Lady Bernaise was apparently tired of conversing with her former husband. She appeared at Linnet’s side. “Precious ones,” she said, “I am feeling the headache.”
“The matrimonial headache?” Piers said. “I thought one had to be married to be troubled by such a thing.”
“Always, you make the joke,” she said, waving her fan at him. “Life is not the joke, always the joke. Your father could give me a headache even when I am a whole continent away from him, I assure you.”
“I apologize,” the duke said, from behind her. “Please don’t retire to your room. I will leave instead.”
“No, you stay here with our son,” she said, not looking at him. “You have lost too many years with him. Deservedly so, but I suspect that you are now aware of the loss you incurred.”
“Yes.” The duke wasn’t looking at Piers, though. His eyes were fastened on his former wife, on her tiny figure, her perfect curves, the gleam of her hair, the elegance with which she held out her hand, first to Linnet, and then to Piers.
“I think His Grace did well when he chose you for Piers,” she said. “Yes, I think he did do something right.” Her tone made it perfectly clear that the duke had shocked her by that moment of success.
And then she tripped away.
“Pull yourself together,” Piers said to his father. “You look like a dog lusting after a big juicy bone. Hell, you should have found a second wife by now. She married someone else; why didn’t you? Then we would have a new duchess standing around trying to condescend to Maman. Now that would be interesting.”
The duke swallowed. “There can never be anyone else for me,” he said. “I wounded her so much, because I loved her even more. Though I couldn’t understand it at the time, of course. Now, I live with that decision, with the man I was.”
“You sound like the lead in a bad melodrama,” Piers said flatly.
“Hush,” Linnet said to him.
“Miss Thrynne, I received your note asking to leave tomorrow morning,” the duke said. There was a desperate look about him.
“Perhaps if we stayed a few days . . . you and Lady Bernaise might be able to converse,” Linnet said. “There’s no particular hurry.”
“I knew it,” Piers said, dramatically recoiling. “All along you were just pretending not to want to marry me.”
Linnet glanced at him and broke into laughter. “Yes, today made me realize what a paragon you are. Any woman’s dream.”
“That would be very kind of you,” the duke said. “Though I wouldn’t want her to become even angrier at me.”
“Oh, this is marvelous,” Piers said. “The unwanted fiancée and the even more unwanted blood relation decide to—”
Linnet gave him a sharp elbow in the stomach, and he bit off his words.
“We’ll stay as long as you wish,” Linnet told the duke. “After all, I should probably give more thought to my matrimonial prospects. Perhaps there is more to your son than meets the eye.” She gave him a sardonic look. “I shouldn’t be so hasty to reject him. Perhaps he only looks like a childish fool. Or perhaps he only acts like one, but there’s an adult inside, ready to come out someday.”
“I will be a duke whether I leap past my infantile state or not,” Piers pointed out. “Unless you marry my father here, you’ll likely never get another offer of that magnitude.”
“Oh, were you making an offer?” she said sweetly.
“No, my father made it for me,” he said. “So, what do you think, Your Grace? Are you going to stay and try to inch back into Maman’s good graces? It’s impossible, in case you’re wondering.”
Linnet pinched him. “Of course it’s not impossible. Especially since he can depend on good advice from his own son and heir.”
“I can help if he has hemorrhoids,” Piers said. “But I hear marriage is actually the greater of those two evils.”
The duke looked at him, shaking his head. “You will never marry, will you?”
Linnet took pity on him. “He’ll probably have to make up his own mind to do it,” she said. “He will have to find his own wife.”
“It’s so easy to do around here,” Piers put in. “You can’t imagine how many young ladies trip their way up the path, complaining of odd swellings, blindness, vomiting . . . all sorts of charming conditions.”
“Well, that’s the pool you’ll have to choose from,” Linnet said, shrugging.
“Maybe I should keep you,” Piers said.
“Don’t you get tired of acting like a little boy?” she demanded. “Don’t listen to him,” she said, turning to the duke. “One of these days a woman will show up with child and he’ll marry her because it’s the prudent thing to do.”
“Not prudent unless I know for sure that she’s carrying a boy,” Piers said, “and as far as I know, there’s no way to ascertain that.”
“You could always just substitute one of her other children,” Linnet suggested.
Piers howled with laughter.
The duke smiled stiffly. “Primogeniture may be a matter for laughter—for both of you, it seems—but my family has carried this title for hundreds of years.”
“Until you trampled your name in the mud by becoming an opium fiend,” Piers said, turning away. “It must be time for supper. Prufrock, what the hell are you waiting for? Ring that bell before we start gnawing each other’s legs.”
Linnet tucked her arm into the duke’s. “A difficult day,” she said.
He patted her hand. “I chose well with you. But I see what you mean.” Piers was striding ahead, already out of the room, paying no attention to the social conventions that demanded he wait—if not for her, then certainly for his father to enter the dining room first.
“You may have noticed that I’m not carrying a child,” Linnet ventured. She was feeling more than a tinge of guilt at the falsehoods that had brought her to Wales.
The duke looked profoundly embarrassed and waggled his hand, as if to say that it was unremarkable.
“I do think that your son will marry someday,” Linnet said. Though she was fibbing. She couldn’t quite imagine the woman who would not only tolerate Piers but also stand up to him.
“Perhaps, perhaps. I had hoped . . . but I see now that you’re very similar.”
“Now that, Your Grace, is something of an insult, if you’re excuse my bluntness,” Linnet said, smiling at him.
“It was certainly not meant as such. What will you do next, my dear?”
“I shall return to London,” Linnet said. “I might go abroad. Or I might to go straight to Lady Jersey’s house and show her that I am not carrying any child. And then I will force the prince to acknowledge that there was no possibility of that event’s occurring. And then I shall marry someone.”
“Very good,” the duke said. “You can count on my support. I fancy my opinion will prove a significant influence on Lady Jersey.”
She smiled at him. “Thank you.”
Chapter Twelve
Linnet was dreaming that her mother was sitting on the end of the bed, laughing and throwing cherries. She didn’t have very good aim, and one bounced off Linnet’s shoulder onto the floor; another fell into the sheets. “Mama!” she protested. “They’ll make a mess. They’ll stain the bed linens.”