One more time, she promised herself. That wasn’t too trollopy. She wouldn’t be too trollopy.
But when they actually got to the guardhouse? Trollopy.
There was no other way to describe her behavior. Nor the day after, nor the day after that.
Certainly not the day when Piers caught her in the corridor after she had read Camilla to a group of patients, pulled her into an alcove and with a quick hand between her legs, reduced her to . . .
Well, trollop-hood.
It’s just playing, she told herself every night before sleep. Though the phrase began to sound a bit anxious.
We’re just playing, giving the duke time to . . . to reacquaint himself with his wife. Or vice versa. No one could miss the fact that the formerly married couple seemed to be spending more and more time talking to each other in a reasonably civil manner.
Then came a week in which Linnet had absolute proof that no baby had been created in their first encounter. Even so, Piers argued that he was not yet ready to send a retraction of their betrothal to the Morning Post. “One never knows,” he said, and then explained exactly how French letters might fail in their duty.
“In that case, perhaps we should stop now,” Linnet said, knowing full well that neither one of them wished to do so.
“We’re just playing,” Piers stated.
And trolloping, as Linnet pointed out.
“I don’t think trollop can be used as a verb like that,” Piers retorted. He never came to her bedchamber to make love to her, never slept with her. But that night he had come upstairs around midnight, pulled her straight out of bed and brought her down to the library to show her a very important text, specially written (he said) to mark the end of her courses.
It turned out to be written on little scraps of paper that he had strewn over the sofa before the fire. And on each little scrap was a suggestion.
“Nor as an adjective,” he continued, thoughtfully. He was sitting on the sofa stark naked, firelight gleaming on his chest, his muscled legs stretched out before him. “I couldn’t say, for example, that my Maman is acting in a trollopy fashion, parading around as she does, dressed in a handkerchief for the most part.”
“But you couldn’t say she was a trollop either,” Linnet said, “because she’s not. So the word is more useful in degrees, as an adverb or an adjective.”
“You are not a trollop, because such a woman moves from man to man,” he said, tacitly giving in to her grammatical point, but, characteristically, countering it with a different argument.
“In fact, any woman who goes to a man’s bed without the benefit of matrimony deserves the label,” Linnet said. “She needn’t visit more than one such bed. I have become everything that most of London believes me to be.”
“Does that bother you?”
She was nestled on the opposite end of the couch from Piers, sitting on her chemise rather than wearing it. “Just look at me.”
He did, and she liked the gleam in his eyes.
“That’s not what I meant,” she said. “Here I am in a gentleman’s library, without a stitch of clothing on my body. I begin to think that I am truly my mother’s daughter. Though I still hope that I won’t earn a reputation akin to hers.”
Inside, she wasn’t afraid of losing her reputation . . . she was afraid of losing her heart. But there was no reason to share that lurking fear.
They had found they both liked to sit by the side of the pool, or in the guardhouse, or in the library, and dissect things. Words. Bodies, though only through Piers’s descriptions. People, at least metaphorically. Patients, as regarding their behavior.
Because Linnet was regularly visiting the rooms of the non-infectious patients, she had funny stories about Mrs. Havelock, sometimes known as Nurse Matilda, and her skirmishes with those few who, rather surprisingly, dared to rebel.
One night, Linnet had reduced Piers to helpless laughter by mimicking the antics of a certain Mr. Cuddy, who had taken advantage of his wife’s visits to have her smuggle in a flask of gin, whereupon he promptly became inebriated, to Nurse Matilda’s disgust. “I don’t know that hearing this kind of thing is good for me,” Piers said.
“Why not?”
“Patients,” he said, waving his hand. “One shouldn’t know too much about them. They’re just illnesses, after all. That’s all I can treat.”
Linnet was sitting on the floor between his outstretched legs, wrapped in a blanket. “You’re a hopeless fool,” she told him.
He bent forward, scooping up her hair in his hands. “We should sell this.”
“There’s no market.”
“It gleams in the firelight like guineas, if guineas had more red in them.”
She leaned back against him and let him play, piling all her ringlets up and then letting them flutter back down.
After all, they were only playing.
Chapter Twenty-Four
One fine morning a few weeks after Linnet first met Gavan, he was carried downstairs by Neythen and plunked in the sun at the front door of the castle to wait for someone to fetch him.
Linnet found him there and sat down beside him. “Will your father be along?”
He shrugged. “Probably Mum, in the wagon. That’s how she got me here. My dad, he’s in the field, or with the sheep.”
“So you’re a farmer’s son,” Linnet said. “Do you want to be a farmer as well?”
“My dad’s not a farmer; he manages a big estate for somebody who’s never there. I’m going to be a doctor,” Gavan said, with easy confidence. “I’m going to be better than those two.” He jerked his head back at the castle.
“They did a good job with you,” she said, hiding her grin. “What do your parents think of your plan?”
“They don’t know yet, do they? On account of how old Havelock told my mum she had to leave me here. We only live over there in Tydfil.” He gestured, rather vaguely, toward the east. “My mum told me she’d visit, and then Havelock said she couldn’t come, ever.”
“So Tydfil is quite close?” Linnet asked, but Gavan was suddenly struggling to stand. Linnet jumped up and hauled him to his feet.
“There’s the cart!” he bawled, beside himself with excitement. “It is my mum!”
When the cart drew up in front of the castle, a woman jumped down, ran over and swooped Gavan up her arms. “There you are!” she cried. “Bright as a ha’penny and good as gold!”
He had his arms tightly wreathed around her neck. “I never cried,” he said. But he was crying now. “Not even when they held me down, and—” but whatever he was saying was lost in sobs.
Linnet patted the bench she and Gavan had been sitting on, and Gavan’s mother walked over, her son clinging to her front. She wasn’t much older than Linnet, all told, her hair black and gleaming under her bonnet.
She sat down, stroking Gavan’s hair. “There’s nothing wrong with crying,” she told him. “Nothing at all.” After that, they just sat there in the sunshine, his head buried in her shoulder as she rocked him back and forth.
The door opened behind them, and Linnet heard the sound of Piers’s cane. She turned around to give him a warning glance. This was no time for incivility. But he was well-mannered, for him. “Mrs. Wing,” he said, “the boy is healing like a charm. He should be on his feet for an hour a day at the most for the next week, and then go gradually from there. He has a cane; he must use it.”
Mrs. Wing nodded. “Thank you, my lord. We can’t thank you enough.” She squeezed Gavan a little tighter. There was a gloss of tears in her eyes, but she was clearly an energetic soul with little time for weakness.
Piers turned on his heel to leave.
“Wait!” Mrs. Wing called.
He paused and half turned. “Madam?”
“I want to say something to you, my lord,” Mrs. Wing said. She uncurled her son from around her neck and dropped him, quite naturally, into Linnet’s outstretched arms. Gavan had stopped sobbing, and was just hiccupping.
&nb
sp; “These weeks without Gavan, and without knowing what’s happened to him, have been terrible for his father and me. Terrible. And there’s no call for that. We live just over the hill. We could have visited easy, without disturbing anyone. That, that housekeeper of yours, she said—”
“We’re changing our ways,” Piers said, cutting her off. “Talk to Miss Thrynne. She’s the frivolous-looking one next to you.” Then he clumped through the door.
“Well, I never,” Mrs. Wing said, plumping down on the bench. “I told Mr. Wing that I would have my word with him, and I knew the doctor wouldn’t like it.” She pulled off her bonnet and started fanning her face with it. “But the way he looked at me! As if I was some sort of rodent he found in the grain bin!”
“He’s not that bad,” Linnet protested.
Gavan suddenly scrambled off her lap. “Mum, I didn’t show you my dog, my dog Rufus!”
Mrs. Wing blinked. “A dog?”
“The miss here, she found me a dog in the stables,” Gavan said, hauling Rufus out from under the bench where he was lying in the shade. “Isn’t he the bestest dog you ever saw, Mum?”
Rufus sat up, his tongue hanging out, and his remaining ear cocked.
“Well, he looks like a good ratter,” his mother said, eyeing Rufus. Then she turned to Linnet. “You found my son that dog?”
“Yes, she took me to the stables before I could even walk, and we found him there,” Gavan said, sitting down on the grass, and then lying down so that Rufus could lick his face. “She kept him in her bedroom at night so he wouldn’t run away. And she took me to see the sea too.”
Mrs. Wing’s lip trembled, and she reached out and gave Linnet a rather blind pat on the knee. “I can’t tell you what that means to me,” she said, her voice wavering. “I’ve been lying awake night after night, thinking about Gavan all alone in this castle, and maybe something going wrong, and us never seeing him again.” She stopped and took out a handkerchief.
“I wasn’t here during Gavan’s entire convalescence,” Linnet said, “but I think he was rather happy. He has a cheerful soul.”
“He does, doesn’t he?” Mrs. Wing dried her eyes. “All I can tell you is that I made four quilts while he was gone. Four. Pieced, sewn, and finished off.”
Linnet had no idea what it took to make a quilt, but one had to imagine it involved a great deal of work.
“Of course, I had help,” Mrs. Wing said. “We all of us women over in Tydfil”— she jerked her head—“quilt together. And if something’s happened, as happened to Gavan, then we quilt more often. It’s a distraction.”
Linnet had a sudden idea. “Quilting doesn’t take anything like a loom, does it?”
Mrs. Wing shook her head. “It’s all piecing squares together at that stage. We sit around in a circle and sew together. And talk, back and forth. Later I put it on a quilting frame and finish up.”
“I wonder if you could ever come here, to the castle,” Linnet said. “Because you see, Mrs. Wing, there’s a room full of women in the west wing who are terribly bored. There’s a woman who’s carrying two babies, for instance, and so she can’t get up for a few months yet. And Mrs. Trusty had a terrible thing happen to her foot, though she’s starting to hobble about now.”
“Would the housekeeper allow such a thing?”
“We could arrange it,” Linnet said firmly. “A quilting circle, here at the castle. Would you please come, once a week, Mrs. Wing? Could you spare the time?”
“Of course. The doctor may be prickly in his manners, but he saved my Gavan’s life.” She nodded. “It helps, you know, with people in pain too. Distracts them. Not labor, though. It doesn’t help for that. I’ve never seen a woman in labor who could sew a straight seam.”
“Mrs. Wing, I see you’re going to be marvelous at this,” Linnet said with a happy smile.
“I like to get things done,” Mrs. Wing said. “I see what needs to be done, and I do it. Luckily, my husband is never bothered by anything. If both of us went haring off every time we see something wrong, we couldn’t get on!” She broke into laughter.
“I will speak to Mrs. Havelock, the housekeeper for the west wing,” Linnet said. “Perhaps you might pay a visit in a week or two, after Gavan is stronger on his feet?”
Mrs. Wing nodded. “That I will.” She looked at Gavan. “I suppose he shouldn’t be rolling around down there in case it hurts his leg?”
“He doesn’t seem to be in any pain,” Linnet said. “He’s a dear boy.”
“And you are a dear lady,” Mrs. Wing said, turning toward her, and taking her hand. “I can’t tell you how this has soothed me. You being there, miss, and giving him Rufus, and making it so I can pay the doctor back with some quilting.”
“Linnet,” she said impulsively, squeezing Mrs. Wing’s hand back. “My name is Linnet.”
Mrs. Wing chuckled. “Diana,” she said. “It’s a strange name, something to do with a goddess who was likely no better than she should be. I reckon you’ll be learning to quilt as well, won’t you?”
Linnet’s smile dimmed. “I’m afraid I’m just visiting, and I’m not likely to be here in two weeks, so I’ll miss the quilting.”
“Now that’s a shame,” Diana said. “A real shame. Well, if you fix it with Mrs. Havelock and warn the doctor, I’ll manage all right.”
“Don’t let him frighten you,” Linnet said. “He’s more bark than bite.”
“No one will stop me helping those women,” Diana said. She laughed again. “Gavan, you hopeless boy, get up.”
“I need my cane,” Gavan said. He managed to get to his feet with its help. “See, miss? See? I’m just like the doctor now, aren’t I?”
He stood there leaning on his cane, grinning in the sun with his hair over his eyes. Linnet couldn’t help laughing. “You look like a doctor already, Gavan.”
“That’s ’cause I’m going to be one,” he said with satisfaction. “The best one ever.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Evening, the next day
Two more patients admitted to the east wing with that fever,” Sébastien said.
“Which fever?” Piers asked.
“The one that you think is petechial and I don’t. I couldn’t find you this morning when I wanted you to take a look.”
Piers had pulled Linnet into an empty bedchamber after breakfast, and when she’d fallen asleep, he lay with her on the bed for an hour, boneless and satisfied, slowly stroking her shoulders. He had heard his name called, and had ignored it.
He was thinking about his father. Linnet, his father, Prufrock, his mother, Sébastien. His father again. Linnet.
“I’ll look at them after the meal,” he promised. They walked into the drawing room. Kibbles and Penders were at the sideboard, hovering over the wine decanter. Linnet was sitting next to his mother, while his father sat opposite with that hungry look in his eyes again.
“Where’s Bitts?”
“He was rather peaked and admitted to not feeling well. I sent him upstairs.”
Piers met Sébastien’s eyes. “Ill?”
“Headache, no fever.” He shrugged. “Probably not hospital fever, but it’s best not to have him in the west wing until we’re sure. Let alone around your family.”
His family. A cold shiver went down his spine.
“I’ve seen that look before,” Sébastien said in a mocking voice. “Yes, I will have a glass, thank you, Prufrock.”
“What do you mean, you’ve seen that look before?” Piers asked.
“The face that launched a thousand . . . scowls,” Sébastien said, obviously enjoying himself. “I mean that you’re thinking about doing something that will hurt yourself in the long run. Seen it before, and I see it now.”
“You think you’ve suddenly developed the ability to diagnose me, of all people? You can’t even manage a simple fever.”
“I know that you have an affinity for unhappiness,” Sébastien said, tipping his glass to his lips. “In fact, paradoxically, yo
u don’t feel truly happy unless you are unhappy. The way to do that is to push away the people who give a damn about your nasty hide. Me, for one—except that I’m impossible to dislodge, so you seem to have given up on me. Your parents.” He turned and raised his glass in the direction of Linnet. “Your utterly beautiful fiancée.”
“Beauty is not everything,” Piers said.
“Linnet has everything else a man could desire as well,” Sébastien said. He put his glass down on the sideboard. “You and I, we’ve always been together.”
“Just break it to me gently, will you? You’re running off with a dairymaid.”
“No. No.”
Piers followed his gaze. “You’re running off with Linnet.” Every muscle in his body went rigid. She was his. His, and no one else’s. His.
“If she’d have me, I’d run anywhere with her. Or after her.” Sébastien turned back to Piers. “I’ve always run faster than you, Piers. And I’m a better surgeon. And a better lover, though it’s crass to point it out.”
“I’ve never bothered to love anyone,” Piers said. Linnet was laughing. Diamonds shone in her ears, twinkled at her throat. She looked like a fairy princess, someone created by a magic wand.
“That’s true enough. You never bothered. And you’re not bothering now, are you? Even though your father wrapped her up like a present and dropped her in your lap.”
Piers flinched, and Sébastien let out a crack of laughter. “So that’s why. You can’t contemplate Linnet because your father chose her. And you’re too busy hating your father for his past sins to admit that he found the right woman for you.”
Piers reached out and grabbed Sébastien by his pale pink neckcloth and twisted him closer. “My leg hurts like a son of a bitch,” he said, between clenched teeth.
His cousin didn’t move, just stared into his eyes. “You and your leg can keep each other company at night, then. No room for a woman, given the terrible injury you suffered.”
Piers let go of his cousin’s neckcloth. Sébastien was right, even though he meant it sarcastically.