“When did he put her in an asylum?”
Max felt his face harden. “Not immediately. He was canny—he outfoxed me, for certain. I thought him a rum chap, devoted husband and all that. He appeared to fuss over her, and would declare he was taking her to Bath or to Cheltenham for the waters. Every few months they were off to a different spa. Doctor after doctor was brought in to consult, and Croach told me their reports of her condition were relentlessly grave.”
“Did you never see her yourself?” Bianca asked softly.
“Yes,” he murmured, remembering. “Croach said visitors upset her, so I was not to come often. When I did, she would be raving about the blue hedgehogs living under the furniture, or sunk in a stupor so low, she couldn’t respond to any conversation. I believed Croach.” Max paused again, swallowing bile at how bloody stupid he’d been. “I agreed when he said she must be put into a hospital for her own benefit.”
“What do you suspect him of doing instead?” asked his wife—his beautiful, intelligent, clear-eyed wife. Max smiled sadly. If he’d had her then, she would have seen through Croach’s lies, and smacked some sense into Max himself.
“I think he encouraged her to drink beyond reason. I think he drugged her— No,” he corrected himself. “Iknowhe drugged her. With my own eyes I saw him dose her, and I thanked him for it. I thought it was medicine to treat her, but now I suspect it was to make her worse.”
Bianca’s lips parted.
“Greta was not an heiress, but neither was she poor,” he explained. “Bradford left her a respectable widow’s portion, almost four thousand pounds. And then my grandfather died, and she inherited the income from the farm in Lincolnshire. Grandfather was wily enough to leave the land to me, but a life estate in the income to her. And Croach knew it.”
“So he spent all her money?” asked Bianca in outrage.
“No, I believe now that he hid that away. But he told me he had spent it—all those spa visits, you know—and that he needed more to pay for the doctors and the hospitals.” Max shrugged. “So I took myself to the gaming tables and I got it for him.”
He’d told her that. She knew he’d been a gambler and a rake. He’d simply never said why.
“You said you were brilliant at it...” Of course she remembered that, from Vauxhall.
Max grinned slightly at that memory. “I was. My best year I cleared nine thousand pounds.”
Bianca’s eyes rounded, as he had expected. That was a very handsome sum of money.
“You’re thinking I only gambled so I could give it all to Croach,” he said. “Don’t. I spent as carelessly as any young man, loosed upon town with no one to say me nay. I lived well when the cards fell in my favor, and then I lived rough when they did not. It was all sport to me. But I did dutifully give Croach money, every quarter.” Max’s voice grew bitter again. “He lectured me of cures, of medicines, of doctors! She was trying to harm herself, he said, and attacking the servants. If I didn’t help him care for her, he would have no choice but to have her confined in Bethlem Hospital with the lunatics.”
Her face softened. “What made you think he drugged her?”
“She began speaking German to me, instead of English, when I visited,” he said slowly. “It was... odd. Her parents spoke nothing else but Greta spoke English. I know only enough German to get by. But Croach couldn’t understand any, and she asked me to take her away. I began to suspect him of being, if not the cause of her malady, at least no help, and that’s when he abruptly put her away in a private madhouse.”
He remembered that as if it had happened an hour ago. He’d gone to visit Greta, armed with more information than usual as his suspicions grew. He’d asked a couple of friendly apothecaries, who had told him what to look for. He’d asked his aunt, in German so Croach couldn’t know, if her medicines made her feel worse. She said they made her soul split in half; Max promised he would come back for her the next day. And by the next morning Croach had bundled her off to God knew where.
“Why didn’t you tell me any of this?” Bianca’s betrayed tone pierced his heart.
Max turned onto his back, staring at the ceiling. “I told no one. Nor did I ever intend to. Who would want a man with lunacy in his blood? Your father would have shown me the door and locked it behind me. You didn’t want me at all. What would a mad relation, locked up in an asylum, have done to your feelings?”
She was quiet for a long time. Max felt drained of all emotion. This was why he had planned never to tell anyone. He had hoped to find a hospital—a good one—and make Greta as comfortable as possible. He had planned to visit her as often as he could. But he had accepted that her condition, even her existence, must be kept secret.
“I don’t know,” Bianca said at last. “Heaven knows Aunt Frances is terrible enough, and we let her walk about freely. Madness is different, of course... Are you certain sheismad?”
Max paused. “I fear so. She had flashes of sensibility, but you saw her—”
“She’s been starved and whipped, dressed in rags and locked in a madhouse. I shudder to think what any of us would be like after enduring that.” She went up on her elbows and looked at him. “Perhaps kinder treatment will improve her.”
“She shall have kinder treatment for the rest of her days, even if her mind is irretrievably broken,” Max vowed. “I’ll tear Croach apart if he tries to take her again.”
“As he’s the one who allowed her to be treated this way,” said Bianca, “I’ll gladly help.”
His heart swelled. When he’d realized Leake must have brought Greta to Perusia, Max had braced himself to be reviled and rejected, thrown out and even divorced. Instead of scenes of horror and revulsion, though, he burst into the house to find Greta sitting on the settee, a fine shawl around her shoulders and Bianca’s hand in hers. Even after his secrecy, even when he’d gone off and been too afraid to send her a note, even after he’d decided, with a sinking heart, that he must try to save Greta even if it cost him his wife.
His wife had been more insightful and compassionate than he deserved. Before he could think, before caution could rear its head and silence him, he pulled her to him and kissed her. “I love you,” he breathed. “I love you.”
She slid her arms around his neck. “You frightened me half to death.”
“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
