Free Ravishing the Heiress by Sherry Thomas Page B

her down and kissed her. God, she tasted so sweet, like spring water at the source. He slid his fingers into her hair and kissed her again.
    It was as he undid the top button of her dress that she began to struggle.
    “Shh. Shh. It’s all right,” he murmured. “I will take care of you.”
    “You are delusional, Lord Fitzhugh! I am not Miss Pelham. I am your wife. Kindly unhand me.”
    Shock spiked through him. He scrambled into an upright position—Christ, his
head
. “What the—why are you talking to me in the dark?”
    “Last time I lit a lamp your eyes hurt.”
    “Well, light one now.”
    The light came, stinging his eyes, but he needed the prickling, burning sensation. His wife had fled to a far corner of the room. How in hell had he mistaken her for Isabelle?They could not be more different, in height, in build, in voice—in every aspect.
    “Perhaps it is time to rethink being so inebriated that you mistake your wife for your beloved,” she said coldly.
    He lay down again. The light of the lamp flickered in circles of diminishing brightness upon the ceiling. “It helps me forget.”
    “What good is that when you must remember everything anew the next day?”
    Of course it was no good. The drink was a weakness—his father would never have countenanced such a show of unmanliness. But then again, his father, at nineteen, had everything to live for. The rest of Fitz’s life stretched endless and barren before him. Only pain was a certainty: His classmates from Eton would receive their commissions as officers; Isabel would marry another man and bear his children.
    What did he have to look forward to? Roof repairs at Henley Park? An intimate knowledge of the preservation of sardines? Lady Fitzhugh, with her primly disapproving face, sitting across the table from him at ten thousand breakfasts?
    “Continual sobriety is unappetizing,” he said.
    Sometimes he was amazed he could even withstand an hour of it.
    “You don’t always remember to close your door. I have seen you clutch your head in agony; I have heard you retch. Is it not enough that your heart aches? Must you ruin your health while you are at it?”
    “I will stop when I am inclined to do so.”
    His hand, by habit, reached for the fresh bottle of whiskyby his side, only to encounter nothing at all. Strange, even if he’d poured its contents down his throat, the bottle should still be here.
    “I’m afraid you’ll have to stop sooner,” said his wife. “I disposed of the whisky.”
    Damned interfering woman. He’d been somewhat thankful that she hadn’t tried to cheer him up or censor his drinking—guess that was too good to last. No matter, she’d emptied one bottle; he still had half a crate left.
    Using the arm of the sofa for support, he struggled to his feet. Walking had become hazardous. He’d stumbled and bruised his shoulder the other day—the perils of being a sot. A sot, a lush, a man who drowned his troubles in his cup—or tried damn hard, at least.
    He usually had ten or fifteen bottles stocked in the cupboard next to his room. The cupboard was empty. He swore. Now he had to take himself all the way outside.
    He lurched and staggered to the shed behind the cabin. He wouldn’t have kept the whisky so far away, but one night, as he smashed things in his room, he’d damaged several unopened bottles. The next day he’d moved the whisky for its own protection.
    The crates were neatly stacked in the shed, the bottles dully glistening. His heart trilled with relief. He grabbed one bottle by the neck and yanked it toward his parched lips. Something was wrong—it was too light. The bottle was empty. He threw it aside and pulled up another bottle. Again, empty.
    Empty. Empty. Empty.
    I disposed of the whisky.
    She’d been thorough.
    He kicked the stack of crates and almost lost hisbalance completely, banging heavily into the wall of the shed.
    “Are you all right?” said her bloodless voice somewhere behind him.
    Was he all