Reese's Bride Read Online Free PDF

the child. It was hard to look at Aldridge’s heir and not feel jealous. The boy should have been his. Elizabeth should have been his.
    But money and power had been more important than the promises she had made or her declarations of love.
    Then again, perhaps she had never felt the least affection for him. Perhaps it had all been pretense.
    “I’m done, Mama,” the boy said. “May I be excused?”
    The child had stopped eating the moment Reese had appeared in the doorway. Elizabeth seemed to sense his distress and managed to smile. She looked paler than she should have and now he noticed her eyes seemed a duller gray than they usually were, without the faint blue undertones that made them so appealing.
    “You may go,” she said to the boy. “I’ll be up in a little while.” Her gaze found Reese’s across the table, a little out of focus, he thought. “Perhaps his lordship will allow us to take a walk round the grounds. The trees are lovely this time of year.”
    Reese merely nodded. He didn’t intend to punish the boy for the sins his mother had committed.
    The child slid down from his chair, grabbed the unicorn, and hurried out of the breakfast room. Reese walked over and poured himself a cup of coffee from the silverurn on the sideboard. He’d been hungry when he walked in. Seeing Elizabeth there, looking like the wife he had once imagined, his appetite had fled.
    As a footman picked up her half-full plate and whisked it away, he pulled out a chair and sat down across from her, leaning his cane against the edge of the table.
    Elizabeth was staring out the window into the garden, which was completely overgrown, the plants sprawling over their low brick enclosures into the pathways, fallen leaves covering the ground. The gardener had quit before Reese’s arrival. There hadn’t been time since his return to hire another one but he vowed he would soon see it done.
    “How are you feeling?” he asked.
    “A little better. I still have a headache but it is milder this morning.”
    “Explain to me again why it is that you are here.”
    She lifted the porcelain teacup with a trembling hand and carefully took a sip, giving herself time to formulate an answer. She set the cup a bit unsteadily back down in its saucer.
    “I know your penchant for honesty so I shall not mince words. I can’t be certain, of course, since I have no sort of proof, but I believe Mason and Frances Holloway are giving me something to purposely make me ill. My son is heir to the Aldridge fortune. Should something happen to me, his guardianship would fall into their hands. My brother-in-law and his wife are ruthless in the extreme. I believe they are after Jared’s money.”
    He had never liked Edmund or his brother, Mason. Edmund was arrogant and overbearing, and Mason was worthless and greedy. It wasn’t too far a stretch to believe the younger Holloway would go after his dead brother’s fortune.
    “Go on,” he said simply.
    She seemed to be fighting to concentrate, though he couldn’t actually be sure. “Several months ago, I began feeling slightly unwell. It wasn’t…wasn’t much at first, just headaches and a slight dizziness once in a while. Over the past few weeks, the symptoms have worsened. My memory has become affected. Sometimes things seem hazy, somehow out of focus. I believe my brother-in-law hopes, eventually, that I shall lose all sense of reality. I think he hopes I will withdraw completely.”
    She lifted the linen napkin in her lap, straightened it nervously, and spread it once more across her full black skirt. “More and more, he tries to take control. He has even begun to…to behave…in a…a manner improper to his dead brother’s wife.”
    Reese tensed. “Are you saying Mason Holloway has made unwanted advances?”
    She swallowed. “Yes…” The sound whispered out as if she hoped no one would hear.
    Anger flashed through him. Fury at Mason Holloway.
    Reese was stunned. It was impossible he could be