Hand over hand he went, ten lengths, twenty . . . at fifty he was tired, but he forced himself through another ten, and then pulled himself onto the rocks in one smooth gesture, water sluicing off his shoulders and arms. Before the injury, he never paid much attention to his body. Now he found himself pleased with the strength in his shoulders and chest. Though the doctor in him knew that was nothing but rubbishing vanity.
“My lord,” a young footman said, stepping forward and handing him a large piece of toweling.
Piers looked up at him. “You’re new. What’s your name?”
“Neythen, my lord.”
“Sounds like a terrible illness. No, more like a bowel problem. I’m sorry, Lord Sandys, your son has contracted neythen and won’t live a month. No, no, there’s nothing I can do. Sandys would have preferred hearing that to syphilis.”
Neythen looked perplexed. “My mum always said I’m named after a saint, not an illness.”
“Which one?”
“Well, he had his head chopped off, see? And then he picked it up and carried it down the road a time. All the way back home, I think.”
“Messy,” Piers said. “Not to mention unlikely, though one has to think of chickens and their post-mortal abilities. Did she think that you would inherit the same gift?”
Neythen blinked. “No, my lord.”
“Perhaps she was just hopeful. It behooves mothers to look ahead to this sort of possibility, after all. I’m tempted to behead you just to see if she was right. Sometimes the most unlikely superstitions turn out to have a basis in fact.”
The footman stepped back.
“God, you are young, aren’t you? Now why did Prufrock send you down here? Not that I don’t appreciate the towel.”
“Mr. Prufrock told me to tell you, my lord, that there’s a patient waiting.”
“There’s always a patient or two around the place,” Piers said, drying his hair. “I need to have a bath first. I’m covered with salt.”
“The sign isn’t up, so Mr. Prufrock said to inform you.”
“No, bath before patient. My life is enough of a shambles without my butler telling me what to do.”
“This one’s come all the way from London,” Neythen said. “And he’s a big lord.”
“Big, is he? Probably too fat for his heart. Pick up my cane and give it to me, if you would.”
Neythen did so. “He’s not fat,” he said. “I saw him coming in. I mean that he’s important-looking. He’s dressed all in velvet and thin as a rail. And he’s wearing a wig.”
“Another dying man,” Piers said, starting up the path. “Just what we need around here. Pretty soon we’re going to have to put in our own cemetery out back.”
Neythen didn’t seem to have anything to say to this.
“ ’Course you won’t be there,” Piers assured him, “since you can carry your head back home and be buried in your own village churchyard. But I’m starting to feel like a dark version of the Pied Piper. They come to Wales to find me, they die. The next day, more of the same arrive.”
“You cure some of them, don’t you?” Neythen asked.
“A few,” Piers said. “Mostly not. For one thing, I’m an anatomical pathologist, which means that I’m really better with dead bodies. They don’t twitch, and they don’t get infections. As for the live ones, all I can do is observe them. Sometimes I don’t know anything until after they’re dead, and then it’s too late. Sometimes I cut the cadavers open and I still don’t have the faintest idea what went wrong.”
Neythen shuddered.
“You’re doing the right thing to become a footman and not a physician,” Piers told him, making his way up the rocky path to the castle. “We surgeons are always cutting up people, dead or alive. It’s the only way to learn what’s inside, you know.”
“That’s revolting!”
“Don’t worry,” Piers said. “If you manage to walk your decapitated body home, then I can’t cut it open and find out what happened to you, can I?”
Neythen kept quiet.
“Don’t even think of quitting,” Piers added, pushing himself over the last rock and onto the flat path. “Prufrock will have my head if more of his staff leaves because of my ill-considered remarks.”
Neythen’s silence seemed to indicate that he wasn’t quitting yet.
Piers reached the house. “I suppose I’ll have a look at that patient before I bathe.”
“Like that, my lord?” Neythen asked.
Piers looked down at himself. He’d wrapped the towel around his waist. “You said there’s a patient waiting, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but—”
“There’s nothing I like more than meeting velvet-clad peers while wrapped in a towel,” he said. “They’re going to lie to me anyway, but it keeps them alert.”
“Lie?” Neythen asked, sounding shocked.
“It comes with the peerage. Really. It’s only the poor who bother with honesty, these days.”
Chapter Five
Linnet left the drawing room and walked straight to her mother’s chamber, the one place where she was sure not to be disturbed.
Not much had changed since her mother died. It was still the same flowery boudoir that it had been when Rosalyn was alive, minus the most important thing: the sparkling, charming person who had made it her own.
Who had made her husband love her, no matter how unfaithful she was. Who had made all those other men love her too.
Who had loved Linnet for more than her beauty.
Linnet sat down at the dressing table just as she had when she was a mere fourteen, devastated by her mother’s sudden death. There was dust on the silver brushes; she had to remind Tinkle to make sure the maids cleaned the rooms properly.
She touched each one, remembering how her mother used to sit on the stool, brushing her hair and roaring with laughter at whatever Linnet told her. No one ever laughed at her jokes the way her mother had. Rosalyn had the gift of making you feel like the wittiest person in the world.
Linnet sighed. Her mother would have loved the joke about the light frigate docking at the pier.
And then she would have dabbed on scent and rushed away to meet some darling, delicious man, her eyes still twinkling.
Finally Linnet took her finger off the silver brush and raised her head. Rosalyn’s portrait dimpled from the wall. Linnet smiled, and without even glancing at the mirror before her, knew that precisely the same dimple had appeared in her cheek. Precisely the same curls, like pale primroses. The same wide blue eyes, the same naughty cherry mouth, the same . . .
Not the same.
Oh, she had her mother’s charm. She knew that. She could twinkle at a man just the way her mother used to, and it was an odd man who didn’t get a faintly glazed expression in his eyes. Zenobia called it the “family smile,” and said it was their greatest inheritance. But what Linnet didn’t do was . . .
Follow through.
She didn’t even like being kissed, if the truth be told.
Kisses were messy, and saliva—well, saliva was disgusting.
She’d always thought that one day a man would stroll into the ballroom and she would realize that he was the one whom she could tolerate kissing. But no one appeared who sparked that realization, not once during the season. That was why she flirted so wildly with the prince.