He had to stop making love to Linnet. Now. There wasn’t any place in his life for her. Not when he knew well that there would be days, even weeks, when the only thing he could feel or think about would be the agony in his leg.
Those were the days when he lost his temper at the drop of a pin, when he shouted at Prufrock and all the rest of them if they so much as twitched. When the pain in his leg spread to his head and he ended up in a darkened room, shivering.
“You’re right,” he said. “Of course, you’re right.”
Sébastien, still angry, looked at him narrowly. “It’s not like you to concede. So, if you recognize how stupid you’re being to reject Linnet, why don’t you go over there and woo her?”
“I thought you wanted her.”
Sébastien grunted. “I do.”
“Well, then, go do the pretty,” Piers said tiredly. Perhaps tonight was the night to have two glasses of brandy, rather than one.
“There’s no point.”
“Merely because my father carted her here from England for me? Nonsense. She needs a husband, and you’ll make a pretty one.” Something twisted, agonizingly, in his stomach at the idea of Linnet with a husband. Another man. Sébastien? Inconceivable. “You can’t live here, though.”
His cousin leaned back against the arm of the sofa, holding his glass of brandy up to the light. “Why not? I’m comfortable here. The castle is big enough, Lord knows. And, like it or not, you need my surgical skills.”
Piers threw him a look. “I won’t have her,” he said, making it clear and simple, so even his romantically minded cousin could understand. “I’m not having her.” Anymore, he added silently.
“And before you start bleating about my father,” he continued, “it’s not that. I see—Linnet made me see—that I’m just making an ass of myself on that front. Prufrock is the king of butlers, and Linnet . . .”
“The queen of women,” Sébastien said quietly.
“But I’m too injured for someone like her. For anyone. I’m too much of a beast, Sébastien. You know that as well as I do.”
His cousin shrugged. “I rather like you, even when you are in a temper.”
“You grew up with me. You had no choice but to get along with me. I can’t pretend to myself that I’m not the utter bastard that I am. Maybe if I were different, if my temper weren’t so fierce, if—”
“If you didn’t indulge yourself by letting it fly,” Sébastian said, dryly.
“You don’t understand.” As if to prompt him, his muscle spasmed, sending a flash of agony up his leg.
“No man in his right mind with a functional tool,” Sébastien said, “would understand. If I had a chance at Linnet, I wouldn’t give a damn how much pain I was in. I’d grab her and get a ring on her finger, and trust that we could work it out later.”
“That’s why you’re no good at diagnosis,” Piers said, trying to ease the muscle by straightening his leg.
“Why?”
“You can’t put symptoms and observations together. One pain-ridden bastard with a wicked tongue—”
He raised his hand when Sébastien opened his mouth. “That’s a good description of me, and you know it. At any rate, someone like me, together with a woman like Linnet, adds up to one thing.”
“What?”
“Unhappiness,” he said flatly, bringing his boot back to the floor.
“Not necessarily—”
“Unhappiness for her.”
Piers let the golden, fiery brandy slide down his throat.
Beside him, Sébastien was silent. Then: “Couldn’t you control it?”
“I am who I am.” He swallowed. “I don’t want to watch her wilt when I’m out of my mind from pain. Or grow afraid, the way my mother did with my father, if I turn to laudanum to relieve it.”
“You never do.”
“I might. It’s always there, the possibility, the temptation, at the back of my mind. Like father, like son, perhaps. I will not put Linnet through that.”
“Damn, you’re in love with her,” Sébastien stated, staring at him.
Across the room, Linnet was chuckling and rapping Penders on the shoulder with her fan. The man was practically groveling at her feet.
“Who wouldn’t be?” Piers said, acknowledging the truth aloud. “Who wouldn’t be?”
Prufrock entered the room, walking swiftly up to the two of them. “The orderly in the east wing feels that the fever patient admitted yesterday has taken a turn for the worse.”
“I’ll go,” Piers said, putting down his glass with a clink. “I’ve no business here anyway.”
“Don’t—” Sébastien said, but Piers lost the end of his sentence in the thump of his cane, the door shutting behind him.
He looked at the stairs before him with some exhaustion. Behind him was a world of fragrant women and golden brandy. But up those stairs was his real world, that of dying patients with their strained faces and terrified eyes.
He started climbing.
The orderly met him at the top of the stairs. “The patient broke out in a rash three days ago, a couple of days after he had the first symptoms.”
“And those were?” The orderly held open the door to the east wing so Piers could limp along beside him.
“It began with a stiff neck and shoulders, but since he’s a miller, he thought he’d simply strained himself moving sacks of flour. Chills came on that night, alternating with fever. He turned, as he described it, red as a boiled lobster within a few days.”
“And now?”
“He hasn’t eaten since admittance yesterday, and vomited after drinking some broth. He’s feverish, complains he can’t breathe. The reason I asked Mr. Prufrock to fetch you is that his skin is blistering terribly. And his lips seem to be blackening.”
“Hell and damnation,” Piers said, with feeling.
Sure enough, when he examined the patient, the inside of his throat was covered with small brown colored specks, and there were swellings behind his ears. “Double damnation. Who’s seen him? Who’s been in the room?”
“Well, Dr. Bitts admitted him yesterday,” the orderly said. “I have, of course.” He looked a bit nervous, but steady enough. “His lordship came by after Dr. Bitts, and said that the man should be kept in a room by himself; Dr. Bitts had directed me to put him in with the patients with petechial fever.”
“It’s not petechial,” Piers said, closing the door as they left. “It’s scarlatina anginosa. Scarlet fever. Or more probably, scarlatina maligna. This means real trouble, unless he’s unique. Where are the two other patients admitted earlier today?”
“Down the hall,” the orderly said. “They’re in a room together, because they’re cobblers who own a shop together, and they became sick at the same time.”
“Where did they come from?”
“Little Millow.”
“Around two miles from here.”
“The first patient is from Aferbeeg.”
“Only about one mile. Did the cobblers say whether anyone else they knew was ill?”
“I asked all three. The miller was delivering grain for the two days before he finally collapsed. He thought he just had a cough and would get over it.”
“Delivering grain . . . likely in a wide circumference around Aferbeeg.” They turned into the room with the cobblers. They both had the rash, the peeling, ulcers in their throats. The miller had stopped by five days ago to have his boots repaired.
“Bad to worse. There’s a good possibility of an epidemic,” Piers said grimly. “The first thing we have to do is protect everyone in this castle who’s not already on death’s door.” He ran the bell for Prufrock, and then went to the top of the stairs, holding up his hand to stop the butler midway.
“Do you remember the plans we made last year in case of epidemic?”
Prufrock nodded.
“Time to put them in force. Get everyone out of the castle who is not essential to patient care. Every patient who’s not actively dying go
es back home—unless they have a sore throat, any stiffness, or signs of fever. Send footmen to borrow all the carriages within a few miles to take them off. All the rest go home—get the duke and my mother out of here, Miss Thrynne with them, of course.”
Prufrock’s eyes widened and he trotted back down the stairs without a word.
Piers felt a pang somewhere in the area of his heart for the fact he would never see Linnet again.
But then he turned back to the east wing. Scarlet fever was a killer, and it looked as if the miller had time and opportunity to infect quite a number of people. But Piers was famous for not losing fever patients, even those with scarlet fever, and he meant to battle the disease with every tool he had at hand. He had argued in front of the Royal Society that anginosa did not have to turn into its deadlier cousin, maligna, and it was time to prove it.
Within an hour, he began to hear carriages rolling up the drive and then trundling away again, as each patient who could be moved was sent away. Meanwhile, he and Sébastien began a careful inventory of the east wing, finding to their dismay that the disease had already spread among their own patients, seriously complicating matters.
“It’s the cough,” Piers said. “But I think it may be spread by touch as well. I want buckets of water mixed with alcohol and liquid soap outside every room,” he told the orderly. “Wash your hands constantly.”
Some of his patients, weakened already, might die, but not as fast as patients would die in the outlying towns, if fools tried to bleed them or give them emetics. “Weak tea and broth,” he told the orderly. “We’ll treat the fever by cooling patients as much as possible. Open all the windows, and keep pouring fluids down their throats. I want a notice going out to every church within five miles of Aferbeeg that anyone showing signs of a fever or sore throat should be quarantined immediately.
“We should make sure Penders and Kibbles didn’t miss any incipient cases in the west wing,” Piers said, some time later. “We’ve got six here so far, but I’m hopeful it hasn’t spread to that wing.”
Dismayingly, he was wrong. “How did this happen?” he demanded a few hours later, in frustration. They had five cases in the west wing, all in the early stages of scarlatina anginosa.
Sébastien shook his head. “We’re the only ones who go back and forth. How are you feeling?”
“It’s Bitts!” Piers exclaimed. “God Almighty, it’s Bitts. I wonder if anyone’s checked on him.”
Two minutes later they were on the second floor, in one of the guest bedchambers. Bitts was burning up. “I’m all pins and needles,” he gasped. His man was hovering nearby.
“The important thing is to keep him cool and give him water,” Piers said. “Bitts.”
The young doctor opened his eyes.
“You’re going to make it. You have white spots on your tonsils, not brown. Keep drinking. God knows I’ve lectured you on the need for patients to take liquids, so put all my barking to good use.”
A ghost of a smile touched Bitts’s lips.
“He’ll do,” Sébastien said, striding ahead of Piers. “Why don’t you get some sleep, and then wake me in a few hours?”
Prufrock was waiting for them, halfway up the stair. “His Grace and Lady Bernaise refuse to leave,” he said.
“You’re wringing your hands, Prufrock,” Piers said. “I’ll speak to them.”
“I can hardly force them into a carriage. And Miss Thrynne is with them.”
Piers sighed. “I’ll take care of this,” he said to Sébastien. “Do you remember the lecture we heard that recommended applying the froth from fermenting malt to the throats of scarlatina patients?”
Sébastien shook his head. “Details like that leave me on the way out of the hall.”
“Get Nurse Matilda on it,” Piers said. “We might as well try.” As he outlined the treatment details, there was a pounding on the front door, and they both paused. A footman opened the door, whereupon four—five—no, eight patients entered, two on their feet, the others dragged or carried.
“I’ll take these,” Sébastien said. “You deal with your parents and then get some sleep. We’ll have to take turns.”
Piers nodded. “Try to put anginosa in the east wing and maligna in the west.” He thumped down the stairs, and detoured around the patients, heading for the drawing room.
His mother, his father, and Linnet formed a charming family group. Piers felt a sense of profound exhaustion even looking at them. They were talking of the sculptor Michelangelo, the table before them littered with cakes and cups of tea. They seemed to be in another world, of porcelain and Italian artists, of French perfume and gentlewomen’s voices.
His mother jumped to her feet as soon as she saw him. “I will not leave here, Piers. Not without you.”
“Are you mad?” he demanded, not moving from the door. “We’re in the midst of a serious scarlet fever epidemic, Maman. If you stay here, you’re quite likely to catch it.”
She tossed her head with fine French disdain. “I snap my fingers at scarlet fever. Who will nurse you, if you fall ill? That shall be I.”
“Are you condemning your maid to die for you? Younger people are more likely to develop a severe form of the fever.”
“We sent our personal servants away immediately,” his father intervened. “They’re waiting for us at an inn some distance from here.”
“You cannot stay here,” Piers said stubbornly. “I cannot have you to worry about.”
“I won’t leave without you,” his mother snapped back. He knew where he got the fierce strain in his nature, and it was looking back at him from her eyes.
“The guardhouse,” Linnet said.
He turned to her, barely understanding what she was saying. “What are you talking about?”
“Lady Bernaise could go to the guardhouse, and the servants could leave food for her outside the door. It’s just down the path on the way to the sea,” she told his mother. “You’d be safe there, but close enough so that if Piers did become ill, you could nurse him.”
“I’ll be damned if I’ll allow it,” Piers stated.
But his mother was already rising. “I shall be in the guardhouse.”
“Don’t come near me,” Piers said, giving up. He had other battles to fight, and they were far more important. “And don’t go out the front door. The corridor is full of patients, all of them coughing, no doubt. You’ll have to go out a window.”
He turned to Linnet. She was as delectable, and as remote from him, as the fairy queen herself. Stupidly, foolishly, he tried to memorize her: the sweet little nose, stubborn chin, curling eyelashes, flawless skin. Which just made him think about the effects of scarlet fever. “You must leave,” he said. “Now, quickly.”
“I will.” She had her hands clasped before her. “Oh, Piers—” She took a step toward him.
“No.” He said it fiercely. “I need you to be gone. I can’t think about you, or worry about you.”
She nodded.
“Forever,” he continued. “Go back to London, or to France, or wherever you want.”
“No!” she gasped.
“It’s over between us,” Piers said, feeling a strange sense of remoteness. Upstairs, his patients were dying, and even so, his heart was twisting; even so, the gleam of tears in her eyes felt mortal. “You always knew it would be the case,” he added, more gently. “We have no future.”
Her jaw set, and suddenly she looked remarkably like his mother.
Piers looked to his father. “Pry open a window, if you would. Take my mother to the guardhouse, down the ocean path. Linnet will be ready to leave with you in two minutes.”
He and Linnet stood like marble statues while the duke pushed a window out of its frame.
“Be well, Piers, my love,” his mother said as the duke held out his hand next to the window. “Be careful.”
“I never catch anything, Maman,” he said, with perfect truth. He always thought it was nature’s compensation for his injury.
<
br /> At last, they were gone.
“You don’t know that you won’t be infected,” Linnet said. Tears gleamed in her eyes.
He shrugged. “If I do, I shall care for myself properly. I lose very few patients to this particular disease, as long as they reach me in time. I myself have no plans to succumb.”
“I don’t want to leave you.”
“I don’t want to marry you.”
There, the truth was out, clearly spoken.
“You’ll have to wait outside for my father,” he said. “Stay away from anyone you see out there, including Prufrock. Do you hear me? In fact, wait by the side of the house. I think it’s spread by coughing.”
Linnet took a deep breath. Piers was leaning heavily on his cane, exhaustion in every line of his body. “I don’t want to leave you.”
“You’ve got no choice,” he said. “God almighty, Linnet, how many ways can I put this? I don’t want to marry you.”
“I haven’t decided whether I wish to marry you,” she said, trying for a small jest in the face of nightmare. “I think I might.”
“The possibility is not in question. It never was, not really.”
Linnet looked at him, the shadow of his beard, the shadows under his eyes, and knew she loved him. That she would never love another man. Piers’s fierce wit had tempted her, but it was his passionate heart that had won her.
“Go on,” he said impatiently. “I don’t want to marry you. I won’t marry you. Is that clear enough?”
“No.” She saw the pain in his eyes and could recognize it for what it is. “We belong together,” she said with a feeling of perfect truth. “You will never love anyone but me.”
“You are blinded by your own claims to beauty,” Piers said, avoiding what she had just said. “Will you please leave now, before I say something I regret?”
But Linnet’s heart was flying on a wave of passion and love. “I love you!” she said again. “And you love me.”
“I don’t give a damn,” Piers said.
For a moment she didn’t hear him. Then she didn’t understand him. “What do you mean?”
“Just what I said. I don’t care what you feel for me, or believe you feel for me.”