THE FOREST LORD By Susan Krinard

The doctor looked up as she entered, his eyes telling her everything she needed to know. Mr. Reynolds never paused in his silent reading of his Bible, straining to make out the words in the light of the fire. The room stank of the chamber pot, but it was a smell with which Eden had become most familiar.

“Eden.”

Spencer lay propped up among his pillows, his sallow face gaunt as a skull. The once-handsome dandy was withered and wasted, but she could still see mockery through the swelling of his faded gray eyes and feel his barely veiled contempt. It only made her pity him the more.

“Spencer,” she said, knowing that formality was pointless. She sat in the chair beside the bed and took his hand. “You wished to see me.”

“My gay, beautiful Eden,” he said. His voice was reduced to a husky rasp. “How it must appall you to be trapped here with me.”

“No, Spencer.” She struggled for words. Their marriage had never included much conversation and far less sympathy. “I only wish—”

“That I’d gone sooner? All these… dreadful weeks of nursing me—” He tried to sit up and coughed, a deep, racking sound followed by a wheeze as he fought to breathe. Dr. Jones placed a gentle hand on his shoulder and eased him back down.

I wish that we might have made a real peace before this, Eden thought. There was still time. One last chance.

“I wish that I had been a better wife to you,” she said. “I wish that I could have made you happy.”

He laughed. “Oh, you did… for a while, lovely Eden. As long as the money lasted.” His breath rattled, but he summoned up his strength and continued. “Unfortunately, your father did me the great discourtesy of losing his wealth and most of his land. After all I sacrificed to marry such—” He closed his eyes and shuddered. “But that would be most indelicate of me, would it not?”

Eden well knew what he’d been about to say. With the bribe of a steady and generous income, her father had arranged her expeditious marriage, five years ago, to an impoverished but well-placed viscount’s son. Spencer Winstowe, practiced rake and gamester, had known she was not a virgin.

He had not known about the child who had died. Papa had taken great pains to hide that scandal from both Society and the local folk of Hartsmere. But he could not silence the rumors of an elopement, and Spencer had never let Eden forget that he had been “forced” to marry her.

Even when he began to be ill after the first year of their marriage, he would not accept her concern or solicitude. He openly preferred his bits of muslin and gaming hells to her company. His increasing ill health did not slow him but drove him to even greater extremes in a mad quest for every sort of dissipation available to a man with connections, money, and no restraint.

He and Eden went their separate ways, like so many couples of the ton. Aunt Claudia’s instruction in the ways of Society had saved Eden. She had learned how to pretend that nothing was wrong, that sorrow could not touch her.

Even when the money stopped coming, and Spencer cursed her to hell.

But nothing had taught her to look upon death as she had come to view all the other exigencies of life with her husband. This was no joke to be laughed away with a mask of cynical indifference.

“However,” Spencer said, cutting into her thoughts, “we have no more leisure for delicacy.” He turned his head on the pillow to catch the doctor’s eye. “What I have to say to my wife is not for your ears. Get out.”

The doctor and clergyman exchanged wary glances. “Mr. Winstowe,” the physician said. “I strongly feel that—”

“Get out, I tell you—if you want your fees paid!” Spencer began to cough again, and both men reluctantly sidled out the door.

“I suggest you… make certain that the door is closed,” Spencer said hoarsely. “You will not wish what I have to tell you to become fodder for the gossip mill… at least… not yet. It may be too much even for your band of aristocratic wantons.”

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