Addicted. Charlotte Featherstone
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swarmed inside the covered bazaar.
Inside the Kapali Çarsi, viziers and pashas smoked their hookahs while their slaves and attendants bartered for goods for their richly furnished homes. It had been there, in Constantinople’s covered bazaar, that Lindsay and his traveling companion, Lord Wallingford, found themselves meandering through the hundreds of stalls that sold everything from spices and nuts to hashish and beautiful women who were bought by rich men as new acquisitions for their harems.
Constantinople’s voluptuous exoticness was so different from his genteel England. He was so very far removed from the glittering ton and the fancy town houses in Mayfair. Far away from his responsibilities to his family and the estates in Worcestershire. Yet Constantinople had not been far enough away from the reaches of his past. He still remembered how Anais had fled from him the night she’d discovered him in the hall with her best friend. No physical distance could make him forget that strangled cry of shock and hurt, nor the distraught look in her eyes.
Now semiawake, he struggled to find his way back to his dream—to a time where nothing had mattered but the warm, lazy days spent in decadence. To the days when the hookah and a beautiful concubine had been all he needed to wile away the hours and deaden the pain of his failure.
But damn him, the dream would not return. It remained elusive and he was faced once more with remembering how Anais had seemed to vanish into thin air after she left the Torrington masquerade. He had looked everywhere for her, but she had evaded his pursuit, denying him the chance to explain that he had not set out to seduce her friend or to destroy her faith in him.
After searching throughout England he’d traveled across the channel to France. He had learned from Anais’s mother that she had gone abroad with her aunt—a trip, Lady Darnby had told him, that had been planned for some time. But he knew better. She’d gone to France in order to be free of him.
He had immediately set out for the continent, but hadn’t been able to locate her in Paris. It was then that Wallingford grew frustrated with him and his obsession with finding Anais. After weeks of fruitlessly searching Paris, Lindsay had allowed Wallingford to persuade him into accompanying him to Constantinople where Lindsay had been seduced, not by beautiful women, but by the allure of opium. Opium, that heavenly demon.
The carriage swayed sharply, pitching to the right. Lindsay found himself fully awakened, and he shook his head free of the memory of his time in Constantinople, as well as the bitter memories of Anais.
“You were dreaming,” Wallingford said, tossing him a fur for his lap.
The temperature had dropped again and the carriage, despite its cushioned silk and thick blinds, could not keep out the chill from the violent winds.
“I was remembering how warm the breeze was when it blew in from the Bosphorus. Perhaps we should not have left the warmth of Constantinople,” Lindsay muttered, lifting up the blind and seeing nothing but the blinding whirl of snow outside the window. “I had almost forgotten how damn cold England gets in December. Although, this amount of snow is quite rare so early in the season.”
Wallingford nodded as he puffed on his cheroot. “It is bloody cold. But three months ago we were not thinking of winter when we left Turkey. We were thinking of other things—like the beauty of the woods in the fall. The sound of the wind howling through the forest as it blows from atop the Malvern Hills. We had had enough of traveling, had we not? We were anxious to see England again.”
“Indeed.” But had he not experienced that dream of Anais all those months ago, he might still be in Constantinople, wasting away his days in lavish Eastern decadence. He had been lost for days at a time, the opium his only companion in a world of silk veils and velvet pillows. Where he had only had a taste for opium before, he now had a consuming hunger.
“Sir,” one of the footmen called, rapping his fist against the back of the carriage. “We need to stop, milord.”
With a tap of his walking stick against the trap door, Lindsay signaled for the coachman to bring the team to a stop. As the six grays came to a prancing halt, Lindsay threw open the door and covered his face with his arm as snow, wild and angry, gusted inside the carriage.
Lindsay could not help but notice how red-cheeked and shivering the footman was, despite the beaver hat and numerous layers of thick woolen capes. “The stallion is rearing in the box carriage, milord. Jenkins says that the animal has begun to suffer from the cold.”
“Not acclimated yet,” Lindsay called over his shoulder to Wallingford. “I’ll ride him the rest of the way. That should warm him up.”
“Bloody fool,” Wallingford yelled after him after Lindsay disembarked from the carriage. “You’ll get yourself killed riding that animal in this weather.”
“I spent a fortune on him. I’ll be damned if I allow him to die from the cold. He’s going to stud my stables and he can’t very well perform when he’s frozen, can he?”
“Damn it, Raeburn,” Wallingford grunted as he tossed his cheroot into a drift of snow. “You know I won’t let you go alone. Not in this weather. Bloody hell, man.”
Lindsay tossed his friend a smile. “Come, it will be like old times, when we were neck-or-nothing youths galloping at breakneck speeds down the mountainside.”
“Our bones were not so easily broken in our youth,” Wallingford grumbled as he raised the collar of his greatcoat to protect his face from the biting wind. “Nor were our heads, for that matter.”
“You sound like Broughton when he used to chastise us for our foolish recklessness.”
“I’m coming to believe that our dear friend was the more intelligent of the three.”
“Come,” Lindsay said, not wanting to think of how he had betrayed Broughton, as well as Anais. Instead, he stalked to the box carriage to where his prized Arabian stallion was snorting and stomping.
“Lead on, Raeburn,” Wallingford said, following in Lindsay’s wake. “And if we are so fortunate to make it home alive, the first to enter the stables may buy the other a warm pint of cider and a hot woman.”
Lindsay gained the stallion’s saddle and took up the reins, turning the Arabian in the other direction. Through the snow, he ran the animal as safely as he could while ignoring the biting wind. On instinct, Lindsay guided the horse down a path he had followed countless times in his lifetime.
As the familiar sites came into view, Lindsay slowed the stallion as it pranced along the icy path that overlooked the town of Bewdley nestled snugly in the vale below them. Ice pallets floated aimlessly atop the black waters of the Severn River, reminding Lindsay of the paintings he had once seen of the remnants of an iceberg after it had crumbled into the sea.
Tossing its sleek black head, the Arabian’s billowing breaths misted gray and evaporated amongst the snowflakes that were circling about them. Tightening the reins, Lindsay settled the rearing animal before casting his gaze to the roof of St. Ann’s Church that dominated the view of the town.
Below the ridge lay the sleepy village he had called home since birth. But tonight, the quiet little village of Bewdley was coming alive. Its residents were strolling down the cobbled streets, candles in hand as they made their pilgrimage to church. To the west of the town center, huddled in the valley where a small tributary broke away from the Severn and formed a creek, lay the first of four prominent estates that anchored Bewdley’s aristocratic society. Wallingford’s family estate bordered the forest. Broughton’s was to the east and only minutes down the ridge. His own home, Eden Park, rested on the other side of the bridge. And directly below him lay Anais’s home, which he had not seen in nearly a year.
Scouring the Jacobean-style mansion from high above the valley, Lindsay blinked back the snowflakes that landed on his eyelashes. The earthy, acrid smell of wood burning in the cold air drifted up to meet him and he inhaled the scent, so familiar to him, yet so long since he’d been home to smell its aroma.
It was Christmas Eve and the coal was replaced in the hearths of the faithful with