by Eloisa James
“I don’t like the fever case that came in this morning,” Sébastien said, following him.
“Petechial, most likely,” Piers said. “There’s a rash of it going around.” He was thinking about swimming. Tomorrow morning.
“It doesn’t look like it to me. It looks worse.”
“How can it be worse? Half my patients with petechial fever die, and I’m not even bleeding them. Besides, you’re no good at diagnosis, may I point out?”
Sébastien shook his head. “That man is really sick. I told the housekeeper to put him in a room by himself.”
“Fine,” Piers said, pausing for a second to ease the pain before they headed down the stairs.
“How’s the leg?” Sébastien asked.
He glared at him. “How’s the twig of a dick you carry around in your breeches?”
“Feeling no pain,” Sébastien said cheerfully. “Unlike your leg, given the fact you’re tilting to the side like a drunken man at a Yule feast.”
“Bollocks,” Piers said, thumping his way down the stairs. And then, “Have you seen my mother?”
“She’s flitting about, trying to find your father so she can torment him by not speaking to him. And she’s dressed up like she’s going to meet the queen.”
Piers stopped for a moment, leaned against the banister.
“You’re overdoing it with the swimming,” Sébastien said. “Cut back. Every other day.”
Not a chance of that. Not now that he had a playmate in the pool.
“I’ll think about it,” he said, starting down again. “Do you suppose my mother wants to take him back, then?”
Sébastien thought about it. “She’s got on one of those corsets that’s pushed her bosom out where you can’t miss it.”
“You’re a pervert to take notice of such a thing in your aunt.”
“I didn’t take notice in a desiring sort of way,” Sébastien protested. “Your father did, though.”
“She’s just tormenting him,” Piers said. But his voice sounded uncertain even to himself.
“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 sh
e 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.
“You’re deluded,” Sébastien said.
“A glass of fashion,” Piers repeated patiently. “Without me, you would hardly shine with the glory that you do currently, would you?”
“A particularly strained metaphor,” Linnet observed. “But I take your meaning. A mongrel always makes a greyhound look more regal, does it not?”
“Or a poodle more absurd,” Piers retorted.
“Insult me all you wish,” Sébastien said. He was looking down at Linnet with an utterly fatuous expression on his face. She had apparently seen that look on men’s faces so often that it hardly registered; there wasn’t a trace of triumph about her.
“You two couldn’t be more different in your dress,” she said.
“You should have seen us as boys,” Piers said. “I could hardly walk, of course, so Sébastien used to run twice as fast. And then as we grew older, he started dressing twice as elegantly, to compensate for my slovenly ways.”
“But you were both interested in medicine,” Linnet said. “How on earth were you able to pursue your interests? Not a single gentleman I know in London has any skills of that sort.”
“Or of any sort?” he asked, eyebrow raised.
“They can dance,” she offered.
“Perhaps that’s why: I couldn’t dance, so I turned to cutting people up.”
“And he couldn’t cut people up all that well, so I had to do it for him,” Sébastien chimed in.
Linnet laughed. Her laugh . . . it was far more enticing than that practiced smile of hers. It was both husky and sweet, like warm brandy with honey.
“He’s not joking,” Piers said, taking another gulp to fortify himself against that laugh.
“I thought you were the famous doctor,” she said.
“I’m good at figuring out what’s wrong with people. The trouble is that I do that best when they’re already dead. Sébastien, on the other hand, is good at the tidy sort of surgery, the kind where the patient is living and would prefer to stay that way.”
Linnet gave Sébastien another smile, and Piers fancied he could actually see the poor man buckle at the knees. “It’s very reassuring to think that you’d be here if I were to need surgery,” she cooed.
“Yes, if you want a leg lopped off, he’s the man to do it,” Piers said.
“That would be a crime,” Sébastien said, his voice as soft as a dove’s.
Damn it, Piers was starting to feel a bit guilty. Sébastien had no idea what sort of temptress he had hanging onto his arm and his every word. He’d end up getting his heart properly broken if this kept up.
“Stop it,” he said to Linnet.
She gave him the smile.
“And don’t ever smile at me like that again,” he ordered. “It makes me want to vomit, and given that your slippers appear to be sewn with pearls—an inordinate waste of money—gastric acid would not be good for them.”
Sébastien frowned at him. “Is this your idea of proper conversation, cousin? If so, you’re worse than I thought. Miss Thrynne is a delicate flower, who should be treated with the utmost respect. Instead you’re talking about lopping her legs and vomiting on her toes.”
Piers raised an eyebrow at Linnet. She sighed and patted Sébastien’s arm. “I’m sorry,” she said. “His lordship has quite correctly noticed that I am as adept at flirtation as he is at its opposite.”
“Nice,” Piers said, with genuine appreciation. “Damned if you aren’t one of the nastiest conversationalists I know. Especially given the extra ammunition you carry.”
“You mean the smile?” she asked. “I find it very useful. You should try it sometime.”
Sébastien was scowling now. Likely it was starting to dawn on him that Linnet was not merely a delicate flower.
“You’re not up to her weight,” Piers told him. “She’s a master. No wonder all of London thinks she had a prince under her thumb.”
“It runs in the family,” Linnet said. She looked almost bashful for a moment. “I would really like to hear more about your surgical practice,” she told Sébastien. “You said that you can’t avoid infection. What sorts of things have you tried?”
Piers often thought his cousin was a bit of a dolt, but he never underestimated him when it came to surgery. Sébastien was the finest surgeon he’d ever seen, his concentration unyielding, his fingers quick and impossibly deft.
“If we didn’t have a problem with infection,” Sébastien was saying, “I think it would be possible to intervene in ways that we can’t even imagine now. For example, up in the west wing we have a woman with a swelling in her stomach. It’s almost certainly some sort of cancer causing a tumor, a kind of growth. It’s probably around the size of an apple, or even larger.”
“I’m certain of the tumor,” Piers put in. “I won’t know the size for sure until a few months from now, of course.”
Linnet blinked, but to her credit, she didn’t flinch or squeal, the way most ladies did once faced with the exigencies of medical practice, and his own fascination with dissection.
“If we had something that could control infection, I could open up her stomach and cut out the tumor,” Sébastien said. “She could go back home and live out her life.”
Piers had to concede that his cousin was particularly appealing when he was talking about surgery. A lock of hair had fallen over his forehead, and his eyes were bright.
Maybe he should steer the subject somewhere else. Linnet was obviously enthralled.
“Doesn’t alcohol work?” she asked. “I’ve read that soldiers in the field pour brandy over their wounds, and it limits the risk of infection.”
“Not good enough,” Piers said. “When we were younger and less morbid, we tried everything we could. But our patients died with distressing frequency.”
“Almost all of them,” Sébastien said. Now his face took on the sort of sweet distress that women found so appealing. Piers couldn’t make an expression like that if his own life depended on it. Of course, Sébastien really meant it. He was genuinely distraught when his patients died.
“So we stopped,” Piers said. “Sébastien couldn’t take the body count.”
“Limbs are one thing,” Sébastien said. “But the interior of the body is just too much of a risk.”
“That poor woman,” Linnet said.
Piers had forgotten whom they were talking about. “Ah. Well, at least she came here. We put her on so much opium that she feels no pain.”
“Is she awake?”
“Almost never. Which, for her, is by far the best situation. Stomach cancer—if that’s what she has—seems to be particularly painful.”
“What about her family?”
He shrugged. “I wouldn’t know about that. Perhaps she hasn’t got any.”
“Don’t any of the patients have families? No one seems to have any visitors.”
“That’s Nurse Matilda’s doma
in. I really wouldn’t know.”
Linnet’s eyes narrowed. “Mrs. Havelock seems to have very decided opinions. It’s possible that she’s told your patients that they aren’t allowed to have visitors.”
“Oh, she wouldn’t do that,” Sébastien said. “She’s rather brusque, but she has a good heart.”
That was Sébastien. He always saw the best in people.
“Actually, she doesn’t have a very good heart, if by that you mean a capacity for human sympathy,” Piers said. “That’s one reason I keep her around, given her utter lack of charm. She can hold down a screaming child without a flicker of an eyelash.”
“A screaming child?” Linnet shuddered.
So she did have a soft spot.
“Gavan screamed like the dickens when we had to set his broken leg,” Piers said. “But look at him now. He stopped screaming, and he’s walking again. The boy will be going home soon.”
“Yes, but how long as he been here without being allowed to see his mother?”
Sébastien frowned. “I’ll look into it, Miss Thrynne.” He threw her a hopelessly addled look. “What a kind spirit you have. Piers and I have been in and out of that room for months without considering the question.”
“Well, you have the patients, not to mention all those Ducklings, to look after,” she said, gesturing across the room. “I can ask Mrs. Havelock about visitors.”
“The Ducklings?” Sébastien inquired.
But Piers was already chuckling. “Those foolish boys,” he said, nodding at Penders, Kibbles, and Bitts. They were hovering around Lady Bernaise, likely absorbed by his mother’s exuberant display of bosom.
“Oh, I see,” Sébastien said. “I suppose they follow Piers as if he were a mother duck. A sweet, lovable mother duck.”
“It does strain the imagination,” Linnet agreed.
“I like that smile better,” Piers told her.
It vanished.
“That was a mean, sarcastic little smile,” he continued. “It showed the real you.”
