by Eloisa James
Not the same.
Oh, she had her mother’s charm. She knew that. She could twinkle at a man just the way her mother used to, and it was an odd man who didn’t get a faintly glazed expression in his eyes. Zenobia called it the “family smile,” and said it was their greatest inheritance. But what Linnet didn’t do was . . .
Follow through.
She didn’t even like being kissed, if the truth be told.
Kisses were messy, and saliva—well, saliva was disgusting.
She’d always thought that one day a man would stroll into the ballroom and she would realize that he was the one whom she could tolerate kissing. But no one appeared who sparked that realization, not once during the season. That was why she flirted so wildly with the prince.
A girl who is flirting with a prince is generally excused from flirting with other men, who understand exactly why, so it isn’t as if she is being rude. Besides, in her spare moments, Linnet generally twinkled at them, to keep a whole crowd about her. It made her feel as if she were on stage, à la Zenobia.
Who would have thought that the biggest thing of all—that quality of her mother’s that had practically defined her—would be so definitively missing in Rosalyn’s only daughter?
And yet, so it was.
Not only did she not desire men, she didn’t even like them very much.
They were big, and hairy, and tended to smell. Even her father, whom she loved, acted like a little boy. He complained and whined and carried on in the most tiresome fashion. They were all like little boys, she thought. And who could desire a little boy?
Her mother’s voice sounded in her head and she answered it irritably: hung like a horse or not, men were still pitiful creatures.
But it made her think of something. If the earl was incapable, then . . .
Then he was incapable.
They wouldn’t have to kiss. She wouldn’t have to put up with all that was implied by a man hung like a horse, which (thank you, Mama!) had revolted and horrified her for years.
All she had to do was appear to be carrying a child long enough to marry him, and then pretend to have lost the babe.
She’d never met a man yet whom she couldn’t charm into a good temper. She’d learned at the feet of a master, after all. Her mother had kept her father sweet-tempered—even after he had to throw Linnet’s French tutor out of the house, and roust another lover out of his new bed.
In fact, she could make a rational argument for marriage to Piers. She would never cuckold him, for one thing. (A man with his problem had to be afraid of that possibility.)
She was the best he could have hoped for: both beautiful and chaste. Practically sainthood material, really.
She stood up and took a last look around her mother’s room. “I miss you,” she told the laughing portrait on the wall. “I do miss you.” But the words pulled at her heart, so she hurried from the room.
Chapter Six
That night at supper, Linnet’s father reported that the Duke of Windebank had leaped on his proposal with undignified speed. “He apparently knew all about you. And Zenobia, it was clear you were right. He was unshaken—if not privately delighted—at the sound of Linnet’s little scandal.”
“Linnet was the talk of the ton,” Zenobia said, “long before last evening’s unfortunate events.”
“He wasn’t nearly as interested in her beauty as in her education, if you can believe it. I told him Linnet had about as much education as any girl should, and that she was the cleverest woman I knew, and that shut him up. I can’t think why he didn’t ever marry again. His wife took off for France years ago, didn’t she? Took the lad with her as well.”
“She was French, of course. He got a divorce,” Zenobia said. “The rumors were that it cost him two thousand pounds sterling to buy his freedom. And then he never did a thing with it.” She shook her head. “He could have had any number of possible heirs by this time.”
“What I don’t like is all this royalty-mongering,” Lord Sundon said. “Absolutely cracked on the subject of monarchy, if you ask me. He told me that a great-great-great aunt on his father’s side was intimate with Henry VIII.”
“Wasn’t he the king who had six wives?” Linnet asked.
“Had ’em and murdered ’em,” Zenobia said with relish, waving her fork. “Just like the story of Bluebeard, except it was all true.”
“At any rate, Windebank is happy because he’s got the blood of the Tudors in his veins, and now he’s getting the blood of the Hanovarians as well, through our Linnet.”
The viscount was looking a good deal happier than he had that morning. “All’s well that ends well,” he said, finishing his glass of wine. “Someday we’ll look back on this whole episode and laugh.”
Linnet couldn’t quite imagine that.
“I suppose you sent the prince a note,” Zenobia said to Linnet.
She nodded, though she had done nothing of the sort. “I’m meeting him in Vauxhall tonight.” In reality, she planned to have a nice nap in the carriage while it tooled around London.
“Vauxhall?” Zenobia asked dubiously. “Luckily it’s a warm night, but it seems an odd place for an assignation. One would think that he could whisk you away to some sort of royal lodge.”
“He probably will,” her father said. “Just be sure you’re back here in the morning. Windebank wants to meet you. I told him we wanted to send you off to Wales as soon as possible. No point in hanging around London.”
In their household, her mother had drawn all the fire for her improprieties. But sometimes Linnet thought her father was just as improper, in a different way. A shabbier way, if the truth be told.
“I think this will all work out better than it might have otherwise,” her father went on. “After all, Augustus could never have married you. And there isn’t a single duke on the market this year. Someday Marchant will be a duke.”
“She could have done better than a limp lily,” Zenobia pointed out. “I assume the duke is obtaining a special license?”
The viscount nodded. “Of course. He’s bringing it with him tomorrow. And he sent a messenger to Wales this very afternoon, so his son will have some warning. It isn’t in the normal course of things to acquire a wife and a child without notice, you know.”
“You’ll have to make sure the marriage takes place quickly,” Zenobia said, “just in case Linnet’s visit to Vauxhall tonight doesn’t have the desired effect.”
“Well, as to that . . .” her father said.
At the note in her father’s voice, Linnet stiffened. She knew it, had heard it a million times. “Papa, you can’t simply send me to Wales without a chaperone!” she said fiercely.
“Hate to bring up a painful truth, but you’ve got no further use for a chaperone,” he said evasively. “Though we might we able to persuade Mrs. Hutchins to accompany you if you insist.”
Zenobia narrowed her eyes. “Do you mean to tell me, Cornelius, that you are thinking of sending your only daughter into the wilds of Wales without your escort?”
“It’s not a good time for me to leave London,” Lord Sundon said, starting to bluster.
“I do not feel comfortable taking a journey of that length by myself, especially when I am going to meet a Beast,” Linnet said. She kept her voice light but firm, precisely as her mother would have done. And just to make absolutely sure that he understood her, she fixed him with a glare that she’d learned from her aunt.
“The Earl of Marchant has been unfairly maligned,” the viscount said. “Heard all about it from his father. He’s a brilliant physician, don’t you know. You remember his mother stole him away to France; well, he got a university degree over there. Then he returned here and did the same at Oxford and then he was admitted to the Royal College of Physicans at the age of twenty-three, which is practically unheard of, and then he went off to Edinburgh and did something or other there, or maybe he did that before the Royal—”
“Cornelius,” Zenobia said, cutting thro
ugh his bluster, “you are a precious coward.”
“I’m not a coward!” the viscount said. “I have important things to do here in the city. The House of Lords is meeting, I’ll have you know, and I’m very important—very important indeed. My voice is required, essential.”
“You’re a cringing coward,” Zenobia said. “You don’t want to go up there and face the Beast yourself, even though you are sending your daughter—your pregnant daughter—into the countryside to marry him.”
Now that Zenobia had got hold of the story, Linnet began to feel like one of those maidens who hung around King Arthur’s court and invariably found herself in the coils of a great serpent. Her aunt instinctively turned any event into a melodrama, though one had to admit that this was worthy of a little drama. “You are throwing your daughter onto the mercies of a wild man,” Zenobia said, her voice rising.
Rather surprisingly, the viscount did not back down. “I’ve already made up my mind. I shall not go to Wales.”
Linnet knew that sulky tone of voice; he wouldn’t go. “Why not?” she asked, before Zenobia could jump in.
“I am no pander for my daughter,” her father thundered. “I may have been a cuckold to my wife, but I will not double my shame by pandering my only child.”
“You already have,” Linnet snapped back. “You bartered me off this very afternoon, by lying about the child that we all know I’m not carrying.”
Lord Sundon’s jaw was rigid. “Your mother never would have spoken to me in such a fashion.”
That was true. Linnet could not remember a single occasion on which Rosalyn’s voice lost its sweet, musical tone. Whereas Linnet’s voice grated with the anger she couldn’t keep inside. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but the tone of my voice doesn’t change the truth.”
“The truth is that every girl is bartered off in some fashion or other,” Zenobia said. “But I really think that you should accompany poor Linnet, Cornelius. What if Marchant takes one look at the girl and refuses to marry her?”
“He won’t,” Lord Sundon said flatly. “We all know that—”
At that moment the door opened and Tinkle entered. “His Grace the Duke of Windebank begs your indulgence.”
“At this hour?” the viscount asked.
“Is he outside?” Zenobia demanded.
It appeared that the duke was indeed in his coach, waiting to see if Lord Sundon could spare him a moment.
“Bring him in,” the viscount said. Then, turning to Linnet. “I suppose he couldn’t wait until tomorrow to meet you.”
“He can’t see me,” Linnet said, alarmed. She looked down at her slim profile. “In this dress, I don’t have any evidence of royal progeny.”
“I told him you were barely showing,” her father said. “Just sit down quickly. We’d better see him in the rose drawing room.”
The Duke of Windebank had to be sixty, but he looked younger and very handsome. He had a regal profile, worthy of a coin, which seemed fitting for his rank. A Roman coin, Linnet decided.
“Miss Thrynne,” he said, bowing. “You are as beautiful as the world has described.”
Linnet dropped a curtsy, judging it to the precise inch to indicate respect for a duke. “I am honored to meet you, Your Grace.”
“Now,” he said, turning back to Linnet’s father and aunt. “I took it upon myself to interrupt you at this hour because I decided that I should personally escort Miss Thrynne to Wales. My son is a brilliant man, absolutely brilliant.”
He paused.
“But he does have a reputation for irascibility,” Zenobia said, giving him her version of the family smile. “Please do be seated, Your Grace.”
Despite his youthful aspect, the duke creaked when he sat down, like a chair left out in the rain. His eyes were suddenly wary. “My son has been much maligned.”
“I suggest we dispense with the pleasantries,” Zenobia said, rearranging the drape of her garments. “After all, we are soon to be family. Lord Marchant may be rather surprised, if not shocked, at the arrival of his bride, and it’s only natural that you wish to accompany dear Linnet, Your Grace.”
“Well, that’s settled,” Linnet’s father said, dispensing with any pretense of reluctance.
The duke looked from the viscount to Zenobia. “Will Miss Thrynne travel with a chaperone? Yourself, perhaps, Lady Etheridge?”
“No need for that,” Zenobia replied cheerfully. “She’s ruined. No point in guarding an empty stable, so to speak. Would you like to bring Mrs. Hutchins with you, my dear?” she asked Linnet.
Linnet looked from her father to her aunt and something familiar panged in the general region of her heart. But it was an old pain, a familiar pain, and easily shrugged off. “I think not,” she said. “If you don’t mind, Your Grace, I shall just come by myself, with my maid, of course. As my aunt says, the circumstances certainly suggest that a chaperone is not necessary.”
The duke nodded.
“If you’ll excuse me,” Linnet said, rising, “I have an appointment at Vauxhall.”
The gentlemen scrambled to their feet, and Zenobia followed, after accepting (in a most theatrical fashion) the duke’s help in rising.
After which Linnet climbed into a carriage, instructing the family coachman, Stubbins, to drive around London wherever he wished, and leaving her relatives with the happy, if quite mistaken, impression that Prince Augustus was vigorously debauching her.
It could be that she would never return to London, she realized, staring out the window. The city passed before the carriage in a long, dreary string of gray houses, made even dingier by a thick layer of coal dust.
That would mean she might not see her father again, as he never left the city. Or Aunt Zenobia, who left only for the most raucous of house parties.
At the moment, that idea was entirely untroubling.
Chapter Seven
In a caravan made up of three carriages and eight groomsmen, Linnet and the Duke of Windebank finally arrived in Wales two weeks later. Since the duke had only one subject of conversation at every meal—his son—by then she knew enough about her future husband to introduce him to the Royal College of Physicians herself. That is, if he hadn’t already joined their ranks.
After the first few days of incessant talking about Piers, Linnet had banished the duke from her carriage, with the excuse that her condition, combined with the jouncing of the coach, made her nauseated.
She had then discovered that lying flat on the ducal cushions was remarkably comfortable. And since she had an iron-clad stomach, she had read happily through their journey, lying on her back and munching apples.
What she’d seen of Wales through the carriage windows was green: a dark, alive green that seemed drenched with water and wind. She’d never smelled the sea before, but she knew what it was immediately, deep in her bones. It was wild and fishy and free, and made her dream about long sea voyages to islands she’d never heard of.
When she wasn’t contemplating the sea, she thought about the physician she was about to marry. According to his father, he had been unfairly labeled as a “beast” because of his impatience with the hoary medical establishment.
“Doctors,” Windebank had told her, “are old fools. Take fevers, for example. Piers discovered that, by their combination of blood-letting and heating the internal temperature, doctors were actually killing their patients. Members of the Royal College fought him tooth and nail until he finally put his patient record against that of an eminent practitioner, Ketelaer. Ketelaer lost all but three of his patients, and from about the same number, Piers lost only one.”
So she was marrying a genius. It did sound as if he had a tendency to lose his temper when crossed, but she was confident that she could manage him.
The morning of their arrival at the castle, she wound some linen cloth around her waist to give her a slightly thicker profile, and regarded herself in the mirror. Apart from her waistline, she looked precisely like a princess in any one of a hundred fairy
tales: clear blue eyes, reddish-gold hair, beautiful skin. Plus the family smile.
She would give herself two weeks to ensure that her fiancé (perhaps husband, by then) was desperately in love with her, and then she meant to confess that she wasn’t carrying a child.
The castle was set on the cliffs, and as the carriages started up the road, the sun was rising hot and yellow to their left. “Enjoy this sunshine,” the duke said. She’d allowed him to join her carriage for the final leg of their journey. “I’m afraid that Wales is infamous for its wet weather. I do wish that you could talk my son into moving to London, my dear. I know he could do so much good there. Not that I’m suggesting that he have a regular practice, of course. He will be a peer of the realm. But he could consult on the most interesting cases.”
There was something about the duke’s descriptions of his son that was a little . . . odd. As if he didn’t know him very well, although that couldn’t be the case.
Linnet leaned forward in anticipation as they neared the castle. It was massive, built of light gray stone, and had four or five turrets that she could see. “Is it very old?” she asked.
“Ancient,” the duke said, looking out as well. “Been in the family for generations. One of my ancestors won it in a game of piquet. Piers had to make extensive repairs, since no one had lived in it for ages.”
The carriages drew up in an enclosed area outside a great arched door.
“Ah, there you are, Prufrock,” the duke said, leaping out.
The butler seemed quite young for his position, probably only in his thirties, and so thin as to be stork-like, with skin the color of milky tea. “Your Grace,” he said, bowing.
His eyes moved to Linnet, who had just stepped from the carriage with the help of a groom. He didn’t have that butler’s knack of keeping an impervious face; his eyes widened and one eyebrow flew up in an unexpectedly charming manner.
