“Likely she does want him. It’d be a good thing too. She would go back to being a duchess, and stay safe here in England, and I would send my mother to London as well.”
“Why—” But there was really no point in asking Sébastien. He was prancing down the stairs in front of Piers, looking like a cockerel at dawn. Clearly he understood women better than Piers did. He was practically a woman himself, given the embroidery on his waistcoat.
“She won’t take your father back unless you mend fences with him, though,” Sébastien tossed over his shoulder. “At the moment, she has to be angry for you as well as for herself.”
“Bollocks,” Piers said again.
Sébastien reached the bottom of the stairs and turned into the drawing room. Piers heard his voice emerging. “Ah, ma tante, you look as ravishing as if you were a mere eighteen.”
“Bollocks!” Piers told Prufrock, who was standing about looking as if he was enjoying himself.
Sure enough, his mother had crammed herself into a gown that had to have been made for a woman with half her bosom. “Maman,” he said, bowing and then kissing her fingertips. But when he looked about, the target of all this feminine extravagance was nowhere to be seen. “Where’s the duke?”
“Who?” his mother said disdainfully.
“You know: hawk nose, cheekbones, sober look? We used to live in his vicinity.”
She took a sip of wine. “I suppose he doesn’t care for a preprandial drink. And I hear that he’s leaving at dawn tomorrow. We’ll have the castle to ourselves.”
She smiled gaily enough, but Piers could see the shadow in her eyes. Damn it, Linnet was right. Sébastien too, probably. “Where’s my fiancée?” he asked, looking around. The doctors were clustered around the sherry. Sébastien was kicking the fire, endangering the high polish he maintained on his boots.
“I don’t know,” his mother said. “Perhaps she’s directing her maids to pack her trunks.”
“She’s not leaving,” he said, accepting a glass of brandy from Prufrock. “She’s trying to drive me into fits of violence by flirting with the idea of accepting my hand. Not that I ever really offered it.”
His mother looked at him with pity in her eyes. “She’ll never marry you, darling. Linnet will cause an uproar in Napoleon’s court, just by walking in the door. All this fuss about her reputation . . . no one will care about that.”
“You’re saying she’s too good for me?”
“Good I know nothing about,” his mother said, waving her fan. “But too beautiful: of a certainty. You should have married her the moment she got here, before she had a chance to get to know you.”
Prufrock actually broke into a trot crossing the room, and Piers turned, knowing exactly who was about to enter.
Linnet’s evening dress was cut in a vaguely classical style. Piers had heard the rumor that Roman matrons wore no undergarments beneath their tunics, and apparently Linnet took that historical aspect of her costume very seriously.
The muslin of her gown was so sheer that he could see the bump of her knee as she posed in the doorway, waiting for Prufrock to announce her. And as for the muslin around her bosom—well, there wasn’t much. Bits of lace here and there, and a string of pearls that did a subtle job of calling attention to the swell of her breasts.
He could feel an unfamiliar grin on his lips. His mother didn’t know everything; that dress was intended for him.
He started limping across the room, but Sébastien flitted ahead, cutting directly before him with a muttered “Excuse me, I’m in a hurry.”
So Piers slowed down. There was no use competing with Sébastien’s Continental flummery; his cousin took a glass of champagne from Prufrock so he could ceremoniously give it to Linnet. Watching him kiss her hand was enough to make him a bit nauseated, so he turned around and stumped back to the sideboard to retrieve his glass of brandy.
She would come to him. Not that it mattered, because they were both merely toying with each other. It wasn’t the flirtation, but the similarity to himself that intoxicated him.
In her own way she was a female version of him: dislikable. Too beautiful, too intelligent, too sharp-tongued.
Not that he was beautiful.
She didn’t come to him. Instead, maddeningly, she seemed to find Sébastien’s chatter delightful. Five minutes later, his father walked into the room, looking drawn and tired and like a man who’d given up. Which Piers found he resented even more than he had loathed His Grace’s longing glances.
In the end, Sébastien brought Linnet over. “I thought perhaps you didn’t notice that your fiancée had entered the room.”
“Good evening, fiancée.”
“Beelzebub,” she said, inclining her head. There was a secret smile in her eyes.
“I’ve been demoted,” he said lazily, leaning back against the sideboard. “I’m sure people have called me Lucifer in the past. Wasn’t Beelzebub just a lesser devil?”
“In fact, I think you are confusing your demons. Beelzebub is another name for the Evil One himself.”
“Oh good,” Piers said. “I’m ferociously competitive. I think I told you that before.”
“Enough of this charming conversation,” Sébastien interjected. “If I want to watch dogs snarling at each other, I can go to the fights.”
“Now, now,” Piers said. “You mustn’t call Linnet a snarling dog. As soon as she decides to throw my father’s proposal back in my face, you’ll be free to snatch her up. But not if you’ve insulted her.”
Of course Sébastien took the opportunity to bow again, and kiss Linnet’s hand, and protest that she was the most charming, agreeable, and exquisite member of the fair sex whom he’d ever, et cetera, et cetera. Piers watched him, marveling that Sébastien didn’t seem to realize how much Linnet loathed that sort of fawning attention.
Oh, she was smiling at him, and holding out her hand. But her eyes were completely unmoved, even as she gave him that lavish smile she seemed to use as ammunition.
It certainly worked on Sébastien. Piers had known him all his life, and he’d never seen quite that expression on his face.
“Enough,” he said to Linnet. “If this were a dogfight, you’d be a mastiff and he a mere spaniel. Save your artillery for stronger opponents.”
Sébastien frowned at him. “What are you talking about, Piers? You’re making less sense than usual.”
Linnet tucked her arm through Sébastien’s and laughed. “He’s jealous,” she said, though her eyes showed perfectly well that she knew he wasn’t. “You’re such a dashing figure, my lord. It’s hard to believe the two of you grew up together.”
“I’m a glass of fashion,” Piers stated.
Sébastien and Linnet stared for a moment at his costume. He was wearing the same sort of thing he always wore: a plain-cut coat with plain buttons, plain breeches, a neckcloth tied in under five seconds. The skirts of Sébastien’s coat, in contrast, were greater in circumference than Linnet’s gown. Not to mention the fact that said coat was a garish mustard color.