Page 14 of Beecham’s Infirmary for the Affluent Afflicted (My Darling Malady #1)
ANNIE
IN WHICH THERE IS NO TIME TO EXPLAIN
T he docks reek of piss and brine, a vile concoction that clings to the evening fog and settles in my throat with every ragged breath I take. It is bitter and unrelenting, but none more than the brute I writhe against. The beast who has slung me over his shoulder.
I scream his name as loud as I can. “Jacques! Put me down this instant!”
My voice is shrill, echoing off the water, startling a seagull into flight and deafening every poor sailor within a half-mile radius.
But I don’t care, and neither does Jacques.
He doesn’t stop—he doesn’t even slow down.
He continues marching along as I bounce across his shoulder, hauled off like a sack of grain, my skirts flailing around me disgracefully.
“You monster ,” I wheeze, trying to twist, but Jacques holds my hips steady.
I jerk, blinding myself with the sweltering autumn sun in its reflected descent.
I’m forced to turn towards the street of wary, soot-dusted onlookers who don’t lift a single finger or voice to help me.
They’re too tired, too poor, too sick to help a woman like me.
I suppose that’s the jarring irony of a place like London. “Put me down this instant!”
Finally, my boot connects with something: a passing barrel, or his ribs, hopefully. It takes him a moment, but he grunts. The sound is in amusement rather than pain.
“Stop squirming,” he advises over his shoulder, much too calmly for a man being physically assaulted, and I wish to once more draw blood across the cheek that keeps healing. Doing so might draw more attention than necessary, or invoke whatever demon has made its home in his skin.
I don’t want him stabbed, or hung, or imprisoned—not that I’m sure it would do anything. But a solid mugging, on top of being set down upon my own two feet, would suffice.
“You’ll fall into the Thames, and I’m not jumping in after you.”
“Good,” I snap, unease blooming in my stomach as I consider Beatrice and Elias.
They’re still in Scotland, and won’t be back another week.
Without me, Thomas will be lost; poor old man, what will he be without me?
I’m not even sure he remembers how to unlock the front door.
“I hope the river swallows me whole. I’ll haunt you for the rest of your miserable undead— oof! ”
The last of my dignity is sucked out of me, along with my breath as he slows, adjusting me on his shoulder.
Behind us, Amah is talking to someone, our travel trunk in-hand.
Her voice is smooth and unbothered as she explains something to a dockhand maybe several years older than my mother—Southern China, or the Philippines, or Indonesia, maybe—whose friendly eyes widen.
At that moment, Jacques stills beneath me, his jaw tightening against my side into a reflexive grimace.
Or a smile, I can’t tell which.
The man nods as my grandmother murmurs to him, hands him a few coins, and exchanges a quick glance with Jacques.
I’m not sure what the look was, but I’m distracted by the way the man grins— grins , as if he’s just been told I’m merely suffering a fit of feminine hysteria and not, in fact, being abducted in broad daylight.
He puts two fingers to his mouth, and whistles up the gangway at his feet; I’m so furious, I haven’t noticed the two-masted vessel beside him. Amah beckons us over, and Jacques too readily obliges.
I ready myself, placing my palms against the backs of Jacques’s shoulders, preparing for him to lower me. He’ll place me down—surely he does not mean as he says—and I’ll make my esc?—
“Congratulations, on your engagement!” the man proclaims, tipping his hat at Jacques. “My, that’s a beautiful fiancé you’ve got there.”
Every muscle in my aching, sweat-slicked body freezes. “I am not his— his —!” On second thought, he does deserve the gallows. “This is illegal ! Someone arrest him!”
No one does. A few of the vessel’s crew glance over, but they look far more entertained than alarmed. One chuckles as another mutters, “She’s got fire, that one.”
“Is she what happened to you?” another asks, leaning over the side and eyeing the blood covering Jacques’s torn shirt and the burgundy crust all over my fingertips. They’re seamen. They must be used to brawls. I redden and tuck my hands under me.
Jacques only laughs through his nose, though his shoulders remain unamusedly rigid. “There is no time to explain.” He cranes his head behind us, as if watching for someone, and somehow manages a gracious, almost trained bow. “May I?”
As the dockhand returns the gesture and unhooks the chain, I rear back and drive my elbow square into the back of Jacques’s neck. He flinches, finally . “ There . That was your spine. Do you want me to crack it in two?”
He doesn't answer me, not aloud. But I feel the shift in his body, the tightening of his grip around the backs of my legs, his fingers shifting away from my ass. The way his breath hitches before he exhales through his nose like I’m some tantruming child.
I despise how solid he feels beneath me, how unshakable. I despise the heat encompassing my throat and rising in my chest, not entirely from rage.
Amah is beside us, watching my face contort with that awful serene expression of hers, the one that makes it clear she’s orchestrating something far greater my comprehension will allow.
She gives the dockhand a few more coins and a wink that could pass for a thanks or something else entirely—and then meets my eye with the satisfaction of a woman who just pulled off a social miracle.
“Thank you for doing this for us,” she says to the dockhand.
“Of course, Madame Tan. It’s nice to see you, and again, I’m so sorry about Grace and John.”
I glare at her through hot tears as she follows us up. A ship . After all we’d been through, after everything she’d told me about. After all she’d weathered.
“I told him you were Jacques’s betrothed as of this morning, and had suffered a nervous collapse as a result.
The physician suggested an immediate exposure to sea air, and that a train ride to one of those stuffy ferries would worsen your symptoms. What?
” she says quietly at my expression of dumbfounded rage, as if this is a perfectly reasonable explanation to being dragged across the Channel without one’s consent.
“They’re a supply ship headed to Calais tomorrow. People make allowances for love.”
I growl, writhing again to no effect. “ This isn’t love.”
Not yet , Amah’s stoic expression says.
The gangplank groans beneath us as Jacques takes the final step. The deck opens around us, a blur of shadows—ropes the size of my arm, sails, tar-stained planks, and the heavy scent of salt and oil.
I go still, for just a moment.
I think of Beatrice and Elias, soon on their way back from Scotland to find the shop empty—Thomas, clueless; I think of our apartment on the Causeway, the shops that line it.
Our friendly, assessing neighbors who live there, those who brought us food and tea when Amah and I spent an entire season grieving.
The sanctuary of my bedroom, and the man who glimpsed a long-hidden part of my soul within its cozy confines.
A taste of what I’d been missing, the life never meant for me.
It hits me all at once: I am not getting off this ship. I glance over the side where the water glitters, dark and gold in the setting sun.
And then, as if sensing the shift in my thoughts, Jacques finally speaks. His voice vibrates my abdomen, low and just for me. “I’ll put you down when it’s safe.”
Safe . I could laugh. I could scream. Instead, I say nothing at all.
Because the vessel is pulling away from the dock. Because the shore is quickly disappearing, the mist of the Thames swallowing the crowd and chimneys and everything I’d ever known.
Because, for the first time in my life, I can’t see what’s ahead of us—and, God help me, I don’t think I want to.