The Mad Earl's Bride

by Loretta Chase

  And he should have done it later, when the ax fell, instead of storming out of Rawnsley Hall in a childish tantrum. Then he might have accomplished something. He might have used the earl’s money and influence to good purpose, in scholarly pursuits, for instance, to further knowledge, or perhaps in a political endeavor.

  Everyone died, some early, some late. It was nothing to whimper about. But dying with nothing but regret and if onlys was pathetic.

  That, Dorian realized, was what had kept him so unsettled for these last months.

  Now, though, his soul was quiet.

  Because of her.

  He nuzzled his wife’s wayward hair. He had made her happy. He had made her forgive the Almighty for making her a woman. He smiled. He knew that was no small achievement.

  She wanted to be a doctor. Equally important, she would use the Earl of Rawnsley’s money and influence to good purpose.

  Very well, he told her silently. I cannot give you a medical degree, but I will give you what I can.

  And that must have been the right conclusion, because his busy mind quieted, and in a little while, he fell asleep.

  AFTER BREAKFAST, DORIAN took her out to the moors, to the place where his mother had brought him eight years earlier.

  He helped Gwendolyn from her horse—treating himself to but one brief kiss in the process—then led her to a boulder at the track’s edge. He took off his coat and laid it on the cold stone and asked her to sit, which she did with a bemused smile.

  “Last night you said I was not your first lunatic,” he began.

  “Oh, not at all,” she eagerly assured him. “Mr. Eversham, who took over Mr. Knightly’s practice, was particularly interested in neurological maladies, and he let me assist him in several cases. Not all the patients were irrational, certainly. But Miss Ware had six different personalities at last count, and Mr. Bowes was prone to violent dementia, and Mrs. Peebles—may her troubled soul rest in peace—”

  “You can tell me the details later,” Dorian interrupted. “I only wanted to make sure I had heard correctly last night. I was not fully attending, I’m sorry to say. I have not listened properly since you came.”

  “How can you say such a thing?” she exclaimed. “You are the only man except Mr. Eversham who’s ever taken me seriously. You did not laugh at my hospital idea, and you were not horrified about the dissections.” She hesitated briefly. “You are rather overprotective, true, but that is your nature, and I know it is a very gentlemanly and noble inclination.”

  “Overprotective,” he repeated. “Is that how you see it, Gwen?”

  She nodded. “You want to shield me from unpleasantness. On the one hand, it is rather lovely to be coddled. Still, on the other, it is just the tiniest bit frustrating.”

  He understood how he’d frustrated her. She didn’t like being kept in the dark about his illness. He had treated her like a silly female, as other men had done.

  “I have surmised as much.” He clasped his hands behind his back to keep from gathering her up and “overprotecting” her in his arms, as he very much wished to do. “Yours is a medical mind. You do not see matters as we laymen do. Illness is a subject of study to you, and sick people represent a source of knowledge. Their ailments make you no more queasy than a volume of Cicero’s works does me.” He paused, his face heating. “I fancied myself a scholar once, you see. Classics.”

  “I know.” Her green gaze was soft with admiration. “You took a first, Bertie says.”

  “Yes, I am not merely a pretty fellow,” he said with a short laugh. “I have—had—a brain.” Embarrassed, he looked away, toward the moors. “I also had plans once, as you do. But they were not . . . well thought out, and it all ended in . . . rather a mess.”

  His throat tightened.

  He told himself it was ridiculous to feel uneasy. He had prepared himself to tell her everything. He knew it was right. She needed to learn the facts—all of them—in order to make intelligent decisions about her future. At present, her attachment to him was probably little more than a new bride’s infatuation, a response to the physical passion they’d shared. If, after he enlightened her about his past and what the future held in store, she chose to leave, she’d swiftly recover her equilibrium. If she chose to remain, she would do it with her eyes open at least, prepared for the worst. To show respect for her mind and character, as well as belief in her goals, he must give her the choice, and accept her decision, and live—and die—with the consequences.

  “Dorian?”

  He closed his eyes. How sweetly his name fell from her lips. He would remember that, too, no matter what happened—or he would remember, at least, for as long as his brain functioned.

  He turned back to her, smiling as he shoved his windblown hair from his face.

  “I know you want to hear all the fascinating details of my illness,” he said. “I was only trying to decide where to begin.”

  She sat up straighter and her soft, adoring expression transformed into the steady green regard that had so intrigued him when they first met. “Thank you, my dear,” she said, her tone thoroughly professional now. “If you don’t mind, I should like you to begin with your mother.”

  AFTER DINNER THAT evening, Gwendolyn sat at a table in the library, making a list of medical texts to be sent from home. Dorian sat by the fire, perusing a volume of poetry.

  She knew it had not been easy for him to talk about his past, but she was sure it had done him good. He kept too much bottled up inside him, Gwendolyn thought as her gaze strayed back to him. When people did that, matters tended to get exaggerated out of proportion, and his ignorance of medical science only made it worse.

  The visual chimera he’d described, for instance, were physiological phenomena common to a number of neurological ailments, not ghastly aberrations, as he thought. Furthermore, Dorian had not quite comprehended his mother’s case or the difficulties of managing lunatics. Nor had he realized that the doctors often had no way of knowing for certain until after death that the brain was physically damaged. Still, she was not sure Mr. Borson had handled the case altogether wisely.

  Dorian looked up and caught her staring at him.

  “You’re wearing your medical frown,” he said. “Am I foaming at the mouth, by any chance, without realizing?”

  “I was thinking about your mother,” she said. “Her hair, for instance. I’m not sure cutting it was the only option.”

  His face stiffened, but only for a moment. “I’m not sure what else they could have done,” he said slowly. “She was tearing it out in bloody clumps, according to my father and uncle. She did not realize it was her own hair, I think. She must have believed it was the talons. The imaginary claws of the imaginary Furies.”

  Gwendolyn left her chair and went to him and stroked his hair back from his face.

  He smiled up at her. “I give you leave to cut my hair, Gwen. I should have done it weeks ago—or at least for my wedding.”

  “But that is the point,” she said. “I don’t want to cut your hair.”

  “I don’t wear it this way because of some mad whim you must indulge,” he said. “I had practical reasons, which are no longer relevant.”

  “I thought you did it to spite your grandfather,” she said. “If he had been my grandfather, I am sure I would have done something to vex him.” She considered briefly. “Trousers. I should have worn trousers.”

  He laughed. “Ah, no, I was not so bold as that. When I went to London, I was concerned that someone might recognize me and tell him where I was. Then he would punish my landlady and my employers for giving aid and comfort—such as it was—to the enemy.”

  He’d told her about his time in London, slaving night and day. Working on the docks explained his muscles, which had puzzled her very much. One rarely saw that sort of upper body development among the nobility, though it was common enough among labor
ers and pugilists.

  “Looking like an eccentric—and possibly dangerous—recluse keeps the curious at bay,” he went on. “It discourages them from prying into one’s personal affairs. Such concerns obviously applied here in Dartmoor, at least while my grandfather was alive.”

  “Well, I’m glad you were impractical and didn’t cut your hair for the wedding,” she said. “It suits your exotic features. You don’t look very English. Not in the ordinary way, at any rate.” She paused, struck by an idea.

  She stood back to consider him . . . and grinned.

  He grasped her hand and drew her toward him, and tumbled her onto his lap.

  “You had better not be laughing at me, Doctor Gwendolyn,” he said sternly. “We madmen don’t take kindly to that.”

  “I was thinking of Cousin Jessica and her husband,” Gwendolyn said. “Dain is not ordinary-looking either. She and I seem to have similar taste in men.”

  “Indeed. She likes monsters and you like lunatics.”

  “I like you,” she said, snuggling against him.

  “How can you help liking me?” he said. “I spent hours yesterday talking of little but medical symptoms and insane asylums. And you listened as though it were poetry and all but swooned at my feet. It is too bad I haven’t any medical treatises about. I’m sure I need read but a paragraph or two, and you will become ravenous with lust and begin tearing off my clothes.”

  All he had to do was stand there—sit there—to make her ravenous with lust, she thought. She drew back. “Would you like that?”

  “Your tearing off my clothes? Of course I’d like it.” He bent his head and whispered in her ear, “I am mentally unbalanced, recollect.”

  She glanced toward the door. “What if Hoskins comes in?”

  Dorian slid her hand into the opening of his shirt. “We’ll tell him it’s a medical treatment,” he said.

  She turned back to him. Behind the laughter glinting in his eyes, desire smoldered, fierce and hot.

  One day, too soon, the fierceness and heat would turn dangerous—deadly, perhaps.

  But she would deal with that day when it came, Gwendolyn told herself. In the meantime, she was happy to burn in his strong arms.

  She lifted his hand to her breast. “Touch me,” she whispered. “Make me mad, too, Dorian.”

  HE HAD AN attack the next day.

  They had just finished breakfast when she saw him blink impatiently and brush at the air near his face.

  He caught himself doing it and laughed. “I know it does no good,” he said. “A reflex, I suppose.”

  Gwendolyn left her chair and went to him. “If you go to bed now and I give you a dose of laudanum, you’ll scarcely notice when the headache starts.”

  He rose, and went upstairs with her, his expression preoccupied. She helped him undress, and noticed that his vision was not so impaired that he couldn’t find her breasts. He fondled them while she wrestled with his neckcloth.

  “You are remarkably good-humored,” she said when she’d finally got him under the bedclothes. “If I didn’t know better, I’d suspect my lord only wished to lure me into his bedchamber.”

  “I wish it were a trick,” he said, blinking up at her. “But there the damned things are, winking and blinking at me. And you were right, Gwen. They are not like ghosts, after all. You described it better. ‘Like colliding with a lamppost,’ you said. ‘First you see stars, then the pain hits.’ I should like to know what it was that persuaded my brain I’d suffered a blow to the head.”

  She knew, all too well.

  I told you he must be insulated from all sources of nervous agitation, Kneebones had said.

  He was a real doctor, with decades of experience. He understood the malady, had studied Dorian’s mother for months.

  You saw what the news about his family did to him: three attacks in one week.

  She recalled yesterday’s conversation, and her conscience stabbed.

  “I can see what it was,” she said tightly. “Yesterday, I obliged you to relive the most painful experiences of your life. And I was not content with the general picture, was I? I pressed you for details, even about the post-mortem report on your mother. I should have realized this was too much strain for you to bear all at once. I cannot believe I did not think of that. I do wonder where I misplaced my wits.”

  She started to move away, to fetch the laudanum bottle, but he grabbed her hand. “I wonder where you’ve put them now,” he said. “You’ve got it all backwards, Gwen. Our talk yesterday did me nothing but good. You eased my mind on a hundred different counts.”

  He tugged her hand. “Sit.”

  “I need to get your laudanum,” she said.

  “I don’t want it,” he said. “Not unless I become unmanageable. That’s the only reason I took it before. I wasn’t sure I could trust myself. But I can trust you. I’m not your first lunatic. You’ll know when I need to be stupefied.”

  “I also know the pain is dreadful,” she said. “I cannot let you lie there and endure it. I must do something, Dorian.”

  He shut his eyes then, and his face set.

  “It’s started, hasn’t it?” It was a struggle to keep her voice low and even.

  “I don’t want to be stupefied,” he said levelly. “I want my mind clear. If I must be incapacitated physically, I should like to use the opportunity to think, while I still can.”

  Gwendolyn firmly stifled her screaming conscience. Her guilt would not help him.

  She had come with low expectations, she reminded herself. She had hoped to learn while ameliorating, insofar as possible, his suffering. She had never had any illusions about curing what medical science scarcely understood, let alone knew how to treat.

  She had not expected to fall in love with him, almost instantly. Still, that changed only her emotions, and she would simply have to live with them. She would not, however, let them rule, and be tempted to pray for a miracle, when what she ought to be doing was listening to him and ascertaining what he needed and how best to provide it.

  “You want to think,” she said, frowning.

  “Yes. About my mother and what you said about her. About my grandfather. The experts. The asylum.” He pressed a thumb to his temple. “I do not believe I’ve burst a blood vessel, but I distinctly see my life passing before me.” Smiling crookedly, he added, “And it is beginning to make sense.”

  She felt a surge of alarm, which she ruthlessly suppressed. “Very well,” she said calmly. “No soporifics. We shall try a stimulant instead.”

  GWENDOLYN GAVE HIM coffee. Very strong coffee and a good deal of it.

  Two hours and countless cups later, Dorian was fully recovered and his wife was staring at him as though he’d just risen from the dead. She stood by the fire, her hands folded in front of her, her expression a comical mixture of worry and bewilderment while she watched him yank on his clothes.

  “I begin to suspect you believed I had burst a blood vessel,” he said as he fastened his trouser buttons. “Or was about to.”

  The comical expression vanished, succeeded by the familiar steady green regard. “I do not know what to think,” she said. “Frankly, I am confounded. Two hours, from start to finish. This makes no medical sense at all.”

  “I told you I distinctly felt the pressure ease after the fourth cup,” he said. “As though my head were being released from a vise. Perhaps the coffee washed the pressure through my system and”—he grinned—“into the chamberpot.”

  “It does have diuretic qualities,” she said.

  “Obviously.”

  “But you should not respond in this way.” Her brow furrowed. “Perhaps I misinterpreted your account of the autopsy report, though I do not see how. Your mother’s was hardly an unusual case.”

  “I should like to know what’s troubling you,” he said. “Have I been babbli
ng incoherently without realizing it? Am I manifesting signs of mania? Is the extraordinary sense of well-being a danger signal? Because if I am at death’s door, Gwendolyn, I should appreciate being informed.”

  She let out a shaky breath. “I don’t know. I had thought the dilating blood vessels and increased blood supply—possibly augmented by leakage—triggered the aura and pain. But for the pain to stop, the vessels must contract again and diminish blood flow—and your cells and tissue are supposed to be too weak and damaged to do it so quickly and thoroughly.”

  He recalled what she’d told him yesterday about brain function. “I see,” he said. “You fear that something has cut off blood supply too abruptly, perhaps in a dangerous and abnormal fashion—and this is a temporary and illusory surcease.”

  “I cannot say.” Her voice was the slightest bit unsteady.

  Perhaps he’d fall down dead in the next minute, Dorian thought. That did not seem possible. He had never felt more alive. Nonetheless, he wasn’t going to take any chances.

  He went to her and gathered her in his arms and kissed her, long and thoroughly, until she melted against him. He went on kissing her, then caressing her, and soon, carrying her to the bed.

  That wasn’t what he’d intended. He’d only wanted to make sure she understood how he felt about her.

  But there was no stopping, once they’d begun. In a little while, the garments he’d so recently donned lay strewn about the floor, along with hers, and he was lost, drowning inside her, in the hot sea of desire.

  And later, when they lay together, limbs tangled, he found his heart was still beating and his brain was still working, and so he told her what she’d done for him.

  Yesterday, he’d told her of his debauched past, expecting shock and disgust. Instead, she’d impatiently dismissed his whoring and drinking as normal male behavior.

  He’d told her about his mother, the pitiable and monstrous creature she’d become, and Gwendolyn had not turned a hair. “It’s like consumption,” she’d said, after reducing the horrors to a logical series of physiological events. “There is no saying that her infidelities and secrets made it worse or triggered the breakdown. Her marriage was unsatisfactory. For all we know, the romantic intrigues may have reduced the emotional strain and delayed the inevitable, instead of hastening it.”