As a child, Chloe had pitied her mother and all that went into the planning of balls and soirees. Aside from the lists and invitations that consumed her time leading up to the grand events, there were the floral arrangements and orchestra to be arranged, servants to be directed, and refreshments seen to and properly situated.
That was why the morning following a sleepless night, Chloe’s inability to move, breathe, or think had come at the utmost worst time.
But then, she’d learned early on that her megrims were not discriminating. They didn’t care whether it was a cheerful, summer day in the country or, say, one’s presentation before the queen. They came when they would, dictating her every action. Or rather… her inaction.
Her maid moved about the room in a chipper manner, humming a discordant tune as she dragged the curtains open.
Sunlight flooded Chloe’s chambers.
Groaning, Chloe placed her palms lightly over her eyes. Even that faintest pressure sent nausea churning in her stomach. “Stop,” she entreated when Doris reached for another one of the gold tassels. The plea echoed around her brain like the hammering upon an anvil.
The maid stopped. “But you indicated I should wake you. ’Tis the day of the soiree and—”
God hated Chloe. There was no other accounting for her inability to so much as quell a rambling maid in her employ and spare herself the throbbing, vicious ache. She blindly fished around for one of the pillows until her fingers made purchase with the linen fabric. She dragged it over her face. The cool, feather-soft fabric blotted out all light and muted her garrulous maid.
When the misery came, one took any relief as a monumental triumph.
Chloe drew in slow, steady breaths.
She needed to make her maid stop. Needed her to go. Weighing the torture of speaking against that of the whine of Doris’ speech, Chloe shifted the pillow slightly over her mouth.
“Go,” she ordered.
The maid paused midsentence. “My lady?”
“I said go,” she repeated, too loudly, and her eyes clenched reflexively at the excruciating sound of her own voice. Nay, everything was magnified under the onslaught of her megrims, the press of the door handle, the click of the panel shutting.
As soon as silence fell, Chloe removed the pillow and promptly wished she hadn’t.
Her eyesight tunneled, canceling out her peripheral view as blinding, bright spots dotted her vision. Heart thudding in her ears, like the incessant beat of a drum, Chloe bit down hard on her lip.
The metallic tinge of blood filled her nostrils, flooding her senses. No. No. No. No.
Since she’d wed Leo, she’d allowed herself the illusion of forgetting the hell that would always be with her. She had been happy and focused only on them, together. She’d not given thought to this. A piteous moan escaped her, ratcheting up the pain that wrapped around the base of her skull.
Chloe forced herself upright. She held her hands up uselessly, fighting to steady the spinning room, and stumbled step by laborious step to the curtains.
After an endless journey, she collapsed against the wall. She borrowed support from the wall as, with her left hand, she searched for and found the gold tie.
Such a small task.
She tugged.
One her maid had so easily seen to.
Chloe tried again.
Flitting from curtain to curtain, unleashing the torture of the morning light on Chloe’s hellish world.
At last, Chloe freed the tassel, and the heavy velvet fluttered back into place. Each whoosh and whir of fabric produced a magnified clamor in her ears. Hunching her shoulders, Chloe cradled her head in one hand. She moved from window to window until the room was doused in darkness once more.
Panting, she limped over to the four-poster bed at the center of her chambers and collapsed onto the mattress. That Herculean effort drained all life from her limbs as she lay with her cheek against the rumpled linen sheets.
Time ceased to matter or mean anything. It could have been marching on into eternity or standing still altogether, for when her headaches came, she dwelled only in a hell created by her mind.
A single tear popped out the corner of her eye.
Never before had she missed her family and staff who knew about the secret she carried. They had been there to tug the curtains, casting the rooms in darkness, forbidding noise, and offering absolute silence and still.
It had been inevitable.
The debilitating migraines that had haunted Chloe since she was a girl would always be there. They were the demons left behind by her father, torturing her still, lingering until she, one day, would draw her last breath.
And when her headaches struck, death was the most appealing of options. For then, there would be no suffering or pain… but the bliss of emptiness.
But death came only when it was ready, and Chloe was left to suffer through the misery that was life.
Drawing in a shaky breath, she pulled herself all the way onto the bed until she lay facedown in the center—and then she slept.
A frantic beating sliced across her uneasy slumber.
Where was she? What was that infernal banging?
Her eyes heavy, Chloe forced the lashes open.
She winced as an aura of white light danced before her vision. That light was made even more acute by the pitch black of her rooms.
“My lady,” a muffled voice was saying, “…come to ready you for…”
Ready Chloe for what?
And then she remembered: her marriage, Leo’s volatile explosion, the soiree.
Oh, bloody, bloody hell.
The soiree.
RapRapRap
“My lady?”
The words muffled by the oak panel became all the more distorted by the high-pitched whine in her ears.
No.
Chloe turned her head toward the revolving clock, trying to make sense of time in her darkened quarters, the cherubs holding the crystal glass more like Satan’s spawns as they shoved the cylinder in a dizzying circular movement. The numbers, as they pulled into focus, were obscured by the dancing ball of light behind her eyes.
Tears stole the remainder of her vision.
“My lady?” Doris called again, her voice shifting in and out of focus.
I cannot do this…
And yet, she had to. She couldn’t very well renege on the agreement she’d struck with Leo. Furthermore, there would be a ballroom full of lords and ladies—her family included—and deafening noise and blindingly bright chandeliers, and—
Gritting her teeth, she swung her legs over the bed. Chloe’s stomach turned over at the suddenness of her movements. “Just a moment,” she forced herself to call out.
It was only one night. A handful of hours. Surely she could put on a show for everyone’s benefit.
And then nausea assailed her. Bile climbed her throat, and she swallowed rhythmically, over and over. She could not do this. “T-tell his lordship I will not be coming,” she rasped, praying her threadbare voice carried, praying Leo would leave her alone, praying for death.
Chloe knew the latter two were useless prayers that would never be answered. Leo had expectations and wouldn’t—nay, couldn’t—accept her refusal to attend.
“My lady?” Confusion wreathed her maid’s question.
“I’m not attending,” she managed to call. “Tell him I’m not feeling well enough to,” she sucked in a breath, fighting to continue, “join him.”
Oh, God.
A moment later, with the frantic footfalls of her maid rushing off, Chloe grabbed the empty chamber pot at her bedside and heaved the contents of her stomach into the porcelain bowl.
Where in the blazes was she?
Standing in the foyer, Leo consulted his timepiece for a third time.
The lady was furious with him.
As she should be… for any host of reasons. One, she deserved a respectable, honorable gent who’d offer her a staid but safe life. Two, he’d lied to her at every turn. All for valuable reasons related to his work, but lies nonetheless. The list really could go on and on.
Even with all that, he’d never considered that she might ever renege on—
Footsteps sounded overhead. At last. Tucking his timepiece into his jacket, Leo glanced at the landing. “I’d begun to think you weren’t coming, l—”
Chloe’s maid appeared at the top of the sweeping staircase. “Her ladyship sent me. She indicated that I should tell you… tell you…”
“Yes?” he barked, his already thinly held patience snapping.
“Her ladyship is not coming,” the maid squeaked and scurried off.
Leo puzzled his brow. Her ladyship was not coming? “Halt.” His command boomed around the sweeping foyer, freezing the trembling young maid in her spot.
The girl faced him. Even with the space between them, her audible swallow reached his ears. “I-is there something you wish, my lord?”
Yes. His wife. “What do you mean, she is not coming?” he called up.
Darting her nervous eyes about, the servant studiously avoided looking at Leo. As the one who oversaw all the hiring of Leo’s very small staff, how in the blazes had the man seen to the hiring of this meek miss? There wasn’t a scrap of Brethren boldness or fire in her. “I asked—”
“Her ladyship simply said she’s not coming and ordered me to leave,” she cried, fisting the front of her skirts. “Her ladyship claimed she isn’t feeling well enough to attend.”
He snorted. “My wife doesn’t have a weak constitution.” Which only meant… she was making a statement with her refusal. Leo cursed. He had been a bloody bastard last evening. Out of frustration and fear, he’d lashed out, ordering Chloe about… when not even the king himself would have the wherewithal to do so.
“Do you wish for me t-to deliver a m-message?” the maid ventured.
The girl sounded about ready to dissolve into a blubbering mess if he accepted that offer.
“I’ll gather her myself,” he gritted out. He’d not even finished his thought before the servant bolted.
“Is there a problem, my lord?”
Leo started at the unexpected appearance of his butler at his side. “Bloody hell, announce yourself, man.”
Tomlinson grinned and then promptly hid his amusement. “As you wish,” he demurred.
“And yes, there is a problem.” Leo had had a scarcity of friends over the years and no real confidantes, and Tomlinson had played that de facto role. At least, he’d come as close as Leo could manage to—he grimaced—friendship. Or, that had been the case until his spitfire wife.
The same clever minx who’d invaded his office and gathered that all of Leo’s life had been nothing more than a lie. The same minx who’d locked herself in her rooms. At the worst possible time.
“My wife is refusing to join me.”
“That is a problem,” Tomlinson murmured, his expression deadpan. “An apology after your temper last evening?”
Leo’s ears went hot, and he felt himself blushing. Egads, blushing? “The staff is aware of that?”
Unapologetic, Tomlinson adjusted his already immaculate jacket. “I took the liberty of stationing myself outside your doorway.”
A modicum of relief filled him, along with frustration at his own carelessness. Even as the other man had verified no one else would overhear all that was said, Leo’s absolute lack of control had made him incautious.
“Afterwards, I had the maids tidy your office.”
The broken glass, his false ledger. Christ.
Heat burned up Leo’s neck. What was it about Chloe that made him lose control? What made him forget the Brethren and his responsibilities to that organization and worry only about her well-being? His mind shied away from a truth he could not… nay, would never confront.
“My lord?”
“How long until the guests begin arriving?”
“I couldn’t say,” Tomlinson said regretfully.
“Guess,” he snapped.
“I would expect your and her ladyship’s guests might begin to arrive any moment.”
Leo cursed roundly. His uncle, his superiors, most important, Rowley and Waterson, and all the damned suspects for the Cato Street Conspiracy were to assemble in his household. His wife had picked the absolute worst time to pitch a temper. “And what in the blazes am I to do if they arrive with no host or hostess?” he demanded, yanking a hand through his hair.
“Again, I’m afraid I—”
“Don’t know,” Leo finished for him. “You’re useless, Tomlinson,” he muttered, taking the stairs two at a time. As soon as he reached Chloe’s rooms, he pressed the handle.
The door refused to give.
Bloody hell.
She’d locked him out.
Leo curved his hands around his mouth and called through the panel. “I trust this is a jest, dear wife.”
There was a lengthy pause.
“Go away.”
Gnashing his teeth with frustration, he raised a fist to pound on her door. He stopped himself.
Regardless of the fear and worry that had assailed him yesterday, he’d been a miserable bear. It hadn’t been Chloe’s fault that she’d been embroiled in Leo’s work for the Brethren and his current assignment. Rather, it was his for having married her without consideration of the peril he’d place her in. He lowered his arm back to his side.
“I apologize for…” He glanced about. He’d reassigned his assistant to shadowing his wife’s movements. Though he trusted the man with his life, he’d still rather not bandy the details of his fight yesterday. “I am sorry for our last meeting, Chloe.” He settled for vagueness.
Another pause and then, “It’s fine, Leo,” she said tiredly.
He waited for the click of the lock as she allowed him entry—that did not come.
“Do you wish for me to grovel, madam?” he bit out.
Because, damn it, he would. He had no other choice. He needed her. He needed them to present a united front of respectability and begin laying a trap for the real traitor of the Cato Event.
“I wish for you to go away.”
The confession drifted through the panel, muffled and so faint he might as well have imagined it. And yet—
“You’re accompanying me,” he boomed. “I—”
A tortured moan slashed across his fury.
All his senses heightened, Leo grabbed the handle. “Chloe?” he asked, his alarm creeping up.
“G-go away.”
The tremor there notched up his unease.
Leo shot a hand up. An instant later, Holman trotted over. “My lord?”
“When was the last time you saw my wife?” he demanded gruffly. His always steady, unaffected heart thundered an erratic, unfamiliar beat. When was the last time you saw her? a derisive voice jeered at the back of his mind.
“She’s not left her chambers, my lord. Turned away meals.”
Not left her chambers? Leo grabbed him by the shoulders, shaking him so hard he dislodged the smaller man’s spectacles. “And you didn’t think to report to me that she’s been shut away?” he whispered.
“The maids saw her ladyship fleeing through the halls last evening,” Holman squeaked. “Upset,” he tacked on.
In other words, the entire household knew there had been a row.
Releasing his assistant so abruptly the boy stumbled back, Leo returned his attentions to his wife’s door.
A groan wreathed in agony met his ears.
His pulse skittering out of control, he stepped back and, raising his leg for a high kick, slammed his foot into the unrelenting oak.
“No,” she pleaded. “Please, don’t.”
“Chloe,” he shouted hoarsely, kicking the panel over and over. Oh, God. Sweat beaded on his brow. Was it terror? His exertions? Desperation? In this instant, Leo couldn’t sort through the cacophonic tumult of his mind. He gave another mighty kick.
The panel splintered. Leo continued battering at it until the wood gave way enough for him to squeeze a hand through. Shards of broken wood stabbed at his gloved palm as he pressed the handle, letting himself in.
Fishing a pistol from his boot, he frantically searched the chambers, pitched in black.
Chloe’s sheets stood out, a stark tangle of snowy white in the otherwise dark space, without even the glow of a fire for light.
What in the hell?
“Chloe?” he shouted, raising his gun close to his chest.
Then he heard it.
A faint, animalistic moan.
Charging over, Leo skidded to a stop, and the earth fell out from under his feet.
He recoiled at the scent of sweat and vomit.
His heart skipped several erratic beats and then ceased to throb altogether. “Chloe,” he whispered. The gun fell from his hand, clattering noisily on the floor. The sound pulled another moan from his wife.
Chloe lay in the same nightclothes she’d worn last evening. Her hair hung in a tangle of knotted golden curls about her hunched shoulders.
Prone on the floor, she clung to a porcelain chamber pot with a death grip that had drained the blood from her knuckles.
With a seeming Herculean effort, she lifted her head a fraction. Her bloodshot eyes, brimming with agony, met his.
All the air stuck sharply in his chest, trapping the gasp in his throat. “My God,” he whispered, stumbling back. “Poisoned,” he choked out, his speech dissolving into fragments of incomplete, panicked thoughts. Thundering for Holman, he raced to the door.
His wife’s piteous moans punctuated the thump of his footfalls, and then a violent retching commenced at his back.
Holman stormed the doorway, his gun at the ready.
“A doctor,” Leo boomed.
Those two words sent the man into flight.
“Noo,” Chloe entreated, spitting into the bowl. “No doctor. Please, please,” she begged.
Leo raced over and collapsed to his knees at her side. So this was fear, this mindless, numbing, soul-rending hopelessness that robbed a man of logical thought, action, and words. With hands that shook, he reached for her shoulders, hovering above them, afraid to touch her, afraid she’d splinter and break apart.
“It’s not poison,” she rasped, resting her head upon the porcelain bowl. “Though I wish it was.” She spoke to the bottom of the chamber pot, her weakened voice pinging off the glass.
“Do not say that,” he said harshly. Oh, God. Why had he married her? Why had he subjected her to every peril that went with being connected to him? “I’ve seen this before.” Both men and women, who’d been sapped of their strength and who’d wasted away to emaciated corpses within hours.
His breath came fast in his ears. He yanked both hands through his hair, wanting to tilt back his head and rage at the merciless heavens. Even as all blame belonged squarely at Leo’s feet.
“It’s not poison,” she insisted, her voice weak. So weak. His eyes slid closed. “Please don’t send for a doctor. I get megrims. I don’t want anyone to see. Please,” she begged. As if that effort cost her everything, Chloe vomited. Her narrow shoulders shook. Her entire body trembled like a slender reed about to buckle under the slightest pressure.
“No doctor,” he vowed. At this moment, he’d carve out his heart and hand it to her on his outstretched palm if it would stop her suffering. “Megrims?” he echoed. She’d not been poisoned. The relief of that assailed him, weighting his eyes closed and filling every corner of him. She would not die. And yet, the relief was short-lived.
Chloe heaved again. The groan that stole from her shredded his soul. The need to take away someone else’s pain and make it his own was so foreign, so unfamiliar to him, a man who’d never given a jot about anyone’s comforts but his own.
Leo only knew, in this moment, that he wanted to take away this woman’s suffering. He would have sold his soul, assets, and role with the Brethren if it meant she was spared from the pain that gripped her.
“Shh,” he whispered. Yanking free his previously immaculate cravat, he stuck it between his teeth. Then, gathering the mass of curls hanging limp about her shoulders, he gently drew the damp strands back so they exposed her sweaty nape. He made quick work of tying her heavy curls with the strip of satin fabric.
Loath to leave her, Leo stalked to the door. Tomlinson lingered in the hall. Ashen-faced and worried, as Leo had never seen him, the butler wrung his hands together. “Her ladyship?”
“When the doctor arrives, do not send him in. Keep him for the night in the event I require his services. I need pitchers of cold water,” he spoke quietly. “Strips of cloth. Bring them yourself and leave them at the front of the room.” The commands came easily, a welcome diversion that gave him a small sense of purposefulness. Otherwise, he’d descend into madness. “I don’t want a single soul entering this room until I give the command.”
Tomlinson rushed off to do his bidding. Leo returned to Chloe.
She was so still. So very, achingly, painfully still that, for a torturous moment, he believed she was wrong and her suffering was not the product of a headache, but rather vengeance carried out by someone Leo had brought to justice.
Chloe groaned, and he fell to his knees beside her. “What can I do?” he entreated. This helplessness was worse than paralysis. It gutted him in ways no blade or pistol ball had ever managed.
“Nothing. Just go,” she begged. He’d sooner take off his own limbs with a dulled letter opener than abandon her. “The soiree.”
He forced his lips into a smile. The strain on his facial muscles made a mockery of his efforts. “Not attending my own soiree is what all of Polite Society has come to expect, anyway.”
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, her voice breaking under the effort it cost her to speak.
“Shh,” he murmured. And as she again emptied the contents of her stomach, he held her gently by the shoulders. She continued on that way, spitting bile into the chamber pot.
Where in the hell was Tomlinson? Leo shot frantic glances back at the slightly gaping door. Never, not when faced with the late marquess’ violent outbursts or on any assignment, had he felt this sense of helplessness. He, a man who, for the past twelve years, had been in control of his own fate and the fates of the people of the British Empire, could not help his own wife. This woman who mattered more to him than himself.
And mayhap later, he’d rail at himself for having lost so much of himself to Chloe. But in this, he could think only of her.
Tomlinson finally reappeared.
Jumping up, Leo rushed to meet him. With the butler standing as a barrier between the maids in the hall and Chloe, Leo accepted the offerings one at a time. “Have a hot bath readied in my chambers,” he instructed.
“The guests have begun to arrive, my lord. Her ladyship’s family is asking after the marchioness.”
“Turn them away. Turn everyone away.”
“As you wish.” Tomlinson turned to go.
“Tomlinson?”
His butler wheeled around.
“Inform Lady Waverly that I require an appointment.” Even as that meeting would usher in the end of the only happiness Leo had known… ever. For though there had been a fleeting time he’d shared with Daphne Smith, every moment had been cloaked in secrecy, with everything about him a secret. Chloe had slipped past his defenses and reminded him of who he had been. And who he wanted to be again… His throat convulsed.
“My lord?” Tomlinson prodded.
Leo gave his head a clearing shake. “I’ll send word for her ladyship.” Closing the badly broken door on that, Leo rejoined his wife, shedding his jacket and rolling his shirtsleeves as he went.
“Leo, go. You cannot miss your soiree.” She spoke on the faintest exhalation. “My sisters will help—” She cradled the back of her head and buried her head again in the pot, retching.
“Stop talking.” He issued the command in quiet, even tones. “We won’t talk. No noise.”
With that, not another word was spoken between them. Leo fetched a cloth. Dunking it in the bowl of cold water, he wrung it out and returned to Chloe. He placed the cool compress along her nape.
An appreciative moan spilled from her lips.
Fetching another cloth, Leo knelt in front of Chloe and ever so gently wiped her perspiring brow. He cleaned the corners of her mouth and then laid another compress over her eyes.
Taking care to not jar her, Leo scooped her under the knees and carried her from the fetid chambers and into his own. A steaming bath had already been drawn and sat readied beside the hearth. The fire crackled noisily within the grate.
Cursing himself for not ordering it doused, he placed Chloe on his bed and stalked over to the windows. Making quick work of the lock, he tossed the crystal pane open. The unseasonably cool spring air spilled into the rooms, immediately stealing the warmth provided by the fire.
Leo stalked over to the mahogany four-poster bed that dominated the room. Carefully balancing a knee on the mattress, he reached for the hem of Chloe’s nightgown.
Her eyes flew open, and she immediately covered her face with her palms.
“A hot bath will help.”
“It won’t,” she mumbled into her hands.
“It—”
“I don’t want a bath, Leo,” she begged.
In this moment, she could have asked him to duel Satan and God Himself for mastery of the world, and he would have committed himself to that battle. “Very well.”
Returning to her rooms, he fetched the strips of cloth and the bowl of water. Throughout the night, he placed cool cloth after cool cloth atop her brow, at her wrists, her neck, until the chill left the water and the fire faded in the hearth.
And when the faintest little snore escaped her, Leo pulled his carved walnut chair over to the side of the bed and sat. Settling into the olive-green leather folds, he stretched his legs out before him. Steepling his fingertips under his chin, he watched his wife until the fingers of dawn peeled back the night sky and ushered in a new day, and then he left.