“Of course you love your mother. But you love your father, too. And he loves you.”
“All this tender emotion so early in the morning is curdling my stomach.”
“You seem to have problems with your stomach,” she said pointedly. “Maybe Sébastien will be operating on you in thirty years.”
“Damn, I hope not. He’s as good as they come, but it’s not a pretty affair. Let’s go, shall we? I can’t take this much intimacy, and definitely not with a woman I haven’t slept with.”
Linnet drank up her chocolate and then swung her feet out of bed. She felt a pang of real sadness at the idea that Piers could never make love. “How did you injure your leg and—and the rest of you?” she asked, going over to the screen. She’d put her clothes out the night before.
When he didn’t answer, she turned around to find him gazing at her back. “What? Did I spill the hot chocolate?”
“That nightgown is practically transparent,” he said, his voice low and growly. “I can see your buttocks.”
She whisked herself behind the screen, feeling a rush of heat in her stomach—and a corresponding twinge of sadness. She, who never really wanted to sleep with a man (if she admitted the truth to herself)—well, she could envision herself in bed with one.
Piers.
Piers, who was incapable. It was the cruelest of ironies.
“I don’t like that word buttocks,” she said, controlling her voice so that not even a hint of desire emerged. “That’s a doctor’s word.”
“What would you prefer? Bottom? Arse? Ass?”
“Bottom, I suppose.”
“I think I like ass. It has such a round sound. Round and luscious.”
Linnet pulled her gown over her head and let it settle around her. Then she reached behind her and felt her bottom. It certainly felt round. Hopefully it was luscious, too.
She walked out and over to her dressing table. “I just have to brush my hair. I decided I would braid it today and see if that keeps it from getting too tangled. It’s giving Eliza no end of trouble.”
He walked up behind her and started doing up her buttons without being asked. Linnet drew the brush through her hair, and then caught his eyes in the glass, and paused.
“Just as if we’d been married ten years already,” he said with a lopsided smile.
“You don’t mean to ever marry, do you?”
“I don’t see any point.”
“Why not?” Then she realized why. “Oh, because you can’t have children?”
“The institution is designed for precisely that,” he said. “No point in it otherwise.”
She opened her mouth, but realized that she didn’t feel like defending love, or even companionship, to a misanthrope. Besides, she agreed with Piers that love and marriage often had little in common. She tied the half ribbon around the bottom of her braid and rose. “Shall we?”
He looked her up and down. “You look about fourteen with that braid. And you’ve left off your stockings.”
“I’ve come to agree that there’s no point. We never see anyone on the way out of the house anyway.”
“Prufrock is not one of those butlers who believe the staff has to be up and about at the crack of dawn.”
“He is a very unusual butler,” Linnet said, falling into step as she tucked her hand under Piers’s arm.
“I told you. He’s not a butler; he’s a spy for my father.”
“But why does your father have a spy in your house?”
Piers shrugged.
“Stop shrugging; you do that entirely too often when you want to avoid a question. Why does your father have a spy in your house?”
“I suppose he wants to know what goes on here.”
“And you said he has one in your mother’s house as well.”
“Yes.”
“He’s still in love with her, you know. And the feeling is mutual.”
“Sébastien said as much to me. They’ll have to make up their own minds about whether they want to act on it.”
Linnet glanced at him, but could see from his jaw that he didn’t want to discuss it further. Besides, it really was no business of hers. “So you told me that the rooms in the castle are all organized by various diseases.”
“As well as by sex,” he said, using his cane to knock a rock off the path before he stepped forward. “Patients are so pesky about decency and propriety.”
“Why is Gavan next to Mr. Hammerhock, then? You told me that Mr. Hammerhock could be infectious.”
“It’s unlikely. Petechial fever seems to stop being infectious after the skin lesions break open. I was just trying to stop you from falling in love with him. His charming rash makes him a danger to any woman. Not to mention that adorable lisp he developed. Although sadly, it seems to be going away as of last night.”
“I think the air is warmer today,” Linnet said as they turned the last bend, passed the guardhouse, and could see the pool.
“I don’t like the sky,” Piers said, squinting up.
“What’s the matter with it? There aren’t any clouds.” She dropped his arm and turned her back to be unbuttoned.
“That brooding color means a storm. Maybe.”
“Maybe? You’re a diagnostician of diseases, not weather.” She pulled off her dress. “Just get undressed, would you? I practiced swimming last night—”
“You did?”
“On the floor. Eliza came in, which confirmed all her suspicions that I’ve completely lost my mind.” She ran over to the rock overlooking the pool.
“Slow down. You’ll make me feel like a cripple.”
“By wounding your non-existent feelings?” she taunted. She moved to the very edge of the rock. There was a light wind blowing from the sea, bringing a kind of salty fever to the air.
Piers was pulling off his boots. He had taken one look at her, and then gone back to undressing. Obstinately, she wanted him to look again. She could tell that the wind had molded her chemise to her body, revealing every curve. She wanted . . .
With a start of guilt, she realized how cruel she was being. It was truly unkind to flaunt before him what he could never enjoy.
She sat down, pulling her knees to her chest. Piers was taking off his shirt, and she watched him while pretending to stare at the water. His chest was beautiful, with a sprinkling of hair that darkened just as it arrowed into his breeches. Her fingers trembled to touch him, to run her fingers over his chest, around to his back, down to his—
Buttocks. Or perhaps the right word for a man’s behind was arse, she thought, watching as he turned to put his breeches and shirt to the side.
A moment later they were both plunging down into the water. Rather than feeling mortally cold, she loved the thrill of the drop, the way the water shocked her, as if she had been sleeping until the instant she hit water.
And then she loved the way Piers hauled her up and against his body. But he didn’t let her cling there long.
“One hand on the side,” he barked. “Now, try swimming.”
She took a deep breath and pushed away from the side of the pool. And promptly sank.
He pulled her back up and shoved her toward the side again. “Float for a moment and then start moving your arms,” he ordered. “And don’t forget to kick.”