Scandal's Bride (40 page)

His hair black in the candlelight, his face so much harder, more angular than any others in sight, his tall figure so vital an amalgam of strength and grace that he threw every other male into the shade, he was the focus of her attention, her mind, her heart.

The focus of her love.

She raised a hand and touched the twin crystals that during the day rode between her breasts. At night, she wore only the older—she would never be without it. It was now a part of her, as it was meant to be. As he was meant to be.

Smiling serenely, she drew her eyes from him. Glancing around, she beckoned to a maid. “Hilda—slip up to our bedchamber and make sure the fire's built high.” So the air would be warm when they retired to their bed.

The maid, one with sufficient years to read between the lines, smiled broadly. “Aye, mum—I'll make sure it's a right blaze.” Eyes twinkling, she hurried out.

Catriona smiled. Just another little detail married ladies had to deal with. Inwardly grinning, she turned back to survey her people—and enjoy the sight of her husband among them.

C
atriona was late down to breakfast the next morning, but not quite as late as had been her wont in recent times. While Richard's morning demands hadn't abated in the slightest, she felt less drained, less exhausted from fulfilling them. Perhaps she was growing used to waking up that way.

Whatever, her energy was at a high as she descended the stairs, her feet tripping, her heart light. Smiling brightly, she swept into the dining hall, beaming at all in sight. At the main table on the dais, Richard was looking down at his plate. Her heart buoyed on a wave of sheer joy, Catriona rounded the table and went to her place beside him.

He sensed her presence and tried to turn her way—tried to straighten his back, tried to lift his head and look at her.

Catriona slowed; horrified, she took in his slack features, the pallor of his skin.

Hunched, his heavy lids hooding his blue eyes, he made a heroic effort to lift his arm toward her.

He crashed out of his chair.

With a pained cry, Catriona flung herself to her knees beside him. About them, shouts and exclamations rang; chairs scraped as everyone rose. Frantically searching for a pulse at his throat, Catriona barely heard.

Then Worboys pushed through and went heavily down on his knees on Richard's other side.
“Sir!”

The pain in his cry was echoed in Catriona's heart. “He's still alive.” A panic like nothing she'd ever known had locked a vise about her lungs. Dragging in what air she could, she framed Richard's face in her hands; with her thumbs, she pried open his lids.

They rose, just enough to confirm her worst fears. He was drugged—heavily, heavily drugged.

She sensed him gather his strength—he blinked and looked directly at her, his eyes focused by sheer force of will. Then, with an even greater effort, he turned his head to Worboys. “Get Devil.” He licked his dry lips.
“Immediately!”

“Yes, of course, sir. But . . .”

Worboys' words faded as Richard, with such intense effort it was painful to watch, turned his head until, once more, he was looking at Catriona. Jaw clenching, he lifted one hand, fingers extended, to her, to her face—

A spasm twisted his features; he gave a choked gasp, and his lids fell.

His hand fell, too; his head lolled.

He was unconscious.

Only the slow beat of his heart beneath her palm stopped Catriona from wailing. Others did, believing the worst—she hushed them with a word.

“He still lives. Quickly—some wine! Then I'll need to get him to our bed.”

That first night was not going to be the worst—Catriona knew it. Richard's life hung by a thread—a steadily fraying one. Only the fact that she'd been there, on the spot when the poison first took hold, had saved him—if she'd been even five minutes later, it would have been too late.

Even now, she might have been too late.

Dragging in a breath, she wrapped her arms about her, and continued her slow pace beside the bed. Before the fire would be warmer, but she didn't dare go so far away. She needed to be close, to do whatever she could quickly, when the time came. It hadn't come yet, but soon, soon . . .

Outside the wind howled and sobbed; she fought not to do the same. She'd done all she could thus far.

Before letting them move him, she'd tipped two glasses of the light morning wine down his throat before his instinct to swallow had faded. All through the day and into the night, she'd painstakingly coaxed liquids into him. Garlic water, honey water, and goat's milk mulled with mustard seed—all the standard remedies. Her efforts had been enough to hold him to life thus far, but it was only the beginning of his battle.

This time, his fate rested squarely in the lap of The Lady.

So she prayed, and paced, and waited—for the crisis she knew must come.

And tried not to think about the other crises looming—the ones to be faced when he regained consciousness, or even before.

The thought that he believed she'd drugged him again, this time with deadly intent, hurt beyond description, but she couldn't interpret his movements, his words, in those instants before he'd lost consciousness in any other way. He'd looked at her so strangely, so intently, so deliberately, then he'd told Worboys to fetch his brother immediately. Then he'd tried to point to her.

Whether the pain that had crossed his face had been due to the drug, or to hurt at her supposed betrayal, she couldn't decide.

But . . . dragging in a huge breath, she pressed her lips tight; kicking her skirts out of her way, she paced on. She was not going to let his temporary insanity get her down. She was not going to waste her time, diffuse her energies, in feeling hurt or insulted, nor in wringing her hands or indulging in tears.

The stupid man couldn't afford it—he might die if she wasn't at her best. At her strongest.

He might die anyway.

Thrusting that thought aside, she reiterated to herself her decision on how best to deal with her husband's mental breakdown. Once his wits returned, she would simply hold him to his vow—and force him to talk to her, and she would talk to him. And keep talking until she had straightened out his wayward thinking. It was, of course, nonsensical to imagine she had poisoned him—no one else in the household, not even Worboys, believed that.

But only Richard knew that she'd drugged him before—she could appreciate that in that dizzy moment when the drug had fought to rip his wits from him, he might have remembered that fact and extrapolated without thinking things through.

She could forgive him—but she wasn't about to let her past misdemeanor combine with his drug-induced daze to set a wall between them.

She would talk until the wall fell down.

There was, however, a hurdle looming in her path—very likely a large hurdle; at least, she imagined his brother would be large. Large and forceful. Powerful. Used to being obeyed, to having his edicts complied with.

Grimacing, Catriona swung about and marched around the bed, just for a change of scenery. Of perspective.

She wasn't now sure she'd done the right thing in encouraging Worboys to carry out Richard's order and summon his brother the duke. At the time, she'd been of the mind that as she'd nothing to hide, there was no reason she couldn't face the inquisition. Unfortunately,
she
hadn't thought things through in that instance—thought about what might happen if Richard's brother—a man known to everyone as Devil and presumably a potent source of authority—insisted on removing Richard from her care. Decreed that Richard, still unconscious, would be better tended in London.

Could she—would she be able to—refuse?

If he was taken away before she made sure he understood she hadn't poisoned him, would she get the chance to right his mind later—would he return if he believed, for whatever twisted reasons, that she was behind his poisoning?

The thought went around and around as she paced up and down. And got nowhere. She couldn't, in fact, concentrate on that point, too overwhelmed by the far more scarifying prospect raised by the possibility of Richard being taken from her care.

If he was, he might not live.

And she doubted she could explain that to his brother, or anyone not acquainted with the ways of The Lady.

Sighing, she halted and reached a hand to Richard's wrist. His pulse was still steady, if far too weak. Once again, she mentally reviewed her treatment, searched for any options she had not yet tried. But she'd done all she could—without knowing the specific poison for certain, she couldn't risk doing any more.

She knew, of course,
who
had poisoned him, but the culprit was no longer in the manor, in the vale, for her to question. It seemed Algaria had slipped the poison—a poison only she and Catriona had access to—into Richard's mug, then left immediately, ostensibly to travel to her own cottage, which she sometimes did, but never without informing Catriona first.

The fact that Algaria hadn't waited to gauge her potion's effect suggested she'd been in no doubt it would work. Quelling a shudder, Catriona resumed her pacing and considered the three possible poisons—hemlock, henbane, and wolfsbane. All were deadly, but the last was the hardest to treat. She couldn't, however, overlook the possiblity that a mixture had been used, so she'd had to combine remedies for all three.

She knew that wouldn't be enough.

Which was why she was there by the bed, would always be there, every minute until he awakened. Until she knew he was safe. She had to be there to anchor him to this world if need be, if his connection with it grew too weak. She'd never done such a thing before, but she knew about the region she mentally dubbed “neither nor.” The region in which life ceased to have meaning, the threshold between the real world and that other.

She'd stood on that threshold once before, on the night after her parents had died. Her mother had come to her in her sleep—from the dream state to “neither nor” was no great step. Having died in the arms of a man who had loved her deeply, and who she had loved in return, her mother had had no real cause to linger—she'd held back only to bid her adieu.

So she knew the way to that region, knew it was cold, swirling with chill grey mists, treacherous in that it had no reality to which human senses could cling. Any who stepped into it had to rely on their other senses, and their link to any other in that void would only hold true if there was a strong connection between the two souls—like a mother and child, or a husband and wife bound by love.

If the connection wasn't there, then in trying to reach Richard and hold him to life, she would risk losing herself.

She didn't care—if he died, life wouldn't be worth living, but she'd have to live it anyway, without him. The thought was guaranteed to stiffen her spine, to fire her determination. She would not lose him. Or herself. She had faith enough for both of them—faith in his need of her, as much as in her love for him.

The first trial came in the early watches of the morning, when his breathing slowed and he slipped into the greyness. On her knees beside the bed, Catriona drew in a deep breath and resolutely closed her eyes. With one fist clenched about the twin pendants between her breasts, with the other she held his hand and followed him, into the void beyond the world.

He was there, but blind and weak, helpless as a day-old kitten; gently, she turned him around and brought him home.

Over the next days, and the next nights, she fought by his side, time and again stepping into that grey nothingness to lead him back, to give him her strength, her life, so he could continue to live.

The effort drained her. She could have done with Algaria beside her, but that, of course, was not to be. About them, the manor lay quiet, hushed, yet she was conscious of a soothing, steady stream of support, of prayers and wishes for his health and hers. Without him, life still went on, but it was as if, with his retreat from their world, the heightened sense of life he'd brought to them had sunk into hibernation.

Mrs. Broom and McArdle brought her food and drink; Worboys was in constant, surprisingly helpful, attendance. He knew his master's state was serious, yet, after that first moment of weakness, he had remained the staunchest in his certainty that Richard would shortly wake hale and whole.

“Invincible, the lot of them,” he'd assured her when she'd commented on his unswerving confidence. He'd gone on to relate the Cynsters' successes at Waterloo.

It had given her comfort, and some hope, for which she was grateful.

But she alone knew what harmful forces had been unleashed against him—what powerful poison had been fed to him—and only she could heal him and hold him fast to this world.

With a sickening jolt, Catriona awoke on the third morning after their ordeal had begun.