The Mad Earl's Bride (Scoundrels 3.50)

Chapter 5

SOME TIME LATER, enveloped in her husband’s dressing gown, Gwendolyn sat tailor-fashion near the foot of his bed.

She had piled a heap of pillows at his back, and he sat with his legs stretched out in front of him—under the bedclothes because she had insisted he keep his feet warm.

The debauch in the bathing room had left them famished. They had raided the larder and sneaked up to his bedroom with a tray of thick sandwiches, which they’d made short work of.

Though the bath, the lovemaking, and the meal had radically improved his mood, he was not altogether tranquil.

Gwendolyn was aware of the glances he stole at her from under his black lashes when he thought she wasn’t looking. She wished she knew what those troubled glances signified. At present, only one aspect of his character was truly clear to her.

Though facing a horrendous death in quicksand, he’d tried to drive her off—because he was afraid she’d fall in.

He had been willing to risk medical bedlam and eventual incarceration in a madhouse, rather than subject her to marrying him.

Though informed of the deadly risks of unsupervised laudanum consumption, he had locked himself alone in his room—to spare her witnessing his miseries.

The Earl of Rawnsley, in short, had a protective streak a mile long and three miles deep.

Gwendolyn didn’t think she was overestimating him. She’d had enough experience with her father, brothers, uncles, and cousins to recognize this particular ailment.

The awareness was doing nothing to restore her clinical detachment, which was in dangerous disrepair already.

Just looking at him paralyzed her intellect. When she recalled what that sensuous mouth, those strong, graceful hands, and that long muscled body had done to her, her entire brain, along with her heart and every other organ and muscle she possessed, turned to jelly.

His low voice broke into her bewildered thoughts.

“I don’t think you ought to stay in here,” he said gently.

She looked up from her folded hands. His carefully polite expression made her heart sink.

She could guess why he wanted her out of his sight. He’d probably spent most of the time since they’d left the bathing room devising a courteous way of telling her he’d rather not repeat the experience.

But she’d been rejected countless times before, Gwendolyn reminded herself, and it hadn’t killed her yet.

“I understand,” she said, her voice cool, her face hot. “I know I behaved shockingly. I scarcely know what to think of myself. I have never, ever, in all my life, reacted that way—to anybody.”

A muscle worked in his jaw.

“Not that I’ve had so many beaux,” she hurriedly added. “I am not a flirt, and even if I was, I hadn’t much time for suitors. I didn’t want to make time,” she babbled on as his expression grew tauter. “But girls are obliged to make an appearance in Society, and then of course the men think one is like the others, and one feels obliged to pretend that’s true. And I must admit that I was curious about what it was like to be courted and kissed. But it wasn’t like anything, and not half so interesting as, say, Mr. Culpeper’s Herbal. If it had been that way with you, I’m sure I should have behaved much more decorously downstairs. I should have fastened my mind on a medical treatise and not made a spectacle of myself. But I could not behave properly. I am truly sorry. The last thing I wanted was to make myself disagreeable to you.”

With a sigh, she started to crawl from the bed.

“Gwendolyn.” His voice was choked.

She paused and met his gaze.

“You are not disagreeable to me,” he said tightly. “Not at all. Word of honor.”

She remained where she was, kneeling near the edge of the mattress, trying to read his expression.

“How could you think I was displeased?” he demanded. “I all but ravished you.”

Good grief, how could she be so stupid? He was upset with himself, not her. Because of the mile-long protective streak.

She tried to remember what Genevieve had told her about men—and the first time—but her mind was a jumble. “Oh, no, it was not like that at all,” she assured him. “You were so very gentle—and I did appreciate that, truly I did. I know I should not have acted like a general: ‘Do this,’ ‘Do that.’ ‘Hurry.’ But I could not help myself. Something”—she gestured helplessly—“came over me.”

“The something was your lusting spouse,” he said grimly. “Which I should not have allowed myself to become.”

“But we are wed,” she argued. “It was your right, and it was a pleasure for me and—” Her face burning, she boldly added, “I am glad you lusted, my lord. I should have been very disappointed if you did not because I have wanted you to make me yours since . . .” She frowned. “Well, I’m not sure when exactly it began, but I know I wanted it after you kissed me.” She crept toward him. “I wish you would not fret about me.”

“This was supposed to be a business arrangement,” he said. Shadows darkened his eyes. “No one would have known if the marriage had not been consummated. Your position was secure enough. I should not have touched you. You have no experience. You do not know how to protect your feelings. Your heart is too soft.”

She sank back on her heels. “I see. You are alarmed that my feelings will become engaged.”

“They are engaged,” he said. “You have just told me as much. Not that I couldn’t see it for myself. I wish you could see the way you look at me.”

Good heavens. Was she so obvious?

But of course she was. She was not like Genevieve or Cousin Jessica. She had no subtlety, Gwendolyn was aware. But she did possess both a sense of humor and common sense, and these came to her rescue.

“Like a lovesick schoolgirl, you mean?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Well, what do you expect? You are shockingly handsome.”

He leaned forward, his eyes narrowed. “I have a brain disease. My mind is crumbling to pieces. And in a few months I shall be a rotting corpse!”

“I know that,” she said. “But you are not mad yet, and when you become so, you will not be my first lunatic—any more than you’ll be my first corpse.”

“You didn’t marry the others! You didn’t bed them! Damnation.” He flung back the bedclothes and stalked, splendidly naked, to the window. “I didn’t even want to be your patient,” he said as he gazed out into the darkness. “And now I am your lover. And you are besotted. It is macabre.”

He would not think it macabre if he could see himself as she saw him, standing so tall and strong and beautiful in the candlelight.

“You said yourself that Providence does not grant all its creatures a pretty demise,” she said. “It does not give each of us exactly what we want. It did not make me a man, so that I could become a doctor.”

She left the bed and went to him. “But now I am not at all sorry I’m a woman,” she told him. “You’ve made me very glad of it, and I am practical and selfish enough to want to enjoy the gladness for as long as I can.”

He s

wung round, his countenance bleak. “Oh, Gwen.”

She understood then that she would not have long. The stark expression, the despair in his voice, told her matters were worse than they appeared.

But that was the future, she told herself.

She laid her hand on his chest. “We have tonight,” she said softly.

HE’D MADE HER glad she was a woman.

We have tonight, she’d said.

Saint Peter himself, backed by a host of martyrs and angels, could not have withstood her. He would have let the heavenly gates slam shut behind him and taken her into his arms and devoted body and soul—eternally damned though it might be—to making her happy.

And so Dorian scooped up his foolishly besotted wife in his arms and carried her to the bed and made love to her again. And he tasted, again, the rapture of being made love to, of being desired and trusted. And later, as he held his sleeping countess in his arms, he lay awake wondering whether he was dead or alive because he could not remember when his heart had felt so sweetly at peace.

Not until the first feeble light of daybreak stole into the room did something like an explanation occur to him.

Never, in all his life, had he ever done anything that was any good to anybody. He’d done no more than fantasize about rescuing his mother from a world where she didn’t belong and taking her to the Continent, where she would no longer have to lie and pretend. When he’d finally got around to visiting her here, he’d missed all the hints she dropped, and gone on his merry way. If he had paid attention instead, and stayed, and helped his father care for her, they might have forestalled his grandfather and the “experts.” Even at the madhouse, when it had seemed too late, it needn’t have been, if Dorian had used the clever brain he’d inherited. He should have played on his grandfather’s overweening pride and sense of duty, and worked him round by degrees. Mother had pulled the wool over the old tyrant’s eyes for years. Dorian could have done it, should have done it.