Page 69 of A Portrait of Love

Simon could still recall that moment—the last time he’d been truly happy. Oh, it wasn’t as if he’d been happy that day, of course. He’d mourned his nephew’s passing and his family’s pain. But always with the knowledge that Bella waited for him; at the end of it all, she would be there.

“Arabella Frampton has married.”

For one moment, he foolishly marveled that there could be two women in England with the exact same name.

Surely, he must have misheard?

But no, his brother had demolished that hope. “She married a Scottish earl, some acquaintance of her father’s—MacLeish.”

The glass Simon had been holding, a ruby crystal shot through with clear chevrons—glasses that had allegedly served Henry VIII when he’d stayed at Whitcomb—shattered. Cool liquid had seeped through the black satin funeral clothing he still wore.

Wyndham’s gaze had flickered over the shards of glass and rapidly disappearing brandy but he had not moved.

“When?” Simon demanded.

“Yesterday, in Scotland. I believe they made a brief stop at her parents’ house after 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.