Wicked, My Love by Susanna Ives Page B

remember thinking that I was being hacked apart by an ax.”
    â€œMy Lord,” Isabella cried, and pressed her hand to her mouth, her eyes watering.
    â€œOh, are you going to be illsy?” Mrs. Busby’s eyes crinkled with concern. “I was so illsy with my fifth. Couldn’t even look at cabbage without—”
    â€œMrs. Busby.” The nurse cleared her throat. “Unnecessary details.”
    â€œGood heavens, but I do get carried away when I talk about baby-wabys,” she admitted, and gazed down at her gurgling waby. “Yes, I dosy-wosy.”
    â€œAs—as I was saying,” Randall said, trying to turn the conversation away from the specifics of pregnancy and childbirth so his pretend sister did not faint—and he wasn’t feeling so well himself—“I wanted to talk to Mr. Busby regarding a serious personal matter.”
    â€œOh, of course.” Mrs. Busby held out her bundle of joy for the nurse. “Do take little-wittle Lionel. You know how Mr. Busby doesn’t allow children in his study. Oh and really, must I tell you again to make sure that Reginald keeps his clothes on and stays in the nursery? We have guests. What they must be thinking.”
    The handed-off infant immediately began wailing, a piercing, eardrum-bursting, nerve-shattering sound. Isabella jumped, her shoulder crashing against Randall’s. He clasped her hand to still her. She twined her taut fingers through his, digging her nails into his palm. Her body was rigid, and perspiration was streaming down from her forehead.
    Until two minutes ago, Isabella had bemoaned her childless existence. Now the thought of jumping off high cliffs or repeatedly being run over by trains seemed more pleasant than childbirth. She struggled to stifle her sneezes. She kept the fingers of one hand laced between Randall’s and the other clenched at her side, refusing to scratch.
    But the itching was killing her. It felt as if wasps were building a hive on her skin, and that baby’s wails were like little jolts of electricity shooting through her nerves. Somebody rock the baby! she wanted to scream. Get it some milk! Make it stop crying! Through her watering eyes, she could see Mrs. Busby smiling pleasantly over her shoulder, immune to the bloodcurdling cries of her dear little-wittle baby.
    Mrs. Busby lightly knocked on a closed door at the back of the hall. “Mr. Busby, my dearest,” she called. “We have guests.”
    The three waited for several moments. Isabella released two violent sneezes.
    â€œOh, dear.” Mrs. Busby leaned close and spoke in a low, knowing voice. “If you need it, the necessary is on the right,” she said for no reason that Isabella could discern.
    Don’t scratch yourself. Don’t scratch yourself. Well, maybe a little under your neck when she’s not watching.
    Mrs. Busby rapped on the door again. Isabella heard the lock turn, the clink of a chain lock being released and then another. The door opened and a man in blue-and-gray plaid pants and a deep gray coat peered out. His graying hair was brushed forward over his balding forehead, and thick whiskers grew along the sides of his face. Granted, she and Randall had spent the better part of the day stuffed in train carriages, hiked for miles in the heat of the afternoon, and hay now filled her corset, but surely they didn’t smell badly enough to warrant the man’s pinched nose.
    Randall didn’t wait for an introduction. He stepped past Busby, pulling Isabella into the inner sanctum of the man’s library. Oak shelves neatly lined with leather books and globes towered along the walls. The chamber possessed a drowsy peace, a quiet order that was entirely at odds with the chaos in the remainder of the house. A large, polished oak desk rested in front of a massive arched window that looked out onto a labyrinth of boxwoods trimmed in even ninety-degree angles. Farther on lay a