The Mad Earl's Bride (Scoundrels 3.50)

“It isn’t impossible,” she said. “Another seven months or so, that’s all we need.” She drew back and gave him a smile as wobbly as her voice. “If I were an elephant, it would be different. The gestation period is twenty and a half months.”

He managed a shaky laugh. “Yes, let’s look on the bright side. At least you are not an elephant.”

“I shall look like one at the end,” she said. “You wouldn’t want to miss that, would you?”

He wove his fingers through her wild hair. “No, I wouldn’t, sweet. You present me with an irresistible temptation.”

“I hope so.” She patted his chest. “The patient’s motivation can have a pronounced effect on treatment, Mr. Eversham says.” Her voice was nearly returned to its normal cool efficiency. “I should have told you about the baby sooner, but this is an uncertain period, and I did not want to get your hopes up for nothing. Still, perhaps I was overcautious. It is rare for the women of my family to miscarry.”

Seven more months, Dorian thought. He’d been given less than that before she came, and she’d been here for two months now.

Yet he was doing better than his mother had at this stage. The visual chimera had not worsened, blossomed into demons. His temper remained relatively even. No sudden black melancholy or inexplicable fits of gaiety or rage.

Instead, there was the fierce rapture of their love-making, and the moments of quiet contentment, and the joy of working with her, planning something worthwhile.

According to Borson’s account, Mother had continued articulate to the last. Mad, and living in a perverse world of her own, but articulate . . . and cunning, even devious at times. Perhaps she would not have sunk into a demon-plagued world of her own if the real world had offered understanding and joy and a sense of being useful and valued and worthy of affection. Perhaps she might have lived a little longer and died more peacefully.

It was not impossible.

A few extra months, he told himself. Long enough to see their baby. That would be wonderful. And if it did turn out to be impossible, at least he would have given Gwendolyn a child, which would surely gladden her heart and banish any sentimental inclination to mourn for him.

Nevertheless, her wishing to remain here was not a good sign. She needed to start a new life, in a new place, away from sad memories. But Eversham would arrive eventually, Dorian assured himself. Her mentor would set her right.

Dorian drew his wife tightly against him. “I shall try to maintain a positive attitude,” he promised softly.

“And you must speak to Cook,” Gwendolyn muttered into his shirt front. “Remind her who is the doctor in this house. I ordered a curry for dinner—and it must be hot.”

He chuckled. “Yes, crosspatch.” He kissed the top of her head. “But first, let us see what Doctor Dorian can do to sweeten your temper.”

Chapter 7

TEN DAYS LATER, Gwendolyn was recalling that conversation and the methods Dorian had employed to sweeten her temper. He had used the same techniques every day since, kissing and caressing the irritation away, drawing her out of her annoying moods and into his strong arms, to take her to heaven and back, and leave her dazed with bliss.

Now, sitting in Mr. Kneebones’s surgery, she focused on those blissful sensations in order to keep her temper from taking over and leading her to do the physician a severe, possibly fatal, bodily injury.

It was hardly the first time she’d humbled herself with doctors, she told herself, and Dorian was far more important than her pride.

She treated Kneebones to an apologetic smile. “I only want to know whether those materials prove absolutely what made Mrs. Camoys’s brain start breaking down.”

Kneebones scowled at her, then at the autopsy report in his hand. “One cannot prove anything absolutely in such cases. One makes logical inferences based on observable facts and the patient’s history. Mrs. Camoys did not drink to excess or indulge in opium eating, which rules out toxic insanity. She had not sustained a high fever prior to or during the decline. And if she had suffered a blow to the head, as you surmise, do you not think Mr. Budge, the family physician, would have mentioned that little detail in his account of her medical history?”

“What if he didn’t know?” Gwendolyn persisted.

“Budge is a competent man. I reckon he knows a concussion when he sees one.”

“But one can’t, precisely, see them,” Gwendolyn said. “She had lovers. What if one of her lovers did it? If he did as great an injury as we’re talking about, she might not have even remembered.” She tipped her head to one side. “Did you question her maid, by any chance? Servants often know more family secrets than the family does.”

Kneebones took off his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. “I do wonder how it is that Lord Rawnsley is not in a straitwaistcoat by now,” he muttered.

“That is what I am wondering, too,” she said. “Otherwise I should not have come to pester you. I know there must be a logical explanation, but I cannot find it.”

Kneebones set his spectacles back on his nose. “That may be due to an overactive—and highly melodramatic—imagination and underactive attention to observable facts.”

“Tell me where I’m wrong,” she said.

He pushed the autopsy report toward her. “Let us suppose your little theory is correct, Lady Rawnsley. Let us suppose Mrs. Camoys’s condition arose from a blow to the head, sustained many months before the early symptoms of traumatic insanity appeared, as often happens. What difference does it make? Her son’s history easily allows for physical violence, fever, alcoholism, not to mention a host of morbid conditions of the system, all of which produce similar consequences. Perhaps this has not occurred to you. Nor do you seem aware that a man may inherit character, and with it a predisposition toward an irrational, self-destructive mode of life. You fail to take into account the patient’s degenerate morals, irrational behavior, and savage appearance. No matter how the initial damage began, these symptoms clearly indicate progressive deterioration.”

At this, Gwendolyn’s fraying patience snapped. She stood up. “My husband is not and never has been degenerate, irrational, or self-destructive,” she said stiffly. “He has a powerful instinct for self-preservation—else he would never have survived a month in the London slums, let alone years.” She took up the autopsy report and stuffed it into her purse. “I cannot believe you overlooked that,” she said, “and I cannot believe that you, a man of science, would diagnose him as insane, simply on account of his hair.”

She stalked out.

LORD RAWNSLEY DID not know that his wife had been quarreling with Mr. Kneebones in Okehampton. She was supposed to be making a tour of possible hospital sites with Hoskins and quarreling with him, because his orders were to (a) find fault with all sites and (b) keep her busy until teatime.

Unaware that she was racing home at this very minute, obstinately immune to all Hoskins’s delaying tactics, Dorian stood by the library fireplace. His hands were clasped tightly at his back and his gaze was fixed on a disconcertingly y

oung and gentlemanly physician.

Eversham stood at the library table. Having finished perusing Gwendolyn’s latest notes, he was now thoughtfully perusing Dorian.

“She’s very near the mark with your mother’s case,” Eversham said. “The same theory occurred to me when I read your letter and your copies of Borson’s materials.” He smiled faintly. “Very handsomely written they were, my lord.”

“Never mind my penmanship,” Dorian said. “You were about to tell me what you learned in Gloucestershire.”

Eversham’s arrival had been delayed, it turned out, on account of a detour to the Rawnsley Hall estate in pursuit of information about Aminta Camoys. He had made the detour partly because Dorian’s letter had aroused his medical curiosity and partly because of Bertie Trent’s tear-filled litany of Dorian’s noble and heroic qualities. It had taken them several days to locate Mother’s former maid.

“Shall I be delicate or brutally direct?” Eversham asked.

Dorian’s heart pounded. “Brutal, if you please.”

“Your mother had been having an affair with your Uncle Hugo,” Eversham said dispassionately. “They were meeting secretly, in the estate’s laundry house, when her maid came to warn them that your grandfather had returned unexpectedly. Your mother panicked, tripped, and hit her head on a stone sink. Since she seemed to recover almost instantly, there seemed no reason to summon the doctor—and risk discovery of the accident’s circumstances.”

Eversham went on to explain concussions, which could be insidiously deceptive: internal injury with no external evidence, sometimes no discernible symptoms for weeks, months, even years—by which time it would be difficult to connect the symptoms with an apparently minor accident of long before. Thus she had been misdiagnosed initially as suffering a “decline,” or constitutional breakdown.

“As you may not be aware,” Eversham said, “the brain functions—”

“I know how it works,” Dorian cut in. “Gwendolyn explained that—and how it breaks down as well.”