“I don’t mind.” He turned away from the child. It was hard to look at Aldridge’s heir and not feel jealous. The boy should have been his. Elizabeth should have been his.
But money and power had been more important than the promises she had made or her declarations of love.
Then again, perhaps she had never felt the least affection for him. Perhaps it had all been pretense.
“I’m done, Mama,” the boy said. “May I be excused?”
The child had stopped eating the moment Reese had appeared in the doorway. Elizabeth seemed to sense his distress and managed to smile. She looked paler than she should have and now he noticed her eyes seemed a duller gray than they usually were, without the faint blue undertones that made them so appealing.
“You may go,” she said to the boy. “I’ll be up in a little while.” Her gaze found Reese’s across the table, a little out of focus, he thought. “Perhaps his lordship will allow us to take a walk round the grounds. The trees are lovely this time of year.”
Reese merely nodded. He didn’t intend to punish the boy for the sins his mother had committed.
The child slid down from his chair, grabbed the unicorn, and hurried out of the breakfast room. Reese walked over and poured himself a cup of coffee from the silver urn on the sideboard. He’d been hungry when he walked in. Seeing Elizabeth there, looking like the wife he had once imagined, his appetite had fled.
As a footman picked up her half-full plate and whisked it away, he pulled out a chair and sat down across from her, leaning his cane against the edge of the table.
Elizabeth was staring out the window into the garden, which was completely overgrown, the plants sprawling over their low brick enclosures into the pathways, fallen leaves covering the ground. The gardener had quit before Reese’s arrival. There hadn’t been time since his return to hire another one but he vowed he would soon see it done.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“A little better. I still have a headache but it is milder this morning.”
“Explain to me again why it is that you are here.”
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