He looked over and saw what she was thinking. “Number one, I didn’t even kiss you. Number two, I couldn’t follow up a kiss—if I had gone that far—with a deflowering, if you remember. Number three . . . well, there’s no number three, but really I think that number two says it all, don’t you?”
Linnet cleared her throat. “I’ll get up if you sit over there.” She nodded toward the chair. “Facing the wall.”
“And just how am I supposed to swim? If I face the other way in the pool, you’ll drown,” he said flatly. “If that’s how you feel, I’m leaving. I have to swim every morning or my leg punishes me.”
“No!” she said. “I want to go back in the pool and learn how to swim.” She’d even taken out a dress, chemise and stockings the night before, in case he came.
“I thought you did. So get yourself bloody well dressed and let’s go down there before all the morning light is gone. I have to see my patients soon. They have a pesky habit of dying overnight.”
His eyes weren’t glittering anymore. In fact, he looked as uninterested as always, so Linnet scrambled out of bed and dashed behind the screen in the corner. “I’m reading one of the books from your library,” she told him. “A medical book.”
“Oh? Which one?” He sounded completely incurious.
“Dr. Fothergill’s Medical Observations and Inquiries. It’s very interesting.”
“It’s unmitigated rubbish. Don’t trust anything it says. In fact, don’t trust anything you read in any of those books you find in the library. Most of them were written by jabbering idiots.”
She popped her head out from behind the screen. “Do you mean that daffodil juice won’t cause a man to lose his potency? So disappointing!”
“I can see you’re planning ahead,” he said, raking a lock of hair from his eyes. “For the next man in your life, the lucky sod.”
“Well, would it work?” she asked, ducking back behind the screen.
“Highly unlikely. Do you want the stocking that just fell on the floor?”
“Yes, please,” she said.
A silk stocking flew over the screen and settled on her shoulder.
“Why are you bothering with stockings?” he asked. “You’re just going to take them off in five minutes anyway.”
She was already tying her garter. “I couldn’t go outside without stockings on!”
“In a minute you’ll be outside with nothing more than a scrap of fabric around your body.”
“I can’t be seen without my stockings.” But she had decided that she could be seen without her corset. It was just too bothersome to lace. “Can you help me again with the buttoning?”
She emerged from behind the screen to find Piers staring out the window. “The sun’s up already. I really should go upstairs.”
“No. Swimming,” she stated. “Button my dress, and let’s go.”
This time, the rush of freezing water past her body, past her face, was less unexpected, but no less brutal.
Piers hauled her back up and she clung to him, crying, “Oh God, oh God,” under her breath. His strong, warm arm wrapped around her body.
“Got your breath back?” he shouted in her ear.
She shook her head. She didn’t want to let go, but he ruthlessly pushed her back. “Float.”
She floated.
“Good. Now do the same on your stomach.” She stared at him, unbelieving, so he reached out and flipped her over.
She instantly sank, but he pulled her back up. “On your stomach,” he said in her ear. “I want you to close your eyes and float on your stomach. It’s just as easy as floating on your back.”
“Warm, warm me up-up first,” she said, her teeth chattering madly.
He pulled her over so her back was against his stomach, and wrapped one arm around her again. The arm was just below her breasts, and even in the middle of freezing water Linnet felt . . . something. A rush of hot blood that went down her body and all the way to her toes, that made her skin prickle, made it aware of the muscled body at her back—and the hard part of him that her mother—
But even thinking of her mother in the context of Piers didn’t seem right, so she pushed that thought away.
“All right,” she said, taking a deep breath. He dropped his arm, she pitched forward and floated, more or less.
“You’re almost swimming,” he shouted in her ear.
She opened her mouth to answer and took in sea water. “Ugh!” She spat. “Ugh!”
“Time for you to get out. Your lips are turning blue, not to mention your fingers. And important parts of me as well. I have to start moving.”
Shaking all over, Linnet stumbled to the pile of towels and swathed herself from head to foot. Then she walked back to the pool and sat down on the flat rock to watch Piers slash his way through the water, up and down.
The sun was even warmer than yesterday, and although she knew that freckles were practically a certainty, she couldn’t help raising her face to it and basking in the sunlight. Even, after a while, lying back on the warm rock so the sun could reach her neck and her shoulders.
The rock below her radiated warmth, so she unwound the towel around her head to allow her hair to dry. And then she eased the towel off her legs, so her chemise could warm as well.
By the time Piers pulled himself out of the pool, she was almost asleep, nestled in towels and sunshine. She blinked up at him. “Have you finished?”
“It looks that way. And once again, you have taken all the towels.”
She sat up. “I’m sorry. Here—take this one. She pulled the one from under her hair. “I’m afraid it’s a little damp.”
He took it without comment and started rubbing down his body and his hair, while she lay back and watched. She had no idea—no idea—that men could look like that. So, so intoxicating. So—
Maybe she was more like her mother than she had thought. The idea was distasteful, and she started to sit up.
“No, stay there,” he said. “Turn over.”
“I will not!”
“I’m going to teach you, on dry land, how to swim. It will be easier than trying to howl instructions in your ear while you shriek about the cold.”
“Oh.” She rolled over, wiggling to get herself comfortable on the nest of towels and warm rock. Then she looked over her shoulder at him. “All right, what do I do now?”
Chapter Thirteen
Piers looked down at the utterly delectable body of his fiancée—his supposed fiancée—and knew that he was in deep, dark trouble.
As dark as the crevice running between her utterly—
She was his father’s choice. He couldn’t have anything to do with her, not if she was the most beautiful woman in all of England.
Which she was, a small voice in his head pointed out. He’d never seen such an exquisite woman. Didn’t even imagine that one existed, to be truthful.
He knelt down beside her, savagely suppressing the part of him that wanted to stroke down that lovely plane of smooth back, up the rise of her bottom, down those sleek legs.
“Put your arms out to the side,” he said, his voice emerging from his chest sounding as gravelly as that of a man who’d smoked cheroots for years. He leaned over to show her the stroke. “See, on this side, and then on the other. And when you stroke on this side, you turn your head to the other to take a breath.”