Reese's Bride. Kat Martin

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