“She was with him for more than five minutes,” Sébastien put in.
“Lord Marchant told me so himself,” Linnet said. “And I agree with him. I’m afraid that I infuriate the poor man, which would not be a good basis for marriage.”
“Since when am I a poor man?” said Piers, from behind her shoulder.
“No man can expect to be considered other than poor when he dresses as you do, mon chèr,” his mother said. “Where did you find that coat, on a dust heap?”
“No, a dust bin,” he said. “So, Maman, did I remember to mention that my dear, despised father is also in residence?”
Lady Bernaise’s eyes narrowed for a fraction of a second. “You must have forgotten it in your excitement at seeing me after all these months.”
“Likely that was it,” he agreed. “That and my poor memory. Dear me, he should be down any moment.”
Lady Bernaise cleared her throat.
“No, he’s not taking opium any longer,” Piers said helpfully.
Sébastien gave Linnet a rueful smile. “We are treating you like a member of the family already, Miss Thrynne.”
Linnet was trying to figure out what precisely was being said. Could the duke have taken opium for some sort of ailment? He seemed quite healthy for a man of his age, in his early fifties, she would think.
“He’s an addict,” Piers said, apparently guessing her thoughts as quickly as he’d guessed his mother’s. “Opium is a painkiller, and therefore addictive, which means he couldn’t stop taking it. No doubt he started taking it for a bruised toe or some such. He used to reel around the house giving Maman and me no end of entertainment.”
Lady Bernaise closed her fan and gave her son a sharp knock on his hand. “You may not be disrespectful of your father in my presence.”
“Then when Maman finally ran away to France—taking me with her, thank God—he divorced her,” Piers added. “Told the whole world that she was unfaithful to him and had run off with a gardener. Which was not the truth, by the way. Our gardener was at least eighty and couldn’t have survived the excitement.”
“You are washing our lingerie in public,” Lady Bernaise said, giving him a fierce scowl.
“Linnet is not The Public,” Piers said. “She’s my fiancée, at least until one of us gets around to sending a cancellation notice to the Morning Post.”
“My father will address that task the moment I return to London,” Linnet said to him. “We’ll leave tomorrow.”
“Must you leave? You are ravissante,” Lady Bernaise said to Linnet. “Extremely so. You would do well in France. Though I think you will look even better when you are able to wear colors other than white. Perhaps you should marry Piers for that reason.”
“As your husband, I would be happy to go with you to the modistes,” Sébastien put in. “Whereas Piers would rather expire than accompany you on such an errand.”
“Yes, but you are a year younger than my Piers,” Lady Bernaise said. “Piers should marry first.”
Linnet opened her mouth to make some sort of response, when Lady Bernaise snapped open her fan again and hid behind it.
Everyone in the room turned toward the door, even the gossiping young doctors and the footman standing by the sideboard.
The duke was rather pale, and looked older than he had a few hours ago. But he walked directly across the room toward them, not bothering to acknowledge anyone else.
He was wearing velvet breeches and a remarkably elegant velvet coat, which enhanced the Roman-coin effect of his profile, Linnet had to admit. He didn’t look like an opium addict to her. But then, what did she know of such things?
“Handsome, isn’t he?” Piers drawled into her ear.
“Yes, he is,” she said.
“I won’t tell dear Maman you said that. Or that he could choose to marry you, if I throw you over. She might still have a grain of affection for the old bastard.”
The duke was bowing over his erstwhile wife’s hand, kissing it. She had lowered her fan, but her face was absolutely expressionless.
“God, could he look a little less longing?” Piers murmured. “He’s a positive disgrace to the male sex. I think you’re going to have to reconcile yourself to marrying me. Or someone else, but definitely not him.”
“Perhaps he feels he made a mistake,” Linnet said back, just as quietly. “Do you suppose your mother might forgive him?”
“For the opium? It’s possible. For the fact that he trumpeted her throughout London, not to mention the legal courts, as a cross between a Cyprian and a trollop? Not likely.”
Lady Bernaise’s back was as straight as a poker, and her glance was anything but flirtatious. “So, Windebank,” she said, “Do tell me how you have been in the years since I left England.” Her voice had the clear, cold quality of hailstones striking marble.
“Ouch,” Piers said.
“Indeed,” Linnet agreed. “We shouldn’t watch.”
“Why not? It’s rather satisfying to see that look of anguish on his face. The old fool threw her away in a opium-induced rage, but I gather he regretted it later.”
Linnet turned her back and looked up at Piers. “How does an opium addict behave?”
His eyes darkened. “One moment the addict is having a wonderful time, dancing around the house in his smalls and generally acting as if he had sunstroke. The next moment he vomits. It’s a very untidy and unattractive condition.”
“When you were young, before your mother took you to France, did you have any idea what was wrong with him?”
“Too young to understand it. But I had already learned to look for intoxication. Children of addicts learn quickly to fear slurred speech, signs of confusion, bloodshot eyes.”
“You noticed his eyes?”
“Maybe not at the time. But now I would. The pupils contract with chronic opium use.”
“It must have been terribly confusing for a child,” she said, putting a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry.”
Piers looked down at her, his eyes impossible to read. “I’m grateful for it.”
“Why? Because your mother took you to France?” His arm was warm under her fingers, and stupidly, she thought about the muscles she’d seen that morning.
“It made me a doctor,” he said flatly. “Without his addiction, I’d be sitting around in a London club playing chess and contemplating blowing my brains out from pure boredom.”
Lady Bernaise was apparently tired of conversing with her former husband. She appeared at Linnet’s side. “Precious ones,” she said, “I am feeling the headache.”
“The matrimonial headache?” Piers said. “I thought one had to be married to be troubled by such a thing.”
“Always, you make the joke,” she said, waving her fan at him. “Life is not the joke, always the joke. Your father could give me a headache even when I am a whole continent away from him, I assure you.”
“I apologize,” the duke said, from behind her. “Please don’t retire to your room. I will leave instead.”
“No, you stay here with our son,” she said, not looking at him. “You have lost too many years with him. Deservedly so, but I suspect that you are now aware of the loss you incurred.”
“Yes.” The duke wasn’t looking at Piers, though. His eyes were fastened on his former wife, on her tiny figure, her perfect curves, the gleam of her hair, the elegance with which she held out her hand, first to Linnet, and then to Piers.
“I think His Grace did well when he chose you for Piers,” she said. “Yes, I think he did do something right.” Her tone made it perfectly clear that the duke had shocked her by that moment of success.
And then she tripped away.
“Pull yourself together,” Piers said to his father. “You look like a dog lusting after a big juicy bone. Hell, you should have found a second wife by now. She married someone else; why didn’t you? Then we would have a new duchess standing around trying to condescend to Maman. Now that would be interesting.”
The
duke swallowed. “There can never be anyone else for me,” he said. “I wounded her so much, because I loved her even more. Though I couldn’t understand it at the time, of course. Now, I live with that decision, with the man I was.”
“You sound like the lead in a bad melodrama,” Piers said flatly.
“Hush,” Linnet said to him.
“Miss Thrynne, I received your note asking to leave tomorrow morning,” the duke said. There was a desperate look about him.
“Perhaps if we stayed a few days . . . you and Lady Bernaise might be able to converse,” Linnet said. “There’s no particular hurry.”
“I knew it,” Piers said, dramatically recoiling. “All along you were just pretending not to want to marry me.”
Linnet glanced at him and broke into laughter. “Yes, today made me realize what a paragon you are. Any woman’s dream.”
“That would be very kind of you,” the duke said. “Though I wouldn’t want her to become even angrier at me.”
“Oh, this is marvelous,” Piers said. “The unwanted fiancée and the even more unwanted blood relation decide to—”
Linnet gave him a sharp elbow in the stomach, and he bit off his words.
“We’ll stay as long as you wish,” Linnet told the duke. “After all, I should probably give more thought to my matrimonial prospects. Perhaps there is more to your son than meets the eye.” She gave him a sardonic look. “I shouldn’t be so hasty to reject him. Perhaps he only looks like a childish fool. Or perhaps he only acts like one, but there’s an adult inside, ready to come out someday.”
“I will be a duke whether I leap past my infantile state or not,” Piers pointed out. “Unless you marry my father here, you’ll likely never get another offer of that magnitude.”
“Oh, were you making an offer?” she said sweetly.
“No, my father made it for me,” he said. “So, what do you think, Your Grace? Are you going to stay and try to inch back into Maman’s good graces? It’s impossible, in case you’re wondering.”
Linnet pinched him. “Of course it’s not impossible. Especially since he can depend on good advice from his own son and heir.”
“I can help if he has hemorrhoids,” Piers said. “But I hear marriage is actually the greater of those two evils.”
The duke looked at him, shaking his head. “You will never marry, will you?”
Linnet took pity on him. “He’ll probably have to make up his own mind to do it,” she said. “He will have to find his own wife.”
“It’s so easy to do around here,” Piers put in. “You can’t imagine how many young ladies trip their way up the path, complaining of odd swellings, blindness, vomiting . . . all sorts of charming conditions.”
“Well, that’s the pool you’ll have to choose from,” Linnet said, shrugging.
“Maybe I should keep you,” Piers said.
“Don’t you get tired of acting like a little boy?” she demanded. “Don’t listen to him,” she said, turning to the duke. “One of these days a woman will show up with child and he’ll marry her because it’s the prudent thing to do.”
“Not prudent unless I know for sure that she’s carrying a boy,” Piers said, “and as far as I know, there’s no way to ascertain that.”
“You could always just substitute one of her other children,” Linnet suggested.
Piers howled with laughter.
The duke smiled stiffly. “Primogeniture may be a matter for laughter—for both of you, it seems—but my family has carried this title for hundreds of years.”
“Until you trampled your name in the mud by becoming an opium fiend,” Piers said, turning away. “It must be time for supper. Prufrock, what the hell are you waiting for? Ring that bell before we start gnawing each other’s legs.”
Linnet tucked her arm into the duke’s. “A difficult day,” she said.
He patted her hand. “I chose well with you. But I see what you mean.” Piers was striding ahead, already out of the room, paying no attention to the social conventions that demanded he wait—if not for her, then certainly for his father to enter the dining room first.
“You may have noticed that I’m not carrying a child,” Linnet ventured. She was feeling more than a tinge of guilt at the falsehoods that had brought her to Wales.
The duke looked profoundly embarrassed and waggled his hand, as if to say that it was unremarkable.
“I do think that your son will marry someday,” Linnet said. Though she was fibbing. She couldn’t quite imagine the woman who would not only tolerate Piers but also stand up to him.
“Perhaps, perhaps. I had hoped . . . but I see now that you’re very similar.”
“Now that, Your Grace, is something of an insult, if you’re excuse my bluntness,” Linnet said, smiling at him.
“It was certainly not meant as such. What will you do next, my dear?”
“I shall return to London,” Linnet said. “I might go abroad. Or I might to go straight to Lady Jersey’s house and show her that I am not carrying any child. And then I will force the prince to acknowledge that there was no possibility of that event’s occurring. And then I shall marry someone.”
“Very good,” the duke said. “You can count on my support. I fancy my opinion will prove a significant influence on Lady Jersey.”
She smiled at him. “Thank you.”
Chapter Twelve
Linnet was dreaming that her mother was sitting on the end of the bed, laughing and throwing cherries. She didn’t have very good aim, and one bounced off Linnet’s shoulder onto the floor; another fell into the sheets. “Mama!” she protested. “They’ll make a mess. They’ll stain the bed linens.”
Her mother just laughed. “It’s all in fun, darling. You have to—”
But whatever her mother would have said was lost when Linnet was roughly shaken awake. She blinked through a curtain of tousled hair to see that it wasn’t her mother at the end of the bed. It was Piers, sitting there as easily as if he were the brother she never had.
And yet . . . she took one look at his lean face, shadowed now with beard, and her whole body told her that it wasn’t a sibling in the room. He was coatless, and his shoulders strained the sleeves of his white linen shirt. Warmth crept up her cheeks.
“Hello,” she said.
This was absurd! He was incapable, and would mock her intolerably if he had even the faintest idea that she liked the look of him so much. That was all it was: a perfectly normal admiration of physical beauty.
“Are you planning to get up one of these hours?” Piers said, his voice as peremptory as ever. “I brought you a cup of hot chocolate. It made me feel just like a lady’s maid, though one of those eunuchs who ran around serving emperors would be more accurate.”
He didn’t look like a eunuch, not that she’d ever seen one. Linnet reached out and took the cup of hot chocolate, curling her hands around it. It was rich and dark to her tongue, almost peppery.
She could see why people liked marriage, at least those who did like marriage. It was fun to have someone else there in the morning to chat with over hot chocolate. What’s more, she liked looking at him, and since he wasn’t paying any attention to her, she did just that, watching the play of his muscles from under her lashes.
The male body was so different from hers, so enticing in its own way. Silently, she sent up an apology to her mother. You were right. Piers stretched out his arm, and his shirt strained over the muscles of his shoulder.
For the first time, the very first time, she understood what made her mother’s eyes so bright when she set off on one of her assignations.
Then, all of a sudden, she realized precisely what she was looking at. Piers had his cane in his hand and he was leaning forward. She glanced along the line of the cane and sat up with a shriek, nearly spilling her chocolate.
“Stop that, this minute!”
He poked again. “It’s so hard to wake you up that I thought a little artillery would help.”
He had he
r jewelry box poised on the very edge of her dressing table. Another good poke and it would fall off.
Linnet put her chocolate on her bedside table. “Give me that!” she exclaimed, grabbing the cane and lying back down. “You may not exert your childish sense of humor on my jewelry box. I inherited it from my mother. It’s inlaid mother-of-pearl, made in Venice.”
Piers leaned toward her, putting a hand on either side of her hips. “That’s the second time you’ve called me childish. Men have been called out for worse.”
“Not by you,” she said, eyeing him. “You’re a cripple.”
There was a split-second pause. “Now that’s just cruel,” he said softly, leaning forward.
“It’s no worse than the way you talk to people,” she said, aware that her tone was distinctly gleeful.
He shifted position, and suddenly his hands were on either side of her waist, so close that she could feel his warmth. She clutched the cane, unable to choke back her smile. Teasing him was intoxicating . . . and dangerous.
Piers confirmed exactly what she was thinking. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you that I’m nicknamed the Beast?”
She wrinkled her nose. “As is every two-year-old boy, by his nanny. What are you going to do, call me names? It won’t have an effect; all of London already refers to me by the worst names a lady can be called.”
“Well, there’s something you and my mother have in common,” he said. “It should make me feel right at home to cuddle up to a trollop.”
A bit awkwardly, she managed to turn the cane around and poke him in the chest. “Would you please move back? This is vastly improper.”
He didn’t move. His eyes glittered with a kind of emotion that went beyond impropriety. Suddenly Linnet realized that she’d made a mistake about him. She had assumed that an incapable man was—well—incapable of feeling desire.
Piers clearly had no problem with desire.
He knew what she was thinking too. His eyes moved slowly down her face, pausing at her lips, slowly down her neck, pausing . . .
And remained frozen.