Suddenly she could understand what he was saying. “I don’t want to let go of you,” she said, shaking the wet hair back from her face because she didn’t want to unwrap even one arm from his body. “I’ll freeze. Or drown. You’re w-warm.”
“Swimming, remember?” he said. His teeth were clenched, which seemed to suggest he was as cold as she was. But wasn’t he used to it?
“I know we’re here to swim,” she said. “Tell me how to do it, and I’ll—I’ll consider it.” In fact, she wasn’t going to let go of him until they were out of the pool altogether.
But he ruthlessly pried her body away from his. She gasped at the loss of warmth and her teeth instantly started chattering again.
“You need to learn how to float,” he snarled. There was something awfully grim about his tone.
She picked up floating instantly. “I’ll just die like this, shall I?” she said, her face surrounded by freezing water, her teeth clicking together like castanets.
“I think you’d better get out now,” he said, sounding exasperated.
“Wa-warm me up first,” she said.
With a muffled curse, he jerked her against him. It was just as wonderful as the first time. With a sigh of relief, she put her head on his shoulder and let the incredible furnace of his body seep into her pores. But a second later, strong arms were around her waist, hoisting her straight in the air and depositing her on the side of the pool. She drew up her toes.
“Towels are over there,” he barked.
She looked down at him, so bemused that at first she didn’t register what he was saying. Piers was at home in the water, in his element. As she watched, he pivoted and pushed off from the rock wall, surfacing halfway across the pool. First one arm and then the other came out of the water, and then he was shooting away from her, bubbles churning behind him.
There were three towels. Linnet took one and wrapped it around her shivering torso, then she took another and wrapped it around her hair. She returned to the rock and watched Piers slice through the water, length after length. He showed no signs of stopping, so she went back, took the third towel and, once seated at the edge of the pool, wrapped her feet and ankles in it.
After that she sat, entirely swathed in toweling except for her face, and watched the broad planes of Piers’s back and shoulders as he tore up and down the pool.
Slowly her body warmed as she sat cocooned and the morning sun poured down on her. Mrs. Hutchins would faint to see her. Faint? She would have an apoplectic fit. Not only was Linnet sitting next to the water, dressed in nothing more than a drenched chemise, but there was a nearly naked man not much farther than an arm’s length away.
In this situation, a few freckles didn’t seem to matter so much, so she tilted her head back and drank up the sunshine and the clear blue sky. It went so far above her head that she couldn’t imagine the top of it. Far, far up a seabird was lazily circling, looking for a fish perhaps.
***
Piers touched the edge, counted fifty lengths. He didn’t stop, just flipped over and swam back the other way. His body was dealing with a feverish kind of energy that didn’t require a medical degree to diagnose. Sixty lengths. He was exhausted, but still there was a river of molten lava running under his skin.
Finally he pulled himself out of the water, his eyes going directly to Linnet. Her head was tilted back and her neck was pale cream in the sunshine. The towel had slipped from her hair, which lay in dark red coils all over the white cloth.
As he was trying to gather together the shards of his wits, she straightened up and opened her eyes. “I’m so sorry about nearly drowning you,” she said, her eyes giving him that secret smile that he—
Well, that he liked to see.
“I truly didn’t mean to,” she continued. “You’re just so much warmer than I am.”
He was when a luscious female body wrapped around him, clinging like seaweed on a rope.
“You look warm enough now,” he said, hearing the grating tone in his own voice. Well, it wasn’t as if she would guess why he sounded so angry. Thank God for his reputation.
She blinked. “I took all the towels! You must be freezing.” She scrambled to her feet, which made all her towels fall to the ground.
It would be sacrilege to refer to those breasts as mammary glands. They were glorious, plump, yielding . . . Her chemise was translucent with water. It clung to her thighs, to a beautiful, dark place between her legs.
“Here, take one of these,” she was saying. She threw him a towel and he just managed to catch it and wind it hastily around his waist.
“You know?” She glanced at him, and a little flare of color rose in her cheeks.
“What?” he said, rearranging himself discreetly and then rewrapping the towel more tightly.
“You’re going to laugh, being a doctor and all, but my mother said something once . . .”
“What?” He had always had control over his body. Always. This was an aberration.
“She told me once that men hung.”
“Hung?” he repeated. If he looked just at her face, then he wouldn’t see the way thin linen clung to her breasts, to her hips. He wouldn’t think about the deep hunger flaring in his groins. It was just a biological urge, nothing more.
“Hung,” she said, giggling again. “In front. You don’t hang, do you?” She waved a hand in the general vicinity of his waist. “You don’t mind my saying that, do you? I formed this disgusting vision of—of a hanging thing and—well, you don’t hang at all. You stand straight up.”
He burst out laughing.
“I know,” she said, laughing too. “I’m a fool.”
But he had an uneasy feeling that he was the fool.
Chapter Ten
Linnet lingered in a bath for an hour, drinking hot chocolate and finishing Miss Fanny Burney’s Camilla. But finally there were no more cans of hot water, and she’d finished the book, so she stood up.
“I wonder if this castle has a library,” she said to her maid, Eliza. “I only brought five novels, and I read them all in the carriage on the way here.”
“Couldn’t you just read them again?” Eliza suggested, handing her a towel. “It seems a waste to look at them just the once. Better to buy a ribbon that you can use over and over.”
“I might reread that one,” Linnet said, nodding toward Camilla. “It was quite good. I already read Miss Butterworth and the Mad Baron twice. Actually, three times.” She sat down at her dressing table.
“It’s funny, miss, how you do all that reading,” Eliza said, starting to comb through Linnet’s wet hair. “If the gentlemen in London knew you were such a bluestocking!”
“What difference could it possibly make?”
Eliza pursed her lips. “Nobody likes a girl with more wit than hair, but on the other hand, I never heard of a lady who reads the way you do. It would shake them up, all those foolish types who jumped to thinking the prince trifled with you.”
“I doubt it,” Linnet said. “I expect it’s far more interesting to talk about my purported royal baby than my reading habits.”
“Well, I do know that there is a library here. Mr. Prufrock mentioned it last night at dinner.”
“Have they made you comfortable?” With a fillip of guilt over not accompanying her to Wales himself, her father had sent along not only Eliza, but footmen, grooms, and the boot boy for good measure.
“Oh, yes, miss. We’re in the west wing, along with the people who are dying of cankers and such. They told us to never go to the east wing, as that’s where they put the ones with infections. That a body could catch, I mean. There’s one housekeeper for each wing, and another for the castle. Some patient was groaning just terrible last night so I thought I’d never sleep, but he finally stopped. Mr. Prufrock said that if it happens again, I should complain, and they’ll hush him up.”
“How on earth can they do that? If the man’s in pain, I mean.”
“Give him some medicine, I shouldn’t wo
nder,” Eliza said. “Why don’t you go wait by the fire, miss, until your hair dries?”
Linnet groaned. “Because I haven’t anything to read. Could you possibly run down to that library and bring me a book or two, Eliza?”
“I suppose I could ask a footman to help me find it,” Eliza said. “There’s one who’s rather attractive, with the funniest name. He was telling me last night that the doctor threatened to cut off his head and see if he could walk around with it.”
Ten minutes later she had returned with a stack of books. “There are oh so many of them,” she reported. “I couldn’t find anything that looked like the sort of novel you like to read, though.”
The books weren’t exactly Linnet’s general reading fare, but a desperate woman will read anything. “Did you know that eating a melon will cure swelling?” she asked Eliza, some time later.
“Really? Maybe a toe. But I doubt any other kind; my da used to get a terrible swollen nose if he drank too much. Do put that book down now, miss. I have your corset ready.”
Rather reluctantly, Linnet put the book to the side. “It also says that onions should be used to freshen the breath.”
“Plain foolishness,” Eliza stated, lacing her corset and then easing a gown over Linnet’s curls, which were now pulled up and fastened all over her head with shining little enameled flowers. When she started buttoning up the back, Linnet caught up the book again.
“My aunt drinks huge quantities of Daffy’s Elixir,” Linnet said. “She thinks that keeps her slim. This book suggests stewed ox-cheek.”
“That’s revolting.” Eliza paused and then added thoughtfully. “It probably works for that very reason.”
“I wonder what Lord Marchant thinks of patent medicines,” Linnet said. “Do you know where he might be found?”
“By all accounts he’s usually up with the patients. Do stand still, miss. I just need to fix this last button—there. You’ve an hour before the luncheon bell.”
Linnet took a quick look at herself in the glass—front and sides.
“No sign of a baby,” Eliza said cheerfully. “I wonder when the duke will notice. By all accounts he’s mad on the subject of royalty, just mad. He’ll be that disappointed when it turns out you’re not the mopsy he wanted for his son.”
Linnet sighed. “Does everyone in the household know everything?”
“Not this household,” Eliza said, shocked. “Though I have to admit that they’ve started a betting pool below stairs. Mr. Prufrock isn’t nearly as stuffy as Mr. Tinkle at home; Mr. Tinkle would never have countenanced such a thing.”
“Is the pool over whether I am carrying a child or not?”
“Oh, no! We, that is, all of us from home, know that you had Stubbins drive you about London with nary a stop to pick up that prince. It’s on whether Lord Marchant will find himself infatuated with you.”
“I sincerely hope you didn’t put your life savings into it,” Linnet said, heading for the door.
“Every one of us who came along with you, we’re betting for you. And the whole household here, well, they’re betting for his lordship. He’s got them all scared to death. They think he’s inhuman.”
“For good reason, no doubt,” Linnet said. “They work for him after all. You’re going to lose your money, Eliza. Lord Marchant and I already agreed that we don’t suit.”
Eliza grinned. “Why don’t you just wander on upstairs and ask him about pickled calf’s cheek or whatever it was?” She darted across the room and tugged Linnet’s bodice a little lower. “Now you’re ready.”
Linnet made her way to the infirmary on the third floor, but when she poked her head in the door, there was no sight of Piers, or indeed, of any of the doctors. The patient from yesterday raised his head, though, and said something she couldn’t understand, so she walked over to him.
He looked rather like a dog, the kind of shaggy dog who hangs around alleyways looking pathetic and scabrous. “Your skin condition looks quite painful,” she said. “We didn’t have a chance to meet yesterday, but my name is Miss Thrynne.”
“Mither Hammer’ock,” the patient managed. His tongue was certainly swollen.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” she asked. “Would you like some water?”
“The doctor said there’s nothing to do for him,” came a voice from behind her.
She turned about to find a small boy in the next bed. He wasn’t much more appealing than Mr. Hammerhock, being all teeth and bones. He too had a kind of dog-in-the-alley scrappiness about him, with brown hair sticking up every which way on his head. He was too pale. She felt a pulse of alarm; surely he wasn’t one of the dying patients Eliza mentioned.
“Nothing to do for him doesn’t mean he can’t drink water,” she said. “And what is your name?”
“Gavan,” he said, pushing himself up in the bed. “Hammerhock there, see, yesterday they decided he had some sort of a fever. So the nurse comes by once in a while and puts a wet cloth on his face and gives him some medicine.”
Hammerhock was nodding.
“Where is the nurse?” Linnet inquired. She was feeling, if the truth be told, rather out of her depth.
“She’s taking a break,” Gavan said. “It gives her the megrims being cooped up in here with all of us dying folk.”
“Dying? Are you dying?”
Gavan smirked. “The doctor says as how we’re all dying.”
Mr. Hammerhock made a strangled noise from his bed, so Linnet turned to him. He pointed to a glass of water, and she helped him take a sip. He lay back and closed his eyes.
Linnet looked down the row of patients, but most of them seemed to be in a stupor, so she sat down on Gavan’s bed. “How did you end up here?”
“Me mum brought me,” he said, frowning. “And she left me.”
“Do you live very far from the castle?”
“Not very far. Well, further than to market.”
“And now the doctor is taking care of you,” Linnet said. “Soon you’ll be able to go home again.”
“Can’t go home,” Gavan said. “I can’t go home because I’m sick and here I have this bed, see. So me mum said I should stay here because, well, I have sheets, don’t I? And food, all the food I want.”
The door behind Linnet’s shoulder opened and a flock of men swept in. Before she even turned around she heard Piers’s growl. “Well, well, look who’s here, trying to burnish her halo.”
Linnet was watching Gavan, who was pushing himself even further up in bed, grinning madly.
Then she heard the thumping sound of a cane, and Piers was standing on the other side of the bed. “Slumming with the nearly dead and the newly bred, are you?”
“What’s newly bred?” And, without pausing, “Did you see this lady?” Gavan pointed to Linnet.
Piers’s eyebrow went up. “I did see the lady. What do you think of her? I was considering marrying her.”
Gavan nodded. “My da says . . .” He hesitated.
“Out with it,” Piers said. “She looks like a lady, but she’s not.”
Linnet glared at him.
“My da says that the best womenfolk have really big peaches,” Gavan said. He peered right at Linnet’s chest, so naturally, Piers did as well. “You’d better take her,” he said to Piers. “That cane means some women won’t want you.”
Ignoring Linnet’s scowl, Piers bent down to take a closer look at the attributes in question. “Are you sure? I always fancied a black-haired girl with a kind of gypsy look about her.”
Gavan threw him a disgusted look. “Don’t you know anything about womenfolk?”
“Maybe not as much as you do.”
“A gal who looks like a gypsy, well, she probably is a gypsy. And if you marry her, you’ll have to go out and live in the ditches because she won’t want to stop in one place, not for long.”
“Couldn’t I just let her go on her own?”
“Not if you’re married,” Gavan said. “Then you’re chained together
, you know. That’s what my da says.”
“How are you feeling today?” Piers changed the subject. “Been up yet?”
“Nurse let me get up to use the chamber pot. But then I pretended to miss and splash her on the shoe, so she said I was as bad as Old Nick and put me back in bed.” He had the clear, happy laughter of children in the park.
“Where is the nurse?” Linnet asked, glancing up at Piers. “Gavan seems to think she’s having an attack of the megrims.”
“Too much dying around here,” Gavan said cheerfully.
“Probably sneaking my brandy,” Piers said. “I would if I had to cope with Gavan urinating on my slippers. Gavan, you tell me if Nurse Matilda rolls in here, drunk as a top, won’t you?”
Gavan nodded vigorously.
“Do you like the nurse?” Linnet asked him.
“She won’t let me get up. She says if I get up, she’ll give my bed away.”
There was another strangled noise from the next bed. Piers and his little coterie had moved farther down the row, so Linnet leaned toward Mr. Hammerhock. “Yes?”
“For God’s sake, woman, move back,” came a roar from behind her. “There’s a chance he’s infectious, you bacon-brained fool.”
Linnet ignored him, as Mr. Hammerhock was laboriously managing a few words. “The nurse is a tartar,” he said finally, gasping from the effort.
“Are you really going to marry the doctor, then?” Gavan asked. “Because he’s not very nice. He’s always calling people rude names, and the nurse calls him Old Nick too.”
From across the ward, as if on cue, Piers roared at one of his young doctors.
“Me mum would wallop him,” Gavan said. “I think if you marry him, you’ll have to wallop him now and then.”
They both looked down the row at Piers’s imposing figure.
“Might not be easy,” Gavan added.
“I see what you mean,” Linnet agreed. “So would you like to get out of bed?”