But as she walked up the stairs, she could feel eyes prickling her shoulder blades. We’re in Wales, she said to herself. Wales. No one cares what happens in Wales. It’s not as if the servants can gossip with their counterparts next door.

What happens in Wales, stays in Wales.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Robert Yelverton, Duke of Windebank, sometimes thought with some despair that he had bequeathed only one characteristic to Piers, his son and heir: the capacity for addiction. Piers’s fierce, single-minded devotion to his work reminded him of nothing so much as his own benighted fall into opium use. Though whether it was possible to talk about work—even such laudable work as being a surgeon—as an addiction was unclear to him.

It perhaps would not have pleased Robert very much to realize that in fact he had given Piers more than a predisposition toward obsession; the scowl on his face as he pulled his erstwhile wife Marguerite out of the room was the duplicate of one often seen on his son.

“Alors!” Marguerite cried, trying in vain to twist her wrist from his grip. “Robert, you have no right to handle me in this rough fashion, you—you—” Apparently she couldn’t think of the right words in English, because what followed was a torrent of French.

Robert ducked into the library, towing her behind him. The minute they were inside he released her hand. She whirled in front of him, a vision of luscious breasts and fluttering skirts, and he felt such a pulse of longing that he almost fell to his knees. It wasn’t only her physical beauty that made his hands tremble: it was the dearness of her, the memory of the way she would smile at him over a cup of tea or a silk sheet, the lost joy of having Marguerite as his wife.

“You—you—cretin!” she cried, so furious her voice broke. “How dare you handle my person in such a manner! How dare you even touch me?”

“I don’t know,” Robert said. He was determined to be completely honest with her. “But I thought your performance in the drawing room had gone far enough, and that it was time for me to play a part.”

“There is no call for you to play any part at all in my life. I will select a man from the street—yes, from the gutter—before I would ask you to be near me again.”

“I know.”

She blinked, and a bit of the fire left her eyes. “Then why did you bring me here? We have nothing to say to each other.”

“I’ve changed, Marguerite. I am not the same man you married.”

“You were not the same man I married within five years of the ceremony,” she stated, turning toward the door.

“If there were any way—any way at all—that I could take back the hurt that I caused you and Piers during the years of my opium use, I would do it,” he said desperately. “I would cut off my arm. I would give my life to undo it.”

She paused, her hand on the door. Her narrow shoulders were rigid. A few, just a very few, strands of white gleamed among her bronze locks.

“I am not the man you married. Nor am I the fool who divorced you. I am older and far wiser,” he continued, praying that she would stay for a moment longer. “I did not understand then how much you were to be treasured.”

Marguerite turned around slowly, and then leaned back against the door. “There were so many times that you told me you would stop taking that drug. You promised so many times.”

“I know. I couldn’t keep my word.”

“But I gather you finally did stop. Piers says that you have not taken opium in years.”

“Seven years. Almost eight.”

“So you could not stop for me, but you stopped for—for what? What did you find that you loved more than that opium dream of yours?”

“Life. I was near death, I think. And I found, to my surprise, that I wanted to live.” He was revealing his saddest truth to her. He walked a little closer, just enough so that a hint of her French perfume reached him. They stood there for a moment looking at each other, two middle-aged people with years of anger and regret between them.

“You’re as beautiful as ever,” he said, clearing his throat.

“You were always one to talk about beauty, and see only what is superficial in a person.” But the fury had drained from her voice.

“Was I?” He couldn’t remember. “I loved you for more than your beauty. I admired your strength, Marguerite, and your intelligence. The way you stepped into the role of a duchess and did so gracefully, and the way you dealt with my mother. The way you raised our son.”

“So you say now.”

“I do say now. And I’m sorry that I never told you then how greatly I admired you. There has been only one woman in the world whom I admire as I admire you, love as I love you.”

“Who?”

“You.”

“Oh. My English is a bit rusty. I did not follow.”

He chose his words carefully. “I know that you would never consider being my wife again after the pain I caused you and Piers. But if you could ever forgive me for what I did to you—” He stopped, swallowed, kept going. “I expect it is unforgivable, but I think of little else.”

She gave a little shrug, an entirely Gallic gesture. “Alors, Robert. I am long past the point where I wish to kill you for ruining my reputation, or even for loving that drug more than me. But what happened to my baby, our son . . . That I cannot forgive.”

Robert took a step closer to her. “I would not expect you to.”

“Yet I think he needs to forgive you,” she said, her eyes troubled, not seeming to notice that he now stood just before her. “Piers is more harsh with you than he ought to be.”

“I know. Perhaps . . . someday.” But he didn’t really want to talk of Piers, and he couldn’t stop himself. His hands came up of their own volition and cupped her face. And swiftly, before she could refuse him, he bent his head and kissed her. He put everything into that kiss: his regret, his love, his longing. The long, cold years of sobriety, when she was married to another, and he had nothing to contemplate but his own stupidity.

For a moment—one blessed, exquisite moment—she kissed him back. She tasted like apricots: at once sweet and tart, and heartbreakingly familiar.

But then she put her hand to his chest and pushed him away. Without a word, she turned, pulled open the door, and walked out, leaving nothing behind but an elusive thread of perfume in the air.

Still . . . there had been something in her eyes, in the way her lips yielded to his . . .

To hope was to put himself at risk. In all likelihood, his hopes would turn to dust, to rejection and pain. He hadn’t dared such a foolish emotion in years. But hope billowed from some secret place in his heart all the same.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Linnet was rather hoping that an irascible doctor with a cane might burst into her bedchamber at some point during the night, but no. He was there in the morning, though, dripping warm chocolate on her face.

“What are you doing?” Linnet gasped. She licked at the chocolate.

“Giving you the look of someone with pox,” Piers said. “One more drop on your left cheek. Yes, you’re a proper horror now. Did you know that Queen Elizabeth was badly scarred by pox?”

“Ugh,” Linnet said, grabbing a handkerchief and rubbing her face vigorously. “How beastly of you!”