“What?” she asked, startled out of her daze. “Am I doing it right? Should I be doing something else? Shall I—”

“Shut up,” he said in her ear.

That wasn’t very nice. Linnet would have felt annoyed, but at that moment he slid a hand between them, right to the part where they were joined, and touched her there. One slow rub of his thumb, and her body reacted like a bonfire doused in brandy.

A strangled cry burst from her lips. The feeling of him, thick and hot and possessive, felt like a fever in her blood.

A satisfied rumble burst from his lips and he thrust again. She saw stars, literal stars. Whatever he was doing with his hand, combined with the delicious friction, made the fever burst through her body.

“Piers!” she cried. “Piers!”

He let go of any semblance of control, pounding into her with such force that the sound of the bed thumping the wall rivaled the beating hail.

Heat exploded in her body, and she fell into a pleasure so vivid and fierce that she could never have imagined such a thing. She couldn’t see, nor hear, only feel as her body went liquid, relaxing into a delirious kind of spasming heat that burned through her blood.

Vaguely she heard a strangled groan, an animal hoarseness, and opened her eyes blurrily to see Piers’s head arch backward as he pulsed into her one last time.

The look on his face, the total abandonment, total pleasure, set off another cascade of red-hot sparks through her body, making her clench at the very moment he shouted, literally shouted.

And collapsed on top of her.

Chapter Nineteen

Later in the afternoon

Lady Bernaise retired with a headache; the duke is playing chess with the marquis,” Prufrock said, walking up the stairs backward before Piers. “I put a new patient in a room by himself; the Ducklings are with him.”

Piers raised an eyebrow. “Ducklings? She’s contaminated you.”

Prufrock had a trick of appearing perfectly innocent when he wished to.

“Where’s Nurse Matilda?” Piers demanded.

“In the morning room, with Miss Thrynne,” Prufrock said. “As you requested, the young lady is reviewing Mrs. Havelock’s responsibilities regarding the patients. When I saw them last, it didn’t seem to be going smoothly.”

Piers hesitated for a moment and then mentally shrugged. What did it really matter? As soon as Linnet left, he could let his housekeeper go back to her obstinate ways. Patients had their families with them, or they didn’t. They still died, unless he and Sébastien could figure out some way to keep them going for a while.

He entered the small room they used to isolate new patients until he determined their illness. If he determined their illness.

The Ducklings—damn it, he was taking on Linnet’s name for them—were clustered around the bed, arguing.

He whacked his cane against the bedpost and they fell silent. “Bitts, who is the patient?”

Bitts pulled himself upright. “Mr. Juggs is a sixty-eight-year-old publican from London.”

“Sixty-eight?” Piers demanded, pushing Kibbles out of the way so he could consider the man himself. “You’ve had a good run at the pub; leave a few beers for the rest of us. Why don’t you close down your taps and go peacefully?”

The patient was tubby and bald, but for an extraordinary pair of eyebrows, so untamed that they looked ready to jump from his face. “Bunkum!” he said with a splendid cockney accent. “My father lived to ninety-two, and I’ve got no plans to be put to bed with a shovel any earlier than me da. If you’re as good as they say, that is.”

“Well, I’m not,” Piers said. “Symptoms, Bitts?”

“He can’t hear.”

“Nonsense,” Piers said. “He just treated me to bunkum. I’m hoping for burn my breeches next. Did you spend time in the navy, Juggs?”

“Twelve years as a corporal in the Fourteenth Light Dragoons. I can’t hear all the time. I hear fine, and then it goes away, like it fades.”

“Old age,” Piers said. “Tip him out of that bed and give it to someone else.”

“And sometimes it happens with my sight too. It just fades out,” Juggs added. “Comes back, though.”

“Not old age. So, Bitts, what do you have to say for yourself?”

“His lungs sound clear. I used the acoustic method we’ve been practicing. His limbs are strong, and his reflexes are normal.”

“Anything to add, you two?” Piers asked Penders and Kibbles.

“He’s lost his vision three times,” Kibbles said. “While watching the entry of the King of Norway into London, during his wife’s sixtieth birthday party, and at a military review. Those occasions seem indicative.”

“Tsk, tsk,” Piers said. “You married a younger woman. Cradle robber.”

“Only by eight years,” Juggs said defensively.

“What’s your diagnosis?” Piers asked Kibbles.

“Based on the three occasions in question, over-excitement leading to a rapid heartbeat.”

“Since when does a rapid heartbeat cause loss of vision?” Penders put in. “I think he experienced heart stoppage.”

“A heart attack doesn’t cause loss of vision,” Bitts objected.

“It does if he suffered a temporary loss of blood to the head,” Penders retorted. “Were you dizzy during those episodes, Mr. Juggs?”

He shook his head. “Awful hot, though.”

The door opened behind Piers. He knew it was Linnet before she entered because he smelled her, a light flowery scent with a hint of lemon. He started wondering whether the olfactory nerves are heightened by sexual arousal.

Nurse Matilda’s charming tones snapped him back to the present. “Doctor, I am deeply offended by what has occurred today, apparently with your permission, if not encouragement. Deeply offended. And while I’m sorry to interrupt you, this cannot wait.”

“The patient experienced a possible fever during the episodes in which he lost his vision. What does that tell us?” Piers asked the Ducklings. Then he turned, reluctantly.

The truth was that Linnet was terrifyingly beautiful. Perfect lips, perfect cheeks, perfect . . .

A perfect secret smile in her perfect eyes.

It was irritating.

He bit back an answering smile. “What the hell are you up to?” he asked her.

The smile faded. “I am questioning the housekeeper of the west wing—that would be this wing—about her procedures for patient care, including diet and family visits.”

“Right,” he said. He nodded at Nurse Matilda. “That’s what she’s doing. Your role is to answer, insofar as you’re the housekeeper in question.”

Nurse Matilda’s chest swelled in an impressive way, rather like that of a toad on a sturdy lily pad, preparing to sing. “I am grossly insulted by the tone of these impertinent inquiries. If you have concerns about my housekeeping and care of the patients, you should consult me directly.”

Piers turned back to the Ducklings. “Temporary vision loss, ditto hearing, possible fever. What other questions have you asked?”

The Ducklings were silent.

“I gather, none,” he said. “You, in the bed. You weren’t dizzy. Did anyone mention whether you turned red in the face?”