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And when I say ruined, I mean ruined. Poor Tammie. She was Tamsyn Roskilly long ago, and in the first scene of the book her boyhood love is thinking about going to London to find her. I’ve just started her book, Hold Me Fast, which is inspired by the folk tales Tam Lin, Thomas the Rhymer, and a host of stories about the Fairy Queen stealing away a musician to play at her feasts.

Every so often, Tammie Lind was struck by a sudden moment of clarity—a step into reality, as it were. Moments when she saw the company she was with, and her own behaviour, through the eyes of Tamsyn Roskilly. It was a sort of haunting, for Tamsyn had been killed long ago, smothered under Guy’s manipulations and Tammie’s own weaknesses.

Today, Tamsyn gazed with scorn at the fellow denizens of the laughing gas party. Ether was the drug of choice today. Tammie herself was as high as a kite, floating high above such mundane concerns as tomorrow’s rehearsal and the foolish fellow pawing at her. He was a peer of some sort. A boy with pretensions to being a songwriter. Guy would own him within a few weeks, and Tammie was part of his bait.

The boy was far too drunk on ether to do more than squeeze and prod. Tamsyn was indignant on her behalf. Silly Tamsyn. Tammie had not owned her own body in more years than she could, at the moment, count. She tried it anyway, numbering the years on her fingers, but she became lost in the mystery of whether a thumb counted as a finger and forgot the question.

She was vaguely aware that Guy was free from Tamsyn’s scorn. Tamsyn avoided looking at him. Wise Tamsyn. As usual, Guy sat a little apart, the untouchable Lord of Coombe, amused at the havoc he had caused. He seldom indulged in more than a taste of the various substances he supplied to his sycophants and the people, like Tammie, that he owned.

Tamsyn despised them all, and she hated Guy. Reality was overrated. Tammie no longer bothered with such emotions. She lined up for another turn at the gas, to nail Tamsyn’s soul back in the coffin of her imagination, but Guy stopped her with a word to the attendant.

“No more for Miss Lind. She has a rehearsal tomorrow. Tammie, time for bed.”

Tammie wanted to whine and howl. Instead, she turned obediently towards the stairs, but the sudden movement set her off balance, and as she steadied herself, she saw Guy nod towards the boy, who followed her to her room.

Tamsyn had made a mistake seven years ago, and since then, Tammie had paid and paid and paid. The boy was making a mistake now. Tammie felt a distant pity for him, but in the end, she would do as Guy ordered.

She took his hand. At least tonight was only the seeming of the thing. He would sleep off the ether and by the time he woke, she would be at rehearsal. Everyone would believe he had been favoured by the Devon Songbird. Perhaps he would believe it himself.

Sooner or later it would be true. Guy had used her that way before and she knew how it went. Blackmail material or bribery or simply yet another way to soften the boy’s resistance and break his spirit until he was putty in Guy’s hands.

Tammie was desperately trying to claw her way back to the floating sensation, but the harder she tried, the further it receded. Perhaps a shot of the gin she had hidden in her room. Guy had taken the last of her secret laudunum.

The boy threw himself at her as soon as she closed her bedchamber door. He clawed at her gown, increasingly frantic as the buttons refused to open for him. “Patience, my lord,” she soothed. “Lie down on the bed, and I shall prepare myself for you.”

He blinked at her, swaying on his feet, his surge of energy draining away.

“Lie down on the bed, my lord,” she repeated. She would sleep in the dressing room tonight. It would not be the first time.

She found the gin where she had hidden it, in a bag concealed within the folds of the new gown Guy had chosen for her to wear for a command performance at one of Society’s balls. Thank whatever diety looked after harlots and drunkards for this season’s fuller gowns.

Just a couple of fingers. She would be watched more closely now that he had her booked for so many performances. This would have to last until she could bribe or blackmail someone into supplying her with another bottle.

Without it, she would be dependent on Guy for each dose. He knew she needed a small drink of laudanum before a performance—on stage or in a drawing room. Just enough to quiet the jitters. Then, afterwards, if he was pleased with her performance, there would be something more powerful as a reward.

Tamsyn had tried to give up the substances that Guy insisted Tammie needed. More times than Tammie could count. Twice, she refused until he forced it down her throat. Once, she managed to evade her minders and hide until the craving turned to cramps and nausea, then vomiting as pain seized her whole body, then bad dreams so bizarre that they exceeded anything that she’d experienced while under the influence.

In one of those, the monsters that invaded the refuge she’d found proved to be men sent by Guy. Or perhaps the monsters were unreal and the invaders retrieved her while she was unconscious.

Whichever it was, Tammie woke up in the house Guy was renting at the time, in the half-floating half-dreaming state that said he had already given her something.

Tammie never allowed Tamsyn to run away again. Giving up opium and alcohol was hard enough, but worse was being brought back when she thought she was free.

It hurt too much to think about it. Tammie poured another two fingers. “You have had more than enough today,” Tamsyn scolded. “You will pass out if you drink that, too.”

“Fair point,” Tammie conceded.

She slid open the door. The boy was sound asleep on the bed, flat on his back, snoring. Tammie moved him so that he lay on his side, with a pillow behind his back to keep him from rolling. There. If he vomited, it would go on the sheets instead of drowning him. She patted his cheek. “Run as fast as you can, my lord,” she whispered. “The Earl of Coombe is not your friend. He is not anyone’s friend.”

Even if he had heard, he would not listen. She returned to the dressing room, tossed down the gin, stretched out on the maid’s pallet, and waited for oblivion.