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Dear God, he was pushing things where he ought not. And yet, the realisation did not stop him.
Impulse control had always been a problem.
Unless he was with a woman or focused on his orchids. Both were singular pursuits that required an intensity of focus he otherwise found impossible.
‘Animals?’
‘Have you never seen animals engaged in...procreation?’
She blinked. Rapidly. ‘No,’ she said.
He was counting on that. He was counting on an amorous hedgehog to have made this easier for him.
Currently, he felt enraged with the whole of the species.
‘Never mind.’
‘I was kept inside most of my childhood. Yes, I did grow up in the country. But in truth, I mostly grew up in Bybee House. I spent a great deal of my childhood in bed in my room.’
An orchid.
The thought bloomed in his head and took root.
Beautiful. Fragile.
Needing a firm, guiding hand.
He gritted his teeth. ‘What were your ailments?’
He had never truly discussed this with Kendal, as it was not his concern. Or, hadn’t been before. ‘I need to know,’ he said. ‘I need to know, so that I understand how best to care for you.’
‘I have been just fine these many years, Your Grace.’
‘You are in my care,’ he said. ‘And that matters to me. I take care of what is mine.’
‘I do not...belong to you.’
‘The Church of England would see it differently.’
‘My breathing. My throat would become very tight, and it would become nearly impossible to take a breath. And any illness of the lungs always... Progressed. Badly. I would get very hot and... They would have to bleed me.’
‘And now?’
‘It is not so frequent. I have not had a true attack of it in years.’
‘That is a terrible way to spend a childhood,’ he said.
‘I learned to find ways to appreciate it,’ she said, her expression deathly serious and hard as stone. ‘I hated the bleeding at first. But I would imagine that it was making me stronger. That it was draining away the bad, and that the pain was fortifying me in some way.’ She got a strange, faraway look in her eyes. ‘And I remember the first time I escaped from the house. And I exerted myself in ways I was not permitted to. I ran through a field. My breathing did become quite hard, but I hid it. I enjoyed it, even. For it was a mark of freedom. And while I was running I fell. But the pain that I felt then was the most real thing. The ground biting into my skin. It was my consequence. Mine. And it was... Somehow wonderful.’
He felt frozen in the moment, not because he was uncertain, no. In these matters Briggs did not traffic in uncertainty.
No, he wanted to stop and linger in it. In the spark it ignited beneath his skin.
The way she spoke of pain. As if it transformed her.
Gave her power.
He knew that feeling. He was not the one who received, but the one who gave. The feeling of absolute control—so unlike how he’d always felt otherwise.
