by Eloisa James
Just like that, he got his erection back. One glimpse at her, draped across the rock, and his body forgot about being cold and rather tired.
“Take a towel,” she said crossly. But her gaze wasn’t quite as dismissive as it had been. “How can you?” she burst out.
“How can I what? Do you suppose you could dry my legs? You know I can’t do it, with this cane.”
He tried to look pathetic, but her eyes narrowed. “The sun will dry you.”
He gave himself a slow caress, his eyes fixed on her. “You heat me faster than the sun.”
“How can you desire me when I look like this?” She swallowed hard, but Piers had already decided that the last thing she needed was pity. Besides, any inclination in that direction died when she added, “And that’s one of the most ill-phrased compliments I’ve ever heard.”
“Unlike you, I fell in love with more than beauty. Your sharp tongue, for example. I adore that.”
“I don’t love you for your looks,” she said crossly. “If I were that way inclined, I’d choose Sébastien.”
“Well, if I were that way inclined, I’d choose Nurse Matilda.”
She snorted.
“These days, she’s better looking than you are.”
Sure enough, she sat up, eyes blazing. “You are a hoggish lout to say such a thing to me!”
“Her creamy skin,” he said dreamily. “Like orchid petals.”
A puff of air escaped from her lips in a fashion that could never be described as lady-like. “Was that another snort?” he asked. “Dear me, what an annoying habit. I hope that darling Matilda doesn’t develop the habit before I ask for her hand. Oh wait, I think I already have a fiancée.”
She pulled the sheet over herself and flopped back down, eyes closed. “You’re ridiculous.”
He lay down too, next to her. For a time they merely lay there, silent. As if they were the only two people in the world, and no other creature in it but a curlew, singing rather tunelessly on a rock nearby.
When he finally sat up, Linnet’s eyes were open, and so full of pain that his throat tightened. She didn’t look away, didn’t say anything.
Before she could intuit what he had in mind, Piers grabbed the sheet and tossed it to the side.
He expected her to screech and try to cover herself, but instead she lay still, her face turned away from his, though not before he saw tears.
“I’m looking at you all over,” he said conversationally, doing just that.
“Look your fill,” she snapped. “You’re going to, no matter what I say.”
“You’re still red, but now you’re peeling too. God, you’re a mess.”
She snapped upright like a jointed wooden doll, looked down, and shrieked so loudly that the curlew flew away.
“Saltwater is healing,” he said, picking up the sheet and rubbing her skin very, very gently. “Look at that. You’re not quite boiled underneath. And no scars, on your stomach at least.”
She watched him, a stunned expression on her face. “It’s coming off?”
“Of course it’s coming off,” he said. “These are scabs that covered the scarlatina blisters, protecting them while they healed. I expect”—he rubbed a little bit more—“that your whole body is ready to molt, except perhaps your back. The salt helped, and the sun.”
“I didn’t think it would ever come off,” she said, so quietly that he could hardly hear her over the waves splashing up on the rocks behind them.
“If you’d asked me, I could have told you. But because you wouldn’t speak to me, I didn’t know you were frightened of something so foolish.”
She had the most rebellious lower lip that he’d ever seen.
“But what’s worse,” he persisted, not looking at her, “you lost faith in me. You said you loved me enough to play the fool. But when it came to it, you hadn’t the courage for the slightest bit of humiliation. You wouldn’t see me in private in case I mocked you, and you wouldn’t see me in public, because you felt humiliated at being seen by Prufrock.”
This time he was the one who lay down and flung an arm over his eyes.
“I do love you,” Linnet said, feeling as though Piers were stealing her capacity for rational thought by looking so hurt. “But I can’t be a duchess looking like this. I don’t want anyone to marry me out of pity. And I can’t marry you if I’m a horrible—”
“Beast?” he interjected. “Is that the word you’re looking for?”
“No,” she said.
He sat up again, and his eyes burned into hers. “You only loved me when you were beautiful. So that you could control me, the way you think you can control other men with your smile.”
“No!” she cried. “That wasn’t it.”
“Then what was it?” he demanded. “One minute you were begging me to marry you, telling me that you would wait for me, and the next you wouldn’t even look at me.” Anger and hurt vibrated in his voice.
She looked down and took stock of her body. It was still red, still peeling, but somehow, sitting next to Piers in the sunshine, it didn’t seem monstrous. “I thought you would be horrified,” she said, choking a little. “I didn’t want you to marry me out of pity. I couldn’t do that to you, give you an ugly wife.”
“Pity is not exactly an emotion I’m known for. What’s more, I haven’t the faintest hesitation about giving you a beast for a husband.”
“That’s not really true,” she said slowly. “You told me that you wanted me, but that you’d never marry me. You said that I was beautiful and eager, but that you’d rut other women, so I should just forget you.”
The ugly words hung in the air between them.
“You’re right,” Piers said. “That was a contemptible thing to say.” All the outrage disappeared from his voice; it was so bleak that she couldn’t think what to say next. “I pushed you away because I’m afraid I might become a drug addict, someday. I was—and am still—afraid that I’ll lose my temper and make your life miserable.”
Suddenly her whole heart was bursting with the fear that he would leave her, even though a mere hour ago she had wanted nothing more than to never see him again.
“You broke my heart when you threw me out,” she said, hugging her knees. “That made me miserable. But when I fell ill, in the chicken coop, I realized that you loved me.”
There was a pause. The curlew was singing again, a bit farther off.
“I said, that you love me,” she repeated.
“I do.” He said it almost irritably.
“I made up my mind that if I lived, I would never let you bully me again, the way you did when you refused to marry me.” She reached out to touch him, just to touch him, running her fingers over his thigh. “But afterwards, I was so ugly. I don’t see how I could possibly be a duchess.”
“I suppose all duchesses are beautiful,” he said. “It’s likely a requirement of the position.”
“At the very least they shouldn’t terrify people in the streets.”
“And for this reason you thought that, since you were circus material, you’d throw me over. What was supposed to come thereafter? Suppers in your room for fifty years?”
“I thought I’d hide,” she said, her voice trembling a little. “Just hide, that’s all.”
Silence. Then: “You weren’t supposed to want to hide from me, Linnet.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“You broke my damn heart by nearly dying, and then you broke it again when you threw me out of your room.”
She couldn’t bear the pain in his voice, the fact she had hurt him, so she pushed him back onto the rock. His body was warm and large under her leg. Familiar and dear.
“Are you going to kiss me and make it all better?” he asked, at once sardonic and tender.
“Shut up,” Linnet said. She brushed her lips across his. Her tongue stole out and tasted his lips.
“I suppose now you’re trying to seduce me the old-fashioned way, having lost your looks.”
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But she knew when he was angry and trying to hurt, and when he wasn’t. This time, he wasn’t. Her heart rejoiced and she hummed, deep in her throat. “Something like that.” She nipped his bottom lip, the way he’d taught her.
Piers opened his lips to her plea and raw passion caught them both for a moment. But then he pulled away. “I can’t.”
Linnet leaned after him. There was something in his voice that made her excitement build, rather than diminish. “Why?” It came out a husky murmur, perhaps because she was kissing the line of his jaw.
“You’re too ugly. I never make love to ugly women. I could never love an ugly woman.”
For a split second Linnet’s heart stammered, and then she realized what he was really saying. “And I, my lord, can only love a man who can carry me over the threshold. Who can promise me that he will never, ever touch laudanum and will certainly never raise his voice. Can you do that?”
His eyes met hers: deep, lustrous, intelligent—loving. “In the inn I carried you down the hallway and over the threshold,” he said, and his voice was as husky as hers. “Does that count?”
“I might be beautiful again someday,” she offered. “Or not.”
He rolled to face her, and their eyes met in a way that had everything to do with love, the kind strong enough to snatch someone back from the grave, the kind that never fades and never fails.
The kind that has nothing to do with beauty, temper, or damaged legs.
“I can’t promise you that I won’t lose my temper,” he said. “Though I have a feeling that you may have changed me for good. I might not be such a beast anymore.”
“I can’t promise that I won’t die and leave you alone. I think I forgot to say thank you for saving my life.”
“I love you,” he said, his voice catching. “When I thought you were going to die, I wanted to die. And as soon as you climbed out that damned window, I wanted you back.”
She ran a hand softly up his cheek. “I’m back.”
“I would have gone to fetch you, even given that I had no idea that you might be ill. I just couldn’t leave my patients yet. Well, actually, I contemplated leaving my patients more than a few times, mostly in the middle of the night.”
“That wouldn’t have been right,” she said firmly. “It would have put a damper on our wedding.”
“Is there going to be a wedding?” His eyes searched hers. “It wouldn’t be easy to take our vows in your bedchamber, but we could manage it.”
She took a deep breath. “Do you mind marrying a peeling lobster?”
His eyes showed that he didn’t mind at all. “You’re not a lobster,” he said, brushing his lips over hers. “Where the new skin shows you’re more like a strawberry. A ripe, delicious strawberry.”
“Berry is my middle name,” Linnet said, a giggle escaping.
“My Berry.” But he was done with talking, so he rolled over onto her, big and strong and—yes—domineering. “If I don’t mind making love to you while you molt, would you mind making love to a man whose temper gets the best of him sometimes?”
“No,” she gasped, because his hand . . . well, there were parts of her that were seemed to be exactly as soft as they used to be.
He had to rub her breasts with the sheet until they were a beautiful strawberry pink, but they both enjoyed that. And they were both happy when it turned out that for some mysterious reason the scarlatina hadn’t touched her inner thighs.
There were other things to be happy about as well.
Afterward, they lay on the rock while Piers concentrated on polishing his beloved into a uniform rosy pink.
“Is my face scarred?” Linnet inquired anxiously, after a time. “Tell me the truth.”
“Not at all. You’re no Queen Elizabeth. In fact—though I hate to tell you this—a little rice powder and the Ducklings will be slavering over you again.” He had apparently decided her breasts needed even more attention.
Linnet began tentatively feeling her face, her fingers sliding over her cheekbones, chin, lips. All smooth again. “I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to forget it,” she said with a shudder. “The chicken coop, the rash, and I was so hot and thirsty.”
Piers cupped her face in his hands. “I will never forgive myself for not being there with you.”
“You mean, the way your father won’t forgive himself?”
“We talked,” he said gruffly. “I tried to think what you would want me to say.”
She brightened. “So you said that he was a dedicated—”
“No.”
“You don’t even know what I was going to say!”
“Nothing along those lines.”
“What did you say then?” she asked, somewhat disappointed.
“That I loved him. Not in so many words, but he knew.”
“When I was very ill, I dreamed my mother was with me in the pool.”
“In the water?”
“Under the water. I kept floating away, because there wasn’t any pain there, and it was cool and wet. But she would push me back.”
Piers clutched Linnet against his chest. “Good for her.”
“I forgave her too,” she said softly. “She loved me.”
“Well,” he said, “you’re very lovable. And not because you’re beautiful, either. And not even because you’re a delectable pink that I’ve never seen on a woman before.”
Tears spilled over in Linnet’s eyes. “I didn’t think anyone would ever—”
“Hush,” he said, brushing his lips over hers. “I didn’t think I would ever care for another person.”
“We were both wrong,” Linnet said, her hand sliding around his head to pull his lips to hers.
“Sweet Berry,” Piers whispered, some time later.
“Yes?” She surfaced from his kiss dazed, her lips swollen, her heart pounding.
“I can’t make love on this rock again. I hate to sound conventional, but my knees are scraped. Shall we go home? I have a wonderfully soft bed. It’s in the master bedchamber, which you have not yet seen, but which you might as well lay claim to.”
“Home,” she repeated, pulling herself together.
“Our home.”
So they got up and fashioned a Grecian gown from the sheet, and made their way home, hand in hand.
When they arrived, Linnet beamed at everyone from Prufrock to the duke. No one really noticed that her skin was strawberry pink.
Because the joy on her face and in her eyes was dazzling.
Epilogue
Some years later
I don’t see why you call Mama ‘Berry,’ ” a small boy said to his father, one summer day. He was lolling on a rock, watching his sister paddle around the sea pool with their mother.
“It’s a private name,” his father said. He was watching Mama with a peculiar smile on his face that the boy couldn’t quite interpret.
“It’s not logical,” John Yelverton, future Earl of Marchant and Duke of Windebank, pointed out. “Mama doesn’t look like a berry. Evie does, because she’s round and fat and she has that red hair.”
He regarded his younger sister with some disfavor. Even at age seven, he was aware that his sister seemed to have some powerful charm over strangers. If she smiled at them, they simply melted. They gave her whatever she wanted.
Not that his mother and father did, of course. They were more likely to poke her until she laughed. He preferred to pinch her, himself.
“Once upon a time, your mother had quite rosy skin,” his father said. “So she was like a particularly delectable berry, a strawberry.”
John had seen that look on his parents’ faces before, and he didn’t think much of it. It wasn’t rational. He was fond of categorizing the world; things were either rational or irrational. That sloppy look? Irrational.
“Could we go back to the castle now and dissect another frog?” he asked.
“No. One frog a week. Frogs are not created simply for your amusement, you know.”
“But you do remember that I had trouble finding the gallbladder, don’t you? I need another try.”
“Next week,” his father said. “I’m sure there will be many gallbladders in your future.”
That was just the sort of nonsensical thing that parents said all the time, and which John didn’t appreciate. “I want to dissect a frog now!”
His father stopped looking at the pool and glanced down at him. He raised a finger. “Remember what we discussed this morning?”
“I have to learn to control my temper,” John said obediently. “An’ if I feel it coming up in my stomach, I have to count to ten.”
“Do you need to count at the moment?”
“No,” he said, somewhat darkly.
Evie was at the side of the pool, and his father got up to pull her out. He had his cane in one hand, but he bent down. Evie grasped his arm with both hands and he swung her out in a big circle while she shrieked and shrieked.
Then he put down his cane and reached down with both hands to help Mama out of the pool. There they were, smiling at each other in that way again.
Papa had a towel slung over his shoulder, which he used to dry her off.
John rolled his eyes and went to look around the little tide pools. Maybe if he found his own frog, Papa would let him dissect it.
There didn’t seem to be any frogs.
“They don’t like saltwater,” Evie said, lisping a little. She cocked her head on the side and gave him that smile he hated so much. “Don’t you know anything?”
He pulled her hair.
Then she cried, so he counted to ten.
“I didn’t yank her hair,” he explained to his papa a second later. “Or wrench it. That would have been mean. It was just a little tug.”
“You are a chip off the old block,” his father said, taking him by the hand as they all started up the path back to the castle. “Next time, count to ten before you tug.”
John grinned. His greatest ambition was to be just like his papa in every way. Well, and a little like his grandfather the duke too, because he loved the way His Grace told stories.
But mostly he wanted to be like his papa. “Maybe I’ll operate on the next frog before I dissect it,” he offered. “Give it a cast on its leg. We could pretend it jumped too high.”
