by Eloisa James
The cloud wasn’t black. It was a kind of dark green-blue, and it bulged as if it were alive. Fear replaced fascination. She ran after Piers again. “What is it?” she asked. “What is that?”
“Weather,” he said tersely. “Bloody Welsh weather, that’s what it is. Would you please start running?”
“I’m not going without you,” she said. A wind running ahead of the cloud reached them, and the words were ripped from her mouth.
One glance over her shoulder and Linnet knew they wouldn’t make it to the castle. Whatever was in that cloud was eating up the blue part of the ocean, racing toward the coast like a ferocious animal. And yet, oddly, the sun still shone in the sky directly above them.
Piers was going even faster now, the power of his left leg clear as he thrust himself forward. “The guardhouse,” he shouted, his words barely intelligible in the howl of the wind. They were almost at the curve of the path, and just beyond that stood the little building.
The wind was shoving them from behind, and all of a sudden Linnet felt needle points of icy rain strike her shoulders and back. Piers, impossibly, put on such a burst of speed that he drew ahead. Then he was at the door, yanking it open, reaching back for her as she came up panting, grabbing her hand and pulling her so strongly that her feet left the ground.
Slamming the door behind them.
One second, in which they looked at each other in the dim twilight of the house. Then as if gunfire had erupted, the wooden door shook from blows so strong that the frame visibly trembled.
“Oh, my God,” Linnet whispered. “What is that?”
“Hail,” Piers said, turning and limping into the room. “That’s why we leave the shutters closed on this house at all times.” He paused and cocked his head. “The size of tennis balls, from the sound of them.”
“I’ve never heard of anything like this,” Linnet exclaimed. She stared, transfixed, at the door. It was shaking as if hundreds of fists were pounding from the outside, as if a wild mob were trying to gain entrance.
“But surely you’ve heard of Welsh weather? It’ll be over in two or three hours, I should think. Does your maid have any idea you came swimming?”
Linnet nodded.
“Prufrock will tell her not to worry; this happens frequently enough that I’ve instructed him not to send out a search party. My patients will have to get by with the tender ministrations of Sébastien.”
“Your Ducklings will help him,” Linnet said, over the noise of a renewed hammering, as the wind flung more hail against the house. She became aware she was shivering, in reaction and cold. “Do you suppose there might be some clothes here, or a blanket?” she asked, her teeth chattering.
Piers turned around and leered in an appreciative kind of way. “Forgot your towels?”
“I’m freezing,” Linnet said, wrapping her arms around herself. “Blankets?”
He pointed with his cane to a door to the left of the fireplace.
“Make a fire,” she implored. “Please.”
“As you command,” he retorted. But he put his cane to the side and took a flint from the mantelpiece. Thankfully, it was already laid with shreds of kindling and a few logs.
Linnet pushed open the door to find a small bedchamber. It had nothing other than a big bed, with a window that looked inland so the shutters weren’t being buffeted by hail.
She found a cupboard next to the door, and pulled open the doors. The shelves were empty, but for a heap of cloth bundled into one corner. She pulled it out, her fingers shaking with cold, and saw that it was a man’s shirt. It wasn’t a shirt of the kind Piers wore, made of fine linen. It was homespun, thick freize.
She sniffed it cautiously and discovered to her relief that it was clean, if rumpled. Her freezing, wet chemise was off in a second. But she was still damp, so she poked her head out the door. “Piers, may I use—”
Only to see what she unaccountably had overlooked. Piers Yelverton, Earl of Marchant, was stark naked.
He was squatting in front of the fireplace, banging the flint against a firestone.
“Your towel?” she asked.
“The wind took it.”
“It took your smalls too?”
“I must have forgotten to leave them on. I’m used to swimming naked.” He looked up at her, his eyes as warm as French cognac. Just as if she’d drunk that cognac, warmth slid down her throat, to her breasts, her stomach, lower. She couldn’t help looking. His body was all heavy muscle, his legs, back, shoulders . . .
“Want me to stand up so you don’t miss anything?” His voice was amused, but there was a strain of something feral in it, deep and male and dangerous.
Linnet’s whole body responded to it. The gentle glow, the brandy-like cheer, turned into a kind of desperate heat, pooling in her legs. “No!” she gasped. “If you don’t have a towel—never mind.” She saw him start to move, and pure instinct whipped her back inside the bedchamber, door closed.
The door’s wood was rough against her back and bottom. I’m naked, she thought. I’m naked, and I’m in a house with a naked man, and I need—
Linnet had the shirt over her head in two seconds. It fell to her knees, which was scandalous enough. The thick fabric concealed her figure fairly well, though her breasts strained the buttons a trifle. It seemed to have been made for a man with a slender chest, which solved the dilemma of whether she should allow Piers to have their only garment. His chest was most decidedly not slender.
She turned back to the bed. It was covered by a rough blanket; she pulled it back to find a coarse sheet. It would cover that huge expanse of naked man out in the front room, and that was all that mattered.
She pulled the sheet from the bed, opened the door and pushed it through without looking.
Piers’s voice came around the wooden door perfectly clearly, even over the wind. “What’s this?”
“Put it on,” she shouted.
“No need.”
“Yes, there is a need.” The door moved under her hand. “And don’t come in here without that sheet around your body!”
The door opened, pushing her backward. “I found a tablecloth.” Sure enough, he had a blue cloth tied around his waist.
“The sheet would be better,” Linnet said, her eyes instinctively sliding over Piers’s broad chest. She looked lower and gasped. “That’s indecent!”
The tablecloth was knotted in a jaunty sort of way over Piers’s right hip, but even so it barely covered the—that— “You can’t wear that!”
“Well, I can’t wear the sheet, unless you want to sit on that blanket,” he said, an odd grin playing around his lips. “It looks as if it might harbor as many fleas as Rufus, which is really saying something.”
Linnet glanced with horror at the bed. “I’m not sitting there.”
“There’s nowhere else to sit,” Piers said. “There’s an unaccountable lack of furniture in the house. My guess is that it was borrowed by neighbors. Very thrifty, these Welshmen. I suppose they didn’t think the house needed a table or chairs, since no one is living in it. We’re lucky the bed is still here.”
Sure enough, Linnet peeped around his shoulder and realized that the front room was empty but for a heavy sideboard. She looked back at the bed.
“My understanding is that fleas can’t live without a blood meal of some sort for more than a few weeks,” Piers said, tossing the sheet back on the bed. “Could you put the damned thing back on? My leg didn’t take to that jaunt we had up the hill, and I am going to either sit down or fall down. At the moment my cane is the only thing holding me upright.”
Linnet scrambled back to the bed and started trying to tuck the sheet in on all sides. “This is harder than it looks,” she said, vainly making idle conversation so that she didn’t look at Piers again.
“Should I give the maids an extra truppence per bed?” He sounded bored.
Linnet gave up on the foot of the bed. She must have put too much sheet under the top, because it wouldn’t sta
y tucked. “Sit down,” she said, waving at the bed.
He sat down with a groan.
“Better?” Linnet asked. After a moment, she perched on the end of the bed, giving him plenty of space. She could hardly remain standing for the duration of the storm, improper though this was.
Piers was digging his fingers into his right leg, giving it a rough massage. “Anything’s better than standing on it after that run,” he said, not looking up.
“Have you had the injury a long time?” Linnet asked.
“Almost my whole life.”
“Why doesn’t it heal?”
He shook his head. “I won’t know until I autopsy myself.” She blinked. “Stupid joke. I think the muscle died, inside. I’ve found patients who seem to have experienced muscle death following a traumatic injury. In some cases the pain goes away. In others . . . it doesn’t.”
“Is there no chance?” She watched his fingers for a moment. “You don’t even have a scar, that I can see.”
He turned his leg slightly to the outside, and she gasped, seeing a wicked, jagged scar, extending from his upper thigh down past his knee on the inside. “How did you survive?”
“I probably shouldn’t have,” he said coolly. “Huge risk of infection, for one thing. But I’m a tough bastard.” He looked up, at last, and grinned at her.
Linnet couldn’t smile back. She was too shaken by the terrible pain implied by that huge scar. Without thinking, she reached out and ran her fingers down the rippled skin. “Does the scar itself hurt, or only the muscles inside your leg?”
“I think you’re the first woman who’s touched me there,” he said slowly. His face was unreadable. “An odd thought.”
Of course no woman had touched him, given his incapability. Her fingers looked pale, creamy against his darker skin. Still, she suddenly realized that she had her hand on a man’s inner thigh.
She jerked her hand away.
“I liked it,” Piers said. His voice came from deep in his chest.
Linnet felt so embarrassed that her cheeks were probably peony red. She risked a glance at his face. She knew that look by now. Desire. She took a deep breath. “I just wanted to . . .” She foundered to a halt.
He seemed to be having trouble controlling his laughter, the wretch. “I don’t see what’s so funny,” she fired at him. “I’m trying to be sympathetic to your plight.”
Piers leaned back against the headboard and crossed his arms behind his head. Which did something to the tablecloth, she couldn’t help but notice. It didn’t seem to contain him very well.
“I haven’t allowed any women to stroke that part of my leg,” he said.
Linnet nodded. “Of course. I completely understand.” Her own hands were clenched in her lap, but her fingertips still tingled from the feel of his skin.
“I quite liked it, though. Perhaps I should get myself a ladybird. What do you think? We could house her in the west wing with Gavan and the patients who are dying but not infectious.”
The wind was howling around the little house, making it feel as if they were the only two people in the whole world. “Why?” she asked, with genuine curiosity. “Just so the lady could rub your scar now and then?”
“She wouldn’t be a lady,” Piers objected. “That’s the whole point.” His eyes were full of laughter. Laughter and . . . something else.
Just desire, Linnet told herself. Garden-variety desire. She pulled her legs up and tucked them to the side. His eyes followed her movements. “What would a ladybird do for you that a lady couldn’t?”
“Ladies come with too many strings,” he said, shifting so that his outstretched leg brushed her feet. It felt like an electric shock.
“Strings as in marriage?” she managed, priding herself on not showing any reaction to his touch.
“As in,” he agreed. “As in living with the same woman for far too many years. Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about the drawbacks of that.”
She had. No one could flirt with a prince for two months and not contemplate what it would be like to see his face over the breakfast table for the rest of her days. And if the prince was Augustus, it was hard to avoid the sinking feeling that accompanied that particular vision.
“You have!” he said, laughing. “You’re as much a lone wolf as I am.”
Linnet shook her head. “I’m not. I do want to marry. I also want to fall in love, though I realize the two are not necessarily compatible.”
He snorted. “You’re a romantic, even if you do seem to be contemplating adultery without turning a hair.”
“I read too many novels not to be.”
“Novels have nothing to do with real life.”
“They are better than real life,” Linnet stated. “There’s a great deal of pleasure in seeing bad people receive their just desserts.”
“Why don’t you come sit beside me? That bedpost looks very uncomfortable, whereas the headboard makes a decent chairback.”
It was uncomfortable, actually. But . . . she eyed him.
“The storm isn’t letting up,” he pointed out. “We’re stuck here for at least a couple more hours. Besides, there are some interesting gaps in your knowledge of real life that we could discuss. I’ve always wanted to chat with an adulterous woman. By the time they get to me, they’re generally riddled with syphilis and don’t feel like gossiping about their trollopy pasts.”
“I’m not adulterous, given that I’m not even married. Though I might as well point out that in real life, I would be compromised by this storm, and we would have to marry,” Linnet said, scrambling to the head of the bed and sitting down next to him.
“Don’t give up hope,” he said amiably. “A dukedom is still within your reach. Just not my dukedom, since there’s no one in Wales who gives a damn what we get up to. My father is probably back in the castle praying for a miracle. Yours is back in London, thinking you’re a countess, well on your way to duchess.”
“What sort of miracle does your father want?” Linnet inquired.
“Oh, that the past never happened. That my mother would forgive him. That my injury will disappear.”
She nodded. “He’s desperately sad.”
“No grandchild,” Piers said. “Very disappointing.”
Linnet elbowed him. “Don’t be so tiresome. You know as well as I do that your father is no monster. It’s stupid of you to keep pretending he is.”
“Aren’t you going to say childish?”
“You don’t mind being childish,” she observed. “But I would guess that you dislike being told that you’re not using your brains. You’re too observant not to see his pain.”
“Well, if you put it like that . . .”
“I do put it like that. He’s in pain because he loves you and your mother.”
“Now you’re beating the dead horse,” Piers said, mildly enough. “I’ll give the old bastard a kiss, will that do?”
She turned to smile at him.
“No!” he said, shuddering and throwing his arm over his face. “Don’t try to poison my will with that grimace of yours. Aristotle believed in free will and so do I!”
Linnet broke out laughing and pulled down his arm. “Here.” She let the smile spread over her entire face. “Are you mine to command, now?”
“Oh dear,” he said mockingly, “it didn’t work that time. Maybe you’re losing your touch.” With one swift movement he swung over her.
Linnet’s mouth fell open. Suddenly she was flat on her back, her hands caught in his above her head.
“Give me another smile; let’s see if the magic is slow to take, or whether I’m impervious,” he said. His words were mocking, but there was a caress in them, a rough, insolent caress.
She gave him a smile. But it wasn’t the family smile. It came from a different place altogether: a hungry place, a longing, fierce, desiring place.
He said nothing.
She could feel every inch of his muscled body on hers. “Mine to command?”
“Not quite,” he said, staring down at her. “But damn . . . you’re good.”
Linnet opened her mouth and ran her tongue delicately over her bottom lip. “I like to kiss you.”
She could feel his deep, shuddering breath.
“And I would rather like to kiss your leg,” she said, wondering in some part of her mind whether she’d gone mad.
“You—” he said.
“Yes?”
“You will do anything to win, won’t you?”
She grinned at that. “I’m very competitive. Did you think you were the only one?”
“Not anymore,” he muttered and then finally, finally, bent his head to hers.
A trace of brine lingered on his lips. And his kiss was pure Piers: rough and demanding, without a trace of civility. Linnet felt as if she were the slave girl again, lying at the feet of her master. No, not at his feet, since her whole body was thrilling to the weight of him.
Lying under her master, submitting to his—
“Bloody hell,” Piers said, lifting his mouth and glaring at her. “Why do I feel as if I’m making love to a rag doll here? You seemed to know how to kiss yesterday.”
She pulled her hands free and wrapped her arms around his neck. “We’re not making love.”
“Right. Let’s go back to my initial comment, stripped of the love part. Why am I bothering to kiss a limp—”
She stifled a groan. “Shut up, Piers.”
Their eyes met for a single, electric moment. Then his eyes darkened, and his mouth took hers again.
She tossed the slave girl idea, and just concentrated on the way he tasted: hot and male. The feeling of hard body lying on top of her. The way he was devouring her, the way she was kissing him back.
Kissing him made her body melt under his, and her hands move down his back, tracing his muscles, the way his back curved to his waist, stopping short at the tablecloth.
He was nudging his leg forward, between her legs, and the shirt—what happened to her shirt? It must have . . .
Piers broke free of her mouth and trailed his lips in a burning caress across the line of her jaw.
Linnet looked blindly at the ceiling, her senses flooded by the touch and smell of him. He was pushing the shirt even higher, which meant that she could feel more of him, more hot skin against hers.