Chapter 2 Bloody Idiot
Chapter two
Bloody Idiot
Darkness suited him.
Aubrey lay in what had been meant to be their matrimonial bed, unused save for this moment of supreme humiliation and stared at the ceiling he could barely discern in the gloom.
He had refused to allow the curtains opened.
Refused the servants' attempts to light more than a single candle.
The shadows were a mercy, hiding the flush of shame that seemed permanently etched into his mind.
The pain in his hip and pelvis throbbed with each breath, a constant reminder of his own spectacular foolishness.
Idiot. Bloody idiot.
He had been riding in Hyde Park—riding too fast, taking Phantom over jumps he had no business attempting in his distracted state—when he had seen her.
Rose.
Rose Beaumont, with her dark hair and quick smile, hurrying along Rotten Row in a grey cloak. His heart had lurched. Without thinking, he had spurred Phantom toward the woman, standing in his stirrups, calling out.
And Phantom, startled by his rider's sudden movement, had balked at the next jump.
Aubrey had gone over the horse's head and landed with a sickening crunch on the frozen ground.
It had not been Rose, of course. Some other woman in a grey cloak, who had turned at his shouts with a startled, entirely unfamiliar face.
It could not have been Rose. Rose was gone, driven away to Lancashire with her family because Eleanor—his wife, his seemingly gentle and quiet wife—had made certain of it.
The morphine from the doctor's last visit had worn off hours ago.
The pain was excruciating now, radiating from his hip down through his legs, making even the smallest movement agony.
He needed laudanum. Desperately. But he would sooner bite through his own tongue than ring for a servant and reveal such weakness before her household.
Before her. Eleanor. Lady Madeley. His wife.
She had not changed much from their wedding day, save that the nervous, wide-eyed girl had been replaced by a woman with a spine of steel and eyes that held no warmth whatsoever.
She had been pale then, pale still—that chestnut brown hair escaping its pins, her small frame nearly drowning in a grey dress.
But there had been a self-possession about her now that had not existed on their wedding day. A quiet confidence that had allowed her to stand before his parents without flinching.
It made her more dangerous, somehow.
The door opened without ceremony.
Aubrey's head turned sharply then felt his entire body sag with relief.
Eleanor entered carrying a tray. Upon it sat a brown bottle—laudanum, blessed laudanum—and a tea service.
She moved with brisk efficiency, setting the tray on the bedside table without looking at him. Without speaking. Her face was expressionless in the candlelight as she measured out the laudanum with steady hands, mixed it with water, and held the glass toward him.
He tried to push himself up. Failed. A sound escaped him—half gasp, half groan—before he could prevent it.
Eleanor's expression did not change. She simply leaned forward, slipped one small hand behind his shoulders, and lifted him with surprising strength while bringing the glass to his lips with the other.
He drank. The bitter liquid slid down his throat, and he collapsed back against the pillows, breathing hard from even that small exertion.
She said nothing. Did not gloat. She simply reached for the pillows piled at the foot of the bed and, with the same matter-of-fact efficiency, tucked another beneath his knees.
The relief was instantaneous. The pressure on his lower back eased, and Aubrey felt something in his chest unclench slightly.
How had she known?
But Eleanor was already moving to the head of the bed, adding pillows behind him with quick, competent movements until he was propped at an angle that somehow made breathing easier and the pain more bearable.
She produced a biscuit from the tray—plain, dry, the sort given to invalids—and placed it in his hand without comment.
Then she turned to the tea service.
Aubrey watched, unable to help himself, as her hands moved over the china. One sugar. No milk. A precise forty-five seconds of steeping before she removed the leaves. She poured the tea into a cup, wrapped the saucer beneath it, and held it toward him with the handle positioned for easy grasping.
Exactly as he took it. Exactly as he preferred.
He stared at the cup, then at her face. Her expression revealed nothing.
"I..." His voice came out as a rasp. He swallowed, tried again. "How did you…"
"I remember from our wedding breakfast," Eleanor said quietly. Her grey eyes met his for just a moment—cool, steady, unreadable. "Just before you ran away."
She turned and walked from the room, closing the door behind her with barely a sound.
Aubrey sat propped against the pillows, the teacup warm in his hands, staring at the door.
She had remembered. After he had left their wedding breakfast within twenty minutes of sitting down. After he had ignored her letters, declined all invitations requiring her presence, treated her as though she did not exist.
She had remembered how he took his tea.
Something twisted in his gut—a sensation that might have been guilt, might have been gratitude, might have been more due to the drug than anything else.
Eleanor was dangerous precisely because she did not look dangerous. Because she played the role of a lady so perfectly that even now, even knowing what she had done, some foolish part of him wanted to believe the gentle care she had just administered was genuine.
It was not. It could not be.
She hated him. He had seen it in her eyes downstairs when his parents had left. And she had every reason to hate him, just as he had every reason to despise her.
The laudanum was beginning to work, dulling the sharp edges of pain into something more bearable.
Aubrey closed his eyes and tried not to think about the woman who had prepared it.
The woman who was his wife.
The woman in whose power he now lay, completely and utterly helpless.