The Dark Affair by Máire Claremont Page B

very small dose of morphine the moment they had arrived at his palatial town home by Green Park.
    Few understood that the immediate cutting off of opium led to intense visions and horrific illness. The hallucinations were often worse and usually far more terrifying than those suffered while under influence of the drug. She’d seen it happen.
    He’d barely been coherent, and his fever had been monumental. She peered over her shoulder, studying the strong figure in the big bed.
    She’d never seen such a bed in all her livelong life, what with its massive gold frame. Even her family’s home in Galway had held nothing so grand. Above that bed, as big as the wall in her small former lodgings, hanged a captivating painting. She wondered at it. A man being devoured by a tiger, arms thrown up, face somehow peaceful . . . and yet the blood was all about the sandy ground, and the flesh of his torso was torn in the tiger’s massive jaws. So, he identified with the tiger. Just as she’d envisioned.
    But what would compel a man to place that over his bed?
    The man himself was fidgeting under the downy burgundy covers. The restless energy of the painting was reflected on Powers’s face. It kept contorting with dreams—no, nightmares.
    Good Lord, but he had the look in this moment of a tormented angel. Perfection hid such anguish.
    Unable to watch him any longer, she peered out at the cold, late-November afternoon. The sun was well since gone, not that they’d ever seen it, what with the low-slung clouds of ominous rain.
    Somewhere in the distance was St. James’s Park and then Buckingham Palace. For the life of her, she couldn’t believe she was standing in this grand room. She’d thought that part of her life had ended when her father had turned his back on his own title. It felt so strange to be mistress of all the earl’s opulence. Once, long ago, it had been a part of her life. The great manor house had been as natural to her as afternoon tea. She’d loved her childhood home. But over the years, the silk wall hangings had faded, the marble fireplaces chilled with ancient soot, and the noisy halls silenced as her family was consumed in the mourning for millions. And finally, after the death of her fragile mother, her father had taken his children by the hand and led them down the gravel drive, away from what he’d come to consider a symbol of oppression, and to a small worker’s cottage, where they could all atone for the sins of the upper classes.
    Perhaps she was mad to unite herself to this English family. Her father would have hated it, despite the sympathies that both the earl and viscount expressed for the Irish plight. In fact, she couldn’t bear to think of what her father, a converted socialist, might think of her marrying into the height of the British establishment. But the words had been spoken. The vow made, and she’d committed to her decision. Powers needed her now more than ever. For if anyone wishing the viscount ill were to call upon the bishop, the bishop would no doubt be happy to testify to Powers’s madness . . . unless, of course, the good earl sweetened the old sod’s pension.
    Such were the ways of the world.
    The door cracked open and the earl’s face emerged. He didn’t enter, just leaned slightly forward through the opening, then crooked his fingers, as though she would run.
    And, of course, she did. Right now, the old man would need assurance that his son had not taken an irreversible step into an unforeseen oblivion.
    She scurried across the gold-and-burgundy rug imported from some fabled Eastern city that she could only dream of. Ready to take her place now as a viscountess and the key to the Carlyle succession.

Chapter 8
    “T oday did not go at all as planned.” Powers’s father crossed to the grog tray and poured a stiff brandy into a Baccarat crystal snifter. He didn’t offer her refreshment, but rather took a large swallow, glaring at her over the rim.
    She was now a tea