The Other Side - J. D. Robb [35]
“Is it? You haven’t been the same lately.” He’d been distant, too considerate. Even in bed he’d been more careful than intense. “I find myself hoping that you are only thinking about an affair and not already having one.”
“Bettina.” Harry came to her, gathered her close, pressing a kiss to her cheek—not her lips. “There is only you.”
Bettina laid her head on his chest. Their darling baby, Cameron, was almost six months old, but her passionate lover had not come back to her bed. Harry had been sweet and gentle, but that was not what she wanted from him. At least not every time they made love. Had her lying-in been too great a test of Harry’s fidelity?
With a quick kiss on her mouth, Harry stepped back and handed her a glass of champagne. “An excellent idea to have champagne waiting in your bedchamber.” The Earl of Fellsborough tugged off his coat and did not seem to notice the sound of a seam ripping. He tossed it onto a chair.
As usual, she acted the valet, picking up Harry’s coat and folding it with the care that the fine wool deserved.
He picked up his own glass of champagne and took a long drink. “As for Patricia Melton, did you notice that her dress was the same fabric as yours?”
“Oh no!” Bettina’s cheeks burned at the thought, and she vowed to give her maid the dress the very next day.
Laughing, Harry continued, apparently unaware of his wife’s dismay. “I doubt anyone remarked on it. Her décolletage had every man there watching her breasts. If the material slipped just one more inch, we all would have had an eyeful.”
“You are an idiot, Harry.” His countess grabbed the glass from his hand and put it on the table with enough force to draw his attention if her words did not.
“What? What did I say?” His humor disappeared. “I didn’t do anything!”
His confusion was convincing and even more infuriating. “How can you be so unfeeling? You’ve as much as said that my gown was the inferior of the two and you called that woman by her first name. I did not even know what her given name was.”
Bettina turned her back to him and was distracted by the glint of a coin on her night table.
“Do you want an argument?” he asked in an all too reasonable voice.
“Yes!” she yelled and picked up the coin. “What is this?” She held out her hand to show it to him.
“I would say it’s a coin. Is that what you want to argue about?”
Rage roiled through her, aimed at him, at herself, at her life. “I just wish you could be in my shoes. Then you would not be so patronizing.” Bettina threw the coin at him.
Harry caught it handily, his expression a mix of frustration and annoyance. “And I wish you would trust me.” Then he dropped the coin as if it had burned his hand.
At the same moment Bettina’s vision blurred. She had the feeling that her mind was being pulled from her body. She braced herself with a hand on the bedpost, but the world would not stop spinning.
She plunged into the vortex, feeling it forcefully separate her mind from the rest of her, taking from her control of limbs, mouth, eyes. There was no pain but confusion as terrifying as any sensation she had ever felt.
I’m dying. Her fear disappeared as her heart filled with regret, sorrow, loss. Oh, her poor son. Motherless or worse, with a mother like Patricia Melton. Oh, Harry, I was only afraid you did not love me anymore.
The sensation felt like it lasted forever and less than a minute, both at the same time. Finally the spinning slowed, and the room settled around her. Bettina did not feel dead, but something profound had happened.
She saw her body lying on the bed. Had she fallen there when she died? Was she in some kind of faint? Looking around, she did not see her husband. Where was he? “Harry! Harry!” she called.
She heard her words, not from where she lay on the bed, but from where she stood, as though her voice had come from someplace else.
“My God, Bettina, where are you?” Her body sat up on the bed. Were Harry’s words coming from her mouth?
“Right here in front of you.” She moved forward, awkwardly. Bettina looked down, and to her confusion