It didn’t smell like the chicken coop.
And then, as her eyesight slowly returned, she realized that moonlight was coming in a window. She was in a bed. And the arm . . . there was an arm around her.
She turned to her side, wincing. Piers was there. He’d come for her. For a moment Linnet just feasted on the look of him: his lean, fierce face, darkened with beard. His eyes, closed now in sleep, but so powerfully intelligent when he was awake. His lips were surprisingly full for a man, his bottom lip rounded.
Piers, she whispered, before she remembered that she couldn’t talk, that she hadn’t been able even to whisper for a long time.
He didn’t stir. Her eyes began to close again; the pool beckoned . . . but he was here, next to her. Didn’t she want to say good-bye? Hadn’t she something to tell him, something important?
Yes. She had to stay awake, not fall into the pool until he woke, until she could tell him the important thing.
She forgot what it was, feasting on his cheekbones, long eyelashes, the tumble of hair over his brow, the frown that he wore even in sleep. He had never slept with her before, though she had secretly longed for it.
And here he was, naked on the sheet. Sleeping with her, in the same bed, at night.
The moonlight faded, replaced by the very first rays of morning light.
“Piers,” she whispered. Her lips moved, but no sound came out.
Still, he must have heard her that time, because his eyes opened.
For a moment he just smiled at her, sleepy and possessive. “Linnet,” he said, and her whole soul rejoiced.
Then his eyes snapped open. “You’re awake!” His hand came down on her forehead. “How do you feel?”
“Hurts,” she said, knowing no sound was coming from her lips.
“It must hurt like hell,” Piers said. That was all he said, but for Piers, that was sympathy. “You need to drink, Linnet. That’s the most important thing. You’re not out of the woods.”
It was as if he were talking to himself. So she drank some water, though most of it trickled down her neck.
Still, she felt . . . different.
“Clean,” she said. He read her lips.
“Do you remember me washing you, Linnet? Do you?”
She almost shook her head, and then remembered not to. “No,” she breathed. Her eyes were drifting shut. His hand was huge on her forehead, touching her gently, and she could hear him talking.
“The fever’s back,” he was saying. “But that’s to be expected, Linnet. I’m putting a wet cloth on your forehead.”
It made her flinch.
“I know those sores hurt.” His voice was grim. “But I have to bring your temperature back down.”
Suddenly she remembered the important thing she had to tell him, and opened her eyes. “Love you,” she breathed, eyes meeting his.
“Then live for me,” he said, bending over her, his voice fierce as a hawk’s cry. “Live.”
She fell asleep with a little smile on her face. The pool was farther away now, dim and receding. She found herself dreaming of the chicken coop instead, and woke with a gasp.
Piers was still there, dressed now, with a snowy white neck cloth. He was standing at the door to the bedchamber, talking to someone in the hallway. “More water, if you please. Boiled, of course.”
She went back to sleep. Time seemed to stretch out, elongate itself and then suddenly disappear. She’d sleep, and wake up to find it was the middle of the night. Sleep again, wake to find it still nighttime, but Piers was wearing a different neck cloth.
Finally, after three days, she tried to say something, and a squawk came out.
“You sound like a barnyard rooster with a cold,” Piers said, coming to her side. His face was exhausted, his eyes bruised.
“Tired,” Linnet said, going back to a soundless whisper.
He misunderstood. “Fatigue is a side effect of a brush with death,” he said, a triumphant grin spreading across his face. “Damn it, Linnet, I’m going to write you up. I’m the only doctor in Wales who could have pulled you through.”
“You peacock,” she mouthed. Her body felt boundlessly weary, but mercifully, the prickling pain was fading. Remembering, she raised her arm, and gasped. It was dark red and scaly.
Piers sat down on the edge of the bed. “It isn’t a pretty disease, Linnet.”
She tried to make sense of that.
“This is not your finest hour. I had to cut your hair off.”
She blinked in horror, her mouth falling open.
“You’re covered in scabs, head to toe. Well, actually for some reason your feet are fine. But you even have them behind your ears.”
Linnet raised her arm again and stared at it in disbelief.
“You could have gone blind,” Piers said with his usual directness. “Or died. You should have died, by all rights. It’s a miracle you didn’t get an infection, lying on the floor of that chicken coop.”
Linnet shuddered at the word chicken and let her arm fall. But she had to ask. “Scars?” she asked, propelling the word out with such force that it was easy to comprehend.
White lies were not in Piers’s repertoire. “Most likely,” he said, looking at her analytically, like the doctor he was. “Sometimes yes, sometimes no. You won’t look quite as much like a boiled lobster in a week or two.”
Linnet closed her eyes and tried to understand what he was saying. She looked like a boiled lobster, perhaps permanently. Not a beauty any longer. Not by any measure. More like a monster, she thought. A scaly beast.
She could hear Piers rising, probably thinking she had gone to sleep. Her body was rigid, the arm under her sheet feeling her leg and then her waist carefully. Everywhere she touched, her skin felt uneven, scaly and hard under her fingertips.
Piers was there again. “Broth,” he said. There was no point in refusing; she’d learned that over the last three days. Piers would not accept no. So she opened her eyes and took the broth, spoon after spoon. Her left fingers twitched at her side, but she didn’t move.
Then the bowl was empty, and Piers walked away with it. For a moment she was frozen, unable to make herself move—and then she did. She put her hand squarely on her breast.
There was no mistaking the skin under her fingers. Her breasts were in the same condition as her arm, as her stomach, as her leg.
She lay there, hand on her breast, and felt one hot tear go down her cheek, and then another.
Piers was still at the door, having given someone the empty bowl. “I’ll just go next door and take a nap,” he was saying.
She knew he would come back, lean over her, say good-bye. In the last three days, he had never left the room without telling her where he was going, and how long he’d be gone.
“Maid,” she breathed, as soon as he was close enough. “You go back to the castle. I’ll be fine with my maid.”
For a split second, his eyes changed, turning desolate. But then he said readily, “Of course. She can be here by supper time.”
Eliza was no better at hiding the truth than Piers. She fell back upon entering the door, hand on her heart. “Lord Almighty!” she gasped.
Linnet waited.
“Your hair, your poor hair,” Eliza breathed, but her eyes returned with a kind of fascinated horror to Linnet’s face and neck. “That’s not . . . you don’t have that all over, do you?”