Piers’s breath sounded harsh in her ears. Without another word, he reached back and pushed her left knee up.
“Oh,” she breathed, understanding his silent command and winding her legs around his hips. It brought the two of them closer, shifted him somehow so he was even deeper inside her. She liked it. Even more after she wiggled a little, adjusting so that they were a perfect fit.
“This is very nice,” she said, kissing his chin. “I like it.”
“I’m going to have to move now,” he said, between clenched teeth. “The pause for virgin accommodation is over.”
“All right,” she said, disappointed, letting her legs uncurl. It felt so good. She was throbbing all over.
He pulled back. The sense of loss was dizzying. Her flesh instinctively clung to him, mourning. And then he thrust forward again.
A sob flew from her lips, and her legs flew back around his hips. Her body arched to meet his. “What—” she managed.
He didn’t answer. Instead he pulled back to thrust, and thrust again.
Linnet clung to him as if she were a limpet and he a rock, letting the wild pleasure of his ride echo through every bone in her body.
She could hear herself whimper, hear the harsh sound of Piers’s breath in her ear. Slowly, slowly, a sort of incandescent heat was building in her body, making her toes curl and her fingernails dig into his shoulders.
“Linnet,” Piers growled, pausing. His voice sounded so unlike himself, his controlled, observant self, that she pulled him even closer, dropping kisses on his shoulder, his neck, his chin.
“We need to—”
“What?” she asked, startled out of her daze. “Am I doing it right? Should I be doing something else? Shall I—”
“Shut up,” he said in her ear.
That wasn’t very nice. Linnet would have felt annoyed, but at that moment he slid a hand between them, right to the part where they were joined, and touched her there. One slow rub of his thumb, and her body reacted like a bonfire doused in brandy.
A strangled cry burst from her lips. The feeling of him, thick and hot and possessive, felt like a fever in her blood.
A satisfied rumble burst from his lips and he thrust again. She saw stars, literal stars. Whatever he was doing with his hand, combined with the delicious friction, made the fever burst through her body.
“Piers!” she cried. “Piers!”
He let go of any semblance of control, pounding into her with such force that the sound of the bed thumping the wall rivaled the beating hail.
Heat exploded in her body, and she fell into a pleasure so vivid and fierce that she could never have imagined such a thing. She couldn’t see, nor hear, only feel as her body went liquid, relaxing into a delirious kind of spasming heat that burned through her blood.
Vaguely she heard a strangled groan, an animal hoarseness, and opened her eyes blurrily to see Piers’s head arch backward as he pulsed into her one last time.
The look on his face, the total abandonment, total pleasure, set off another cascade of red-hot sparks through her body, making her clench at the very moment he shouted, literally shouted.
And collapsed on top of her.
Chapter Nineteen
Later in the afternoon
Lady Bernaise retired with a headache; the duke is playing chess with the marquis,” Prufrock said, walking up the stairs backward before Piers. “I put a new patient in a room by himself; the Ducklings are with him.”
Piers raised an eyebrow. “Ducklings? She’s contaminated you.”
Prufrock had a trick of appearing perfectly innocent when he wished to.
“Where’s Nurse Matilda?” Piers demanded.
“In the morning room, with Miss Thrynne,” Prufrock said. “As you requested, the young lady is reviewing Mrs. Havelock’s responsibilities regarding the patients. When I saw them last, it didn’t seem to be going smoothly.”
Piers hesitated for a moment and then mentally shrugged. What did it really matter? As soon as Linnet left, he could let his housekeeper go back to her obstinate ways. Patients had their families with them, or they didn’t. They still died, unless he and Sébastien could figure out some way to keep them going for a while.
He entered the small room they used to isolate new patients until he determined their illness. If he determined their illness.
The Ducklings—damn it, he was taking on Linnet’s name for them—were clustered around the bed, arguing.
He whacked his cane against the bedpost and they fell silent. “Bitts, who is the patient?”
Bitts pulled himself upright. “Mr. Juggs is a sixty-eight-year-old publican from London.”
“Sixty-eight?” Piers demanded, pushing Kibbles out of the way so he could consider the man himself. “You’ve had a good run at the pub; leave a few beers for the rest of us. Why don’t you close down your taps and go peacefully?”
The patient was tubby and bald, but for an extraordinary pair of eyebrows, so untamed that they looked ready to jump from his face. “Bunkum!” he said with a splendid cockney accent. “My father lived to ninety-two, and I’ve got no plans to be put to bed with a shovel any earlier than me da. If you’re as good as they say, that is.”
“Well, I’m not,” Piers said. “Symptoms, Bitts?”
“He can’t hear.”
“Nonsense,” Piers said. “He just treated me to bunkum. I’m hoping for burn my breeches next. Did you spend time in the navy, Juggs?”
“Twelve years as a corporal in the Fourteenth Light Dragoons. I can’t hear all the time. I hear fine, and then it goes away, like it fades.”
“Old age,” Piers said. “Tip him out of that bed and give it to someone else.”
“And sometimes it happens with my sight too. It just fades out,” Juggs added. “Comes back, though.”
“Not old age. So, Bitts, what do you have to say for yourself?”
“His lungs sound clear. I used the acoustic method we’ve been practicing. His limbs are strong, and his reflexes are normal.”
“Anything to add, you two?” Piers asked Penders and Kibbles.
“He’s lost his vision three times,” Kibbles said. “While watching the entry of the King of Norway into London, during his wife’s sixtieth birthday party, and at a military review. Those occasions seem indicative.”
“Tsk, tsk,” Piers said. “You married a younger woman. Cradle robber.”
“Only by eight years,” Juggs said defensively.
“What’s your diagnosis?” Piers asked Kibbles.
“Based on the three occasions in question, over-excitement leading to a rapid heartbeat.”
“Since when does a rapid heartbeat cause loss of vision?” Penders put in. “I think he experienced heart stoppage.”
“A heart attack doesn’t cause loss of vision,” Bitts objected.
“It does if he suffered a temporary loss of blood to the head,” Penders retorted. “Were you dizzy during those episodes, Mr. Juggs?”
He shook his head. “Awful hot, though.”
The door opened behind Piers. He knew it was Linnet before she entered because he smelled her, a light flowery scent with a hint of lemon. He started wondering whether the olfactory nerves are heightened by sexual arousal.
Nurse Matilda’s charming tones snapped him back to the present. “Doctor, I am deeply offended by what has occurred today, apparently with your permission, if not encouragement. Deeply offended. And while I’m sorry to interrupt you, this cannot wait.”
“The patient experienced a possible fever during the episodes in which he lost his vision. What does that tell us?” Piers asked the Ducklings. Then he turned, reluctantly.
The truth was that Linnet was terrifyingly beautiful. Perfect lips, perfect cheeks, perfect . . .
A perfect secret smile in her perfect eyes.
It was irritating.
He bit back an answering smile. “What the hell are you up to?” he asked her.
The smile faded. “I am questioning
the housekeeper of the west wing—that would be this wing—about her procedures for patient care, including diet and family visits.”
“Right,” he said. He nodded at Nurse Matilda. “That’s what she’s doing. Your role is to answer, insofar as you’re the housekeeper in question.”
Nurse Matilda’s chest swelled in an impressive way, rather like that of a toad on a sturdy lily pad, preparing to sing. “I am grossly insulted by the tone of these impertinent inquiries. If you have concerns about my housekeeping and care of the patients, you should consult me directly.”
Piers turned back to the Ducklings. “Temporary vision loss, ditto hearing, possible fever. What other questions have you asked?”
The Ducklings were silent.
“I gather, none,” he said. “You, in the bed. You weren’t dizzy. Did anyone mention whether you turned red in the face?”
Juggs shook his head.
“Did you feel weak in the knees? Hot and then cold?”
“Just hot. Well, and I spewed some of those times.”
“You didn’t think to mention that? Anything else you’re not telling us?”
“My wife says that I was on the toodle. But I wasn’t.” Juggs frowned so that his eyebrows joined in the middle, an interesting look, though unlikely to be taken up by dandies, in Piers’s opinion. “I’ve owned the Mermaid’s Ankle for twenty years and I know when a man is three sheets to the wind. I wasn’t.”
“Drunkards are usually the last to realize,” Piers told him. “In fact, most of them only admit inebriation the morning after. You of all people should know that.” He turned back to Nurse Matilda. “Just what has you so excited, in fewer than five words? I take it Miss Thrynne’s questions don’t please you.”
Her chest swelled again. “This young lady has no idea of nursing care whatsoever. She implied that I was cruel—”
“Inhumane was the word I used,” Linnet put in. She had that smile going again, and all the Ducklings were melting on the spot. Even Juggs was hanging over the side of the bed, the better to see her.
“Because I tell the patients once they’re here, there’ll be no visitors,” Nurse Matilda said firmly. “You know as well as I do, Lord Marchant, that there’s many of our patients that never leave. I can’t be dealing with weeping and such like. The family can make their good-byes just as easy when they leave the patient here. There’s no reason to prolong the pain of it.”
“So it’s really in their best interests.” Linnet frowned, but Piers ignored her. “Did you give this speech to Mrs. Juggs?”
Nurse Matilda nodded. “I did indeed.” She flashed Linnet a look of profound dislike. “Unfortunately, this young lady countermanded my orders and sent the woman down to the kitchens, where she is just causing extra work and bother, no doubt.”
“Which means we can request that she come upstairs and explain exactly how Mr. Juggs looked on the pertinent occasions,” Linnet put in. “Mrs. Havelock, why don’t you fetch her?”
Interestingly, though Linnet weighed at least three stone less than the housekeeper, there just must be something about her, because Nurse Matilda stamped from the room.
“By Jaysus, I wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of your housekeeper,” Juggs observed. He cast Linnet a worshipful glance. “It’s right kind, what you’ve done. My missus would feel terrible, driving off and leaving me here. She’d worry herself half to death.”
“It’s the smile, isn’t it?” Piers said to Linnet.
“My smile had no effect whatsoever on Mrs. Havelock,” she said. “How long have you been married, Mr. Juggs?”
“Going on twenty-four years,” Juggs said. “First time I had this happen to me was our twentieth wedding anniversary.”
“You didn’t mention that before,” Bitts pointed out, scribbling it down. “That’s four occasions, now.”
“Maybe there were a few more,” Juggs admitted. “It took me a while to get up the steam to see a doctor in the first place. It’s really the missus that did the worrying.”
The door opened again, and an infuriated Nurse Matilda swept back in, followed by a round, anxious-looking woman wearing a bonnet covered with cherries that appeared to have been fabricated from knobbly wool.
“What did your husband look like during these attacks?” Piers asked, not bothering with greetings.
She blinked at him. “He looked the same as usual, I reckon.”
“Red in the face?”
“Not more than usual when he’s drunk.”
“I’m never drunk,” Juggs shouted from the bed.
“You was.” She nodded her head so vigorously that a whole bunch of cherries rose lightly in the air and then subsided. “As you will get when it’s a special occasion, and don’t deny it, Mr. Juggs.”
“That time in York, I hadn’t had more than a pint,” the patient said triumphantly.
“You was slurring your words,” his wife said, moving over to pat his foot. “There’s nothing wrong with a pint or two, but it takes more than that to jumble your tongue. This last time in York was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” she told Piers, but somehow talking to Linnet at the same time. “He had promised me before as how he’d see a doctor iffen it happened again.”
“Blow my dickey,” Juggs said with frustration. “I wasn’t drinking near as much as I could have!”
“What sort of occasion was it?” Linnet asked. “Were you wearing that utterly captivating bonnet, Mrs. Juggs?”
Mrs. Juggs beamed. “I was, that I was. Well, it was the military parade, wasn’t it? And there was Mr. Juggs dressed in his uniform, though it is a bit small these days. But he always likes to wear it of a special occasion. I made this hat just for the day, even though it were already summer and hot for it.”
“I expect Juggs here was sweating to beat the band,” Piers said.
“Oh, no, he never sweats, Mr. Juggs doesn’t,” his wife said proudly. “I hardly ever have to wash his uniform a-cause of sweat, which is a blessing. His mates in the parade, they were all mopping themselves dry.”
“And then I went blind and couldn’t see a thing until the next morning,” Juggs said mournfully.
“Our preacher suggested it’s the wages of sin,” Mrs. Juggs offered.
“That’s when I said I’d go to the doctor. ’Cause I ain’t been sinning more than is strictly normal.”
“Well, Bitts? Kibbles? Penders? I think it’s quite clear what has happened to Juggs, don’t you think?” Piers waved his hand at their blank faces. “Confer amongst yourselves, you blithering idiots.”
He turned back to Nurse Matilda. Linnet was examining the fruits of Mrs. Juggs’s crochet hook. “You just lost the battle,” he told her. “Mrs. Juggs solved the problem of her husband’s blindness. I’m an idiot not to have insisted on seeing family in cases like this.”
Mrs. Juggs’s mouth fell open. “I did? It’s the drink, isn’t it?”
“No,” he said to her.
Nurse Matilda was hissing like a teakettle on the boil.
“What symptom was the most important?” Linnet asked curiously.
“They all are.” He caught the Ducklings’ eyes. “Juggs has lately gained weight, his uniform is uncomfortably tight, he suffers episodes only on celebratory occasions during which he feels hot and drinks ale—likely to cool himself, though he ends up vomiting. Add to that the fact that the dress uniform of the Light Brigade is heavy wool, with triple braiding at the shoulder, not to mention the truly crucial detail that Juggs cannot sweat.”
“Heatstroke!” Kibbles exclaimed, while Penders and Bitts were still thinking it through.
“Right. The good news, Juggs, is that you can hop out of this bed and go back to the Mermaid’s Ankle. The bad news is that an inability to sweat, a woolen uniform, and a hot day are a dangerous combination. You’re likely to die one of these times, and you’re damned lucky you’re not already planted.”
“But what happened?” Mrs. Juggs asked, bewildered. “It wasn’t al
l that hot.”
“He needs to drink more water,” Kibbles explained.
“And no ale if it’s sweltering out,” Piers ordered. “Not even one pint.”
“That was it, that was all it was? Just not drinking enough water?” Mrs. Juggs still looked confused, but Juggs swung his legs out of bed.
“I knew I wasn’t sick, not really.” He stood up. “I stay away from water if we’re going in the parade, being as there’s no place to piss without breaking ranks.”
“Adding to the problem,” Bitts said, scribbling madly.
Piers let Juggs and the missus leave with the Ducklings. “Mrs. Havelock, you can decide whether you want to go along with Miss Thrynne’s plans for my hospital, or you can find another position.”
She looked at him, her mouth so tightly shut that it looked like Sébastien’s suture work.
“Scratch that,” he said. “You’re sacked.” He took Linnet’s arm and led her out of the room, but she stopped in the corridor, holding him back until the nurse stamped into the corridor.
“His lordship was only jesting,” she told Nurse Matilda, giving her the smile that supposedly didn’t work on outraged housekeepers.
Piers opened his mouth, but she pinched him so sharply that he shut it again.
“We can discuss how to manage family visits tomorrow,” Linnet said. “Of course, we’ll have to figure out a way to disrupt your schedule as little as possible. I know how smoothly you run the wing, Mrs. Havelock.”
The smile clearly didn’t work on Matilda. Still, she froze there for a moment, obviously calculating whether to give in or not.
“I know the doctor’s humorous ways,” she finally said, heavily.
“Good day, Mrs. Havelock,” Linnet said, pulling Piers down the corridor.
Chapter Twenty
You’re an interfering little witch,” Piers said. “Wait a moment. My leg is aching.” He pushed open a door. “Look at this! An empty bed just waiting for a patient.” He limped in. “Perfect place to sit down and rest our weary limbs.”
Linnet leaned against the door frame, laughing.