Theo stared at the closed door. What abominable timing! Why couldn't he have become indisposed… or whatever it was… an hour or two later?

She went downstairs to the breakfast parlor to discuss the earl's puzzling condition with her mother and sisters.

Stoneridge lay in the merciful dimness, fighting the nausea that increased with each knife of pain slicing through the right side of his head. Retching exacerbated the pain to an intolerable level, so that if he had the strength, he would scream, would bang his head against the bedpost – anything to divert the agony. But already the insidious weakness was in his limbs, even though they could find no rest, and the debilitation would get worse until uncontrollable tears would squeeze between his eyelids.

The door opened and Henry padded softly to the bed. "Will you take some laudanum, my lord?"

"I'll never keep it down," Sylvester said. It worked only if he could take it the minute the warning signs appeared, but this morning he'd awakened, as so often happened, when the attack was well established, and there was nothing now that he could do except endure.

"Lady Theo wished to speak with you, sir," Henry said, laying a cloth soaked in lavender water over his temples. "She said it was urgent."

Sylvester lay still; for a second the throbbing eased. He knew it merely heralded renewed violence but was pathetically grateful for the tiny respite. Why would Theo need to speak to him urgently? Second thoughts?

The pain overwhelmed him in a throbbing wave, and he moaned, grabbing for the bowl beside the bed, retching in desperate agony as the pain pierced his skull as if nails were being driven through the bone with a hammer.

Henry held the bowl, it was all he could do. And when it was over, he wiped his lordship's gray face, offering a sip of water. Sylvester lay still, trying to concentrate.

"Henry, I want you to ride to London immediately."

"To London, my lord?" The man's surprise was clear in his voice.

"Deliver an announcement to the Gazette. It must be there tonight so that it can appear tomorrow."

He held the pain down, ignored it, his hand reaching to grip Henry's with convulsive pressure. "Go immediately."

"But I can't leave you, sir."

"Yes, you can… Just tell Foster no one… no one.. . is to come into this room unless I ring. Now fetch paper and pencil, I'll tell you what to say."

"Very well, my lord." Henry fetched the required items. Arguing would only make matters worse.

Sylvester endured through a fresh wave of agony, and then, his voice a mere thread, dictated: "The Earl of Stoneridge is honored to announce his engagement to Lady Theodora Belmont of Stoneridge Manor, daughter of the late Viscount Belmont and Elinor, Lady Belmont." He waved a hand in weak dismissal. "That will have to do. See to it, Henry. And bring a copy of the Gazette back with you in the morning."

"You'll be all right, my lord?" The valet still hesitated.

"No, man, of course I won't. But I'll live. Just do it!"

"Aye, sir." Henry left without further protest, delivering his lordship's orders to Foster. Ten minutes later he was riding toward the London road, the announcement of the earl's engagement to his distant cousin safely tucked into his breast pocket.

Theo spent the rest of the day close to the house, waiting for the earl to reappear. Her mother refused to discuss the issue, and her elder sisters wanted to talk about it ad infinitum, and she found both attitudes a sore trial, since they merely highlighted her own confusion. She paced the corridor outside the earl's closed door, questioned Foster twice as to Henry's exact instructions, and tried to imagine what could have felled a man like Sylvester Gilbraith so suddenly and so completely.

It didn't occur to her to wonder where Henry had gone. The man was not yet part of the household, and his comings and goings were of little concern.

By evening she was feeling desperate. With each hour that passed, the engagement seemed to become more of a fact and less of a floating proposition. Every hour that Sylvester continued to believe they were to be married made disabusing him more and more difficult – not to mention unprincipled and hurtful.

She contemplated writing him a note and slipping it under the door but dismissed that idea as the act of a coward. She owed him a face-to-face explanation.

But what was the explanation? She didn't like him? She didn't want to marry anyone? At least not yet? She couldn't contemplate living her life with a Gilbraith? She was afraid of him?

There was some truth in all of that, but most important, she was afraid of him… of what happened to her when she was with him. She was afraid of losing power, of losing control over herself and her world. And if she lost it, Sylvester Gilbraith would take it. He would immerse her in that turbulent whirlpool of emotions and sensations into which so far she'd only dipped her toes. Part of her clamored for that immersion, and part of her was terrified of its consequences.

She went to bed with nothing resolved, to spend the night tossing and turning in a ferment of indecision – one minute clear and determined, her speech prepared, firm, rational, kind, and sympathetic – and the next minute the words lost themselves in confusion as she thought of what marriage to Sylvester Gilbraith could bring her. Stoneridge Manor and the estate, certainly, but more than that, much more than that. He'd awakened passion, shown her a side of herself she hadn't known, taken her to the brink of a sensual landscape she was impatient to explore.

If Theo had seen the object of her fear and confusion during the long, dreadful hours of the night, she might have felt less fearful.

The man was a husk, immersed in pain, blind to anything but the dehumanizing agony. He was swallowing laudanum now in great gulps, no longer rational enough to know it would do no good until the hideous nausea left him. Perhaps a little would stay down, enough to take the edge off, even for a few minutes. He knew he was crying, that ugly animal moans emerged without volition from his lips, but he was too debilitated to keep silent, thankful only that there was no one to witness his shameful weakness. He gave no thought now to his marriage, to Henry's errand, to Theo, or to what action she might be considering. He begged only for surcease.

And mercifully it came, after the sun rose and the household began its day's business. The last dose of laudanum stayed in his stomach, spread through his veins, and brought unconsciousness.

It was midday when Elinor decided she could no longer respect the earl's orders as relayed to Foster. He hadn't been seen for thirty-six hours. No one had entered his bedchamber since Henry's departure, and all kinds of sinister explanations ran rampant in her imagination. Was he a drunkard? Or addicted to some unnatural practices that kept him secluded for days at a time? If this man was to marry her daughter, there could be no such mysteries.

She knocked softly, and when there was no answer, quietly lifted the latch, slipping into the room, closing the door behind her, feeling she must respect the earl's privacy this far at least.

The reek of suffering hung heavy in the darkened room, and heavy, stertorous breathing came from behind the drawn bed curtains.

On tiptoe she approached the bed, drawing aside the hangings by the carved headboard. It was so dark, it was hard to make out more than the white smudge of the earl's face on the pillow, but as her eyes grew accustomed, she saw the lines of endurance etched deep around his mouth and eyes, the dark stubble along his jaw. She recognized from her father-in-law's illness the drugged quality of his breathing, and her eye fell on the empty bottle of laudanum on the side table beside the bowl he'd been using for the last harrowing hours.