“We don’t have a problem,” he snapped.
She bit back a smile. “Oh, but we do,” she said. “Your father has promised your hand in marriage to me, and the announcement has already been sent to the Morning Post.”
“Do I look as if I give a damn about that?”
“Your father will.”
“The father I just met five minutes ago, for the first time in twenty-six years?”
“Yes, well,” she said. “Here I am. Your fiancée. Probably the only one you’ll ever be offered, too.”
There must have been something in her tone that gave her away, because he gave another one of those rusty barks of laughter. “I’m not marrying you, and I can tell that you’re in agreement—but damned if I wouldn’t consider it, if things were different.”
“Now, now,” she cooed, curling her hand more tightly around his arm and giving him another smile.
“Oh, give it up,” he said. “You’re not marrying me, any more than I’m marrying you. What’s your name, by the way?”
“Miss Thrynne,” she said. “My father is Cornelius Thrynne, Viscount Sundon.”
“I’m an earl,” he said. “But I suppose you know that, since you apparently made a dead set at my poor father, bewitching him with stories of princely issue. How did you find out his weakness for royal blood?”
“My aunt was aware that he claims Henry VIII as an ancestor,” she said, eyeing his big frame. “I don’t see much resemblance, though; he was certainly shorter and fatter than you are.”
The butler was waiting in the entry as they reached the bottom step. “This is Prufrock,” the earl said. “He knows everything that happens in this castle and farther abroad. Though really, Prufrock, you should have warned me that my father planned to breach the fortress. I would have left.”
“My conclusion precisely, my lord,” the butler said. He bowed to Linnet. “Your maid is in your bedchamber, Miss Thrynne, if you would like to join her.”
From the top of the steps came a clamor of voices as the doctors walked down, led by the duke.
“Hell and damnation,” Marchant said. He turned toward the archway. “You—open the door,” he snarled at a footman, who sprang into action.
Linnet was looking after him with some amusement when he suddenly turned around. “And you,” he said to her. “Come with me.”
She laughed. “You,” she said mockingly, “run away and hide now, why don’t you? I think the big, bad wolf is coming.”
For a moment his face darkened and his eyes narrowed in an almost frightening fashion. But then he held out his hand. “Please.”
She might as well. “All right,” she said. But she didn’t take his hand. They went out the massive door into the sunshine.
“The sun’s still out,” Marchant said, squinting up. “All morning, which is practically a record. It rains most of the time in Wales.”
“Will you take me in the direction of the sea?” She could smell a saucy, salty freshness and faintly hear the sound of waves. She didn’t have her bonnet, which meant she might get freckles, but at the moment she couldn’t bring herself to care. Mrs. Hutchins said that freckles were vastly unattractive, but Mrs. Hutchins was far away, in London.
“This way,” the earl said. “You may hold my arm if you wish.” He would never wait for her to retrieve her bonnet, so she’d have to go without it.
“Very courteous of you. You’ll be ready for Almack’s any moment,” she said, curling her fingers around his arm again.
“Almack’s? What’s that?”
“A place where all the best sort go to dance on Wednesday nights,” she said.
“Sounds appalling.”
“It can be tedious,” she said, considering.
He looked sideways at her. “You don’t like dancing?”
“It’s fine,” she said, without much enthusiasm.
“But what do ladies do if they don’t dance? My mother lives for it. She’s furious at me about the lack of dancing in her life at the moment.”
“Why?”
“It’s Seb’s fault. He sent his mother and mine off to Andalusia to make sure nothing happens to them in Paris if Napoleon gets an itch to invade England. And, of course, nothing has happened, so instead the ladies are longing to be back in the ballroom.”
Linnet said nothing. She would love to travel, to see places like Andalusia, or Greece, or even further afield. In fact, she would willingly give up dancing forever for the chance to see the Parthenon.
“So what’s your name?”
“I told you,” she said, frowning. “Miss—”
“Your given name.”
“Linnet,” she said. “But it’s quite inappropriate for you to use it, now that you’ve informed me that you’re not my fiancé.”
“But I haven’t informed the Morning Post yet,” he said. “So I suppose we’re still technically betrothed. Mine is Piers, by the way. Don’t call me Marchant; I loathe the name.”
The path curved and ran alongside a tiny house. “What’s this?” Linnet inquired.
“The guardhouse. It seems that at some point in the castle’s less-than-illustrious past a man was stationed here, the better to manage a smuggling operation,” Piers said.
Linnet opened her mouth to ask more, but they rounded the bend and suddenly, there below them, was the sea. It shone like a great sapphire in the sunlight.
“It’s so beautiful!” Linnet breathed, dropping his arm. “I had no idea.”
“You’ve never seen the sea?”
She shook her head. “My father prefers London all year round. Is that a pool?”
“Yes. It’s carved from the rock. Drains and then fills again with the tide.”
“Do you raise fish in it?”
“I swim in it, of course. If I can tolerate my father’s presence long enough, you can give it a try.” He started down the path. “Not that you’ll have the nerve.”
She narrowed her eyes, staring at his back.
A moment later he turned around. She had folded her arms and was waiting. “You’re a pain in the arse,” he said impatiently.
She waited.
He leaned hard on his cane and let out a ragged groan. “My leg. The pain is excruciating.”
But he walked back to her. The wind coming off the sea whipped his dark hair out of its queue, and it swirled around his head. Linnet laughed, because there was something about him that made her feel . . .
Weak.
Ridiculous. She curled her fingers across his arm. “Ladies don’t swim,” she informed him.
“Yes, they do. I’ve sent quite a few of my patients off to the coast. I generally do with women whose problems stem from their love of pastries. Send them there for female complaints too. As I understand it, they roll out to sea in a carriage, and then their maids tip them into the water.”
She digested that. “I would think one’s clothes would make one sink.”
His eyes were wicked, full of laughter. “Stripped, you fool. The maid takes her mistress’s clothes off and she slips, fish-like, into the water.”