“Look how many sons the king has,” his father said. “The chances are good it will be a boy. And even if she does bear a female, your part of the estate is unentailed, and my solicitor says we could break it on mine as well. The child won’t have our title, but she’ll have the rest.”

“Well,” Piers said, knowing he was being abrupt, but unable to stand another second in the company of this old man with longing eyes, “I’d better get back to my fiancée before Sébastien snaps her up and takes her back to France.”

His father’s brows drew together. “L’Affitte is your cousin. Of course he won’t steal your fiancée.”

“He is indeed my cousin. But look at the woman you bought for me, Father.” He gave the label a mocking twist. “There aren’t many like her in all of France, nor England either.”

“No,” his father agreed. “And not just because of her beauty either.”

Piers took a leisurely look at Linnet. There was the beauty, sure enough. But it didn’t detract from the intelligence in her eyes. And in his opinion the slightly cynical lilt in her voice just made her all the more beautiful, as if Aphrodite had been crossed with Athena.

“Go,” his father said, making an abrupt gesture. “You can pretend I’m not in the room. No need to do the pretty with me.”

Piers got back across the room and cut in on the conversation between Linnet and his cousin. “My fiancée,” he growled, giving Sébastien a look.

The Frenchman smiled at Linnet with all that Gallic charm he flaunted so shamelessly. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather marry me? Piers is the very devil to live with. I’ve had years of him, and I know.”

Linnet’s eyes danced over Sébastien as if she were seriously considering his proposition, and Piers had the sudden wish to pound his cousin in the face.

What the hell was going on? He’d decided long ago that he was better off alone. He didn’t need anyone else to worry about.

“You should take him,” he made himself say. “He’s nicer. I’m richer, though.”

Sébastien shrugged. “My lands were confiscated. But I have enough.”

“You have enough to dress yourself like a popinjay,” Piers said. “Didn’t you say that you were going to check on that amputation from this afternoon?”

“I already have.”

“So what sorts of things do you cut up?” Linnet asked.

“Legs and arms,” Sébastien answered.

“He could be chopping wood, but he took the easier route,” Piers said.

“I thought you cut people open from top to bottom,” Linnet said. She didn’t sound in the least frightened or squeamish, which was unusual in Piers’s experience of young ladies.

“There’s too much risk of infection,” Sébastien told her.

He was opening his mouth, probably planning to regale her with gory details of their dead patients, when Prufrock summoned them to the dining room. At the table, Piers had Linnet at his right hand and Sébastien, thank God, was banished to the other end to talk to the duke.

“Lucky for you the bell rang just then,” he told Linnet. “My cousin was about to bore you silly with tales of infection and death.”

“It’s very kind of you to provide me with a resident marquis to flirt with, insofar as the Continent is likely my next home.”

“Do you mean you have to leave the country? Because of that baby that doesn’t exist?”

She shrugged. “Marrying you was my aunt’s idea of a brilliant recovery from impending catastrophe.”

A gentleman would probably follow this revelation with a quick proposal of marriage. Piers, however, had no problem maintaining his silence.

“May I offer you some wine?” Prufrock bent over Linnet in such a way that he was probably looking straight down her bodice.

“Go away,” Piers growled. “We’re having a private conversation. You’re going to have to learn to be more butler-like once I marry Linnet, you know. Can’t have you barging in on the marital bedchamber, let alone marital confidences.”

“As you wish,” Prufrock said, gliding away without a backward glance.

“I think you hurt his feelings,” Linnet said. “What an odd butler you have.”

“Spy for my father,” Piers said. “Prufrock can’t afford to have hurt feelings, since he’s being paid by two households. Listen, I’ll take you swimming tomorrow morning.”

She opened her mouth, but he spoke first. “If you dive in and drown, people will talk. They’ll say I did it just for the pleasure of dissecting you.”

Linnet wrinkled her nose.

“And who’s to teach you to swim if I don’t? Not that I really believe you’ll make it in the water. The minute you feel it, you’ll be squealing and trotting back up the path.”

“It’s not proper.”

Piers rolled his eyes. “For a young lady who was recently tussling with royalty, you are remarkably prudish. I’m no danger to your chastity. Besides, we can go early in the morning while your chaperone is still snoring. Oh, wait! You don’t have a chaperone.”

She smiled, not that full-blown dimpled miracle that she used to manipulate the poor sods who fell under her spell, but a small, almost secret, smile. Just a curl of her lips and a smile deep in her eyes.

“Right,” he said, pushing back from the table.

“We haven’t had our second course yet—”

“Patients dying upstairs, you know.” And with that he took himself off.

He was losing his head, sitting there looking at her eyes.

A strategic retreat was called for. After all, he had no intention of marrying. Ever.

Chapter Nine

Linnet went to bed thinking about the deep crevice between Piers’s brows. Was it there because he was in constant pain, or was it just because he had a wretched temper? Despite her better judgment, there was something about the ferocity in his eyes and the lines of pain around his mouth that made her want to taunt him, to make him laugh, to force him to listen to her.

Which was absurd. He was a man who clearly had made the decision to spend his life alone, and from all indications had never thought twice about it.

Still, she kept thinking about his brow, and fell asleep imagining a Piers whose face had smoothed into laughter, a Piers who wasn’t Piers.

She woke to find that particular brow frowning down at her. “You didn’t even turn over when I clumped my way into your bedchamber, cane and all. I’ve spoken to you twice and you just keep lying there with that odd little smile on your face.”

“What hour is it?” she mumbled groggily, pushing her hair off her face.

“Dawn.” He sat down on the edge of her bed as if they were the oldest of friends. “My leg hurts like a son of a bitch, so could you please get yourself ready to go swimming? It’s the only thing that kicks back the pain.”

“Swimming,” she said, rolling over on her side, a hand under her cheek. She was still half asleep, and felt as if he had walked straight out of her dream. “You think I’m going swimming with you?”

He dug his fingers into his thigh. “Hurry up. The sun’s coming up.”