A Portrait of Love (The Academy of Love #3) - Minerva Spencer Page 0,65
returning from London and heading to MacLeish’s estate some hours north of Edinburgh.”
He’d barely heard his brother’s words through the roaring in his ears.
“Simon? Simon!”
Even now, with so much of his past drifting back into place, Simon had no clear recollection of the days and weeks that followed that discussion.
The next memory he recalled was his brother dragging him from a London brothel and hauling him back to Whitcomb.
He had nightmarish flashes of shaking and shivering, a prisoner in his room, desperate for the oblivion that only the milk of the poppy could bring.
To this day Simon had no memory of who’d introduced him to the magical substance.
“You were poisoning yourself, Simon.” His brother had said when Simon woke bound hand and foot to his bed.
A man in an old-fashioned black suit had lurked in the duke’s shadow, like a witch’s familiar.
“Doctor Hanley operates a special asylum where he has experience with such matters. I have arranged for him to treat you here, in the comfort of our own home.” Wyndham had gestured for the spindly, nervous-eyed man to come forward, black leather bag in hand.
“I’ll need to bleed you, my lord. And then we can begin—”
Simon had lunged from his bed, stopped only by the thick leather cuffs that held him to the four posts.
“If you touch me, I’ll kill you,” he’d snarled only inches from the man’s sweaty, wide-eyed face.
The doctor had stumbled back, but the duke had merely nodded at someone behind Simon’s head.
Two enormous hands landed on his shoulders to stop him from thrashing, while another set of big hands gagged him.
Simon fought like a demon, but the duke had employed men the size of oaks.
He’d been carefully subdued, restrained, and forced to endure the good doctor’s nightmarish treatments.
He’d been imprisoned, fed gruel and watered wine, and bled for days.
Finally, one morning he woke up cool and lucid, his hands and feet no longer restrained. His body no longer slick with sweat and stench. It was as if a fever had broken.
He’d felt shame at how he’d behaved. His brother had lost three children and had still gone on living. Simon had lost a woman who had agreed to marry another man—clearly she had never loved him—and he’d behaved like an animal.
He had vowed to start a new life that day. And he had, for all of nine days, until Bella’s sister delivered the letter to him.
It was her youngest sister Mary who’d found him when he’d been riding back from some estate errand for the duke.
“I’m not supposed to be here. Father would kill me.” Mary h ad thrust a wrinkled rectangle of paper at him. “It’s from Bella—I have had it for months, but you were away.”
The paper had smelled of roses—Bella’s scent.
Simon had torn open the letter with shaking hands.
“My Beloved,” both her looping, girlish hand and endearment had made his legs so weak that he’d left his horse grazing and gone to sit under a tree before continuing.
“By the time you receive this I will be gone—beyond your reach in every sense of the word. My father is forcing me to marry an acquaintance of his from Scotland and—”
Simon had cursed so loudly that his startled horse had cantered beyond his view.
Forced? But why? Mr. Frampton had always liked Simon.
Why?
Then he’d read the rest.
“MacLeish is my father’s age. A giant, cruel man who smells of port and unclean skin. He looks at me as if I were a chop of lamb and I shiver at what he will do to me when we are wed and I am in his power.”
Simon had closed his eyes, too disgusted, furious, jealous to even see straight.
He’d forced himself to read on.
“My father says His Grace of Plimpton came to see him the day after his son’s death.”
Simon could still recall the sickness that had unfurled in his belly at his brother’s name.
“You are his heir and he cannot have you marrying a mere baronet’s daughter. He told my father to arrange this marriage and he offered more money than my father could turn away for my bride’s dowry.
I have only ever loved you, my dearest, sweetest, most gentle Simon. I will give my body to another man, but my heart will always belong to you.
Forever,
Your Bella”
“My lord?”
Simon’s head jerked up; his wife was staring at him.
“What is it?” she asked, her forehead furrowed with concern. “You look almost murderous.” She glanced out the window, as if to see what might have angered him.