“I would have gone to fetch you, even given that I had no idea that you might be ill. I just couldn’t leave my patients yet. Well, actually, I contemplated leaving my patients more than a few times, mostly in the middle of the night.”
“That wouldn’t have been right,” she said firmly. “It would have put a damper on our wedding.”
“Is there going to be a wedding?” His eyes searched hers. “It wouldn’t be easy to take our vows in your bedchamber, but we could manage it.”
She took a deep breath. “Do you mind marrying a peeling lobster?”
His eyes showed that he didn’t mind at all. “You’re not a lobster,” he said, brushing his lips over hers. “Where the new skin shows you’re more like a strawberry. A ripe, delicious strawberry.”
“Berry is my middle name,” Linnet said, a giggle escaping.
“My Berry.” But he was done with talking, so he rolled over onto her, big and strong and—yes—domineering. “If I don’t mind making love to you while you molt, would you mind making love to a man whose temper gets the best of him sometimes?”
“No,” she gasped, because his hand . . . well, there were parts of her that were seemed to be exactly as soft as they used to be.
He had to rub her breasts with the sheet until they were a beautiful strawberry pink, but they both enjoyed that. And they were both happy when it turned out that for some mysterious reason the scarlatina hadn’t touched her inner thighs.
There were other things to be happy about as well.
Afterward, they lay on the rock while Piers concentrated on polishing his beloved into a uniform rosy pink.
“Is my face scarred?” Linnet inquired anxiously, after a time. “Tell me the truth.”
“Not at all. You’re no Queen Elizabeth. In fact—though I hate to tell you this—a little rice powder and the Ducklings will be slavering over you again.” He had apparently decided her breasts needed even more attention.
Linnet began tentatively feeling her face, her fingers sliding over her cheekbones, chin, lips. All smooth again. “I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to forget it,” she said with a shudder. “The chicken coop, the rash, and I was so hot and thirsty.”
Piers cupped her face in his hands. “I will never forgive myself for not being there with you.”
“You mean, the way your father won’t forgive himself?”
“We talked,” he said gruffly. “I tried to think what you would want me to say.”
She brightened. “So you said that he was a dedicated—”
“No.”
“You don’t even know what I was going to say!”
“Nothing along those lines.”
“What did you say then?” she asked, somewhat disappointed.
“That I loved him. Not in so many words, but he knew.”
“When I was very ill, I dreamed my mother was with me in the pool.”
“In the water?”
“Under the water. I kept floating away, because there wasn’t any pain there, and it was cool and wet. But she would push me back.”
Piers clutched Linnet against his chest. “Good for her.”
“I forgave her too,” she said softly. “She loved me.”
“Well,” he said, “you’re very lovable. And not because you’re beautiful, either. And not even because you’re a delectable pink that I’ve never seen on a woman before.”
Tears spilled over in Linnet’s eyes. “I didn’t think anyone would ever—”
“Hush,” he said, brushing his lips over hers. “I didn’t think I would ever care for another person.”
“We were both wrong,” Linnet said, her hand sliding around his head to pull his lips to hers.
“Sweet Berry,” Piers whispered, some time later.
“Yes?” She surfaced from his kiss dazed, her lips swollen, her heart pounding.
“I can’t make love on this rock again. I hate to sound conventional, but my knees are scraped. Shall we go home? I have a wonderfully soft bed. It’s in the master bedchamber, which you have not yet seen, but which you might as well lay claim to.”
“Home,” she repeated, pulling herself together.
“Our home.”
So they got up and fashioned a Grecian gown from the sheet, and made their way home, hand in hand.
When they arrived, Linnet beamed at everyone from Prufrock to the duke. No one really noticed that her skin was strawberry pink.
Because the joy on her face and in her eyes was dazzling.
Epilogue
Some years later
I don’t see why you call Mama ‘Berry,’ ” a small boy said to his father, one summer day. He was lolling on a rock, watching his sister paddle around the sea pool with their mother.
“It’s a private name,” his father said. He was watching Mama with a peculiar smile on his face that the boy couldn’t quite interpret.
“It’s not logical,” John Yelverton, future Earl of Marchant and Duke of Windebank, pointed out. “Mama doesn’t look like a berry. Evie does, because she’s round and fat and she has that red hair.”
He regarded his younger sister with some disfavor. Even at age seven, he was aware that his sister seemed to have some powerful charm over strangers. If she smiled at them, they simply melted. They gave her whatever she wanted.
Not that his mother and father did, of course. They were more likely to poke her until she laughed. He preferred to pinch her, himself.
“Once upon a time, your mother had quite rosy skin,” his father said. “So she was like a particularly delectable berry, a strawberry.”
John had seen that look on his parents’ faces before, and he didn’t think much of it. It wasn’t rational. He was fond of categorizing the world; things were either rational or irrational. That sloppy look? Irrational.
“Could we go back to the castle now and dissect another frog?” he asked.
“No. One frog a week. Frogs are not created simply for your amusement, you know.”
“But you do remember that I had trouble finding the gallbladder, don’t you? I need another try.”
“Next week,” his father said. “I’m sure there will be many gallbladders in your future.”
That was just the sort of nonsensical thing that parents said all the time, and which John didn’t appreciate. “I want to dissect a frog now!”
His father stopped looking at the pool and glanced down at him. He raised a finger. “Remember what we discussed this morning?”
“I have to learn to control my temper,” John said obediently. “An’ if I feel it coming up in my stomach, I have to count to ten.”
“Do you need to count at the moment?”
“No,” he said, somewhat darkly.
Evie was at the side of the pool, and his father got up to pull her out. He had his cane in one hand, but he bent down. Evie grasped his arm with both hands and he swung her out in a big circle while she shrieked and shrieked.
Then he put down his cane and reached down with both hands to help Mama out of the pool. There they were, smiling at each other in that way again.
Papa had a towel slung over his shoulder, which he used to dry her off.