She was his wife, he reminded himself.
He ought to stop thinking of her as anything else. Another shiver shuddered through his body. Cold. He was so bloody frigid now.
But how did that make sense when his skin remained on fire?
Hot and burning. His body heavy. So heavy. Heavy as his eyes, weighed down by all the nights he had eschewed sleep in favor of combating his dark mood.
“Carlisle?” came his wife’s sweet, husky voice. “Are you well?”
“No.” He was not certain if he said it, but he thought he did. The chamber spun about him once more. And then he could no longer stand.
He dropped to his knees.
The room faded to black.
The Duke ofCarlisle was seriously ill.
Bridget knew it before the doctor had even been sent for. She knew it as she waited in the drawing room with the lovely blonde duchess who had been at his side when he had collapsed. A lovely blonde duchess she very much wanted to ask to leave. Or forcibly shove out the front door.
The revelers had disbanded in the wake of Carlisle’s illness. A man passing out rather seemed to have a dampening effect even upon the truly licentious. And there was no other way to describe the men and women who had gathered at Blayton House that night. Bridget had wandered in and out of chambers, witnessing all manner of shocking acts, before she had finally found the cipher of a man she had married.
Union in name only or no, the Duke of Carlisle was her husband.
Not the interloper duchess’s husband.
Even if she acted far too familiarly toward him, clutching his sleeve as he fell, weeping prettily over his slumped form, referring to him by his Christian name. Entwining her fingers lovingly through his.
In the upheaval following the moment Carlisle had fallen to the floor as if he had been shot, Bridget’s first instinct had been to remain by his side. She ought to have fled as she had originally intended, until she’d caught a glimpse of him in the ballroom as she’d passed. One look, and she had known something was amiss. It was rather troubling now when she revisited it in her mind. She had fallen to her knees at his side, frantically searching for some sign he had been attacked, convinced he had been stabbed or poisoned, for no shots had been fired.
Why had she been concerned for his wellbeing? Why had she not escaped when she’d had her chance?
With Carlisle passed out, Wilton locked in her chamber, and a crowded ballroom of drunken revelers, her disappearance would have gone unnoticed long enough for her to have escaped.
And yet, her only thoughts had been for him.
Now, seated in the sitting room adjoining the ducal apartments awaiting word from the physician, Bridget frowned at the duchess as much as she frowned at herself. It was far easier, however, to inflict her displeasure upon the other woman, who was wan and golden and infallibly beautiful, like a Venus come to life.
Bridget did not like the woman. Not one bit. “You may go, Your Grace. I shall tend to my husband from this moment forward.”
The duchess’s lips pinched. “I was not aware Leo had married.”
There it was again.Leo.
It occurred to Bridget she had never referred to Carlisle in such intimate terms. His given name was Leopold. She had not known he preferred a sobriquet. Had certainly never wrapped her tongue around it.
But apparently, this woman had. An insidious voice inside Bridget wondered just what else of Carlisle’s the duchess had wrapped her tongue around. A sour bolt of something she refused to believe was jealousy hit her. Ruthlessly, she tamped it down.
“And why are you a person who ought to receive the announcement?” she asked, not caring if she was rude. The woman was intruding, and Bridget did not like the notion Carlisle had once been on intimate terms with her.
“We are old acquaintances,” the duchess said quietly. “I care for Leo very much.”
Bridget forgot she was not Carlisle’s wife in truth in that moment. Forgot she had no claim upon him, forgot their union had not been—and never would be—consummated. All she could think about, all she could summon, was the righteous outrage that had sparked to life inside her from the moment she had seen another woman interacting so intimately with the duke.
“I care for him as well,” she snapped, only to realize what nonsense she had just said in an effort to match the duchess, verbal thrust for verbal thrust.
Her union to Carlisle was in name only.
It was a marriage of convenience.
