“Hmm,” his father said, and John realized he was looking over at Mama again.
She was holding hands with Evie, who was still heaving with sobs, though John knew perfectly well that he hadn’t really hurt his sister.
“You love Mama a lot, don’t you?” John said, pulling on his father’s hand to get his attention.
“Yes, I do,” his papa said. “I certainly do.”
“And she loves you,” John stated. He liked to have things organized and clear in his mind.
His mother laughed. “I do love your father, Johnakins.”
He frowned. “That’s my baby name. I’m not a baby any longer.”
“My apologies,” she said, dropping a finger on his nose.
“Then if you love him,” he said to his father, “and she loves you, and you love us, why do you have to have another one?” He had been told that there was another baby in Mama’s tummy, but it didn’t seem logical, even if her tummy was rounder than it used to be.
His mother smiled down at him and then took his free hand in hers. “Loving each other is what this family does best.”
That was illogical to John’s mind. Dissecting people was what his papa did best. But there was no point in fussing over it, and besides . . .
He guessed the four of them could probably spare a little love for a baby.
As long as it wasn’t another girl.
Historical Note
Beauty and the Beast” is a very old tale; Madame Gabrielle de Villeneuve wrote La Belle et la Bête in 1740. I shan’t cite any particular adaptation, because I discarded most of the details, including the magically transfigured hero. Piers was transformed by a far less wondrous, but no less life-changing, event: infarction—tissue death—in his right quadriceps muscle.
My greater debt, as you may have recognized, is to a far more modern tale, the Fox television show House, M.D.; I tip my hat to House’s brilliant, quirky, and thoroughly entertaining scriptwriters. Piers, my version of their Dr. Gregory House, differs from his prototype as much as Linnet does from Beauty. But his personality, not to mention his damaged leg and his life’s work, was inspired by the irascible diagnostician from Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital.
If the gifted Dr. House deserves mention, so do the eighteenth-century doctors and surgeons who struggled to combat diseases without the benefit of the tests, technologies, and treatments on which Dr. House relies so heavily. Many of the details regarding scarlet fever you read here came from a book first published in 1799. A Treatise on Febrile Diseases, written by Dr. A. Philips Wilson, offered detailed information about the progress of scarlet fever, along with commonsense treatments. In his hands, or so he said, an attack of scarlet fever never became fatal. Wilson’s Treatise fought against the ineffectual and too often harmful practices of doctors such as a certain Dr. Sims, who in 1796 recommended treatment of scarlet fever with laxatives and emetics. In his own way, Wilson was a similarly arrogant, and truly heroic, version of House.
I also pay homage to Enid Blyton’s series of books about a girls’ boarding school in Cornwall, named Malory Towers, which boasted a pool cut from the cliffs and filled by the tide. Reading her novels aloud to my daughter sparked my imagination, and by the time I finished this novel, Piers’s sea pool had taken on a character all of its own.
And finally, T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufock” sang through my mind while writing, though Eliot would surely have palpitations to think so (you’ll find the text on my website, www.eloisajames.com). His poem raises questions about time and courage—whether there is “time for you and time for me,” whether there is time to prepare “a face to meet the faces that you meet,” and time to wonder, “Do I dare?” So I leave you with Eliot’s love song, in which the mermaids sing, and humans risk lingering too long in chambers of the sea.
Acknowledgments
My books are like small children; they take a whole village to get them to a literate state. I want to offer my heartfelt thanks to my personal village: my agent, Kim Witherspoon; my website designers, Wax Creative; and last but not least, my personal team—Kim Castillo, Franzeca Drouin, and Anne Connell. I am so grateful to each of you!
By Eloisa James
WHEN BEAUTY TAMED THE BEAST
A KISS AT MIDNIGHT
A DUKE OF HER OWN
THIS DUCHESS OF MINE
WHEN THE DUKE RETURNS
DUCHESS BY NIGHT
AN AFFAIR BEFORE CHRISTMAS
DESPERATE DUCHESSES
PLEASURE FOR PLEASURE
THE TAMING OF THE DUKE
KISS ME, ANNABEL
MUCH ADO ABOUT YOU
YOUR WICKED WAYS
A WILD PURSUIT
FOOL FOR LOVE
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 by Eloisa James
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
ISBN 978-0-06-202127-4
EPub Edition © 2011 ISBN: 9780062041753
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