Read The Mad Earl's Bride for Free Online

on.
    “That often happens when one converses with Bertie for any length of time,” she said. “Sometimes I have to shake him. Otherwise, he will go on and on and lose track entirely of what he’s saying, and one can grow quite giddy trying to follow.”
    “I’m very fond of Bertie,” he said coldly.
    “So am I,” she said. “But he is miraculously stupid, isn’t he? Cousin Jessica says he was born with his foot in his mouth and has been unable to get it out since. I suppose he must have made the most harrowing vows of eternal devotion to you. He was blubbering into his handkerchief when he came out to tell me you’d bolted. So there was no getting an intelligible explanation out of him. And Abonville said only that he’d made a terrible mistake, and Genevieve must take me back to the inn.”
    “Obviously you heeded Abonville no more than you did me,” Dorian said irritably. “The words ‘go away’ appear to have no meaning for you.”
    “If I always did what I was told, I should never accomplish anything,” she said. “Fortunately, Abonville is aware that I do not blindly obey orders. And so, when I said I must go after you, and my grandmother agreed, he took Bertie back into the library, and they made direct for the brandy.”
    They had reached the bridle path. Dorian wanted to get on his horse and ride so he wouldn’t have to listen to her, but his leg muscles were giving way.
    His hair was thick with mire ooze, and the cold slime dribbled down his neck. Thanks to the slime, he stank to high heaven. He was too tired and shaken to care.
    He staggered to a boulder and sat down and stared at his sodden trousers while he waited for his respiration to slow and his brain to quiet.
    “It would appear there has been a misunderstanding,” she said.
    He couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t keep her distance from him when it must be obvious to her by now that he was deranged. It was certainly obvious to him.
    He pushed a hank of soggy hair from his eyes and looked up at her. Though she didn’t appear as demonlike as she had before, galloping after him, she still looked like a witch. A young witch, with her sharp little nose and chin and narrow, uptilted green eyes—and the hair, the wild mass of red hair. It wasn’t even a normal red but a strange maroon, glinting fire even in the gloom of the approaching storm.
    All the same, strange as she was, Dorian couldn’t believe he’d actually mistaken this young Englishwoman for one of Satan’s handmaidens.
    He should not have let himself become so overwrought, he reproached himself. If he had stayed with the two men and argued patiently and rationally . . . but he hadn’t. Instead, he had run away—from temptation, yes, but they would think he’d fled a mere girl—and now they would have no doubt he was a lunatic. Abonville would probably have him examined and certified non compos mentis.
    “Damn me to hell,” he muttered.
    “I don’t mean to plague you,” she said, “but I cannot work out what happened, exactly. What did they say about me that made you bolt? I have been wracking my brains, but all I could think was that Bertie—”
    “I didn’t know what to do with him!” he snapped. “The silly sod wants to stay with me—to the tragic bloody end—and I’ll never get rid of him without resorting to violence.” Then they ’ ll lock me away, he added silently.
    “I can make him go away,” she said. “I’m one of the few people who can actually communicate with him. Is that all?”
    “All?” he echoed. “No, that isn’t all. I want the lot of you gone. I don’t need Bertie about, sobbing the instant my tragic condition is hinted at. I don’t need Abonville telling me what’s good for me and what I ought to do. I’ve had a lifetime of that. And most of all, I don’t need a wife, damn and blast him!”
    The demons in his breast cried that a wife was what he most needed, and conjured erotic images he hastily thrust away.
    A