When Beauty Tamed the Beast

“They were?” Piers was so tired that he felt as if his brain had been pickled. “Together, in the guardhouse?” Even thinking of the guardhouse brought a pain to his heart that felt as if it would break him in two.

“I suspect there will be a newish duchess soon,” Sébastien said, rather cheerfully. “He had his arm around her. Very cozy.”

“Wait! That means he sent Linnet home without an escort,” Piers said, fury surging through his veins. “He sent her all the way to London without an escort.”

Sébastien frowned at him. “Other than a crew of footmen, maids and grooms. Three carriages’ worth in all. For God’s sake, Piers, you threw her out. Put her out of your mind. She’ll be perfectly safe. Remember, your mother traveled here all the way from Andalusia.”

Linnet was fifty times more at risk than his mother. But Piers bit back the words before he could voice them.

Kibbles appeared, halfway up the stairs. “One of the new patients is in a bad way. The village doctor treated him with leeches.”

“Get a grip on yourself,” Sébastien said, his voice growling with fatigue. “Linnet is gone. Put her behind you.”

“Go to bed,” Piers snarled back, waving his cousin off. Then he turned to Kibbles. “I thought we got the news out about proper care.”

“His wife says they heard about isolating the sick, but nothing about treatment.”

“What village was it?”

“Llanddowll.”

“We’ve already taken three patients from there. Send Neythen over on horseback. He seems to be good at this sort of thing and he’s a local boy. Tell him to talk some sense into the doctor. And if that doesn’t work, knock the man on the head and bring him over here. We’ll put him downstairs in the dungeon.”

Kibbles shook his head. “Neythen is down. A mild case, I think. He’s in the west wing. My guess is that Prufrock would be hard-pressed to spare someone.”

“They’ll have to get along on their own, then,” Piers said tiredly. “Take me to the patient.”

“Mr. Connah is very hot, with a feeble pulse,” Kibbles said, standing by the patient’s bed a moment later.

“Throat?”

“Dark-colored ulcers. And,” Kibbles turned the patient’s arm over, “the peeling is so violent that he has lost his fingernails.”

Piers looked down at the patient. His eyes were closed, and his breath rattled in his chest. “How many days has he been ill?” he asked his wife.

“This is the sixth day,” she said. She was standing by the bed, twisting her hands. “It came on sudden-like, so we put him in a room by himself, just as the minister said, and I sent the children away.”

“You probably saved their lives,” Piers said.

“And my husband? My Barris, what of him?”

He had found that it was best to be direct. “I don’t think he will survive. There’s a chance, of course. Your husband looks like a strong man, and we will fight for him. Tomorrow will tell.”

Her hand clenched on the bedpost. “If I’d brought him here right when he got the fever, would he have lived? Tell me that.”

“No,” Piers said flatly, meeting her eyes. “The course of the disease is the course of the disease. We can’t say who will live and who will die.”

“It weren’t because of those leeches? I didn’t want the leeches, but the doctor insisted. He’s come all the way from the next village, so it seemed as if we were wasting his time if I didn’t let him. He put them right on the throat, the part that hurt, to get the poisoned blood out, he said.”

“There’s nothing you could have done that might have made a difference. Only God knows when it’s a man’s time to die.”

“God,” she repeated with a little gasp. “That’s right. Barris went to church every Sunday he did, and always something for them poorer off as well. Iffen he dies . . .”

Piers waited until she collected herself.

“Iffen he dies, he had a good life. He loved the children. Me. He said it to me, as soon as we knew he was sick. We had twelve years together.”

“A great deal of happiness in those twelve years?” Piers asked.

“Hardship too, but yes, yes,” she said, tears falling onto her hands. “He is a good man, Barris is a good man.”

“Then you have much to be proud of,” Piers said. “And so do your children.”

In the corridor he said wearily, “Tell the orderly to keep giving him water, as much as possible. Enlist his wife’s help. We need to cool him down; try wet cloths. I don’t think the malt foam is doing a damn thing but stinking up the rooms, so drop that.”

“Why did you say that to her?” Kibbles asked. “About whether she could have done it differently? We haven’t lost a single patient who got here early enough. We should tell people, so they know that scarlatina can be beaten back.” For all his exhaustion, there was pride in his voice.

“She has to live with herself,” Piers said, turning to go. “And she has to live with his memory. That’s enough for one woman.”

“And why did you say that about God?” Kibbles said, trotting after him. “I’ve never heard you say anything like that.”

“Observe, you idiot,” Piers snapped. “I’m always telling you that. She was wearing a cross at her neck.”

“The other two new patients aren’t so badly off. I think you should go to bed as well.”

“I just sent the marquis to bed.”

“Penders and I had a good five hours’ sleep,” Kibbles said. “And we know what we’re seeing now. We can manage. Go to bed.”

“You’re the best of the lot,” Piers said, eyeing him. “You listen.”

“So, trust me. Go to bed.”

“I’ll just look in on Neythen,” Piers said. “Anyone else in the household down?”

“Not since the two maids a few days ago,” Kibbles said. “I think the hand washing is having an effect.”

Neythen was sleeping, so Piers didn’t enter the room. He could see from the door that the footman had a mild case; his face and arms looked uniformly red, which suggested a fairly quick recovery.

Then he made his way to bed, swaying a little from pure exhaustion as he went down the corridor, leaning on his cane as if it were a third leg.

His man had been there at some point; his sheets were turned down and a cold supper waiting. He stopped only to pull off his boots before he fell between the sheets.

The dream was waiting for him, as it had been every night since she left.

Linnet was laughing as she pulled her chemise off, just as she had that last morning together. She stood on the rock overlooking the pool, her eyes shining, her beautiful, curvy figure lit by the sunshine so that she looked positively angelic.

He waved at her as he came down the path, planning to throw off his clothes and join her . . .

And then he saw, down in the pool, the glint of teeth.

There was danger in the water.

Something had got into his pool, and it was waiting for her, hungry and destructive.

He tried to shout, but she didn’t hear him, and then he started running down the path toward her, except he couldn’t run. Pain flared in his leg, but he kept running, violently throwing his cane forward and thrusting himself off the ground, desperately trying to reach her.