The Mad Earl's Bride (Scoundrels 3.50)

He couldn’t remember what the rest was and winced when the soft, icy bag settled onto his head.

“I’ll hold it in place,” she said. “You needn’t worry about it slipping off.”

The ice bag was the least of his concerns.

He looked down into the water. The sunken tub was not the deepest one in the world. He could see his masculine possessions all too distinctly.

Though it was too late for modesty, he drew a bit of towel over the place and set his hand over it to keep it from floating up.

He heard a faint sound, suspiciously like a giggle. He refused to look up.

“It’s nothing I haven’t seen before,” the witch said. “Admittedly, the others were live babies or adult corpses, but the equipment is essentially the same in all males.”

Something stirred in his sluggish mind. He laid his head back and closed his eyes, trying to collect the elusive bits and pieces. The hospital . . . definite ideas and . . . principles. Her relatives’ puzzling obedience. Her lack of fear. The basin in his hands the instant he needed it . . . the quiet efficiency.

He began to understand, but not altogether. Many women had nursing experience, and yet . . .

He returned to the last piece of news. He could understand about the babies. Plenty of women saw infants naked—but adult male . . . corpses?

“How many deathbeds have you attended, Miss Adams?” He kept his eyes closed. It was easier to think without trying to see at the same time. His eyes still hurt. Though the pain was easing, it was still there.

“I am not Miss Adams any longer,” she said. “We are wed now. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten.”

“Ah, yes. It slipped my mind for a moment. Because of the . . . dead bodies. I am vastly interested in your corpses, Lady Rawnsley.”

“So was I,” she said. “But you will not believe the difficulties I encountered. Admittedly, fresh corpses are not so easy to come by. Still, that is no excuse for medical men to be so selfish about them. How is one to learn, I ask you, if one is not permitted even to witness a dissection?”

“I haven’t the least idea.”

“It is ridiculous,” she said. “I finally had to resort to challenging one of Mr. Knightly’s students. The condescending coxcomb claimed I would lose my breakfast and swoon and fall on the stone floor and get a severe concussion. I bet him ten pounds I wouldn’t.” She paused. “As it turned out, he was the one who went to pieces.” Her voice held a quiet note of triumph. “After I’d dragged his unconscious body out of the way—I did not wish to step on him by accident—I continued the dissection myself. It was most enlightening. You cannot learn a fraction as much from a living person. You can’t see anything.”

“How frustrating,” he murmured.

“It is. You’d think that proving myself once would be sufficient, but no. It was the one and only time I had the instruments in my hand and a corpse all to myself. All I won was permission to observe, and that must remain a dark secret, lest my family get wind of it. Even with the patients—the living ones—it was no good proving my competence to anybody. As long as Mr. Knightly was in charge, I might only assist, discreetly. He must rule absolutely, and mere females must obey orders, even when they are based upon the most antiquated theories.”

Behind his closed eyes, Dorian saw the answer now, with stunning clarity.

A day earlier, the insight would have had him leaping from the bath and running hell for leather for the nearest available mire.

At present, a part of his mind suggested that fleeing was not an altogether bad idea.

But he was so comfortable, his muscles relaxing in the steaming water, his tormented head pleasantly cool.

And so he said, very mildly, “Small wonder, then, that you should leap at the chance to have a patient of your very own.”

And before very long, a corpse of her very own, he added inwardly. Not that it mattered. If she wished to dissect his remains, he would hardly be in a position to object.

She did not respond immediately. Dorian kept his eyes closed, savoring the scented mist drifting about him. Her scent was there as well, rich and deep, coiling with the lavender. He did not know whether it was the scent or his ailment that made him feel so lightheaded.

“I was not implying that all members of the medical profession are imbeciles,” she said at last. “But I could not trust Abonville to distinguish among them. Bertie would be worse. He’d be sure to send for experts from London and Edinburgh, and he has such a knack for blundering.”

“I understand,” he said. “You came to . . . save me.”

“From medical bedlam,” she said hastily. “I am not a miracle worker, and I know precious few brain diseases are curable. Not that I know much about yours,” she added with a trace of irritation. “Mr. Kneebones is as obstinately closemouthed as Mr. Knightly was. I knew it was a waste of breath to argue with him. Words are rarely of any use. I shall have to prove myself, as usual.”

Dorian recalled her brisk, unruffled mode of freeing him from the mire. He recalled the cool steadiness with which she’d met his attempt to frighten her away. He recalled her calm, efficient ministrations of a little while ago, when he’d been so disgustingly sick.

He considered his present comfortable state. He had not felt so tranquil in months. He couldn’t remember, in fact, when he’d last felt so much at peace. Had he ever?

He couldn’t recall a time when he hadn’t been angry with himself for his weaknesses and seething with resentment of his grandfather, who, like the doctors she spoke of, insisted on ruling absolutely.

He opened his eyes and slowly turned his head to look up at her. She kept the ice bag in place while her cool green gaze shifted to meet his.

He wondered whether the cool detachment came naturally, or if she’d had to train herself to suppress emotion, in order to survive in a world that didn’t trust or want her. He knew what that was like, and what the training cost.

“The damp does strange things to your hair,” he said gruffly. “All the little curls and corkscrews sprout up every which way, making a fuzzy red cloud. Even in dry air, it seems alive, trying to do whatever it is bent on doing. ‘What on earth is her hair doing?’ the medical men must ask themselves. One can’t be surprised at their failing to attend closely to what you say.”

“They should not allow themselves to be distracted,” she said. “It is unprofessional.”

“As a group, men are not very intelligent,” he said. “Not in a steady way, at least. We have our moments of lucidity, but we are easily distracted.”

He was—oh, so easily.

The room’s steamy fog had settled upon her. A fine dew glistened on her porcelain skin. Damp curls clustered about her ears. He thought of pushing the curls away and tracing the delicate shape with his tongue. He thought of where his mouth and tongue would go if he let them . . . along the moist flesh of her neck to the hollow of her throat.

His gaze skimmed down to her neckline, then lower, to where the damp fabric clung to the curve of her breasts.

Mine, he thought. And then he could not think about the future. He could scarcely think at all,

“Some men can be distracting,” she said. “At times. You, especially.”

If he had not been so keenly, yearningly aware of her, he would not have caught the faint, unsteady thread in her voice.

“Ah, well, I’m mad.” What he felt might as well be madness. Beneath the concealing corner of the towel, the part of him that never needed reason stirred from its slumbers.

“This treatment is supposed to have a soporific effect,” she said, frowning as she studied his face.

Sh

e did not appear anxious but puzzled, which would have amused him if he had been capable of detached observation. That was impossible.

She sat near his shoulder, at the edge of the sunken tub, her legs curled up under her gown, and his base mind was fixed upon what lay beneath. He brought his hand up out of the water and rested it on the tub’s curved rim, inches from the hem of her gown.

“Treatment?” he said. “I thought this was supposed to be a spell.”

“Yes, well, I must not have added enough eye of newt. It is supposed to induce a pleasant drowsiness.”

“My brain is becoming somnolent.” His fingers touched the ruffled muslin . . . and closed upon it.

Her frowning attention shifted to his hand. “You have a headache,” she said.

He toyed with the ruffle. “That does not seem terribly important at the moment.”

Though the pain lingered, it no longer mattered. What mattered was his treacherous recollection of what lay under the muslin. He drew it back.

Soft kid slippers . . . a few inches of prettily turned ankle . . . and no stockings. “No stockings,” he said, his voice as foggy as his mind. “Where are your stockings, Lady Rawnsley?”

“I took them off before,” she said. “They were frightfully expensive—from Paris—and I hated to risk catching them on a splinter when I climbed in your window.”

He grasped her ankle. “You climbed in the window.” He did not look up from the imprisoned limb.

“To get into your room. I was worried you would take too much laudanum. Not an idle anxiety, as it turns out. The solution in that bottle of yours had not been properly diluted.”

She had said she couldn’t let him die before the ceremony, he recalled. Apparently, she dared not let him die before the marriage was consummated, either.

And he didn’t want to die before then, either, rot his black soul.

“You had to save me,” he said.

“I had to do something. I know nothing about picking locks, and breaking down the door would have made a ghastly row, so I took the window route. Isn’t your hand growing cold again, my lord?”