around his neck and held fast as the sobs of terror turned to sobs of relief that he had broken through the darkness.
A hundred years later, the tears finally burned themselves out.
He held her curled up in his lap, with her head resting against his chest.
Somehow he'd known the exact moment to come that wouldn't trigger hysteria but wasn't so late that she couldn't be saved. "How did you know?" she whispered.
Her head rose and fell with the depth of his sigh. "Because I recognized it," he breathed. "The darkness that rips apart your heart and soul and being and then leaves them to rot and shrivel and die until only nothingness is left behind."
A sickening chill ran through. He knew what it was like but even worse because no one had saved him from being swallowed up by the darkness. Her arms wrapped around his middle, but there was fear of looking up and seeing the unbearable pain in his eyes. "When?"
"Bedlam," he whispered.
Her heart stopped. He never spoke of it. After the torment of losing Anna and then being tried for murder and thrown into Bedlam with tortures of its own, letting her mind dwell on what it had been like for him there had been too frightening. A part was terrified to know what exactly he'd gone through, but the other part wanted to help him unburden himself so he could heal.
"After the final time of electrocution, I gave up hope of ever getting out," he whispered and held tighter. "I didn't deserve to get out after murdering Anna. I stopped fighting it and let it come. I thought at least I'd be numb to the tortures of Bedlam." His voice grew thick. "But it was worse. I think it made me go insane at one point," he breathed, "because I remember screaming for so long that I went hoarse, desperate for whatever it was that could make the darkness end. So they tied me down and did another electrocution treatment. I thought my head would explode from the pain and then I blacked out. When I woke up, I was chained to a wall and beaten to get 'the devil out of' me. After that, there was just...nothing, a numbness inside."
Tears spilled over. They'd broken him so deeply that he'd still been mostly numb six years later when she'd arrived. She sat up to meet his eyes, tears blurring him. "And that's how you got the name Devil Debonario. Oh Mark, I had no idea whenever I'd tease you about the name. I'm so sorry. I—"
He set a finger to her lips, and tears shimmered in his eyes. "I never cared because you were my sun," he whispered and leaned his forehead to hers with his eyes closed. "My temper never existed until after the electrocutions once I returned home, and it used to frighten me. So I pushed everyone away and blamed myself for Anna's death and let that darkness feed on me. And then you came. That hell started to fade away, but I didn't understand it was because of you until much later. Sometimes it still sneaks up and tries to bleed me. I won't let it get you because once it does, it becomes a part of you."
There were likely other, more horrific things he'd endured in Bedlam that would never be spoken. The moments of seeing it haunt his eyes...it was so much worse than imagined. And it was humbling that he choose to confide in her. She cupped his face in her hands and leaned back to look at him. "Tell me when you feel it coming. I don't understand what it is or when it comes."
Such a heartfelt sigh escaped him. "I don't either. But I've seen it at times in some who've been through severe traumas. I didn't mean to fall asleep, sweetheart. I'm sorry."
That was his limit of being able to share about Bedlam. Resting her head against his chest, she held him tight. "I'm not. You've never told me about what happened. Does your temper still frighten you?"
Silence. "It used to terrify me," he whispered, "I hardly ever got angry, but after that I'd fly into rages. I was afraid of hurting someone because I didn't know how deep that rage ran. So I shut everyone out. Then you brought me back from the dead, and I learned that my new temper didn't mean I was now violent. I know I still have a short fuse and I sometimes go off in the next instant without even realizing I'm about to, but I know that I'd never hurt you or the children. I'm grateful that you didn't know me before, because I think you'd be afraid of me now," his voice cracked on the last words.
It hurt to hear his pain. She stroked his arm holding tight. "Your temper doesn't frighten me, Mark, and I doubt it would even if I had known you because you aren't violent. I love you so much."
A kiss pressed atop her head. "I love you too, my lady love. You turn me into a blubbering old woman."
"Tis good for you, my cuddle bear." Then she glanced down. "Oh no, I bled on your pants."
"I don't care." His arm slipped behind her knees, and he managed to stand with her rather easily in the prosthesis. "It looks like your bleeding is better this morning. I had to give you some blood, so you might be woozy for a few days." He carried her back to their bedchamber.
"I think after both childbirths and now this, I'm made up entirely of your blood," she teased.
He gave a sideways look and grunted, as if he didn't find it funny.
After tucking her in bed, he returned with a basin and rag. He changed his bloodied pants and then sat on the edge of the bed, gently running the rag over her thighs to clean the blood. It should've been embarrassing, but it felt safe and comforting and intimate.
Then the rag gently stroked between her thighs, and his eyes grew dark as he took in her soft gasp of surprise. "Do you hurt anymore?" His voice grew deeper and husky.
With a shake of her head, she held out her arms.
It took no further encouragement for him to shed his pants and the prosthesis. "We can't make love and make the bleeding worse."
"We can make love other ways."
The exhaustion from the illness and blood loss was so strong that she slept the rest of the day, forgetting about the five thousand dollars.
