Reese's Bride

She lifted the porcelain teacup with a trembling hand and carefully took a sip, giving herself time to formulate an answer. She set the cup a bit unsteadily back down in its saucer.

“I know your penchant for honesty so I shall not mince words. I can’t be certain, of course, since I have no sort of proof, but I believe Mason and Frances Holloway are giving me something to purposely make me ill. My son is heir to the Aldridge fortune. Should something happen to me, his guardianship would fall into their hands. My brother-in-law and his wife are ruthless in the extreme. I believe they are after Jared’s money.”

He had never liked Edmund or his brother, Mason. Edmund was arrogant and overbearing, and Mason was worthless and greedy. It wasn’t too far a stretch to believe the younger Holloway would go after his dead brother’s fortune.

“Go on,” he said simply.

She seemed to be fighting to concentrate, though he couldn’t actually be sure. “Several months ago, I began feeling slightly unwell. It wasn’t … wasn’t much at first, just headaches and a slight dizziness once in a while. Over the past few weeks, the symptoms have worsened. My memory has become affected. Sometimes things seem hazy, somehow out of focus. I believe my brother-in-law hopes, eventually, that I shall lose all sense of reality. I think he hopes I will withdraw completely.”

She lifted the linen napkin in her lap, straightened it nervously, and spread it once more across her full black skirt. “More and more, he tries to take control. He has even begun to … to behave … in a … a manner improper to his dead brother’s wife.”

Reese tensed. “Are you saying Mason Holloway has made unwanted advances?”

She swallowed. “Yes …” The sound whispered out as if she hoped no one would hear.

Anger flashed through him. Fury at Mason Holloway.

Reese was stunned. It was impossible he could be jealous. Ridiculous after all of these years. He took a deep breath, shoving the unexpected emotions away.

Elizabeth looked up at him. “I think Mason is trying to gain control of my mind and my body and in doing so, gain control of my son and his fortune.”

He replayed the things she had told him. He had no idea how much of what she was saying was true, but the way she had fainted dead away last night made him believe it was possible.

“Assuming what you’re telling me is true, how do you believe Mason is managing all of this?”

“I don’t … I don’t know. Some sort of drug, perhaps, laced into my food. I tried not eating for a while, but I began to feel weak and since I wasn’t certain if food was the problem or if I was wrong entirely, I gave up the notion.”

“And you never saw a physician?”

She swallowed, took a sip of her tea as if it fortified her somehow. She set the cup back down on the table, moving tendrils of curly black hair, loose from the knot at the nape of her neck, against her pale cheek. Beneath the table, his body stirred to life. His groin began to fill and Reese swore a silent oath.

He needed a woman, he told himself. A single trip to Madame Lafon’s exclusive London bordello had not been enough to ease a man’s needs after so many months.

“Mason brought someone in to see me,” Elizabeth continued, returning his mind to the subject. “A doctor named Smithson. He said I would be fine. I didn’t know him. I’m not certain he was a doctor at all.”

“My brother’s physician is reliable. I’ll have him here as soon as it can be arranged.” Reese waited to see if she would agree or if her purported illness was some sort of ruse.

“I think that is a good idea. I’ll be happy to pay him, of course.”

A thread of anger trickled through him. “You might be rich, Countess, but you are a guest here and as such under my care. I am hardly a pauper. Though I suppose compared to an earl it might seem so to you.”

“I didn’t mean—”

He rose from his chair, the legs grating on the polished wooden floor. Reaching down, he picked up his cane. “I have things to do. I believe your son is expecting you.”

Elizabeth said nothing, just sat there staring up at him with big gray wounded eyes. Reese turned away, determined to ignore the twinge of guilt he felt at his harsh words.

He owed Elizabeth nothing. Less than nothing, he told himself as made his way out of the breakfast room.

Four

Reese sent a note to his brother, Royal, that morning, asking him the name of his physician, a doctor who lived near Swansdowne, but leaving out the reason why. He knew all bloody hell would break loose if Royal found out Elizabeth was staying in Reese’s house.

She wouldn’t be there for long, he assured himself. He would see her off to London, perhaps as soon as tomorrow.

The doctor arrived earlier than he expected. At two o’clock that afternoon, a reed-thin, silver-haired gentleman named Richard Long walked into the foyer. Pleading another headache, Elizabeth had returned upstairs to bed. Reese escorted Dr. Long upstairs to examine her, introduced him to the wan-looking woman beneath the covers, then went down to his study to await the doctor’s verdict.

Reese tried to concentrate on the ledgers still lying on his desk, but as usual, his attention continued to stray. He told himself he wasn’t worried about Elizabeth, just anxious for her to get well enough to leave his house.

He was staring down at the numbers written on the page in front of him when a light knock sounded, noting the physician’s arrival. Reese beckoned him in and Dr. Long sat down in a brown leather chair on the opposite side of Reese’s big oak desk.

“How is she?” he asked, a question he couldn’t have imagined posing even a few days ago.

“Not well, I’m afraid. Lady Aldridge is extremely fatigued. She has started to perspire and I believe she may soon start vomiting. I left one of the maids upstairs with her.”

He ignored a thread of concern. At least she hadn’t been lying. She was ill, as she had said.

“The countess was quite candid with me,” Long continued. “She told me she believes someone has been drugging her and I believe she is correct in that assumption.”

Reese’s hand unconsciously fisted.

“I can’t say how the drug got into her system,” the doctor continued. “But her ladyship appears to be suffering from the effects of a continual use of laudanum.”

Laudanum. He understood the effects of the drug often administered to relieve pain. He had been given fairly large doses before and after the grapeshot was cut out of his leg.

“Little by little, she was slowly becoming addicted,” Long said. “Today she didn’t get whatever dose she usually receives, an amount her body has begun to crave. Until the drug is completely flushed from her system, she will have to endure the effects of the withdrawal.”

He fought to contain his temper. Elizabeth was being drugged and she had accused the man who was supposed to be her protector. Reese suppressed an urge to retrieve his saber and run it through Mason Holloway’s heart.

Of course he had no proof that Holloway was responsible. For all he knew, she could have been dosing herself. People often became addicted to the feeling of euphoria that accompanied the drug, which also relieved stress and pain—for a while.

“How much time will it take?”

“A few days, is my guess. From the symptoms she described, I would say the dosage has been small.”

“Probably why she couldn’t figure out how they were giving it to her.”

“Will you go to the authorities?”

“As you say, there is no way to know how the drug got into her system. Even Lady Aldridge can’t be certain who might be responsible.”

“You are aware that overuse of the drug can cause mind alterations and even death?”

“I am.”

“May I presume you will be aiding the countess in her recovery?”

He could barely force out the word. “Yes.”

“Then you will provide a safe haven until the matter is resolved.” The doctor’s dark eyes assessed him. Clearly the man was concerned.

Elizabeth would have to stay, but unless her visit was chaperoned, eventually word would leak out and the scandal of her living in a bachelor household would be enormous. For himself, he didn’t care, but there was the boy to think of.

“I’ll send word to my aunt. I’m sure she’ll agree to a visit while Elizabeth is recovering.”

Although he wasn’t completely certain. His great aunt Agatha, dowager Countess of Tavistock, had fiercely disapproved of Elizabeth marrying the Earl of Aldridge. Since she had no children of her own, she was wildly protective of her three nephews. And she knew how badly Reese had been hurt.

Still, he believed she would come, if for no other reason than to protect him from the woman she saw as the viper who had destroyed his life.

He might have smiled at the notion of needing to be saved from one small, dark-haired woman if he hadn’t remembered his body’s reaction to Elizabeth only that morning. Even now, as he recalled her lying in bed last night, his arousal pulsed to life.

He needed a woman, he told himself again, vowing to seek out female companionship as soon as it could be arranged.

In the meantime, he would do a little digging, see what he could find out about Mason and Frances Holloway and something of the life Elizabeth had shared with her husband.

It was the last thing Reese wanted to do.

Elizabeth lay trembling, her body bathed in sweat. Twice she had retched into the chamber pot the little maid, Gilda, had placed beside her bed. Laudanum, the doctor had said. He had told her she was suffering a withdrawal from the drug she had probably been receiving on a daily basis but that in a matter of days, she should be fine.

She had guessed it was something like that, though she still couldn’t figure out how they had been giving it to her. Probably lacing the fine white powder into her food. She had been right to leave, she thought as her stomach rolled, threatening to erupt again.

She was safe here, no matter Reese’s dislike of her.

She tried not to think how handsome he had looked that morning when he had walked into the breakfast room, tried not to remember the way her heart had madly started beating. She couldn’t help wondering if the light-headedness she had felt in that moment had been the drug or merely Reese’s presence.

From the instant she had met him all those years ago, he’d had that sort of effect on her. His aunt, Lady Tavistock, had made the introductions at a ball given in honor of Elizabeth’s seventeenth birthday. Her father, Charles Clemens, third son of a marquess, had hoped Reese’s older brother, Royal, heir to a dukedom, would become her suitor. But it was Reese who attracted her, the dark-haired, blue-eyed Dewar who was unaccountably sensitive and even a little bit shy in the presence of a marriageable young woman.

Another wave of nausea struck and Elizabeth reached for the chamber pot. If Edmund were alive and hadn’t eventually turned to other women to satisfy his urges, she might have believed she was pregnant, suffering morning sickness as she had when she had carried Jared. She wasn’t with child—she had been drugged, just as she had feared.

She fixed her mind on her son and how much he needed her and told herself she could survive the next few days.

Silently, she thanked Reese for setting aside his feelings and taking her and her son into his home.

The house no longer seemed too quiet, the way it had before Elizabeth’s arrival. In fact, lately, the place was overrun with people.

Along with Elizabeth and her son and the doctor who had returned several times, another visitor had arrived early that morning. Captain Travis Greer, formerly of the 1st Royal Dragoons, had once served under Reese’s command. At the battle of Balaklava, Greer had saved his life when Reese’s horse had been shot from beneath him and he had been left unconscious on the battlefield.

Captain Greer had, at great risk to himself, carried his superior officer to safety.

In the course of his actions, the captain had lost his left arm.

Reese owed him.

On top of that, they had become extremely close friends and he was damned glad to see him.

“Come in, man.” Reese welcomed Travis into the study, feeling the pull of a smile for the first time in days. “It’s good to see you.”

“You, as well, Major.” Travis had sandy brown hair and a square jaw, a muscular man whose features were softened by the small gold spectacles perched on his nose. He was an interesting, well-educated man, his mother a Russian ballerina, his father, the son of the late Sir Arthur Greer, a professor at Oxford University.

“I hope you don’t mind my stopping by this way,” Trav said. “I was heading back to London. I’d heard you were here. Thought I’d see how you fared.”

The men shook hands. Travis’s left coat sleeve was empty from several inches above the elbow. Reese suppressed a feeling of guilt. The injury wasn’t his fault. War was war. Men were injured. Travis had lost his arm. Reese had injured his leg. Both of them were lucky to be among the living.

“Would you like a cup of coffee or tea? Or perhaps you’d prefer some brandy.” Reese headed for the sideboard. He’d been working on the Briarwood ledgers for the last two hours. He deserved to take a break.

“Brandy sounds like a fine idea.”

Reese filled two crystal goblets and carried one over to his friend. “I thought you were living in Dorset. What takes you to London?”

Travis grinned. “Believe it or not, a job. I’ve been offered a column in the London Times. I’ll be doing a series of articles on soldiering and the war.”

“Which one?” Reese said dryly, since it seemed as if there was always at least one war going on.

Travis smiled. “Mostly the one we just fought, but also my thoughts on war in general.”

“Sounds like something right up your alley. You always wanted to be a journalist. Looks like you’ve finally got the chance.” Reese lifted his glass in a toast. “Congratulations.”

Travis lifted his. “Thanks.”

The butler, Hopkins, knocked just then.

“What is it?” Reese asked as the door swung open.

“A man named Holloway is here to see you, my lord.”

Reese’s jaw hardened. He’d been expecting Mason Holloway, sooner or later. “Show him into the drawing room. Tell him I’ll be right there.” He set his brandy glass down on top of his desk. “I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me. This shouldn’t take long.”

Not bloody long, indeed, he thought as he grabbed hold of his cane and started out the door.

Mason Holloway stood up from the sofa as Reese entered the drawing room, a comfortable chamber though it needed a bit of care.

“My lord.” Holloway was a big man, tall, with a dark brown mustache and a slightly oily smile.

“Holloway.”

“I hope you will pardon my unexpected appearance in your home. I only just received word that my dear sister-in-law might be here at Briarwood.”

“She’s here. She and the boy.”

He gave up a sigh of relief. “Thank God. I had seriously begun to worry. It is not like Elizabeth to hie herself off the way she did. But she has been feeling unwell of late. At times, her thoughts seemed a bit jumbled, but I—that is my wife and I—neither of us expected anything like this.”

“Lady Aldridge was feeling a bit under the weather when she arrived, but I assure you she is now on the mend. In fact, she is feeling well enough to stay for a visit with my aunt.”

“Your aunt?” Mason repeated as if the words stuck in his throat.

“That’s right. Lady Tavistock is currently on her way to Briarwood and looking forward to seeing Lady Aldridge again after so many years.” That was a load of rot. Aunt Aggie’s note had been curt and to the point.

What could you possibly be thinking to allow that woman into your house? I shall arrive with all haste.

Your aunt Agatha

The phony smile slid from Holloway’s face. “Lady Aldridge and her son are best cared for at home. I have brought the traveling coach so that they may ride in comfort the short trip back to the house. Now if I may just speak to her …”

Reese flashed a feral smile, exposing the white of his teeth. “I’m afraid she’s asked that she not be disturbed.”

“That is ridiculous. I’m her brother-in-law and as such—now that her husband is gone—head of the family. I’m here to take her home. Please have one of your servants tell her to prepare herself to leave.”

Reese’s hand tightened around the silver head of his cane. “Elizabeth isn’t going anywhere with you, Holloway. Not unless that is what she wants to do. Neither you nor your wife are welcome here. Please take your leave.”

Any trace of civility left Mason’s features. “She belongs at home, Dewar. Sooner or later, I intend to fetch her back there—whether you like it or not.”

Reese thought of the six-inch blade concealed in his cane and his fingers itched to trip the button exposing it. He imagined using it to carve a warning into the flesh over Holloway’s black heart.

“Get out.” His glance strayed toward the stairway and he spotted his manservant, brawny Timothy Daniels, hovering protectively nearby.

“You’ll be sorry for this, Dewar,” Holloway threatened. “Take my word for it.”

Reese turned toward the stairs. “See Mr. Holloway out, will you, Corporal?”

“Aye, sir.” Timothy started toward him and Holloway turned and headed for the door.

“I’ll be back,” Mason said over one thick shoulder, and then he was gone.

“If you see him around here, Tim, be sure to let me know.”

“Aye, that I will, Major.”

Leaving Timothy to insure Mason’s departure, Reese returned to the study. Travis was still standing next to the desk when Reese walked back into the room.

“I couldn’t help overhearing,” Trav said. “You have a lady houseguest, I gather.”

Reese nodded. “The Countess of Aldridge and her son. That was her brother-in-law, Mason Holloway. Elizabeth’s afraid of him. She’s asked me for sanctuary. I couldn’t turn her away.”

“Elizabeth … That wouldn’t be the same Elizabeth you used to curse in your sleep? I seem to recall she married a man named Holloway.”

A muscle flexed in his cheek. “That’s her.”

One of Travis’s sandy brown eyebrows went up. “I see.”

“No, you don’t. You couldn’t possibly because I can’t figure it out myself. I only know she preyed on my honor as a soldier and I couldn’t refuse her request. She’s here until I can figure out what to do with her, then she’s on her way. It couldn’t happen soon enough for me.”

Travis looked as if he might say I see again, but wisely refrained. “Female problems. They’re always the worst.”

Reese lifted his crystal goblet and took a deep swallow of brandy. “You can say that again.”

Five

Several days later

Beginning to feel more her old self again, Elizabeth made her way up to the third floor where Mrs. Garvey and Jared shared adjoining bedrooms. The withdrawal symptoms had faded completely and though she still felt a little tired, she was ready to get out of the house, at least for a while.

She listened at the door a moment, then turned the handle and silently pushed it open. The bedrooms connected to a third room, a lovely little nursery she had admired when she had come to the house with Reese years ago.

At the time, she had imagined seeing their baby lying in the white-ruffled bassinet that still sat empty in the corner. When he had shown her the room, she had smiled up at him and told him what a wonderful father he would make.

The notion twisted her heart. If only her son had been raised by Reese. If only he’d had a loving father instead of one who was distant, even cruel. Jared had yearned for a father’s love, but Edmund had pushed the child away, treating him little better than one of his servants.

If only she had known what her life would be.

But her father had admired the young earl and he had been determined she have a title. Edmund will make you a countess. He won’t exile you to a life in the country while he goes off adventuring with the army.

It was only one of dozens of speeches he had made. In the beginning, she had simply ignored them, certain that in time she could convince her father to accept the man she loved, the man she had chosen to marry.

In the end, she had succumbed to his words, his dire predictions, and finally his unbending edict, and agreed to his demands. By special license, just a little over two months after Reese had left for London, she had married the Earl of Aldridge.

She closed her mind to what came next, looked across the nursery to where Mrs. Garvey read to Jared. He loved listening to stories and was becoming a very good reader himself.

“Mama!” He rose when he saw her and raced toward her.

Elizabeth lifted him into her arms. “Good morning, sweetheart.” She pressed a kiss on his forehead. “You’re getting so big. Soon I won’t be able to lift you.”

He smiled as she set him back down on his feet, always happy when she mentioned how big he was getting. She thought that in time he would grow into a tall, strong man, but at seven, he was small for his age, and withdrawing into himself as he often did made him appear even smaller.

“So what are you two reading?”

Jared looked over at his silver-haired nanny for an answer.

“It’s called Peter Wilson’s Journey,” Mrs. Garvey said with a smile.

“What is the story about?” she asked Jared, forcing him to speak when he would have kept silent.

“It’s about … about a little boy who finds treasure in his garden.”

Elizabeth smiled. “That sounds marvelous.” She glanced out the window. “I know how much you love stories but it’s so nice outside. Wouldn’t you like to come with me for a walk? I’m sure Mrs. Garvey would be willing to finish the story a little later.”

Jared’s solemn brown eyes looked up at her. “You aren’t still sick?”

“I’m feeling better every day. Come on, let’s go.” She reached out a hand and Jared clasped it.

“Have a good time,” Mrs. Garvey called to them, waving as they walked out the door.

They headed along the hall and down the back stairs. For the past few days while she convalesced, Elizabeth had been able to avoid seeing Reese. Every servant in the household knew of the confrontation Reese had had with Mason Holloway. Sooner or later she would have to thank him for his protection.

And his generosity in giving her asylum. Elizabeth wasn’t sure how much longer she could accept his grudging hospitality, but sooner or later, she would have to leave.

The thought sent a chill down her spine. She was stronger now, more able to deal with Mason and Frances, but also she knew that she had been right and that she and her son were still in danger.

Elizabeth pushed through the back door, out into the September sunshine. A soft breeze blew over the barren fields, but they were no longer empty as they had been for years. Men worked hoeing weeds and, in an old abandoned orchard, another group worked pruning trees.

Clearly, Reese meant to ready the place for spring planting. She knew he had been forced to leave the army because of his injury. Still, he had never been interested in farming. She couldn’t help wondering if he would actually stay.

She felt a tug on her hand and realized Jared was urging her toward the stable. Her son so loved horses. She let him lead her in that direction, pulling her into the cooling shade of the barn.

One of the horses nickered softly and Jared hurried toward the sound. A pretty sorrel mare stuck her nose above the door of the stall.

“Isn’t she beautiful?” he said with awe, careful to keep his distance. He’d been forbidden to go near any of the horses at Aldridge Park, but he often went out to watch them running across the fields.