The Rakehell Regency(46)

He tucked her into the bed tenderly, rearranging the disheveled covers she had tossed about. "You escaped once, my dear. You will again. I give you my word. You can come to Stone Court as my bride, and will never have to step foot in that place again."



She grabbed the lapels of his jacket and shook him violently. "Don't you understand! I can't escape! I carry it around with me! In me!"





CHAPTER SEVENTEEN





Clifford grasped her wrists, and forced the distressed Vanessa to release the worsted wool of his lapels and allow him to lay her back down again. "You're not mad. You're stronger than that, my dear, and so am I. It will be fine. I give you my word."



Emma stood staring and wringing her hands at the alarming scene. She was relieved when Dr. Gold came in to give Vanessa a cordial to soothe her.



The two of them helped administer it to the distraught woman while Clifford held her hand quietly against his chest, stroking it tenderly.



Vanessa drank all of it down, and fell back against the pillows once more, still trembling and by now utterly exhausted.



Emma tucked her in again, and all three of them sat with her until she fell into a deep slumber. Then the doctor signaled for them to come outside with him.



"Given that violent display, I think we should have both a woman and man sit watch with her at the same time. I shall go fetch Josephine and Henry up here, and then you and I are going to have a chat, Clifford."



Clifford nodded curtly, and watched the two of them descend the stairs. He waited until his brother and future sister-in-law came up to the room, and then made his way to the doctor's study. He shut the door behind him, and sat in the empty chair by the blazing fire.



Dr. Gold avoided his earnest blue gaze and rubbed his hands together nervously. It was most unlike him. Clifford steeled himself for bad news, but he still felt a crushing sense of fear.



The doctor cleared his throat and said tentatively, "Clifford, I'm relatively new to the area, compared with yourself. I don't recall the Hawkesworth family apart from Gerald, with whom I have tried to have as little to do with as possible. But given what I've just heard, and witnessed last night, I have to ask you, is it possible that what they are saying is true? That the Hawkesworth family were, are, all mad?"



Clifford heaved a huge sigh, and leaned forward in the chair to put his head in his hands. "I don't like to speak ill of the dead, and I certainly don't want to think badly of Vanessa. But there have been some past, er, well, shall we just say, peculiar circumstances in the family."



"In what way peculiar?"



"Both of Mr. Hawkesworth's wives died in odd circumstances, as he did himself. Gerald as we all know is a most unpredictable chap, and now you have seen Vanessa acting strangely. Her aunt had some eccentric notions about the place of women in society, but I would not say that made her mad."



"Vanessa has evidently been under a great deal of strain recently. It is easily explained. Her aunt's death, her grief, her relocation to a place which is strange to her--"



"Dread."



"I beg your pardon?"



Clifford sighed. "She said her home was a place she dreaded. I thought it an odd word at the time, but given what she just told me she saw in her nightmares, perhaps an apt one."



Clifford repeated what Vanessa had told him of her dreams. Both men lapsed into a thoughtful silence.



"So far as I recall, Gerald's mother killed herself after a long illness. Now she comes out of a locked house that she escaped from with symptoms of arsenic poisoning. Perhaps the whole family isn't mad. Maybe only one of them is?"



Dr. Gold's brows knit. "How did the father, and Vanessa's mother die?"



"Vanessa's mother died in a hunting accident, so far as I can remember being told. Her father had a riding accident several years later," Clifford revealed.



"So many accidents, unnatural deaths, it is a wonder that no one said anything at the time."



"I'm told their solicitors are most discreet, and handled the affairs swiftly and quietly."



The doctor shook his head, and looked more grim than Clifford had ever seen him. "Not swiftly and quietly enough in the case of Gerald's London season. I have heard it said that he did the girl he became enamored of so much damage she was forced to retire to the country and was never heard of again."



Clifford ran his hands through his lush blond hair. "I have heard the same rumors, though apparently Edmund Cavendish was also involved in the scandal in some way, so that Gerald was believed to not have been entirely at fault. Something about jealous rivalry, a duel? I cannot recollect, but we might do well to find out more."