The Scandalous Duke Takes a Bride Read Online Free PDF Page A

Mrs. Harper can assist me now.”
    The housekeeper nodded to the young girl as she took her leave, shutting the door softly behind her. “Did the midwife tell you what to expect?”
    Jessica nodded. When she’d found out that her husband had been poisoning her so that she would lose the baby, she’d sought the advice of a midwife—the old woman had only confirmed Jessica’s worst fears. The life within her was dead. “Only that losing the babe would be no easy task.”
    And the midwife had known with certainty that the baby in Jessica’s womb no longer grew. She’d offered a strong concoction to speed up the process, but Jessica had refused on the off chance that maybe this once the heavens were looking down at her and smiling. Maybe the babe would be spared the violence Jessica had suffered from her husband now that he was well and truly gone.
    The heavens had no reason to be kind to her. And she was sure her husband went laughing all the way to his grave and was gloating from his accomplishment from whatever depths of hell he’d landed himself in.
    Mrs. Harper helped her undress, piling her soiled clothes into a neat stack before taking her hand to assist her into the hot water. On grasping her arm, her housekeeper looked at her, worry evident in the dark brown depths of her eyes. “I’m of a mind to call the doctor to the house.”
    Jessica shook her head. There was no way a doctor could come to the house; she’d not risk this secret being found out. “We’re in for a long night, and for now the hot bath will have to do.”
    Mrs. Harper pressed the back of her hand to Jessica’s cheek, clucking her tongue in a motherly fashion. “We’ll keep adding hot water until your chill breaks.”
    She nodded, unable to speak through the chattering of her teeth as she sank into the hot water that slowly turned pink as it washed the blood away from her body.
    “This is like the influenza that swept through the household six years ago,” Jessica said absently.
    “Hopefully not so severe as that.” Her housekeeper was right in that regard. After half the house had fallen sick, a stable hand and a maid had succumbed to their illnesses, shrouding the house in black for one week—Fallon had refused to let mourning go on longer.
    Jessica’s limbs started to loosen and the aches and cramps eased somewhat in the soothing water. Enough that she closed her eyes and leaned her head back on the curved lip of the tub.
    Mrs. Harper placed a warm cloth over Jessica’s forehead. “While the maids prepare your bed for what’s to come tonight, I’ll have a broth readied for you if you think you can stomach it.”
    Tears pricked at her eyes. “You’re too good to me, Mrs. Harper.”
    “Now, lass, you’ve been kind to the staff where your lord husband was not. And I’ll not speak ill of the dead, but I only ever stayed on so I could keep an eye on you. Lord Fallon grew more foul every year past his fiftieth birthday.”
    Jessica removed the cloth and looked at her housekeeper. “I think his mood had a great deal to do with me. I’m afraid I was not a good wife or, at least, not the kind of wife he’d always envisioned.”
    “No one in this house would blame you for the actions you were forced to take, my lady. There is a certain amount of self-preservation one must seek in order to bear the brutalities this world sometimes offers us. There is also no denying that Fallon was a wretched man—right up till his end.”
    A small smile played on Jessica’s lips as she reached out to grasp Mrs. Harper’s hand to give it a light squeeze. “Broth sounds ideal, though it’ll be a miracle if I can stomach even that.”
    She’d been so hampered by morning sickness at the beginning of her pregnancy. And then there had been the addition of the poison dropped into her morning tea, making her more ill as it worked its way through her body.
    Miller, her husband’s loyal valet, had been the one watching the food she ate, making