“What if this opium did some permanent injury to you?”

He pulled back, looked down at her. “I don’t—”

Her smile was impish, and her eyes slid to the bedchamber door. “A Frenchwoman never, ever takes important things for granted.”

With a rush of joy, Robert took his former wife—no, his wife—up in his arms and stepped across the threshold to the bedroom, placing her gently on the bed. “It would be my very great pleasure to assuage your alarm.”

He straightened with the sound of her laughter in his ears. “I must make sure that Linnet is safely away in a carriage. Then I shall tear back here with such speed the servants will think me mad.”

“You are mad,” Marguerite said, giggling like a young girl.

“No,” he said, bending over to kiss her once more. “I am sane. For the first time in years.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

I’m so sorry,” the Duke of Windebank said to Linnet, after he climbed into the carriage and discovered she was sobbing. “I apologize for bringing you here, Miss Thrynne.”

“Linnet,” she managed. “After all, we were almost related by marriage. Do you have a handkerchief by any chance? Mine is wet.”

“My son is a difficult man,” the duke said, handing her a huge linen handkerchief embroidered with his crest.

“He’s a—a fool,” she said, her voice breaking.

“That too.”

“He loves me, I know he does, and he still says he won’t marry me. That he doesn’t wish to marry.”

The duke was silent.

Linnet blew her nose. “Perhaps he will change his mind.”

She could see the answer to that in the duke’s eyes. “He won’t, will he?” Tears started rolling down her cheeks again.

“My dear, my dear, I wish I could give you a different answer.”

“It’s quite all right,” Linnet managed. “Could we leave now?”

The duke hesitated.

She understood immediately. “You plan to stay with the duchess, I mean, with Lady Bernaise.”

“I cannot leave her,” he said quietly. There was a firm resolve in his eyes that was the mirror of his son’s. “And I can’t leave Piers either. For all my transgressions, they are my family, and they will always be my family.”

Linnet sniffed ungracefully. “I would do the same. Don’t worry about me. I shall be just fine.”

“I’m sorry about all this,” the duke said. “Deeply, deeply sorry. My carriage will take you to a village where the servants and your maid are waiting. We mustn’t delay any longer, since I told them to continue without us if we didn’t arrive before this evening. I want the household and you well away from this epidemic.”

“I am ready to leave,” Linnet said, hiccupping.

“I’m afraid it will be a lonely journey back to London.”

She managed a smile. “I’m used to being lonely.”

“Oh.” The duke looked even more distressed, if possible.

“Ignore me,” she said, venturing a watery smile. “I’m merely feeling sorry for myself. I fell in love with your impossible son. Rather hopelessly so. And now I need to craft a life without him. Which I shall do.” Though she couldn’t imagine it. The pain of even thinking about it tore at her heart.

“It will not be easy,” the duke said, leaning forward and patting her knee. “But you can do it. I did.”

“Perhaps when I’m sixty,” she said, laughing a little, “I shall come to Wales and force Piers to live with me in the guardhouse for a week or so.”

“Yes, do that,” the duke said. “I would feel better about him if I imagined you pulling him from the castle someday.”

“If you tell him so, I’ll have nothing to look forward to at age sixty,” she said frankly.

“I realize that. I won’t say a word about you. If I had understood how profound his dislike of me runs, you wouldn’t be in such pain now. I deeply regret that.”

“In that case, I would not have met Piers.” She dried her eyes again. “I will take the broken heart.”

He reached out again, and squeezed her knee. “You’re a rather wonderful woman, you know.”

Her smile was shy, this time. Not a bit of the family talent in it. “Thank you. I wish you the very best of luck.”

The duke’s eyebrow shot up in precisely the way his son’s did. “Thank you.” He started for the door. “I shall call on you as soon as I return to London.”

“I think you will not be alone,” Linnet said.

He paused for a moment on the carriage steps, and she hardly heard his response as he stepped to the ground. “I hope not.”

The door closed behind him. There was a rumble of men’s voices outside the carriage, and it started rolling down the road. Away from the castle, away from the ocean and the pool, away from Kibbles and Bitts, Prufrock and the patients. Away from Piers.

She let the duke’s handkerchief fall to the floor. Crying had given her a terrible, blinding headache. In fact, it seemed inconceivable that the day wasn’t over yet. That she was in a carriage rather than a bed. It was impossible to imagine going all the way back to London, day after day in this carriage.

After a bit she lay back on the padded seat, staring at the swaying ceiling of the coach. It was hard to get comfortable. She must have strained her neck and her shoulders while swimming.

Finally, she closed her eyes and let the gentle rocking of the carriage carry her away from Piers’s harsh words, though they echoed through her dreams.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Six days later

He’s dying,” Piers said, with the frustrated pang he always got at moments like this. He looked down at the patient, a stout man in his sixties.

“Every time I give him water, it just rolls out of his mouth,” the orderly said.

“Make him as comfortable as you can,” Piers said, heading for the corridor. “It could be that red eyes are a sign of impending mortality.”

“He looks like a ferret,” Sébastien said. He was leaning against the wall in the hallway.

“Go to bed,” Piers said. “You were up all last night. You’ll be no good if you keep on like this. Besides, there haven’t been any new patients for at least two hours.”

As if in answer, there was a banging on the front door.

Sébastien’s laugh had a hollow sound to it. “How is Bitts doing?”

“Quick pulse, but the fever broke. I told his man to start with chicken broth sometime today. He’s out of the woods.”

Sébastien pushed himself away from the wall. “I think it’s slowing down.”

“That would make sense,” Piers said. “We have the orders out about isolating patients. Thank God it was limited to the miller’s route.”

“I’m off to bed,” his cousin said, and then paused. “Did you know that your father is still here?”

Piers jerked his head up. “What?”

“Living in the guardhouse with your mother. I went out for a breath of fresh air yesterday. They were sitting in the gardens. I waved, from a distance, of course.”