Page 57 of Captured By the Cold Duke
We have to prove Rochford did this!
But even revenge was far from his mind as he gazed down at his wife, who was still lying in his arms, too still for comfort. He raised a finger and held it to her neck, feeling for a pulse.
“Is she… is she dead?” Aidan’s voice sounded through the sudden quiet of the study, and it sounded nothing like Thomas had ever heard before. The fear in that voice chilled him to the core.
“I don’t think so,” Thomas said. “I can feel a pulse. It’s slow, but I can feel it.”
“She isn’t breathing,” Aidan said. “Her chest isn’t moving.”
“She’s breathing,” Thomas said. “But it’s very faint.” An idea suddenly struck him, and he pushed Cherie onto her side, still in his arms, and began to undo the buttons on the back of her dress.
“What are you doing?” Aidan asked sharply.
“Getting her out of her corset,” Thomas growled. He didn’t care if it was scandalous to undress his wife here in his study, with other men present. If it saved her life, then nothing mattered.
He shrugged off her dress and then began to pull up her petticoat as quickly as possible. The delicate fabric tore under his shaking hands, but that was the least of his concerns. Finally, it was off, and then Thomas was faced with a truly daunting task: trying to get off her corset.
“How do these things work?” he growled, as he pawed at the laces.
“Don’t ask me,” Aidan said, his voice heavy with panic. “Her Grace usually has it already removed when?—”
“All right, I don’t want to know more.” Thomas tried to pull at the laces, but they were only getting tired. Letting out a furious, frustrated cry, he reached for the desk and felt around until he found his letter opener. Then he brought it to the laces of the corset and slashed as forcefully as he could.
The knife ripped through the laces, and the corset loosened at once. At the same time, Cherie gave a small, rattling gasp, and Thomas and Aidan exchanged hopeful glances. Thomas pulled the corset off of her and then cradled her in his arms, watching with fevered hope as some of the color seemed to come back into her cheeks.
“That helped, but if it was poison, then she doesn’t have long,” Thomas whispered, and behind him, he heard Aidan begin to pray.
Soon, Aidan’s whispered prayers became the only sound in the room other than Thomas’s uneven breaths. Time seemed totick so slowly as they waited for the physician. And with every passing second, Thomas was sure that his wife was slipping away. He could feel her pulse growing fainter, her breathing slow, the color draining away from her cheeks…
And then, at last, the sound of footsteps on the drive outside filled their ears, then they heard the front door of the house burst open.
“They’re in here!” Mr. Norton shouted, and then the door to the study flew open and Mr. Norton entered, followed by a physician. If either of them were startled by the state of undress they found Cherie in, they had the good graces not to say anything. At once, the doctor bent over his charge and began to feel her pulse and check her breath.
Mr. Norton, meanwhile, was tipping a clear substance from a small vial into the bottle of cognac.
“This will turn the cognac blue if there is cyanide in it.”
Thomas didn’t know where to look or what to feel. On the one hand, he wanted the liquor to turn blue so that he could know for sure what had happened to Cherie. On the other hand, if it was cyanide, that could mean she wouldn’t survive.
And all the while, the doctor was poking and prodding Cherie. It all seemed to be taking far too much time. Didn’t they know she had already been poisoned for minutes?
And then the cognac in the bottle shifted color. The moment Thomas saw it, he felt as if his heart had been torn out of his chest.
“It’s blue!” Aidan shouted.
“Cyanide,” Norton confirmed, his jaw set. “That bastard…”
“What bastard? Who gave you…” and then Aidan’s expression became stoney.“Rochford.He gave them this bottle at the wedding breakfast. We were all there; we all saw it.”
“And he will pay for what he has done!” Norton cried, but Thomas wasn’t looking at them anymore, or even at the bottle of blue cognac. He was staring at the doctor, whose brow had begun to sweat, and whose expression looked like that of someone about to deliver bad news.
“What is it, doctor?” Thomas whispered. “Can you save her?”
The physician looked up at him. “I can try. But at this point, Your Grace, it is up to God whether or not she survives.”
Twenty-One
“Cherie, you’re doing so well.”
