When Beauty Tamed the Beast

She watched him, a stunned expression on her face. “It’s coming off?”

“Of course it’s coming off,” he said. “These are scabs that covered the scarlatina blisters, protecting them while they healed. I expect”—he rubbed a little bit more—“that your whole body is ready to molt, except perhaps your back. The salt helped, and the sun.”

“I didn’t think it would ever come off,” she said, so quietly that he could hardly hear her over the waves splashing up on the rocks behind them.

“If you’d asked me, I could have told you. But because you wouldn’t speak to me, I didn’t know you were frightened of something so foolish.”

She had the most rebellious lower lip that he’d ever seen.

“But what’s worse,” he persisted, not looking at her, “you lost faith in me. You said you loved me enough to play the fool. But when it came to it, you hadn’t the courage for the slightest bit of humiliation. You wouldn’t see me in private in case I mocked you, and you wouldn’t see me in public, because you felt humiliated at being seen by Prufrock.”

This time he was the one who lay down and flung an arm over his eyes.

“I do love you,” Linnet said, feeling as though Piers were stealing her capacity for rational thought by looking so hurt. “But I can’t be a duchess looking like this. I don’t want anyone to marry me out of pity. And I can’t marry you if I’m a horrible—”

“Beast?” he interjected. “Is that the word you’re looking for?”

“No,” she said.

He sat up again, and his eyes burned into hers. “You only loved me when you were beautiful. So that you could control me, the way you think you can control other men with your smile.”

“No!” she cried. “That wasn’t it.”

“Then what was it?” he demanded. “One minute you were begging me to marry you, telling me that you would wait for me, and the next you wouldn’t even look at me.” Anger and hurt vibrated in his voice.

She looked down and took stock of her body. It was still red, still peeling, but somehow, sitting next to Piers in the sunshine, it didn’t seem monstrous. “I thought you would be horrified,” she said, choking a little. “I didn’t want you to marry me out of pity. I couldn’t do that to you, give you an ugly wife.”

“Pity is not exactly an emotion I’m known for. What’s more, I haven’t the faintest hesitation about giving you a beast for a husband.”

“That’s not really true,” she said slowly. “You told me that you wanted me, but that you’d never marry me. You said that I was beautiful and eager, but that you’d rut other women, so I should just forget you.”

The ugly words hung in the air between them.

“You’re right,” Piers said. “That was a contemptible thing to say.” All the outrage disappeared from his voice; it was so bleak that she couldn’t think what to say next. “I pushed you away because I’m afraid I might become a drug addict, someday. I was—and am still—afraid that I’ll lose my temper and make your life miserable.”

Suddenly her whole heart was bursting with the fear that he would leave her, even though a mere hour ago she had wanted nothing more than to never see him again.

“You broke my heart when you threw me out,” she said, hugging her knees. “That made me miserable. But when I fell ill, in the chicken coop, I realized that you loved me.”

There was a pause. The curlew was singing again, a bit farther off.

“I said, that you love me,” she repeated.

“I do.” He said it almost irritably.

“I made up my mind that if I lived, I would never let you bully me again, the way you did when you refused to marry me.” She reached out to touch him, just to touch him, running her fingers over his thigh. “But afterwards, I was so ugly. I don’t see how I could possibly be a duchess.”

“I suppose all duchesses are beautiful,” he said. “It’s likely a requirement of the position.”

“At the very least they shouldn’t terrify people in the streets.”

“And for this reason you thought that, since you were circus material, you’d throw me over. What was supposed to come thereafter? Suppers in your room for fifty years?”

“I thought I’d hide,” she said, her voice trembling a little. “Just hide, that’s all.”

Silence. Then: “You weren’t supposed to want to hide from me, Linnet.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“You broke my damn heart by nearly dying, and then you broke it again when you threw me out of your room.”

She couldn’t bear the pain in his voice, the fact she had hurt him, so she pushed him back onto the rock. His body was warm and large under her leg. Familiar and dear.

“Are you going to kiss me and make it all better?” he asked, at once sardonic and tender.

“Shut up,” Linnet said. She brushed her lips across his. Her tongue stole out and tasted his lips.

“I suppose now you’re trying to seduce me the old-fashioned way, having lost your looks.”

But she knew when he was angry and trying to hurt, and when he wasn’t. This time, he wasn’t. Her heart rejoiced and she hummed, deep in her throat. “Something like that.” She nipped his bottom lip, the way he’d taught her.

Piers opened his lips to her plea and raw passion caught them both for a moment. But then he pulled away. “I can’t.”

Linnet leaned after him. There was something in his voice that made her excitement build, rather than diminish. “Why?” It came out a husky murmur, perhaps because she was kissing the line of his jaw.

“You’re too ugly. I never make love to ugly women. I could never love an ugly woman.”

For a split second Linnet’s heart stammered, and then she realized what he was really saying. “And I, my lord, can only love a man who can carry me over the threshold. Who can promise me that he will never, ever touch laudanum and will certainly never raise his voice. Can you do that?”

His eyes met hers: deep, lustrous, intelligent—loving. “In the inn I carried you down the hallway and over the threshold,” he said, and his voice was as husky as hers. “Does that count?”

“I might be beautiful again someday,” she offered. “Or not.”

He rolled to face her, and their eyes met in a way that had everything to do with love, the kind strong enough to snatch someone back from the grave, the kind that never fades and never fails.

The kind that has nothing to do with beauty, temper, or damaged legs.

“I can’t promise you that I won’t lose my temper,” he said. “Though I have a feeling that you may have changed me for good. I might not be such a beast anymore.”

“I can’t promise that I won’t die and leave you alone. I think I forgot to say thank you for saving my life.”

“I love you,” he said, his voice catching. “When I thought you were going to die, I wanted to die. And as soon as you climbed out that damned window, I wanted you back.”

She ran a hand softly up his cheek. “I’m back.”