The Mad Earl's Bride (Scoundrels 3.50)

She turned back and smiled.

Her mouth was overwide. He had noticed that before . . . and felt and tasted every luscious atom of it.

He could not remember seeing her smile before. If he had, he would not have forgotten, for it was a long, sweet curve that coiled about him like an enchantment.

He did not know how to resist its warm promise. He did not know how to fight her and himself simultaneously. He did not know how to drive her away, as he must, when she made him want so desperately to hold her.

It seemed he did not know how to do anything.

The document he’d been asked to sign, the reasons they’d given him for signing, had made him face what he’d tried to ignore. He’d come, intending to scare her off for her own safety—and his peace of mind. Yet he, once capable of making hardened whores tremble, could not stir the smallest anxiety in her, any more than he could rouse his feeble conscience.

Once capable.

Past tense.

Before the headaches. Before the disease had begun its insidious work.

The answer came then, chilling him: the tenuous link between will and action, mind and body, was breaking down already. He was healthy and strong, she’d claimed, but that was only outwardly. His degenerating mind was already sapping his will.

He turned away, lest she read his despair in his countenance. He would master it. He needed but a moment. It had caught him unawares, that was all.

“Rawnsley.”

He felt her hand upon his sleeve.

He wanted to shake it off, but he couldn’t, any more than he could shake off his awareness of her. The taste of her lingered in his mouth, and her drugging scent wafted about him. He recalled the soft look in her beautiful eyes and the smile . . . warm promises. And he was cold, chilled to his soul.

And too selfish, too weak, he thought with bitter resignation, to let her go.

He brought his hand up and covered hers. “I do not want to go back into that curst library and listen to their solemn speeches and read their bloody documents,” he said levelly. “I signed the settlements. You’ll get your hospital. That is enough. I want to be wed. Now.”

She squeezed his arm. “I’m ready,” she said. “I’ve been ready for hours.”

He looked down at her. She smiled up at him.

Warm promises.

He drew her arm through his and led her back to the house. It wanted all his will not to run. The sun was setting, evening closing in with its blessed darkness. Soon, this night, they’d be wed. Soon, they would go up to his room, to the bed. And then . . . God help them both.

He took her through the door and hurried her down the hall. He saw the library door standing open, the light streaming into the gloomy corridor.

He turned to speak to her—then he caught it, faint but unmistakable, at the periphery of his vision.

Tiny zigzags of light.

He blinked, but they would not wash away. They hovered, sparkling evilly, at the edges of his vision.

He shut his eyes, but he saw them still, winking their deadly warning.

He opened his eyes and they were there, inescapable, inexorable.

No, not yet. Not so soon. He tried to brush them away, though he knew it was futile.

They only signaled back, glittering, remorseless: soon, very soon.

Chapter 4

“THIS IS YOUR doing,” Mr. Kneebones raged at Hoskins. “I told you my patient’s fragile health could not withstand any strain. I told you he must be insulated from all sources of nervous agitation. No newspapers. No visitors. You saw what the news about his family did to him: three attacks in one week. Yet you let strangers descend upon him at a time when he was most vulnerable. And now—”

“A man becomes a peer of the realm, he ought to know about it,” Hoskins said. “And attacks or no attacks, it was a relief to him to learn the old gentleman couldn’t trouble him anymore. And as to letting in strangers, I reckon I can tell the difference between a friend and an enemy. Even if I couldn’t, I’d like to see you shut the door in Lady Pembury’s face—and her the grandmother of the only friend my master ever had. Maybe it wasn’t my place to tell her what was wrong with him, but I judged it best to warn her beforehand that he wasn’t as strong as he looked, and his nerves weren’t what they used to be.”

“Which means they should not have been subjected to any source of agitation,” Kneebones snapped.

“With all due respect, sir, you never clapped eyes on him until a few weeks ago,” Hoskins said. “You may be qualified to judge his medical condition, but you don’t know his character or his wishes. I’ve had more than nine months to learn, and I promise you, the last thing he wishes is to be treated like a vaporish female.” He glanced at Gwendolyn. “Meaning no offense, my lady.”

“None taken,” she said. “I’ve never succumbed to vapors in my life.”

The middle-aged veteran smiled.

Kneebones glared at her.

He’d been glowering at her ever since she’d summoned him into the drawing room, after he’d visited his patient. They had not spoken together ten minutes before hostilities broke out. Hoskins, waiting outside in the hall, had hurried in and leapt to her defense, unware she didn’t need defending.

Still, that had not been unproductive. The man-servant’s skirmish with the doctor had clarified several matters, and heaven knew Gwendolyn needed as much enlightenment as she could get.

Rawnsley seemed determined to keep her completely in the dark about his illness.

She had noticed something was wrong within minutes of their returning to the house, after the episode in the garden. During the following hours, while Gwendolyn was marshalling everyone into order, she had watched the earl change. By the time of the ceremony, his voice had settled into a monotone . . . while his movements became painfully slow and careful, as though he were made of glass and might shatter at any moment.

The fingers slipping the wedding ring onto hers had been deathly cold, the nails chalk white.

Only after it was done, though, and they had signed their names as husband and wife, had Rawnsley told her he had a headache and was going to bed.

She’d sent her relatives away, as he’d asked, saying the earl needed absolute quiet.

He had spent his wedding night in bed with his laudanum bottle. He had locked his bedroom door, refusing to let even Hoskins in.

This morning, Gwendolyn had taken up the earl’s breakfast herself. When she tapped at the door and called softly to him, he told her to stop the infernal row and leave him alone.

Since the servants hadn’t seemed unduly alarmed by his behavior, she’d waited p

atiently until late afternoon before sending for Kneebones.

After the doctor left the room, the patient’s door had been locked again—and Kneebones refused to discuss his condition with her.

Gwendolyn regarded the physician composedly, ignoring his threatening expression. Medical men had been glowering and glaring and fuming at her for years. “I should like to know what dosage of laudanum you have prescribed,” she said. “I cannot get into my husband’s room to determine for myself, and I am most uneasy. It is all too easy for a patient in extreme pain to lose track of how much he’s taken and when he last took it. Laudanum intoxication rarely improves either calculating abilities or memory.”

“I’ll thank you not to tell me my business, madam,” Kneebones said stiffly. “I have discussed the benefits and risks with my patient—for all the good that does him now, after what he’s been subjected to. One shock after another—capped by a hurry-up wedding to a female he doesn’t know from Adam. It was as good as killing him outright. You might as well have taken a hammer to his skull.”

“I have discerned no symptoms of shock,” Gwendolyn said. “What I have observed—”

“Ah, yes, during your lengthy acquaintance with His Lordship,” Kneebones said with a cold glance at Hoskins. “My lady has known him all of what—thirty-six hours, if that?”

Gwendolyn suppressed a sigh. She would get nowhere with him. He was like virtually every other physician—with the blessed exception of Mr. Eversham—she’d ever encountered. How they resented being questioned! And how they loved to be mysterious and all-knowing. Very well. She could play that game, too.

“I noticed that the hallucinations were of very brief duration,” she said.

Kneebones started. He recovered in an instant, his expression wary.

She could have told him she’d been trained to observe, but she said nothing of her background or of the conclusions she’d drawn after noticing the way Rawnsley had angrily blinked, and brushed at the air near his face, as though trying to clear cobwebs. If Kneebones chose to keep her in the dark, he must expect the same treatment.

She gave him the faintest of smiles. “Did His Lordship not tell you, sir? I am a witch. But I must not waste your valuable time. You have other sickbeds to attend, I know—and I must set my cauldron aboil . . . and look about for a fresh batch of eye of newt.”