“You’d better keep her,” his father said. “If your life isn’t ruined, that is.”

“She wants to go.” Piers decapitated another flower. “She won’t talk to me. I wrote her a letter, and her maid reported that she ripped it up without reading it.”

“When I decided that I couldn’t bear not knowing you any longer, I took a carriage to Wales knowing you’d be furious. Linnet was just an excuse.”

“Every time I go to her chamber, she rolls over and hides.” Two more flowers lost their heads.

His father gave a little shrug, and that came back to Piers too. That little shrug of amused acceptance. He had always thought that the only memories he carried of his father were of intoxication. But apparently, not so. “I suppose I could go to her room in the night.”

“You could. At least that way it would be dark. She wouldn’t have to worry that you were looking at her.”

“That’s absurd. I was the one who rescued her from that chicken coop. I know exactly what she looks like!”

“Your mother thinks that her skin is at the root of the problem, however.”

“Why?” Piers ran his hand through his hair again.

“Linnet is mortified by the loss of her beauty.”

“She hasn’t lost her beauty! Her skin is not the same, but the rest of her is just as good as it ever was.”

“To Linnet, she has lost her beauty, and for a woman that exquisite, it must be a tremendous shock.”

“No doubt.” Moodily he took out three more flowers. “She’s vain enough to drop me for that reason, so it must be important. You know, she pleaded with me in the drawing room that day, after you and Maman climbed out the window. She begged me to marry her. She said she didn’t mind playing the fool for me.”

His father nodded.

“But apparently all that love was contingent on being beautiful enough to control me,” Piers said, thrusting his cane back into the ground. “Or something.”

“Or believing that she was good enough for you,” his father suggested. “I didn’t see any signs that Linnet had hope of controlling you.”

Piers gave a bark of laughter. “Good enough for me? For a cripple with a ferocious temper and a vile tongue?”

“You’re the one she wants. I have the distinct impression that you are the only man she has ever wanted, though she has been courted by princes, as well as every eligible man in the ton. Likely very few vile tempers in the group.”

“Fools, all of them,” Piers muttered.

“You’ll join that crew if you let her go.”

“I never dared to imagine someone like her. Or a life with someone like that.”

“That’s no reason not to dare now she’s standing before you. There’s something about the two of you together—”

“She’s like my other half,” Piers said savagely, keeping his head down. “My other bloody half, like some sort of joke that Plato made up. Like nothing I ever wanted, and then, there she was.”

His father put a hand on his shoulder. “Go tell her that.”

Piers swallowed. The idea was horrific. Blurting it out to his father was one thing; telling a woman who wouldn’t even look at him was another. His feet were surrounded by flower petals. “Is that what you said to Maman?”

“No. She wouldn’t listen to me.”

There was something amused in his voice. Piers raised a hand. “I do not want to know.”

His father grinned, shrugged. “Do whatever you have to.”

Chapter Thirty-Five

It took until the next afternoon to think of a plan. His instincts told him that visiting Linnet at night would just make things worse. He couldn’t say why, exactly, but he trusted his instincts as a doctor, so he might as well trust them when it came to Linnet.

Humiliatingly, he had to ask for help. It was like the bloody labors of Hercules, courting Linnet. And he wasn’t exactly hero material. Remembering the way he had crawled along that corridor, arse-naked (albeit in the dark) made him shudder.

But he swallowed his pride and asked for help, and never mind the fact that Hercules never needed help.

“What do you mean, you want me to go to Linnet’s bedchamber?” Sébastien said, looking horrified. “I certainly will not!”

“I’ll be with you, you cretin,” Piers said. “You’re going to pick her up and carry her out of the castle and down to the pool.”

Sébastien’s mouth fell open. “I certainly will not!” he squealed again. “Are you mad?”

“Have I ever been wrong when it comes to a diagnosis?”

“Of course you have!”

Piers waved his hand. “Ninety percent of the time I’m not, am I?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“I’ve diagnosed her, and now I must cure her.”

His cousin eyed him. “She’ll likely scream bloody murder.”

“No, she won’t,” Piers said. “I’ve already told Prufrock to get everyone out of the way. And she’s too embarrassed by her appearance to want to draw attention to herself.”

“Is it still quite terrible?” Sébastien asked.

Piers shrugged. “Who cares?”

“She does, you lout.”

“Just come with me to fetch her and spare me the sermonizing.”

“What if she never speaks to me again?” Sébastien moaned.

“Once she marries me, you’ll both be living in the castle. She’ll have to break down and greet you at breakfast.”

But Sébastien still protested all the way up the stairs. At the door of Linnet’s bedchamber he caught Piers’s arm. “She’ll hate me for this. I don’t want her to hate me.”

“Don’t be a fool,” Piers snarled. He was having enough trouble suppressing his own doubts without having to contend with Sébastien’s. He turned the handle.

In the end, it was quite easy. At the first sight of him Linnet dove under the sheet. Which meant it was the work of a moment to roll her up in that sheet.

She made muffled noises and tried to struggle, but her arms and legs were pinned.

“Are you sure she’s still breathing?” Sébastien asked, as he made his way with some difficulty down the path.

Piers prodded at Sébastien’s cargo, provoking a new struggle. Furious sounds were coming from the bundle. “It appears she is.”

“What now?” Sebastian said when they reached the pool.

“Put her over there,” Piers said. “On that flat rock. I couldn’t have done it without you, but feel free to leave immediately. No need to come back; my fiancée is going to walk back under her own steam.”

The words emanating from the bundle took on a tone that suggested profanation.

Sébastien left, shaking his arms. Piers waited until his cousin rounded the curve leading to the guardhouse, and then said, “All right, you can take the sheet off. He’s gone.”

Instantly the sheet exploded in thrashing movement. Piers stood, arms folded, until Linnet popped out. She was wearing nothing but a light chemise, and he took a moment to enjoy the sight.