Loretta Chse by The Mad Earl's Bride

Author:The Mad Earl's Bride [Bride, The Mad Earl's]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

THREE WEEKS LATER, Dorian stood in the doorway of his wife’s sitting room, watching her frown over a pamphlet.

Her books had arrived a fortnight ago, and he and Hoskins had helped her convert the sitting room into a study. The medical tomes stood in neat rows in a bookcase.

Her desk was not so neat. Pamphlets, notebooks, and sheets of foolscap lay in haphazard heaps.

Dorian leaned against the door frame and folded his arms and studied his preoccupied wife.

He knew what she was looking for. Not a cure, because there wasn’t any, but clues to his “positive response to treatment.” Though she would never admit it, Dorian knew she had hopes of prolonging his sanity, if not his life.

He had every reason to cooperate. He would be glad of an extra month, even an extra day. Yet her dogged search made his heart ache for her. She was not “practical and selfish,” as she’d claimed. She cared, deeply, about her patients. She had even cared about Mr. Bowes, whose dementia made Dorian’s mother’s fits seem like mere sulks.

But at present it was not simply a matter of caring. Dorian feared Gwendolyn’s dedication was crossing the line, from a quest for intellectual enlightenment to obsession. Last night she’d muttered in her sleep about “idiopathic inconstancy” and “lesions” and “prodromal symptoms.”

He was strongly tempted to send the books back and order her to cease and desist before she developed a brain fever. Yet he couldn’t deprive her of what he knew was the learning opportunity of a lifetime, or show a lack of respect for her maturity, intellect, and competence.

Fortunately, he’d been able to devise something like a solution because his mind was still functioning adequately, despite two more attacks. The last, a week ago, had continued for twenty-four hours, until he’d made her dose him with ipecac, to make him vomit. After that, he’d slept like the dead for another half a day.

Yet he’d recovered with the same sense of well-being and clarity of mind he’d experienced the two previous times. He was sure it was because she’d exorcised the demons of fear, shame, and ignorance, thus reducing emotional pressure on his damaged brain. He knew the reprieve was temporary, and he wasn’t going to waste it. He had no future, but she did, and he’d spent the last week looking into hers.

“Is this a bad time to interrupt?” he asked.

Her head went up and her preoccupied gloom vanished, and the sun came out in the endless smile that could still make his heart turn over in his breast.

“There is never a bad time for you,” she said. “You are the most welcome interruption in the world.”

Dorian came away from the door frame, crossed to her desk, and perched on the edge. His gaze settled upon the pamphlet she’d put down when he approached: “An Account of Acute Idiopathic Mania as Manifested . . .”

“It is one of Mr. Eversham’s studies,” she said. “But your behavior does not fit his model.”

He took it up and scanned the pages.

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