Free The Mad Earl's Bride by Loretta Chase Page A

weeks ago,” Hoskins said. “You may be qualified to judge his medical condition, but you don’t know his character or his wishes. I’ve had more than nine months to learn, and I promise you, the last thing he wishes is to be treated like a vaporish female.” He glanced at Gwendolyn. “Meaning no offense, my lady.”
    “None taken,” she said. “I’ve never succumbed to vapors in my life.”
    The middle-aged veteran smiled.
    Kneebones glared at her.
    He’d been glowering at her ever since she’d summoned him into the drawing room, after he’d visited his patient. They had not spoken together ten minutes before hostilities broke out. Hoskins, waiting outside in the hall, had hurried in and leapt to her defense, unware she didn’t need defending.
    Still, that had not been unproductive. The man-servant’s skirmish with the doctor had clarified several matters, and heaven knew Gwendolyn needed as much enlightenment as she could get.
    Rawnsley seemed determined to keep her completely in the dark about his illness.
    She had noticed something was wrong within minutes of their returning to the house, after the episode in the garden. During the following hours, while Gwendolyn was marshalling everyone into order, she had watched the earl change. By the time of the ceremony, his voice had settled into a monotone . . . while his movements became painfully slow and careful, as though he were made of glass and might shatter at any moment.
    The fingers slipping the wedding ring onto hers had been deathly cold, the nails chalk white.
    Only after it was done, though, and they had signed their names as husband and wife, had Rawnsley told her he had a headache and was going to bed.
    She’d sent her relatives away, as he’d asked, saying the earl needed absolute quiet.
    He had spent his wedding night in bed with his laudanum bottle. He had locked his bedroom door, refusing to let even Hoskins in.
    This morning, Gwendolyn had taken up the earl’s breakfast herself. When she tapped at the door and called softly to him, he told her to stop the infernal row and leave him alone.
    Since the servants hadn’t seemed unduly alarmed by his behavior, she’d waited patiently until late afternoon before sending for Kneebones.
    After the doctor left the room, the patient’s door had been locked again—and Kneebones refused to discuss his condition with her.
    Gwendolyn regarded the physician composedly, ignoring his threatening expression. Medical men had been glowering and glaring and fuming at her for years. “I should like to know what dosage of laudanum you have prescribed,” she said. “I cannot get into my husband’s room to determine for myself, and I am most uneasy. It is all too easy for a patient in extreme pain to lose track of how much he’s taken and when he last took it. Laudanum intoxication rarely improves either calculating abilities or memory.”
    “I’ll thank you not to tell me my business, madam,” Kneebones said stiffly. “I have discussed the benefits and risks with my patient—for all the good that does him now, after what he’s been subjected to. One shock after another—capped by a hurry-up wedding to a female he doesn’t know from Adam. It was as good as killing him outright. You might as well have taken a hammer to his skull.”
    “I have discerned no symptoms of shock,” Gwendolyn said. “What I have observed—”
    “Ah, yes, during your lengthy acquaintance with His Lordship,” Kneebones said with a cold glance at Hoskins. “My lady has known him all of what—thirty-six hours, if that?”
    Gwendolyn suppressed a sigh. She would get nowhere with him. He was like virtually every other physician—with the blessed exception of Mr. Eversham—she’d ever encountered. How they resented being questioned! And how they loved to be mysterious and all-knowing. Very well. She could play that game, too.
    “I noticed that the hallucinations were of very brief duration,” she said.
    Kneebones