Loretta Chse

by The Mad Earl's Bride

  “The time will come when I will have no power over you,” he said, his low tones making her nerve ends tingle. “When my mind crumbles, little witch, I shall be at your mercy. Believe me, I’ve considered that. I’ve asked myself what you will do with me then, what will become of me.”

  At that moment, one troubling question was answered.

  He was aware of the danger he was in. His fears were the same as those she felt for him. His reason was still in working order.

  But he continued before she could reassure him.

  “I can guess what will happen, but it doesn’t seem to matter, because I’m the man I always was. A death sentence has changed nothing.” His hands tightened on her waist. “You should have left me in the mire,” he told her, his eyes burning into her. “It was not pleasant—yet Providence does not grant all its creatures a pretty and painless demise. And I’m ready enough for mine. But you came and fished me out, and now …”

  He let go abruptly and stepped back. “It’s too late.”

  He was in no state to listen to reassurances, Gwendolyn saw. If he was angry with himself and didn’t trust that self, he was not likely to trust anything she said. He would believe she was humoring him, as though he were a child.

  And so she gave a brisk, businesslike nod. “That sounds like a yes to me,” she said. “Against your better judgment, evidently, but a yes all the same.”

  “Yes, drat you—drat the lot of you—I’ll do it,” he growled.

  “I am glad to hear it,” she said.

  “Glad, indeed. You’re desperate for your hospital, and I’m the answer to your maidenly prayers.” He turned away. “I’m desperate, too, it seems. After a year’s celibacy, I should probably agree to marry your grandmother, Devil confound me.”

  He strode down the pathway to the house.

  Chapter 3

  DORIAN MADE STRAIGHT for the library, the red-haired witch close on his heels.

  He flung the door open.

  Abonville was pacing in front of the fireplace.

  Genevieve was reading a book.

  Bertie was building a house of cards.

  Dorian strode in and paused a few feet from the threshold.

  Abonville stopped short and stared. Genevieve laid aside her book and looked up. Bertie leapt from his chair, the cards flying about him and fluttering to the carpet.

  “By Jupiter’s thunderbolts!” he cried. “What’s happened to you, Cat?”

  “Your cousin drove me into a mire,” Dorian said levelly. “Then she fished me out. Then we agreed to wed. Today. You may stand as my groomsman, Bertie.”

  The two elders did not so much as raise an eyebrow.

  Bertie opened his mouth, then shut it. He retreated a pace, his brow furrowing.

  Dorian bent his gaze upon Miss Adams, who had advanced from the doorway to stand beside him. “Any objections, Miss Adams?” he asked. “Or second thoughts?”

  “Certainly not,” she said. “The ceremony may take place whenever you wish.”

  “I understand that everything has been prepared for speedy nuptials,” he said. “If you’ve the preacher somewhere about, we can do it now.”

  He turned his stare upon the trio of relatives, bracing himself for an outburst of hysteria.

  They believed he was a madman. He knew he looked like one. The rain had merely diluted his coating of mire ooze, which streamed from his sopping garments onto the carpet.

  No one uttered a word.

  No one moved.

  Except the witch, who paid no more attention to her relatives than if they’d been the statues they were doing a splendid imitation of.

  “You’ll be more comfortable after you have a bath,” she said. “And something to eat. And a nap. I know you are exhausted.”

  Every muscle in his body ached. He could scarcely stand upright. “I can be comfortable later,” he said, darting another defiant glance over the mute trio. “I want to get married. Now.”

  “I should like to wash and change, too,” she said. She stepped nearer and tugged at his soggy shirt cuff. “It will take time to send for my maid and my clothes, as well as the minister. They are all waiting at the inn, along with our solicitors. The lawyers must come, too, so that you can sign the settlements. You don’t want to be waiting about for everybody in wet clothes, I’m sure.”

  Lawyers.

  Chill panic washed through him.

  They would examine him to make sure he knew what he was doing. Very recently, the Earl of Portsmouth’s fourteen-year marriage had been annulled on grounds he’d been of unsound mind when it was contracted. Miss Adams would not want to risk an annulment and lose all claim to his fortune and the title whose influence she needed.

  But if they found him unsound … He shuddered.

  “Look at you,” she said sharply. “You’re shivering, my lord. Bertie, do stop gaping in that fish-like way and come and make yourself useful. Take your stubborn friend upstairs before he collapses, and tell the servants to ready his bath and find him something to eat. Genevieve, you will send to the inn for what we need, won’t you? Abonville, I wish to speak with you.”

  No one uttered a protest, not so much as a syllable.

  Bertie hurried toward him, took the bemused Dorian by the arm, and steered him back through the library door.

  Moments later, when they reached the stairs, Dorian saw Hoskins dart through the servants’ door and hasten to the library.

  He wondered whether the witch had cast a spell over the lot of them.

  “Shouldn’t dawdle if I was you,” Bertie warned. “If Gwen catches us hanging about, she’ll take a fit, which I’d rather she didn’t, seeing as how she took one already and my ears are still ringing. Not but what she was right. We wasn’t listening proper, was we?”

  He grasped Dorian’s arm and tugged. “Come along, Cat. Hot bath, Gwen said, and she got that right, too, by gad. You look like what the cat dragged in, and meaning no offense, but you smell like I don’t know what.”

  “I told you she drove me into a mire,” Dorian said. “What do you expect a man to smell like after a soak in a reeking bog?”

  Unwilling to be dragged up the stairs by his overanxious friend, Dorian shook off the helping hand and started up on his own.

  Bertie followed. “Well, she wouldn’t’ve had to chase you, would she, if you hadn’t gone and bolted,” he said. “Couldn’t think why you’d do it. I told you she wasn’t like Jess, didn’t I? I told you Gwen was a good sort of girl. Did you think I’d let them shackle you to any beastly female? Ain’t we friends? Don’t we look out for each other? Well, I should think so, or at least I did, but then you was away a long time and never told me where you was. But you never was much for letters, and I never was much good at answering ’em anyhow, and I figured you didn’t hear yet I was back from Paris.”

  They had reached the landing. He gave Dorian a worried look. “But it’s all right now, ain’t it? Mean to say, if you was looking at her over the breakfast table, you wouldn’t cast up your accounts, would you?”

  If he were looking at her over the breakfast table, he would probably leap on her and devour her, Dorian thought. Even now, he wondered how he’d managed to keep his hands restricted to her waist after seeing the soft, dazed expression in her eyes when he’d helped her dismount. No woman had ever gazed at him in that way. Under that look, reason, conscience, and will had simply melted away, leaving him defenseless and nigh trembling with longing. Even now, merely recalling, he could not summon up a fragment of common sense.

  “I like her … eyes,” he told Bertie. “And her voice is not disagreeable. She does not seem silly or missish. She seems a capable, sensible girl,” he added, recollecting the terrifying efficiency with which she’d extricated him from the mire.

  Bertie’s worried expression vanished, and he broke into the amiably stupid grin that had softened Dorian’s heart toward him years ago.

  “There, I knew you’d see it, Cat,” he said. “Sensible’s t
he word. Tells you what’s to be done and says it plain so you always know how to go about it. And when she says she’ll do it, Gwen goes and does it. Said she was going after you, and we was to stay put and keep our mouths shut tight and stay out of her way. And she did it and you come back and said you’d have her, and now we’re all in order, ain’t we?”

  He’d had his life in order before, Dorian thought: everything in hand, his short future so carefully planned. Kneebones had promised, and he could be trusted to keep his part of the bargain: laudanum, as much as Dorian needed to keep him quiet, to let him die in peace.

  Now there was no telling what would happen. He could tell his bride what he wanted, but he could not make her do it. He could exact promises, but he couldn’t make her keep them. Before long, he would have no power over her.

  But he could not keep his mind on the future because he could not drive out the recollection of the melting look in her green eyes. All he could think of was the night to come and the little witch in his arms …

  Oh, Lord, and if his mind failed and he hurt her—what then?

  For Bertie’s sake, he manufactured a smile.

  “As you say, Bertie,” he answered lightly. “All in order and everyone happy.”

  SOME HOURS LATER, Gwendolyn was sitting on a stone bench in the Earl of Rawnsley’s garden, watching the blood-red sun’s slow descent over a distant hill. The storm had long since swept off to ravage another part of Dartmoor, leaving the air cool and clean.

  She was clean and neatly dressed in the green silk gown Genevieve had brought her from Paris, and her unruly hair had been temporarily tamed into a relatively tidy heap of curls atop her head. She hoped it would still be tidy by the time Rawnsley emerged from his meeting with the lawyers.

  Gwendolyn’s hair was the bane of her existence. The Powers that Be, with their usual perverse idea of a joke, had given her Papa’s hair instead of Mama’s.

  She did not mind the color so much—at least it was interesting—but there was so much of it, a hodgepodge of twists and bends and corkscrews, each of which had a mind of its own, and all of them demented.

  Her hair, which was the complete antithesis of her level, steady, and orderly personality, made it very difficult for people to take her seriously—as though being a female didn’t make that hard enough already. Thanks to the crazed mass of red curls and corkscrews, every new person she met represented yet another uphill battle to prove herself.

  She wished wimples would come back into fashion.

  She wondered what Rawnsley’s raven mane was like when it was clean and combed. She had not seen him since Bertie had taken charge of him.

  She wondered why the earl kept his hair long, whether it was merely some odd masculine vanity or an act of defiance—against convention in general or, more likely, his straitlaced grandfather in particular. She could certainly understand that.

  Rebellion did not explain, however, why the earl so little resembled his tiny portrait. The puffy face in the miniature had seemed to belong to a rather corpulent man. The one Gwendolyn had met hadn’t an ounce of excess flesh upon his six-foot frame. His drenched shirt and trousers had clung like a second skin, not to rippling rolls of fat, but to lean, taut muscle.

  Whatever was wrong with him was obviously confined to the contents of his skull.

  Gwendolyn watched the light of the lowering sun spread a red stain through the deepening shadows of the moors while she searched her mental index of brain diseases. She wondered what malady corresponded to the “crumbling” he’d mentioned.

  She was considering aneurisms when she heard footsteps crunch upon the gravel path.

  Turning toward the sound, she beheld her betrothed advancing toward her, his face set, his right hand clutching a piece of paper.

  At that moment, medical hypotheses, along with all other intellectual matters, sank into the deepest recesses of Gwendolyn’s mind. When he paused before her, all she could do was stare while her heart beat an erratic rhythm that made the blood hum in her veins.

  He wore a coat of fine black wool, whose snugly elegant cut hugged his powerful, athletic physique. Her glance skidded down over the equally snug trousers to the gleaming toes of his shoes, then darted up again to his face.

  Cleaned of the mire’s vestiges, his countenance was pale, chiseled marble. The long black hair, gleaming like silk, rippled over his broad shoulders. A burning golden gaze trapped hers.

  If she had been a normal female, she would have swooned. But she was not normal, never had been.

  “Good grief, you are impossibly handsome,” she said breathlessly. “I vow, I have never experienced the like. For an instant, my brain stopped altogether. I must say, my lord, you do clean up well. But next time, I wish you would call out a warning before you come into view, and give me a chance to brace myself for the onslaught.”

  Something dark flickered in his eyes. Then a corner of his hard mouth quirked up. “Miss Adams, you have an interesting—a unique—way with a compliment.”

  The trace of a smile disoriented her further. “It is a unique experience,” she said. “I never knew my brain to shut off before, not while I was full awake. I wonder if the phenomenon has been scientifically documented and what physiological explanation has been proposed.”

  Her eyes would not focus properly but wandered fuzzily downward again … and stopped at the piece of paper. The document snapped her back to reality. “That looks official,” she said. “Legal drivel, I collect. Is it something I must sign?”

  He glanced back toward the house.

  When his attention returned to her, the half-smile was gone, and his expression had hardened again. “Will you walk with me?” he asked.

  The backward glance gave Gwendolyn a good idea of what the trouble was. She kept her thoughts to herself, though, and stood obediently and walked with him in silence down a path bordered by roses. When they reached a planting of shrubs that shielded them from view of the house, he spoke.

  “I am told that, in view of my prognosis, a guardian ought to be appointed to oversee my affairs,” he said. His voice was not altogether steady. “Abonville proposes to act as guardian since he’s my nearest male kin. It is a reasonable proposal, my own solicitor agrees. I’ve inherited a good deal of property, which must be protected when I become incapable of acting responsibly.”

  A stinging stream of indignation shot through her. She did not see why he must be plagued with such matters this day. All he needed to sign were the marriage settlements. He should not be asked to sign his whole life away in the bargain.

  “Protected from whom?” she asked. “Grasping relatives? According to Abonville, there’s no one left of the Camoys but a few dithering old ladies.”

  “It isn’t merely the property,” he said. His voice was taut, his face a rigid white mask.

  She wanted to reach up and smooth the turmoil and tension away, but that would look like pity. She plucked a leaf from a rhododendron and traced its shape instead.

  “The guardianship includes legal custody … of me,” he said. “Because I cannot be responsible for myself, I must be considered a child.”

  He was not irresponsible yet or remotely childlike. Gwendolyn had told Abonville so. She knew her lecture had calmed the duc down, yet it was too much to hope that her speeches could fully quell his overprotectiveness. He meant well, she reminded herself. He assumed the marriage would be too great an ordeal for her and wished to share the burden.

  She could hardly expect her future grandfather to fully understand her capabilities when none of the other men in her family did. None of them took her medical studies and work seriously. Her dedicated efforts remained, as far as the males were concerned, “Gwendolyn’s little hobby.”

  “It is very difficult to think clearly,” Rawnsley went on in the same ferociously controlled tones, “with a pair of lawyers and an overanxious would-be grandpapa hovering over me. And Bertie’s holding his tongue was no help, when he had to stuff his handkerchief into
his mouth to do it, and he still couldn’t stop sniffling. I came out to clear my head, because … damnation.” He dragged his hair back from his face. “The fact is, I do not feel reasonable about this. I wanted to tell them to go to the Devil. But my own solicitor agreed with them. If I object, they’ll all believe I’m irrational.”

  And he was worried he’d end up in a madhouse, Gwendolyn understood.

  That he’d come to her with his problem seemed to be a good sign. But Gwendolyn knew better than to pin her hopes on what seemed to be.

  She moved to stand in front of him. He did not look down at her.

  “My lord, you are aware, I hope, that the 1774 Act for Regulating Madhouses included provisions to protect sane persons from improper detention,” she said. “At present, only an examining body composed of imbeciles and criminal lunatics could possibly find you non compos mentis. You need not sign every stupid paper those annoying men wave in your face in order to prove you are sane.”

  “I must prove it to Abonville,” he said stiffly. “If he decides I’m mad, he’ll take you away.”

  She doubted the prospect was intolerable to him. She knew he’d agreed to marry her for what he believed were the wrong reasons. She doubted he’d developed a case of desperate infatuation during the last few hours.

  It was far more likely that he’d come to test her. If she failed, he would believe it was wise to let her go.

  Gwendolyn had been tested before, by certified lunatics, among others, and this man was no more deranged at present than she. Nevertheless she did not make the mistake of imagining this trial would be easier—or less dangerous. She had marked him as dangerous from the first moment he had turned his smoldering yellow gaze upon her. She was sure he fully understood its compelling effect and knew how to use it.

  Her suspicions were confirmed when the brooding yellow gaze lowered to hers. “What’s left of my reason tells me you represent an infernal complication, Miss Adams, and I should be better off rid of you. The voice of reason, however, is not the only one I hear—and rarely the one I heed,” he added darkly.