When Beauty Tamed the Beast

Page 26

“Not destined,” Linnet said. “Possible.”
“I have not been in England in so many years,” Lady Bernaise said, waving her hand. “You must forgive my errors. Do you wish to marry my son?”
“If you don’t, I’d be happy to extend my hand,” Sébastien said. He was laughing, of course, but there was a thread of seriousness in his voice.
Linnet gave him a smile from under her lashes. He was everything that Piers wasn’t: kind, well-spoken, considerate. And he dressed beautifully. “I’m afraid that your son and I don’t suit,” she said to Lady Bernaise.
The lady snapped open her fan and regarded Linnet over the top of it. “And how did you reach this conclusion?”
“She was with him for more than five minutes,” Sébastien put in.
“Lord Marchant told me so himself,” Linnet said. “And I agree with him. I’m afraid that I infuriate the poor man, which would not be a good basis for marriage.”
“Since when am I a poor man?” said Piers, from behind her shoulder.
“No man can expect to be considered other than poor when he dresses as you do, mon chèr,” his mother said. “Where did you find that coat, on a dust heap?”
“No, a dust bin,” he said. “So, Maman, did I remember to mention that my dear, despised father is also in residence?”
Lady Bernaise’s eyes narrowed for a fraction of a second. “You must have forgotten it in your excitement at seeing me after all these months.”
“Likely that was it,” he agreed. “That and my poor memory. Dear me, he should be down any moment.”
Lady Bernaise cleared her throat.
“No, he’s not taking opium any longer,” Piers said helpfully.
Sébastien gave Linnet a rueful smile. “We are treating you like a member of the family already, Miss Thrynne.”
Linnet was trying to figure out what precisely was being said. Could the duke have taken opium for some sort of ailment? He seemed quite healthy for a man of his age, in his early fifties, she would think.
“He’s an addict,” Piers said, apparently guessing her thoughts as quickly as he’d guessed his mother’s. “Opium is a painkiller, and therefore addictive, which means he couldn’t stop taking it. No doubt he started taking it for a bruised toe or some such. He used to reel around the house giving Maman and me no end of entertainment.”
Lady Bernaise closed her fan and gave her son a sharp knock on his hand. “You may not be disrespectful of your father in my presence.”
“Then when Maman finally ran away to France—taking me with her, thank God—he divorced her,” Piers added. “Told the whole world that she was unfaithful to him and had run off with a gardener. Which was not the truth, by the way. Our gardener was at least eighty and couldn’t have survived the excitement.”
“You are washing our lingerie in public,” Lady Bernaise said, giving him a fierce scowl.
“Linnet is not The Public,” Piers said. “She’s my fiancée, at least until one of us gets around to sending a cancellation notice to the Morning Post.”
“My father will address that task the moment I return to London,” Linnet said to him. “We’ll leave tomorrow.”
“Must you leave? You are ravissante,” Lady Bernaise said to Linnet. “Extremely so. You would do well in France. Though I think you will look even better when you are able to wear colors other than white. Perhaps you should marry Piers for that reason.”
“As your husband, I would be happy to go with you to the modistes,” Sébastien put in. “Whereas Piers would rather expire than accompany you on such an errand.”
“Yes, but you are a year younger than my Piers,” Lady Bernaise said. “Piers should marry first.”
Linnet opened her mouth to make some sort of response, when Lady Bernaise snapped open her fan again and hid behind it.
Everyone in the room turned toward the door, even the gossiping young doctors and the footman standing by the sideboard.
The duke was rather pale, and looked older than he had a few hours ago. But he walked directly across the room toward them, not bothering to acknowledge anyone else.
He was wearing velvet breeches and a remarkably elegant velvet coat, which enhanced the Roman-coin effect of his profile, Linnet had to admit. He didn’t look like an opium addict to her. But then, what did she know of such things?
“Handsome, isn’t he?” Piers drawled into her ear.
“Yes, he is,” she said.
“I won’t tell dear Maman you said that. Or that he could choose to marry you, if I throw you over. She might still have a grain of affection for the old bastard.”
The duke was bowing over his erstwhile wife’s hand, kissing it. She had lowered her fan, but her face was absolutely expressionless.
“God, could he look a little less longing?” Piers murmured. “He’s a positive disgrace to the male sex. I think you’re going to have to reconcile yourself to marrying me. Or someone else, but definitely not him.”
“Perhaps he feels he made a mistake,” Linnet said back, just as quietly. “Do you suppose your mother might forgive him?”
“For the opium? It’s possible. For the fact that he trumpeted her throughout London, not to mention the legal courts, as a cross between a Cyprian and a trollop? Not likely.”
Lady Bernaise’s back was as straight as a poker, and her glance was anything but flirtatious. “So, Windebank,” she said, “Do tell me how you have been in the years since I left England.” Her voice had the clear, cold quality of hailstones striking marble.
“Ouch,” Piers said.
“Indeed,” Linnet agreed. “We shouldn’t watch.”
“Why not? It’s rather satisfying to see that look of anguish on his face. The old fool threw her away in a opium-induced rage, but I gather he regretted it later.”
Linnet turned her back and looked up at Piers. “How does an opium addict behave?”
His eyes darkened. “One moment the addict is having a wonderful time, dancing around the house in his smalls and generally acting as if he had sunstroke. The next moment he vomits. It’s a very untidy and unattractive condition.”
“When you were young, before your mother took you to France, did you have any idea what was wrong with him?”
“Too young to understand it. But I had already learned to look for intoxication. Children of addicts learn quickly to fear slurred speech, signs of confusion, bloodshot eyes.”
“You noticed his eyes?”
“Maybe not at the time. But now I would. The pupils contract with chronic opium use.”
“It must have been terribly confusing for a child,” she said, putting a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry.”
Piers looked down at her, his eyes impossible to read. “I’m grateful for it.”
“Why? Because your mother took you to France?” His arm was warm under her fingers, and stupidly, she thought about the muscles she’d seen that morning.
“It made me a doctor,” he said flatly. “Without his addiction, I’d be sitting around in a London club playing chess and contemplating blowing my brains out from pure boredom.”