“His Grace was devoted to Her Grace and wounded by the terrible events of the past,” Prufrock said with a palpable lack of attention to the truth.

Piers didn’t bother answering that. His leg hurt as if someone had stuck a hot poker into his thigh. “I need a drink, so why don’t you rush ahead like a good butler and meet me at the door of the library with a strong brandy?”

“I’ll keep walking next to you in case you keel over,” Prufrock said.

“I suppose you have visions of breaking my fall,” Piers said, giving his scrawny butler a sidelong glance.

“Actually, no. But I would call for a footman, who could drag you along the corridor. It’s marble, so you might get a concussion, and that might make you a bit kinder to your patients, not to mention your staff. You had Betsy in tears again this morning. You seem to think scullery maids grow on trees.”

Thank God, they were getting close to the library. Piers paused for a moment, the idea of amputation flitting through his mind, and not for the first time. He could get one of those Egyptian bed-things that Cleopatra had herself carried about on. Walking would be a damned sight more difficult, but at least he’d be free of this infernal pain.

“Your father has written,” Prufrock told him. “I took the liberty of putting the letter on your desk.”

“Took the liberty of steaming it open, more like,” Piers said. “What does he have to say?”

“He expresses some interest in your marital future,” Prufrock said cheerfully. “It seems that last missive you sent him, the one listing all your demands for a spouse, did not dissuade him. Rather surprising, I must say.”

“The one that called him an idiot?” Piers asked. “Did you read that one too, you pestilent polecat?”

“You’re quite poetical today,” Prufrock observed. “All that alliteration in the service of mopsies and mollishers, and now for your lowly butler. I’m honored, I assure you.”

“What’s the duke writing about now?” Piers said. He could see the library door. He could almost feel the brandy going down his throat. “I told him that I wouldn’t accept a wife unless she was as beautiful as the sun and the moon. Which is a quote from literature, in case you don’t know. And I added quite a lot of other provisions as well, ones guaranteed to send him into a frothing fit of despair.”

“He’s looking for a wife,” Prufrock said.

“For himself, I would hope. Although he’s waited a bit long,” Piers said, failing to summon any particular interest in this news. “Men of his age don’t have the balls they once had, if you’ll excuse the vulgar truth of it, Prufrock. Lord knows you have more delicate sensibilities than I do.”

“I used to, before I began working for you,” Prufrock said, pushing open the library door with a flourish.

Piers had one thing in mind. It was golden, tasted like fire, and would cut the pain in his leg.

“So he’s looking for a wife,” he repeated without paying any attention to the words, but heading straight for the brandy decanter. He poured out a hefty dose. “It’s been a rotten day. Not that it matters to me, or you, for that matter, but there’s nothing I can do for that young woman who showed up at the back door this morning.”

“The one who’s all swollen in the belly?”

“It’s not the usual swelling, and if I cut her open, I’ll kill her. If I don’t cut her open, the disease will kill her. So I took the easier of the two options.” He threw back the brandy.

“You sent her away?”

“She had nowhere to go. I turned her over to Nurse Matilda, with instructions to bed her down in the west wing with enough opium to keep her mind off what’s happening next. Thank God this castle is big enough to house half the dying people in England.”

“Your father,” Prufrock said, “and the question of marriage.”

He was trying to distract him. Piers poured another glass, smaller this time. He had no wish to stick his head in a bottle of brandy and never come out again, if only because he’d learned from his patients that overindulgence meant that brandy wouldn’t blunt the pain anymore. “Ah, marriage,” he said obediently. “About time. My mother’s been gone these twenty years. Well, gone isn’t quite the word, is it? At any rate, darling Maman is over on the Continent living the good life, so His Grace might as well remarry. It wasn’t easy to get that divorce, you know. Probably cost him as much as a small estate. He should make hay while the sun shines, or in short, while he’s still able to get a rise every other day.”

“Your father’s not getting married,” Prufrock said. Something in his tone made Piers glance up.

“You weren’t joking.”

The butler nodded. “It is my impression that His Grace sees you—or your marriage—as a challenge. It could be that you shouldn’t have listed quite so many requirements. One might say that it fired up the duke’s resolve. Got him interested in the project, so to speak.”

“The devil you say. He’ll never manage to find anyone. I have a reputation, you know.”

“Your title is weightier than your reputation,” Prufrock said. “Additionally, there is the small matter of your father’s estate.”

“You’re probably right, damn you.” Piers decided he could manage another small glass. “But what about my injury, hmm? You think a woman would agree to marry a man—what am I saying? Of course a woman would agree to that.”

“I doubt many young ladies would see that as an insurmountable problem,” Prufrock said. “Now, your personality . . .”

“Damn you,” Piers said, but without heat.

Chapter Three

The moment Linnet returned to the drawing room, her father groaned aloud. “I turned down three marriage proposals for you last month, and I can tell you right now that I’ll never receive another one. Hell, I wouldn’t believe you a maiden myself. You look four or five months along.”

Linnet sat down rather heavily, her skirts floating up like a white cloud and then settling around her. “I’m not,” she said. “I am not pregnant.” She was starting to feel almost as if she truly were carrying a child.

“Ladies don’t use that word,” Lord Sundon said. “Didn’t you learn anything from that governess of yours?” He waved his quizzing glass in the air the better to illustrate his point. “One might refer to a delicate condition, or perhaps to being enceinte. Never to pregnancy, a harsh word with harsh connotations. The pleasure, the joy of being of our rank, is that we may overlook the earthy, the fertile, the . . .”

Linnet stopped listening. Her father was a vision in pale blue, his waistcoat fastened with silver buttons inset with ivory poppies, his Prussian collar a miracle of elegance. He was very good at overlooking anything earthy, but she’d never been as successful.

At that moment a long banging sounded at the door. Despite herself, Linnet looked up hopefully when their butler entered to announce the visitor. Surely Prince Augustus had rethought. How could he sit in his castle, knowing that she was being rejected by the ton? He must have heard about the disastrous events of the ball, the way no one had spoken to her after he left.