It went on like that for a week. Piers would push his way into the room, and Eliza would manage to thrust him back out. Sometimes she thought they were actually enjoying it, the two of them. Eliza took to shouting at the earl with relish. And Piers had never hesitated to shout back. They were a pair.
But once or twice, she caught Piers’s face when he looked at her, and she understood that she was hurting him. She did understand that.
“But it doesn’t matter, it can’t matter,” she whispered to herself in the depth of the night, thinking of it. “I can’t—I cannot be a duchess. Never. It’s inconceivable.”
Finally, Piers declared her ready to travel, back to the castle at least. Eliza wanted to put her in a gown, but Linnet said no. She could talk now, albeit in a low voice. “The sheet,” she said hoarsely. “It’s bigger.”
Eliza immediately caught what she was saying. “Your hair’s curling all over,” she said. “So that’s good. It looks like that short haircut some ladies get. It’s à la mode, which means French ladies probably did it first.”
Her hair didn’t matter; she knew it would grow back. Yet even thinking about leaving this room and people staring at her face made Linnet want to vomit. Or faint.
But leave the room she did, wrapped up like a mummy and carried by Mr. Buller, Piers’s coachman.
It wasn’t so terrible leaving the inn . . . but when they got to the castle, Prufrock was there, and the footmen. The duke came down the stairs to greet them, and Linnet actually prayed for a quick death after she saw the kindness in his eyes.
But as death didn’t seem to be offered, she closed her eyes, and pretended, as fervently as she could, that none of this was happening. That she was in London, dancing with Prince Augustus. The prince was smiling down at her with that besotted expression he tended to have around her.
“Of course she’s fine,” Piers’s rough voice said, interrupting her daydream. “She looks like a lobster, and she’s twice as irritable.”
The dance . . . Prince Augustus turned her in a circle and she caught a glimpse of a row of faces ogling them, frankly envious. Her skirts were swirling—
“No, she’s just having a fit of the megrims,” Piers barked. And then, off-handedly, “Someone show Buller the way to her bedchamber.”
With Linnet’s eyes closed, she could hear Eliza tapping up the stairs before them, and the sound of Buller’s heavy breathing.
“I’m sorry if I’m too heavy,” she said. Her voice was no longer rasping.
“Not at all, miss,” Buller said. His voice was kind. All the kindness was mortifying, worse than the moment when the whole ballroom gave her the cut direct. Honestly, she preferred Piers’s irritatability.
A moment later she was in bed. “His lordship said as you should get up today,” Eliza said. “Perhaps Lady Bernaise might join you for tea.”
“No,” Linnet said, firmly. When evening came, she closed her eyes but she couldn’t sleep. Instead she lay in bed, listening to the sounds of the castle, distant clinkings, floors squeaking, the sound of the front door opening and closing.
Over the next few days she ate everything Eliza brought to her, and she obediently walked in circles around the bed to gather strength, but she refused to leave the chamber. Piers had stopped trying to visit her; she had taken to rolling over with a pillow on top of her head the moment he entered, and no matter how he ranted, she didn’t listen.
“I am strong enough to return to London,” she told Eliza one evening. “Will you please inform the duke?”
“I’ll tell him,” Eliza said uneasily. “But what of—”
“I am grateful for the earl’s care of me,” she said steadily. “But I have made up my mind not to marry him. Which is no more than he said to me, before I became ill. I’m not marrying anyone who pities me, Eliza. Never.”
Eliza sighed and left the room.
Chapter Thirty-Four
She wants to leave,” the duke said to Piers.
“Bollocks,” Piers said angrily. “She can’t leave.”
“Her maid says that she is quite strong and sat up for the entire day yesterday.”
“Her skin is still scabbed over, which may well lead to infections. She should be under medical care.”
“Are such infections common?”
Piers hated the fact his father’s eyes were so sympathetic. It was bad enough that he and his mother were gazing at each other like feverish adolescents. He turned away, raking his hand through his hair so the ribbon fell away. “No,” he admitted. “No.”
“Perhaps if you let her go, she will come back to you,” the duke said. “When she is well.”
“She won’t.” Piers took off across the garden in front of the castle, his cane digging savagely into the grass.
His father kept pace with him. “She loves you. Why wouldn’t she come back to you? I came back to you.”
“Oh God, is that the cue for a tender reunion?” Piers said, stopping at the edge of a flower bed.
“Not unless you wish it.”
He stood still, a tacit yes.
The duke took a deep breath. “I know you hate to hear this, but I’m sorry for injuring you, for ruining your life, Piers. I would cut off my own leg, if I could. I would—”
“Killing yourself wouldn’t achieve much,” Piers said. His father’s eyes, oddly enough, were just like his. In his imagination, he always saw them with pupils contracted and the wild gleam of opium intoxication.
But those were childhood memories. What was in front of him was a grieving man, but a strong man. A loving man.
“I forgive you,” Piers said flatly. He wasn’t good at this sort of thing, so he thought for a moment if there was something else Linnet would think he should say. Too bad she was locked in a bedchamber playing Sleeping Beauty.
His father’s eyes glistened with tears. “I will never forgive myself. Never.”
Then he knew what Linnet would do. He opened his arms and his father came to him, just as he had when Piers was small and his father was large.
All this emotion was making him feel even more irritable, so he pulled back and snapped, “By the way, my life isn’t ruined.”
“You suffer intolerable pain,” his father said, dropping his arms.
Piers whacked off the head of a nodding daisy with his cane. “That hasn’t ruined me. I’m a hell of a doctor. I wouldn’t even be a doctor if you hadn’t developed a liking for opium.” He scowled at his father. “I’d rather be dead than not be a doctor.”
A smile tugged at the corner of the duke’s mouth. But: “You have no family and no friends.”
“Bollocks. I have Sébastien. You sent Prufrock to me. And I have Linnet, if I can manage to keep her.”
“You’d better keep her,” his father said. “If your life isn’t ruined, that is.”
“She wants to go.” Piers decapitated another flower. “She won’t talk to me. I wrote her a letter, and her maid reported that she ripped it up without reading it.”
“When I decided that I couldn’t bear not knowing you any longer, I took a carriage to Wales knowing you’d be furious. Linnet was just an excuse.”
“Every time I go to her chamber, she rolls over and hides.” Two more flowers lost their heads.
His father gave a little shrug, and that came back to Piers too. That little shrug of amused acceptance. He had always thought that the only memories he carried of his father were of intoxication. But apparently, not so. “I suppose I could go to her room in the night.”
“You could. At least that way it would be dark. She wouldn’t have to worry that you were looking at her.”
“That’s absurd. I was the one who rescued her from that chicken coop. I know exactly what she looks like!”
“Your mother thinks that her skin is at the root of the problem, however.”
“Why?” Piers ran his hand through his hair again.
“Linnet is mortified by the loss of her beauty.”
“She hasn’t
lost her beauty! Her skin is not the same, but the rest of her is just as good as it ever was.”
“To Linnet, she has lost her beauty, and for a woman that exquisite, it must be a tremendous shock.”
“No doubt.” Moodily he took out three more flowers. “She’s vain enough to drop me for that reason, so it must be important. You know, she pleaded with me in the drawing room that day, after you and Maman climbed out the window. She begged me to marry her. She said she didn’t mind playing the fool for me.”
His father nodded.
“But apparently all that love was contingent on being beautiful enough to control me,” Piers said, thrusting his cane back into the ground. “Or something.”
“Or believing that she was good enough for you,” his father suggested. “I didn’t see any signs that Linnet had hope of controlling you.”
Piers gave a bark of laughter. “Good enough for me? For a cripple with a ferocious temper and a vile tongue?”
“You’re the one she wants. I have the distinct impression that you are the only man she has ever wanted, though she has been courted by princes, as well as every eligible man in the ton. Likely very few vile tempers in the group.”
“Fools, all of them,” Piers muttered.
“You’ll join that crew if you let her go.”
“I never dared to imagine someone like her. Or a life with someone like that.”
“That’s no reason not to dare now she’s standing before you. There’s something about the two of you together—”
“She’s like my other half,” Piers said savagely, keeping his head down. “My other bloody half, like some sort of joke that Plato made up. Like nothing I ever wanted, and then, there she was.”
His father put a hand on his shoulder. “Go tell her that.”
Piers swallowed. The idea was horrific. Blurting it out to his father was one thing; telling a woman who wouldn’t even look at him was another. His feet were surrounded by flower petals. “Is that what you said to Maman?”
“No. She wouldn’t listen to me.”
There was something amused in his voice. Piers raised a hand. “I do not want to know.”
His father grinned, shrugged. “Do whatever you have to.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
It took until the next afternoon to think of a plan. His instincts told him that visiting Linnet at night would just make things worse. He couldn’t say why, exactly, but he trusted his instincts as a doctor, so he might as well trust them when it came to Linnet.
Humiliatingly, he had to ask for help. It was like the bloody labors of Hercules, courting Linnet. And he wasn’t exactly hero material. Remembering the way he had crawled along that corridor, arse-naked (albeit in the dark) made him shudder.
But he swallowed his pride and asked for help, and never mind the fact that Hercules never needed help.
“What do you mean, you want me to go to Linnet’s bedchamber?” Sébastien said, looking horrified. “I certainly will not!”
“I’ll be with you, you cretin,” Piers said. “You’re going to pick her up and carry her out of the castle and down to the pool.”
Sébastien’s mouth fell open. “I certainly will not!” he squealed again. “Are you mad?”
“Have I ever been wrong when it comes to a diagnosis?”
“Of course you have!”
Piers waved his hand. “Ninety percent of the time I’m not, am I?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“I’ve diagnosed her, and now I must cure her.”
His cousin eyed him. “She’ll likely scream bloody murder.”
“No, she won’t,” Piers said. “I’ve already told Prufrock to get everyone out of the way. And she’s too embarrassed by her appearance to want to draw attention to herself.”
“Is it still quite terrible?” Sébastien asked.
Piers shrugged. “Who cares?”
“She does, you lout.”
“Just come with me to fetch her and spare me the sermonizing.”
“What if she never speaks to me again?” Sébastien moaned.
“Once she marries me, you’ll both be living in the castle. She’ll have to break down and greet you at breakfast.”
But Sébastien still protested all the way up the stairs. At the door of Linnet’s bedchamber he caught Piers’s arm. “She’ll hate me for this. I don’t want her to hate me.”
“Don’t be a fool,” Piers snarled. He was having enough trouble suppressing his own doubts without having to contend with Sébastien’s. He turned the handle.
In the end, it was quite easy. At the first sight of him Linnet dove under the sheet. Which meant it was the work of a moment to roll her up in that sheet.
She made muffled noises and tried to struggle, but her arms and legs were pinned.
“Are you sure she’s still breathing?” Sébastien asked, as he made his way with some difficulty down the path.
Piers prodded at Sébastien’s cargo, provoking a new struggle. Furious sounds were coming from the bundle. “It appears she is.”
“What now?” Sebastian said when they reached the pool.
“Put her over there,” Piers said. “On that flat rock. I couldn’t have done it without you, but feel free to leave immediately. No need to come back; my fiancée is going to walk back under her own steam.”
The words emanating from the bundle took on a tone that suggested profanation.
Sébastien left, shaking his arms. Piers waited until his cousin rounded the curve leading to the guardhouse, and then said, “All right, you can take the sheet off. He’s gone.”
Instantly the sheet exploded in thrashing movement. Piers stood, arms folded, until Linnet popped out. She was wearing nothing but a light chemise, and he took a moment to enjoy the sight.
“Don’t you dare look at me like that!” she shouted. And then she realized where she was.
It was a lovely day. The sky was hot and blue, with just wisps of clouds, like ragged lace high above the wheeling seabirds.
“Oh,” she breathed. “You brought me to the pool.”
“Why don’t you take off your chemise before we swim?” he asked.
She seemed not to hear him, her eyes dreamy as she stared down at the blue water.
“Your chemise,” he repeated, pulling off his boots. “Take it off.”
She finally turned and frowned at him. “I will not.”
“Your choice,” he said. He tossed his shirt to the side.
Her eyes flicked away from his chest with indifference. He pushed down his breeches.
“You needn’t bother undressing,” she said. “I will not swim, and I am not interested in anything more intimate.” In fact, she seemed to be shuddering a little at the very thought.
That was annoying. In wordless reply, Piers reached out and gave her a shove between her shoulder blades.
She hit the water with a shriek, and came up spluttering. “You pull me out this second,” she shouted, hanging on to the side of the pool. “My skin prickles, and it’s freezing!”
“Better start swimming,” he said, pulling down his smalls. He had an erection again. It wasn’t his favorite thing in the world, jumping into an ocean pool with an erection, but there it was.
He saw Linnet look at that part of him, then he dove off the rock over her, and swam back to the edge where she was clinging. Of course her teeth were chattering now.
“The water’s not that cold today,” he said. “The sun’s been out for three days. You should get moving.” But he scooped her against his body, as he always had. He hadn’t held her close for days—and it was so . . . so . . . His heart clenched, like the beginning of a cardiac attack.
“We need to swim,” he said, pushing her off. “Go!”
“I’ve been ill.” But her voice lacked conviction.
“You’re well now. You’re just malingering.” He grinned at her furious expression, and then reached out and pinched her bottom.
She
narrowed her eyes. “Don’t you dare touch me. Ever.”
“I shall whenever I want to,” he said. “You’re mine. You might want to start swimming or you’ll freeze.” Without another word he turned and started swimming slowly down the pool. It took a second, but she began swimming after him.
When he had his worst days, during which the pain in his leg was all he could think about, coming here to the pool set him free. It cleared his head, stopped him from thinking about laudanum and brandy. Stopped him from contemplating suicide.
So, he swam just in front of Linnet in case she needed help, hoping that the water would have the same soothing effect on her. At the other end, she caught hold of a rock and panted for a moment. He tried to pull her against him, but she said, “I’m fine,” pushed away, and started swimming.
This time he swam behind. She was doing fine without his help, and besides, it gave him a fine glimpse of her legs kicking up and down.
When she reached the flat rock, she was blown, puffing and wheezing; he popped her up on the side, and climbed out after her.
“Is that all the swimming you’re doing?” she said, running like a rabbit over to the towels.
“I have to make sure you’re not going to steal away.”
She kept her back to him. “Where would I go? I have no clothing.”
“That’s right, I forgot,” he said. “You’re too much of a coward to be seen in red.” Then he dove back in and started swimming, checking every so often to make sure she was still there. She had lain down on the rock, so bundled up in the sheet as well as towels that he could see nothing more than the tip of her ruddy nose.
By two lengths later, it seemed the peace and the sunshine had worn down her resistance. She had unwound the towels and sheet and even taken off her chemise. She was lying like a mermaid on the rock, soaking up the sun.
Five more lengths, and he decided her skin had probably had enough.
He hoisted himself out of the pool and walked over to her, shaking his head so that cold drops flew all over her and made her squawk with annoyance.