“I’m glad to hear it,” Linnet said. “See, Gavan, not everybody is—”
“Can you take me out now?” he interrupted. “I’ve been waiting and waiting for you. Who knows what Rufus is doing? We need to go see him.”
“I don’t think you’re supposed to be out of bed,” Linnet said.
“The doctor said that he can start walking today,” came a stern voice behind her.
Linnet scrambled to her feet. “Nurse Matilda?”
The woman standing by the bed was wearing a leather apron that went to her knees. She had a black knob of hair on top of her head, a white knob for a nose, and a very long chin. In short, she looked rather terrifying.
“My name is Mrs. Havelock,” she replied, witheringly.
“I’m so sorry.” Linnet found herself babbling. “Lord Marchant referred to someone as Nurse Matilda, but of course he has more than one nurse, as there are so many patients.”
“The doctor refers to me as such because of his impertinent and foolish ways,” Mrs. Havelock said. She didn’t bother to add but you may not. “I am not a dry nurse, but the housekeeper for this wing. Now if you’re taking young Gavan out of doors, you may not take him to the stable. I don’t want him returned with a single flea on his body. That boy is a magnet, a flea magnet.”
Gavan piped up. “We won’t go near a flea. Miss will just take me down to the pool again to look at the purty water.” His eyes were shining with all the fervor of a missionary before the Pearly Gates.
Mrs. Havelock grunted. Apparently the halo was invisible to her. “I’d say no, but he’s driving my other patients mad. I want him out.”
“Don’t give my bed away,” Gavan said, his face falling.
Linnet waved at Neythen, whom she’d stationed at the door. “If you could pick up young Master Gavan, Neythen, we’ll get out of Mrs. Havelock’s way. I’m sure she has a busy morning ahead of her.”
Mrs. Havelock gave her a scathing look that made Linnet suddenly realize just how different a beaten leather apron looked in comparison to a pale yellow morning gown adorned with cherry ribbons.
But she gave the housekeeper a deliberate, defiant smile. It wasn’t her fault that she’d been born into a family that thought one could easily spend the morning paying calls, the afternoon sorting ribbons—not to mention buying more ribbons—and the evening galloping around a ballroom.
Any more than Mrs. Havelock had chosen to be born into a family that apparently enabled—or forced—her to hold a position in Piers’s hospital. And it was absurd to feel even the slightest twinge of jealousy about that.
“Do you take care of all the patients in this wing by yourself?”
“Certainly not,” Mrs. Havelock said. “That would be most improper. I am assisted by maids and male orderlies.” Clearly she thought that Linnet was constitutionally worthless; she turned around without a farewell.
Of course they didn’t go to the pool. Neythen deposited Gavan in the stable and then returned to his duties in the castle, promising to come back in an hour. Linnet sat on a rough wooden bench while Gavan played with Rufus.
“He looks different,” Gavan said. “Don’t you think he looks happier now that he has me?”
Linnet looked at the dog. Rufus didn’t have much fur, but what he had stuck straight out. One ear poked up, and the other seemed to have been bitten in half at some point in the distant past. His tail bent sharply to the right, so it wagged only on that side of his body. “He is not beautiful.”
“He is beautiful,” Gavan protested. “You’re just not looking at him the right way.”
“What’s the right way?” Linnet asked.
“You have to look at the doggy bits of him.”
Rufus sat down and panted. “Well, he has a very long tongue,” Linnet observed.
“He has, hasn’t he? It’s a pink tongue too, that’s the best for a dog. I think we should give him a bath. You know Mrs. Havelock doesn’t like fleas. And I think he might have them. See how he’s scratching?”
He was, indeed, scratching.
“That’s because he needs a bath,” Gavan said. “We should give him a bath, miss.”
She could just imagine that. “I don’t think you should get wet at this stage in your recovery. Perhaps we could ask one of the footmen to do it.”
“Good morning, Miss Thrynne.”
It wasn’t Piers. Of course it wasn’t Piers, because he had important work to do. It was odd that his father’s voice was so similar, though, when they looked entirely different. And it was more than odd—just plain stupid—that Linnet’s heart had leaped at the sound of that voice.
She jumped up and curtsied before the duke. “How are you, Your Grace? May I introduce Gavan, and his dog Rufus?”
Gavan looked up. “Yergrace is a funny sort of name.”
“He’s a duke,” Linnet explained. “That’s how he’s addressed.”
Gavan nodded and went back to scratching Rufus’s stomach.
“I’m afraid there’s nowhere to sit except this bench,” Linnet said, sitting back down. She was tired after the swimming lesson. “Did you come to see how your horses are faring?”
The duke sat down on the other end of the bench. “I had to leave the house.”
Linnet thought he probably meant that Lady Bernaise was in the drawing room, but she didn’t know precisely what to say. And then she realized that the duke had buried his face in his hands, so she reached out and touched his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
“The mistakes were all mine.” A tear dropped from between his fingers.
A voice slashed through the air, making Linnet look up with a jolt. “Isn’t this cozy?”
How could she have thought that Piers’s voice was like the duke’s? It was entirely different: darker, stronger, more manly—angrier.
“Gavan is acquiring new fleas,” Piers continued, “and dear Dad is acquiring new friends. We’re all happy, happy, happy. It must be your influence, Beauty.”
“Don’t call me that!” she said fiercely.
“It must be your influence,” he repeated, thumping his cane.
“Don’t be such an ass,” she retorted.
The duke took a deep breath and dropped his hands. His eyes were red and glossy. “You told me never to apologize to you again. But—”
“Do you think my mind has changed?” Piers didn’t look indifferent now. He looked utterly furious.
Linnet cast a quick look at Gavan, but he had crawled into the corner of a stall, trapped Rufus on his lap, and was whispering into one of the dog’s hairy ears. He wasn’t paying attention.
“I know nothing has changed,” the duke said, his voice cracking. “But I can’t help saying I’m sorry. I looked at you and your mother last night and I knew that I once had everything, everything that life could possibly give me that meant anything, and I threw it away. I threw away my marriage. Worse, I injured you—”
“Shut up,” Piers said, his voice as cold as the ocean, colder, even. “I told you that I can’t give you the pardon you are looking for, and even if I could, it wouldn’t magically make your past go away.”
The duke swiped away another tear.
“You didn’t throw us away. You made a legitimate, if misguided, decision that you preferred the euphoria of drugs to the tedium of family life. Who’s to say that you weren’t right, after all? I’ve never been tempted to sleep with the same woman every night myself. Let alone reproduce myself in a leaky, noisy miniature human.”
“Stop it,” Linnet said, rising to her feet.
Piers’s eyes narrowed. “Oh look, now we’re going to have an injection of warm female compassion.”
“Who’s being compassionate? What I see is you making a fool of yourself, and since I grew up with that behavior, it doesn’t inspire compassion. Repetition leads to contempt, not compassion.”
“If your father was a weeper, all I can say is that I know the feeling.”
“You’re the fool,” Linnet said. “Y
our father took too much opium. He lost his family. He hurt your feelings.” She paused.
“Boo hoo,” Piers said.
“That’s just what I was going to say.” She smiled in a way calculated to irritate. “Was it the medical degree that gave you the idea it was all right to keep acting like an angry six-year-old?”
“No, do tell me. How would that work?”
The duke rose as well, swaying a little. “Please, this is all my fault.”
“We agree with you,” Piers said. “No need to keep beating that particular dead horse.”
“Yes, why bother, when your son can have fun doing it for you?” Linnet said.
“Are you always this sarcastic?” Piers actually looked rather startled.
“No. I’m a very nice young lady,” Linnet said. “You bring out the worst in me, however.”
“I’ll leave,” the duke said heavily. “That is, we’ll leave. She wouldn’t even speak to me this morning. I’m—I’ll take you back to London, Miss Thrynne. I don’t know why I didn’t realize it sooner, but my son could never accept a bride whom I suggested.”
“Is that true?” Linnet demanded, putting her hands on her hips.
Piers raised an eyebrow. “What, you’d rather be rejected on your own merits, or should I say demerits?”
“We’re not going anywhere,” she said, turning to the duke. “We’ll stay here until I’m quite sure that I don’t feel the urge to marry a nasty, self-absorbed six-year-old tyrant.”
“Are you talking about me?” Gavan piped up suddenly.
She looked over. “No, you go back to playing with your dog.”
“I’m going to try walking,” Gavan announced. “Rufus will help me.”
“Good idea,” Piers said. “Nurse Matilda won’t keep your bed forever, you know.”
Gavan stood up, wavering a bit, and walked out of the stall. Rufus stayed at his heels. They all watched as he started down the aisle that ran the length of the stables.
“Once up and down, and then he’d better go back to Matilda’s tender ministrations,” Piers said.
“If you’ll excuse me,” the duke said, “I think I’ll return to the house.” He straightened his shoulders and bowed politely, but his eyes were squinty and small.
Linnet waited until he was gone, and then she said, “You must forgive him.”
“Why?” Piers actually sounded half interested.
“It’s not good for either of you.”
“Do you realize that you sound as if you’re hallucinating? We don’t talk like that in Wales. Good for either of you. Wait! I have heard that sort of language before, from a cracked man who belonged to the Family of Love.”
She stared at him, waiting.
“Aren’t you going to ask what the Family is, if only so you can run off and join them?”
“I didn’t realize you needed a response. When Hamlet is giving a monologue, he just goes on and on by himself.”
Piers threw her a disgusted look and turned to go.
She raised her voice. “You must forgive your father because anger is destructive, and it makes you a worse doctor.”
“Actually, it makes me a better doctor. I’m more likely to notice when people are lying to me, and believe me, there’s no one people lie to more than a doctor.”
“Wrong,” she said. “Spouses win.”
He gave a crack of laughter.
“Your father is sorry that he took all that opium. He’s sorry that he drove your mother to France and then divorced her.”
His smile was almost feral. “Addicts are often sorry for what happened. I’ve seen it repeatedly.”
“And families forgive each other,” she said.
“Oh, they do? What would you know about that?”
“My parents often had occasion to forgive each other.”
He limped back toward her, put a hand under her chin. “And you, did you forgive them?”
Surprised, she blinked. He dropped his hand. “I didn’t think so. It’s easier to give advice than to take it.”
“Of course I forgive them,” she said. Though her voice betrayed uncertainty.
“Shouldn’t your father have come along with you?” Piers demanded, going straight for the jugular. “After all, I do have a carefully concocted reputation as a beast. He sent you off to the wilds of Wales without a qualm?”
“Accompanied by your father,” she said. “A duke.”
“We both have irresponsible, not to mention uncaring, relatives.” He sounded rather satisfied. “Enough of this charming chitchat. I came to tell you it’s time for luncheon.”
“Irresponsibility and lack of love don’t go together. My father loves me; he simply finds it difficult, if not impossible, to contemplate leaving the comforts of London. Your father obviously loves you, since he puts up with your foul temper and your general unlovableness.”
“I gather you’re warning me not to get my hopes up based on that small point of harmony between us?”
She hadn’t quite noticed how close he was to her. The clean, male smell of him reached out to her like a caress and set her heart racing.
“I think we have a more interesting connection than parental ineptitude,” Piers said. He switched his cane from his right to his left. She waited, just waited. A hand brushed by her cheek, curled into her hair. Still, she waited, without saying a word.
It felt as if the whole world waited, the sounds of the stable, the noise of Gavan’s unsteady footsteps walking down the corridor, the occasional stamp of a horse’s hoof, the creaking wood . . . it all faded before the intent look in his eyes.
“Your eyes—” she said, but he cut off her words.
His lips were like brandy, like an intoxication that swept down her back and stole her breath away. And his tongue—
She had hated it, loathed it, when the prince thrust his tongue into her mouth. Only the good manners drilled into her by the most rigid governess her father could find in the whole of the British Isles had stopped her from slapping Augustus in the face.
But now . . .
Piers didn’t thrust his tongue where it didn’t belong, the way Augustus had. Instead he traced the seam of her lips, a touch so sweet that she opened her mouth, asking him in. He didn’t take the invitation. His tongue dawdled, savored her, teased her lips.
Her heart was beating faster and she wanted—she wanted . . . Her tongue met his, played for a moment, tasted essence of Piers.
Then, finally, finally, the hand around her head pulled her closer, against the hard lines of his body. He bent his head, just a fraction of an inch, but Linnet, every instinct wildly alert, felt the movement, the change, his intention.
His kiss was no gentle adoration. It was a ravaging, craving kiss, a wildly passionate, tumultuous stand-and-deliver kiss. Her arms went instinctively around his neck. He tasted of the smoky tea he had had for breakfast, and some wilder substance: desire.
It was the sort of kiss that a gentleman never, ever gave a lady.
Linnet loved it.
Chapter Fifteen
Evening
Linnet was wrong about his father’s being a distraction. She was a distraction. Piers stared at the patient who had just arrived at the castle, not even seeing her distended abdomen; instead he saw the way Linnet’s eyes darkened, from blue irritability to—something else.
It was just sexual desire, of course. Same thing that led a million men to turn themselves into total asses. She was outrageously beautiful and he—well, God knows why she wanted him, but she did. Or at least she seemed to.
Suddenly he heard Sébastien’s voice. “You’re very large for five months, Mrs. Otter. Have there been any twins in your family?” He tapped her stomach on one side and then the other.
“You look like someone trying to select a ripe melon,” Piers said, pushing his cousin to the side. “She’s obviously not carrying one baby unless she’s been consorting with a bear.”
Mrs. Otter gasped. “Well, I never!”
“He doesn’t mean it,” Sébastien said. “It’s his idea of light humor.”
“Buttocks here,” Piers said, pointing to one little bump. “Another one to that side, though it might be a head. Hard to tell. Have you ever had twins in your family, Mrs. Otter? Yes, well, then you’ll want to get yourself a couple of cradles.”
“My aunt—and my mother—they both lost their twin babies.” Her voice trembled. “That’s why I came here, because their babies were born dead.”
“Born dead, or died thereafter?” Piers demanded.
“Died after,” she said. “I think. They were too small. I remember my mother saying that her babes had hands just like a walnut, a shelled walnut.”
“Well, yours are both alive at the moment,” Piers said. “Go home and go to bed. For the next four months.”
“What?”
“Go to bed,” he said, spacing out the words. “Get up only to take a wee, and probably not even then.”
“I couldn’t possibly do that! Why, my husband needs me. And my father-in-law lives with us; he’s old and I have—”
“Go on out and tell Mrs. Havelock that you need a bed in the west wing. For a few months at least. We have to try and get your babies’ hands past that dangerous walnut stage.”
“A bed?” she said, almost shrieking. “You want me to stay here?”
“Oh, you’ll love being here,” Piers told her. “All my patients adore it. I have a housekeeper who’s saint-like in her loving care. In fact, she’s due for canonization any moment.”
“I can’t just go to bed for months! My husband couldn’t do without me, and I’m the leader of the sewing circle, and I run the benefit for—” Her voice died at the expression on Piers’s face.
“I can see that you are entirely worthy and likely a comfort to the entire county. But you have a better chance to bringing these children of yours into the world actually breathing if you lie down for four months. Of course, twins are a great deal of trouble, so if you’d prefer to trot along home, we would all understand. I daresay your mother slept better with only you, rather than two of the same.”
She shook her head.
“Are you sure? Your mother obviously had better luck the second time. Go on upstairs, then,” he said when she remained silent, glaring at him. He turned toward the door, dismissing her from his mind. “Is that it for the day? I didn’t go to all the trouble of changing for supper just so I could make rounds again.”