The Mad Earl's Bride (Scoundrels 3.50)

Kneebones’s mouth set in a grim line, and without another word, he stalked out.

Gwendolyn met Hoskins’s quiet gaze.

“I don’t know the dosage,” he said. “All I know is what the bottle looks like—and there’s more than one.”

DORIAN AWOKE FROM a restless, nightmare-plagued sleep to nightmarish pain.

His head pounded relentlessly. His insides churned, raw with bile.

Slowly, carefully, he inched up to a sitting position and reached for the bottle on the nightstand. He put it to his lips.

Empty.

Already? he wondered dully. Had he finished it off in a single night? Or had several nights passed in the oppressive haze of pain and opiates?

It didn’t matter.

He had seen the silvery wraiths again. Today, they’d slowly closed in from the peripheries and shimmered everywhere he looked. He had watched the wedding preparations through sparkling ripples undulating in the air like waves in a ghostly sea.

Then, finally, the silver shards had vanished from his vision and sliced into his skull like white-hot blades.

Now he understood why his mother had claimed the “ghosts” had vicious talons, and why she’d screamed and torn at her hair. She had been trying to rip the wicked claws away.

Even he had trouble reminding himself there were neither ghosts nor claws, that it was all a sick fancy.

He wondered how much longer he would be able to distinguish between sick fancy and reality, how long before he began confusing those about him with ghosts and demons—and attacked them in mindless rage.

But he would not, he told himself. Kneebones had promised that the laudanum would quiet him, quelling the delusions along with the pain.

Dorian edged closer to the nightstand and opened the door. He reached in and found the porcelain cylinder.

He took it onto his lap and pried off the lid.

The narrow bottle, nestled in a woolen cloth, lay within.

The elixir of peace . . . perhaps eternal.

He took it out and with trembling hands set the cylinder upon the nightstand.

Then he hesitated, but it was not the prospect of eternity that gave him pause. No, he was too shallow and base for that. It was the witch he thought of, and her soft mouth and slimly curved body. And that image was enough to set his mind to fabricating noble reasons for avoiding laudanum’s risks: if he died before the marriage was consummated, it might be annulled, and she would not get her hospital . . . and it was his duty, besides, to get an heir.

But her hospital and the end of the Camoys would not matter to him when he was dead, Dorian reminded himself. Nor would she. He would be gone, and good riddance, and God forbid he should leave a child behind. With his luck, his offspring would inherit the same defective brain and live—briefly—and die in the same mortifying way.

He unstopped the bottle.

“I should be careful, if I were you,” came a quiet, familiar voice out of the darkness. “You are married to a witch. What if I’ve turned it into a love potion?”

The room was black as Hades. He couldn’t see her—couldn’t focus past the throbbing anyhow—but he could smell her. The oddly exotic scent stole through the thundering sea of pain like ghostly fingers and lifted him up to consciousness.

“It might even be a potion to turn you into a cat,” she said.

He could not hear her approach past the relentless hammering in his head, but he could smell it, the faint scent growing richer, more potent. Jasmine?

Slim, warm fingers closed over his icy ones.

He tried to speak. He moved his lips, but no sound came out. Pain slammed his skull. His stomach lurched. The bottle slipped from his hands.

“Sick,” he gasped. “Christ, I—”

He broke off as something else, cold and round and smooth, pressed into his hands. A basin.

His body shuddered violently. Then all he could do was hold on to the basin, his head bowed, and give himself up to spasm after spasm after spasm, uncontrollable.

Retching. Endlessly. Helplessly.

All the while, he felt her warm hands upon him, holding him. He heard her soft murmurs above him.

“Yes, that’s right. It can’t be helped. It’s a sick headache, I know. Beastly thing, isn’t it? Hours and hours. Then it won’t go quietly, will it? Instead, it must rip out of you and take your insides with it. I don’t doubt it seems that way, but you shall feel better in a moment. There. You’re done.”

It was not a moment, but an eternity, and Dorian didn’t know whether he was done or dead. His body had stopped the spasmodic heaving, but he couldn’t lift his head.

She caught him before he could sink into the revolting mess in the basin. She raised his head and put a cup to his lips. He smelled mint—and something else. He didn’t know what it was.

“Rinse your mouth,” she commanded quietly.

Too weak to fight, he obeyed. The tangy draught cleansed the foul taste from his mouth.

When he was done, she gently guided him back onto the pillows.

He lay there, exhausted, aware of movement. The basin disappeared, and its stench with it.

In a little while, a cool, wet cloth touched his face. Gentle, quick, efficient—cleansing and cooling him. He knew he should protest—he wasn’t a babe. He couldn’t summon the strength.

Then she was gone again, an everlasting time, and the pain rolled in during her absence. Though it was not so ferocious as before, it was there still, pounding at him.

This time, when the scent returned, light came with it, a single candle. He watched her shadowy form approach. He winced at the light. She moved away toward the fireplace and set the candle on the mantel.

She returned to the bed. “You are still in discomfort, it seems,” she said very softly. “I don’t know whether that’s the original headache or the aftereffects of laudanum.”

He remembered, then, the bottle she’d stolen from him. “Laudanum,” he choked out. “Give me the bottle, witch.”

“Maybe later,” she said. “At present, I have to work a spell. Do you think you can climb into the cauldron unaided, or shall I summon Hoskins to help?”

THE WITCH’S “CAULDRON” was alleged to be a steaming bath, and the spell appeared to involve her holding an ice bag on his head while she boiled the rest of him.

That, at least, was the sense Dorian made of her explanation.

He had no trouble deciding that the last thing on earth he wanted to do was climb out of his bed and stagger down to the ground-floor bath chamber.

He changed his mind when he learned his servants were prepared to carry him. He couldn’t bear to be carried by anyone, anywhere.

“Your extremities are icy cold,” she said as she handed him a dressing gown. She looked away while he angrily struggled into it. “Above the neck, you are much too hot. Your system is unbalanced, you see. We must correct it.”

Dorian didn’t care if he was unbalanced. On the other hand, he could not bear her seeing him lying helpless and trembling like an infant.

And so he dragged himself from the bed and stumbled across the room and through the door. Rejecting her helping hand, he made his way out of the room and down the stairs.

He found the small, tiled room filled with lavender-scented steam. Candles flickered in the narrow wall niches.

The scented mist, the warmth, the gentle light enveloped him and drew him in. Entranced, he walked to the edge of the sunken bath. Towels had been laid on the bottom and draped over the sides.

His impotent rage dissipated in the sweet warmth and quiet.

He flung off his dressing gown and climbed in, groaning as he slid into the steaming water and the heat stole into his aching muscles.

A moment later, a small pillow slid behind his neck. His eyes flew open.

Mes

merized by the delicious warmth, the inviting water, he had forgotten about the witch . . . and he was stark, screaming naked.

“All you need to do is soak,” she said. “Lean back on the cushion. I’ll do the rest.”