Free The Mad Earl's Bride by Loretta Chase

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
    “T HIS 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