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 swung 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 to night,” she said softly.
He’d made her glad she was a woman.
We have to night, 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 mad house, 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.
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 wind-blown 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 laborers 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.
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