“Why are you being so cruel?”
“I’m not. Indiscriminate niceness is not indicated in this situation. Honesty is.”
She ran to him and grabbed his lapels. He recoiled violently. “I might be infectious. Stay back!”
“You are not ill. You never get ill. I believe you.”
“Then why don’t you believe me when I say this: Linnet, I don’t want to marry you. I don’t want to marry you!” He was shouting it.
“Yes, you do,” she said, and reached out, clasping his face, bringing it down to hers. Her lips sought his, hungry, welcoming, even adoring.
“I won’t marry for sex,” he said, pushing her away.
She couldn’t understand him, and her hand reached out to catch his sleeve as he turned away.
“For God’s sake, have you no dignity? I tupped you, and we were good together. But you’re not the first, and you won’t be the last.”
Linnet felt her throat tighten. “Why are you speaking to me like this?”
“Because you damn well won’t listen to me any other way,” he said with obvious frustration. “You know what kind of man I am, Linnet. We had fun dallying together, rutting, shaking the sheets, whatever you want to call it. But I never pretended to you that it would result in marriage.”
“No, you didn’t,” Linnet whispered, a chill creeping over her. “You were very clear about that.”
“I suppose I should have turned you down,” he said. “But you were there, you were eager.”
Linnet swallowed. “Because I was—eager?” It seemed she was like her mother, at least in Piers’s eyes. “Is that why?”
“You’re also damned beautiful,” he said, raking his hair back. “But yes, you were eager. You might want to practice more discretion if you find yourself in that situation again.”
Her heart fell like a stone.
“Look, you have to go. I need some sleep. Sébastien and I have a castleful of patients, and Bitts is already down, which means the other two might go down as well.”
“I could—” she said, and the words died in her throat.
“Go,” he said wearily. “You can’t help. We don’t need you here.”
“And you don’t want me,” she said, needing to say it aloud.
“If you mean, do I want you in a sexual way, then the answer is yes. Reference your beauty and general enthusiasm. Every man wants that in his bed. But do I want you in a marital kind of way, a death-do-us-part kind of way? No. And I never will.”
His eyes were faintly kind. That kindness, Linnet felt, was rather horrid. “You don’t want to admit to loving me because that would mean you have to take responsibility for being miserable—or in this case, not being miserable,” she said, raising her chin and staring back at him.
“What?”
“Just what I said,” Linnet retorted. “If you married me, if you admitted to your feelings, it would mean that misery is not a given, but a choice.”
“Bollocks!”
“Well, I love you,” she said. “I’m not afraid to say it aloud. And I want you too.”
“I don’t—”
“I see you don’t,” she cut in, moving away from him, toward the window. “I hope all goes well in the castle.”
“It will,” he said. Now that she had her back to him, it seemed that his voice had pain in it. But when she turned, his jaw was set, his face unyielding.
She stopped, just one more time, because she was a stubborn woman. “I’ll wait for you in London,” she said. “For a time. In case you change your mind.”
“Has no one any dignity around here?” he said, half shouting it. “You’re as embarrassing as my father.”
“I don’t mind being a fool for you,” she said. “I love you.”
There was no response behind her, and she rather thought there never would be one. So she clambered over the windowsill.
“Get in that carriage,” Piers said from behind her, nodding to a large one standing to the side, the horses blowing and stamping. “It’s the duke’s, given the crest.”
“Good-bye,” she said. “God bless.”
She left before he could say anything, because it wouldn’t be what she wanted to hear, and she was blinded with tears anyway.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Robert leaped down from the window after handing out Marguerite, but she refused to move. She was standing, frozen, listening to Piers’s voice emerging from the drawing room.
“We must go,” the duke said quietly, catching Marguerite’s hand to pull her away, just as their son said flatly, “I don’t want to marry you.”
“He is a fool,” Marguerite whispered, “Such a fool. Linnet is the one for him. There will never be another, not like her.”
But Robert drew her away, down the path toward the guardhouse, listening silently as she told him what he already knew: that Piers seemed to be determined to bring himself more unhappiness. That their son was unable to accept the woman whom he obviously loved, and who loved him.
She stopped talking only when they walked into the guardhouse’s sitting room. The interior of the little house didn’t look like a servant’s dwelling, but like the country home of a gentleman, albeit in miniature. The walls were hung with paintings and the room glowed with color, punctuated by a scarlet throw tossed over a settee before the fireplace.
“How odd,” Marguerite said, looking around. “From the outside, it looks quite rough, but in truth, it is charming. Look at that little sofa: surely that was in the small drawing room only last week?”
Robert had his own theories about why the house resembled a snug little nest, but he didn’t think Piers’s mother would appreciate the insight.
“You may leave now, Robert,” Marguerite said, pushing open the door to the bedchamber and poking her head inside. “I shall be perfectly comfortable here. The servants will tend to me, and if Piers becomes ill, you may depend on me to care for him.”
“I always knew you would,” he said, coming up behind her.
She looked over her shoulder, smiling. He had not kissed her again after the first time, unwilling to risk the chance that she might repudiate him for good. But they had talked and talked about the last few years, about how he had slowly emerged from an opium haze, only to realize that his family was lost to him. During the lonely years that followed, his only happiness was the certain knowledge that Marguerite was taking the very best possible care of their son.
“I know,” she said now, accepting it.
“If you become ill, Marguerite, what then?” He wrapped his arms around her, from behind, and dropped a kiss on her cheek. “What then?”
To his enormous pleasure, she didn’t pull away, but stayed in the circle of his arms. “Oh, I shan’t,” she said, with a perfect confidence that echoed Piers’s. “I am never ill.”
“I remember differently.”
“Never!”
“When you were carrying our son. Don’t you remember how ill he made you?”
She laughed at that, and actually leaned back into the circle of his arms, remembering. “How I came to detest that wretched green basin we kept in our bedchamber! I threw it away after he was born.”
“So I have seen you ill,” Robert said, holding her even tighter and daring to kiss her ear. “I cared for you then, remember? When you were ill in the middle of the night. And I shall be there to care for you again, if worse comes to worst. If Piers falls ill, we shall both be at his side.”
“Nonsense,” she said, pulling free and turning about. “What are you saying, Robert?”
Even the way she said his name, with her enchanting accent, made his heart thump. “I am saying that I shall not leave you,” he said steadily.
Her brows drew together. “That is foolish.”
“No.”
“Foolish,” she persisted.
For a moment he just stood looking down at her, and then he stated with absolute truth, “I shall never leave you again.”
“What on ea
rth do you mean?”
“If you throw me out of this house, I shall sleep on the path outside. If you return to the Continent without me, I shall follow you. I will build a willow hut at your gate; I will sleep under your window; I will be waiting for you at your own front door.”
Her hand went to her mouth, laughter escaping from behind her fingers. “You have lost your mind, Robert!”
He shook his head. “On the contrary: I have found it. I’m in love with you. I was always in love with you, always. Even when I couldn’t think straight, there was one thing I knew, even in an opium dream: that I loved you.”
“It is a tragedy that you could not remember your beloved ones the day Piers entered your study unexpectedly.” But her voice was not harsh.
“I will always, to my dying day, beg Piers to forgive me. But Marguerite . . . At this moment I don’t want to talk about Piers. He is now a grown man, a wonderful man, which is entirely to your credit. But you are not only Piers’s mother. You are my wife, the only woman I ever wanted to marry, and the wife of my heart, even though I behaved like a fool after you took Piers to France. You were perfectly right to leave.”
“You were un idiot,” she observed. Her eyes encouraged him, though.
“No one will ever love you as I do,” he said, catching her hands and bringing them to his lips. “No one ever has loved you the way I do. You are my heart and my life, Marguerite.”
A little smile played at the corner of her mouth, an enticing, utterly feminine smile.
“Take me back.”
His words seemed to hang in the air, to echo in the small house.
“I am sure what you did is unforgivable,” Marguerite said, finally. “All my friends say so.”
“They’re right. Don’t forgive me. Just—just take me back.” His fingers tightened on hers.
“And if I say no?”
“Then I shall leave this house.”
“And?”
“I will not allow you to be at risk for scarlet fever. I will be outside, should you need me. I will take the food from the servants so they cannot infect you.”
“You may get the fever yourself,” she said softly.
“I would die for you in a heartbeat.”
Hope had exploded from his heart and was pouring through his veins: a torrent of joy and fear and desire.
Marguerite took a step closer, pulled her hands free and wound her arms around his neck. She fit there as sweetly as she always had. “You may stay.”
He pulled her to him, put his cheek against her hair, closed his eyes. “Mon amour.”
“But I am not sure that I will marry you again,” she observed.
“I don’t care. We can live in sin for the rest of our lives.”
He heard a gurgle of laughter. “I am French. We are very prudent.”
“Prudent and delectable,” he whispered, his hands moving slowly down her narrow back.
“What if this opium did some permanent injury to you?”
He pulled back, looked down at her. “I don’t—”
Her smile was impish, and her eyes slid to the bedchamber door. “A Frenchwoman never, ever takes important things for granted.”
With a rush of joy, Robert took his former wife—no, his wife—up in his arms and stepped across the threshold to the bedroom, placing her gently on the bed. “It would be my very great pleasure to assuage your alarm.”
He straightened with the sound of her laughter in his ears. “I must make sure that Linnet is safely away in a carriage. Then I shall tear back here with such speed the servants will think me mad.”
“You are mad,” Marguerite said, giggling like a young girl.
“No,” he said, bending over to kiss her once more. “I am sane. For the first time in years.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I’m so sorry,” the Duke of Windebank said to Linnet, after he climbed into the carriage and discovered she was sobbing. “I apologize for bringing you here, Miss Thrynne.”
“Linnet,” she managed. “After all, we were almost related by marriage. Do you have a handkerchief by any chance? Mine is wet.”
“My son is a difficult man,” the duke said, handing her a huge linen handkerchief embroidered with his crest.
“He’s a—a fool,” she said, her voice breaking.
“That too.”
“He loves me, I know he does, and he still says he won’t marry me. That he doesn’t wish to marry.”
The duke was silent.
Linnet blew her nose. “Perhaps he will change his mind.”
She could see the answer to that in the duke’s eyes. “He won’t, will he?” Tears started rolling down her cheeks again.
“My dear, my dear, I wish I could give you a different answer.”
“It’s quite all right,” Linnet managed. “Could we leave now?”
The duke hesitated.
She understood immediately. “You plan to stay with the duchess, I mean, with Lady Bernaise.”
“I cannot leave her,” he said quietly. There was a firm resolve in his eyes that was the mirror of his son’s. “And I can’t leave Piers either. For all my transgressions, they are my family, and they will always be my family.”
Linnet sniffed ungracefully. “I would do the same. Don’t worry about me. I shall be just fine.”
“I’m sorry about all this,” the duke said. “Deeply, deeply sorry. My carriage will take you to a village where the servants and your maid are waiting. We mustn’t delay any longer, since I told them to continue without us if we didn’t arrive before this evening. I want the household and you well away from this epidemic.”
“I am ready to leave,” Linnet said, hiccupping.
“I’m afraid it will be a lonely journey back to London.”
She managed a smile. “I’m used to being lonely.”
“Oh.” The duke looked even more distressed, if possible.
“Ignore me,” she said, venturing a watery smile. “I’m merely feeling sorry for myself. I fell in love with your impossible son. Rather hopelessly so. And now I need to craft a life without him. Which I shall do.” Though she couldn’t imagine it. The pain of even thinking about it tore at her heart.
“It will not be easy,” the duke said, leaning forward and patting her knee. “But you can do it. I did.”
“Perhaps when I’m sixty,” she said, laughing a little, “I shall come to Wales and force Piers to live with me in the guardhouse for a week or so.”
“Yes, do that,” the duke said. “I would feel better about him if I imagined you pulling him from the castle someday.”
“If you tell him so, I’ll have nothing to look forward to at age sixty,” she said frankly.
“I realize that. I won’t say a word about you. If I had understood how profound his dislike of me runs, you wouldn’t be in such pain now. I deeply regret that.”
“In that case, I would not have met Piers.” She dried her eyes again. “I will take the broken heart.”
He reached out again, and squeezed her knee. “You’re a rather wonderful woman, you know.”
Her smile was shy, this time. Not a bit of the family talent in it. “Thank you. I wish you the very best of luck.”
The duke’s eyebrow shot up in precisely the way his son’s did. “Thank you.” He started for the door. “I shall call on you as soon as I return to London.”
“I think you will not be alone,” Linnet said.
He paused for a moment on the carriage steps, and she hardly heard his response as he stepped to the ground. “I hope not.”
The door closed behind him. There was a rumble of men’s voices outside the carriage, and it started rolling down the road. Away from the castle, away from the ocean and the pool, away from Kibbles and Bitts, Prufrock and the patients. Away from Piers.
She let the duke’s handkerchief fall to the floor. Crying had given her a terrible, blinding headache. In fact, it seemed inconceivable that the day wasn’t over yet. That she was in a car
riage rather than a bed. It was impossible to imagine going all the way back to London, day after day in this carriage.
After a bit she lay back on the padded seat, staring at the swaying ceiling of the coach. It was hard to get comfortable. She must have strained her neck and her shoulders while swimming.
Finally, she closed her eyes and let the gentle rocking of the carriage carry her away from Piers’s harsh words, though they echoed through her dreams.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Six days later
He’s dying,” Piers said, with the frustrated pang he always got at moments like this. He looked down at the patient, a stout man in his sixties.
“Every time I give him water, it just rolls out of his mouth,” the orderly said.
“Make him as comfortable as you can,” Piers said, heading for the corridor. “It could be that red eyes are a sign of impending mortality.”
“He looks like a ferret,” Sébastien said. He was leaning against the wall in the hallway.
“Go to bed,” Piers said. “You were up all last night. You’ll be no good if you keep on like this. Besides, there haven’t been any new patients for at least two hours.”
As if in answer, there was a banging on the front door.
Sébastien’s laugh had a hollow sound to it. “How is Bitts doing?”
“Quick pulse, but the fever broke. I told his man to start with chicken broth sometime today. He’s out of the woods.”
Sébastien pushed himself away from the wall. “I think it’s slowing down.”
“That would make sense,” Piers said. “We have the orders out about isolating patients. Thank God it was limited to the miller’s route.”
“I’m off to bed,” his cousin said, and then paused. “Did you know that your father is still here?”
Piers jerked his head up. “What?”
“Living in the guardhouse with your mother. I went out for a breath of fresh air yesterday. They were sitting in the gardens. I waved, from a distance, of course.”
“They were?” Piers was so tired that he felt as if his brain had been pickled. “Together, in the guardhouse?” Even thinking of the guardhouse brought a pain to his heart that felt as if it would break him in two.