Wilde Child EPB

by James, Eloisa

  Thaddeus’s chiseled profile was so tempting because . . . why? London had its share of handsome men. His wig was perfectly positioned; his boots without a smear or speck of dust; his lips set in a firm line.

  He hated being in this carriage. He loathed her breeches; he’d made that clear.

  But he was here. She stole another look at him.

  His eyes were unreadable, whatever he was thinking shuttered behind an expression of polite interest. And yet she was certain that he was brewing with anger.

  Interesting.

  He denied the ability to act, but she suspected he played a role a good deal of the time. A future duke, presented to the world in continuous performance.

  It sounded exhausting.

  Drabblefield didn’t have its own fairgrounds, like Bartholomew Fair in London, or the fairs that took place on the outskirts of Bath. It was held in a large field, whose high grass hadn’t even been scythed, though it would be trampled to the ground by the end of the week. One edge was marked by a thicket; another by ramshackle market stalls, some with a hastily erected wooden structure, and others making do with an old table. The third side was lined with animal pens, and the fourth by a series of tents offering refreshments or entertainment.

  They were greeted by shouts from the tents and stalls: “Bottle ale!” “Cure for the pox!” “Best pig this side of London!” “Boiled eels!” “Hot tea, hot brandy, hot treacle pudding!”

  Joan choked back a huge grin and set out from the carriage in a long stride.

  “Wait for us!” Otis bellowed from behind her, apparently forgetting that he was dressed as a woman and ought to sound like one.

  Joan wheeled about, discovering that the ladies had only just managed to clamber down from the carriage. “I’m sorry!” she cried, trotting back to them.

  “Gentle ladies, the weather’s hot and the fair is dusty; cool yourself in the shade!” a man bawled from one of the tents.

  “I’d like a cup of Waddy’s tea before venturing any further,” Aunt Knowe said firmly.

  Thaddeus opened his mouth. He was going to say something about unclean tin cups, or tea that was merely water colored by molasses, so Joan gave him a kick, which was pleasurably easy when unhampered by skirts.

  He turned to her, his eyes like chips of ice. “Yes?”

  “When you’re at the fair, you’re at the fair!” she told him.

  Other than his eyes narrowing slightly, he showed no response.

  She sighed. “We’ve been coming every year since we were wee children, and nothing’s happened to us other than the odd upset stomach. It’s an adventure, you see?”

  “No,” he said uncompromisingly.

  “Waddy’s tea is marvelous,” Aunt Knowe told Otis and the duchess. “He is the one shouting over there. He’d be hurt if I didn’t visit him first.”

  “Excellent,” Her Grace said eagerly. “I’ve never had tea from a tin cup, but I understand that it adds something to the experience.”

  “Will you join us?” Otis asked Joan. “Though perhaps you should stride around the fair and practice looking more manly.” They all stared at Joan.

  The duchess shook her head. “She’s too pretty.”

  Joan set her jaw and widened her stance.

  “Pretty and indecorous,” Her Grace amended.

  Sighing, Joan adopted Thaddeus’s customary expression.

  “That’s it!” Aunt Knowe crowed. “Now you’re getting it. All right, my dears, tea. Joan, go forth and polish your manhood. Otis will practice being ladylike with a tin cup while sitting on a stool.”

  Otis looked alarmed.

  “Low to the ground in case you topple off,” Aunt Knowe told him. “Come along!”

  The three of them moved toward Waddy’s tent, followed by Peters, the duke’s groom.

  “You’re welcome to accompany your mother,” Joan said to Thaddeus. “I’m very comfortable at the fair by myself.”

  “Is there something about the word ‘dangerous’ that you don’t understand?” he demanded. “Otis may be hampered by skirts, but he is a good boxer, and they have a groom with them.”

  Joan took a deep breath and controlled her irritation. “Right. My favorite part of the fair is the animal tents.”

  He didn’t move a muscle, but she could almost feel the wave of disapproval that broke over her head. “You don’t care for animals?” she inquired.

  A moment of silence and he said, “If you don’t understand, there is nothing I can tell you.” Apparently, animal shows were beneath Thaddeus’s notice.

  “I suppose ‘no one of quality or fashion’ would attend such a ‘ramshackle’ entertainment as an animal tent?” she asked, giving him a wide-eyed, innocent look.

  “Unfortunately, they are all too likely to do just that,” he answered, with a satirical twist to his mouth.

  “The reptile tent comes first,” she told him, not letting his disdain sink into her bones. If there was one thing that her unusual parentage had taught her, it was how to find pleasure in moments when people thought she ought to be ashamed.

  Turning her back to him, she strode toward the tent marked Leviathan: A Snake Longer Than the Thames.

  The old man at the door was missing a quantity of teeth so he burbled, “Leviathan, the Snake That Ate the World,” running the words together. “Enter at yer own risk! He could eat both of you an’ ask for breakfast. Loves human flesh so watch yerself near the fence. Want a ticket?”

  “Yes, please,” Joan said, smiling at him.

  His brow puckered, but he said, “Tuppence buys you five minutes to risk yerself alone with the giant serpent, or a penny to crowd in with others.”

  Joan pulled some coins from her pocket and said, “We’ll take five minutes, and I’ll pay for my friend as well.”

  Behind her shoulder, she caught a sharp movement. It seemed that Lord Greywick didn’t care to have a woman pay his entry fee?

  Ha! She was already enjoying herself.

  The tent was shady after the bright sunshine outside. A picket fence in the middle was shaped in an octagon. In Joan’s opinion, the boards were rather flimsy, given the purported appetite of the snake.

  The reptile was truly huge. Coils and coils of fat, glistening snake wound on each other, moving from bigger to smaller until at the very top the snake’s head emerged from his grotesque body. He was a gray-green color, with black markings.

  He looked at her unblinkingly and then raised his head, tongue licking at the air.

  She drew in a breath and caught Thaddeus’s arm. “Do you see that? I think it scents prey!”

  He lifted her hand off his arm, replaced it to her side, and said curtly, “I doubt it.”

  His touch sent a shiver down Joan’s spine, which was particularly humiliating given that he acted as if she had contaminated him by her mere touch. “Don’t you ever get tired of sneering at people?” she asked, before she thought better. “That behemoth of a snake is terrifying, but you won’t allow me to touch your arm?”

  “You’re dressed as a man,” Thaddeus said. “Gentlemen don’t clutch each other in alarm.”

  “I paid tuppence for privacy,” Joan reminded him. “What did I ever do to you?” she demanded, putting her hands on her hips.

  His face registered boredom, although his lips were tight. She glanced down: yes! His fingers were thumping the hilt of his rapier.

  “Well?” she insisted, when he didn’t respond.

  “I don’t know how to answer that question,” Thaddeus said. “I have a constitutional dislike of questions that are no more than clever traps without a genuine request for information at the heart.”

  “Mine is a genuine question. I don’t understand why you look at me with such dislike.” She raised her hand when he opened his mouth. “Please do not prevaricate. Clearly you disapprove of my mother’s infidelity, but I am doing you the courtesy of assuming that you do not blame me for the sins of my parents.”

  He still didn’t speak, just sta
red at her, so she cleared her throat. “I gather gentlemanly decorum dictates your silence.”

  She could feel her face getting red as common sense intervened. Plenty of people in society considered her a disgraceful hussy, even without reference to her mother’s behavior. Why was she pushing him to be truthful?

  So he didn’t like her.

  Why should she assume that everyone would like her? Any number of people thought she was reckless, scandalous, and on the brink of ruin.

  But inside, she had thought he liked her, even though he disapproved of her.

  The Wilde family was so large, and so loving, that each of them had been told over and over how adorable they were. Lack of confidence didn’t come naturally to her, but hell’s bells, she felt it around Thaddeus.

  She turned to watch the snake as it tasted the air until she was absolutely certain that she had her expression under control. Then she turned her head and found Thaddeus was looking at her, rather than the snake. “So what do you think?” she asked lightly, her tone perfect.

  “Two minutes left!” the man outside bawled.

  His eyes bleak, Thaddeus asked, “What do I think of Leviathan or of you?”

  “We have concluded the discussion of your dislike . . .” She stumbled to a halt, feeling like a fool. “I mean, your lack of affable feelings toward me, which is absolutely your prerogative, because I know that I am . . . that I irritate people.”

  A splintering noise drew her eyes, and she looked down to find that Thaddeus’s hand had cracked the flimsy board topping the fence.

  “Careful!” she said, summoning a smile. “You don’t want to allow Leviathan to escape and come after us!”

  He let go of the board, stepped toward her, and tipped up her chin. “You,” he growled.

  Joan stared at him.

  His mouth came down on hers hard, and her lips instinctively opened to his silent demand. Thaddeus’s tongue met hers, a silky, erotic stroke that made her pulse speed to a gallop. This was no gentle buss or courteous peck, such as she was accustomed to.

  Joan had been kissed more times than she could count, in private and in public. She had kissed men out of boredom and out of curiosity.

  She had never kissed, or been kissed, in a blaze of passion like this. Thaddeus shifted infinitesimally closer to her, making her fiercely aware of the subtle movements of his body, the possessive warmth of his spread fingers on her lower back, the taste of peppermint and strong tea on his tongue.

  She wouldn’t have imagined that Viscount Greywick, the man famed for his faultless behavior, would give her this particular kiss. Not this rough, demanding kiss that made her blood heat and her heart throb against her ribs. Her skin prickled all over as she swayed even closer to him.

  He lifted his head, and she made a small sound in the back of her throat, an urgent, embarrassing plea for more, that came from some part of her that she’d never known before. Their eyes met, and his mouth crashed down on hers again. She opened to him eagerly, her arms going around his neck—

  “Zounds!”

  The curse made them jump apart. The startled expression on Thaddeus’s face evaporated in a moment, and he turned toward the old man who had interrupted them, every lineament of Thaddeus’s body as regal as Hamlet at his best.

  Joan couldn’t help herself; she memorized the way outrage translated to Thaddeus’s entire body: his stiffened shoulders, frigid gaze, hand on his rapier . . . the general air of menace that descended into the tent.

  Perfect for Hamlet, for a prince outraged by murder.

  And for a viscount interrupted in a kiss.

  The man opened his mouth, but Thaddeus held up his hand. “I have no interest in your opinion. Do you understand?”

  The man’s cheeks had turned a ruddy color. “I’ll have—the parish constable—my tent!”

  “I collect that you are outraged.”

  Joan could feel herself blushing when she caught the man’s scandalized gaze.

  “I shall kiss my wife in any dwelling that I choose,” Thaddeus announced, at his most imperious.

  Joan’s blush got hotter as the man’s eyes skated from her head to her feet. Who would have thought that Lord Greywick could lie, let alone lie with such conviction?

  “What?” The man gaped at her. “That ain’t—”

  “My wife chose not to wear a gown to the dusty environs of a public fair,” Thaddeus stated, with an air that suggested ladies often made that choice. “I trust you aren’t questioning the sartorial preferences of my viscountess.” He withdrew his hand from his pocket, and a guinea caught a ray of sunlight coming in the tent door.

  “No, sir,” the man said, his face suddenly wreathed in smiles. “I’d guess that my wife, bless her soul, would have thought it a frolic herself, when we were young.” He accepted the coin and nodded to Joan. “I thought when you came to my tent that you were the prettiest young gentleman as I ever did see, my lady. And I say that as sees everyone who comes to the fair, from across the whole of England. Now I see why you’re so fetching!”

  Joan cleared her throat. “I appreciate that. Thank you.”

  She walked out of the tent, her mind reeling, knowing that her cheeks were flaming red. What just happened?

  Thaddeus had kissed her. He kissed her. A smile trembled around her lips because for once she hadn’t invited the kiss with a temptress’s smile.

  She’d spent years practicing her smiles in a glass. Without being overly prideful, she thought she could entice almost any young man in the kingdom who wasn’t promised or in love with another woman to kiss her, if they found themselves away from prying eyes.

  And yet she hadn’t even been thinking of kisses. In fact, hadn’t she been scowling at Thaddeus? She thought she had. All the same, he had kissed her. Her smile spread, which made her realize that her lips were swollen, and her fingers were trembling. She’d like to do that again. Kiss him.

  She turned around, curious to see if Thaddeus shared her inclination.

  He was walking from the tent, his expression bleak and icy, his eyes like chips of blue stone. Her heart sank.

  Apparently not.

  “That was unforgivable on my part,” he stated tautly, when he reached her side. “I beg your pardon. I have no excuse.”

  In other circumstances, she would have made a laughing rejoinder, but nothing came to mind. Instead, she just stared at him, trying to figure out if he was angry with her. He looked as stiff and pompous as she’d ever seen him.

  But she thought the expression in his eyes was self-loathing.

  “It was only a kiss, for goodness’ sake,” she exclaimed, before she thought better of it. “It isn’t as if I climbed in your bedchamber window, and you failed to push me back out the door!”

  If possible, his expression shaded even cooler. “It wasn’t the act of a gentleman,” he explained, with the odious air of one teaching ethical standards to a felon.

  She could agree with him . . . or she could provoke him. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said, deliberately giving him a dimpling smile. “I’ve found that many a gentleman snatches a kiss upon occasion.”

  “Despicable,” he said curtly. “A weakness.”

  “One you share, apparently.” It wasn’t possible to make her tone sunnier, but she put in a good-faith effort. It was sad just how much she was enjoying the raw discomfort she saw on his face. “Weakness or not, I’ve been kissed by many gentlemen. I would never judge you by a kiss in a snake tent, of all places! It was nothing. Think no more about it. So what do you think of Leviathan?” she asked over her shoulder, beginning to stroll to the next tent.

  There was silence, and then: “Leviathan is a barred grass snake,” Thaddeus stated.

  “What? No grass snake is that big,” Joan objected, stopping in her tracks.

  “Natrix natrix helvetica. At most, it can grow to twice your arm length.” He cast her one of his condescending looks. “That poor fellow was perched on top of a clay snake fashioned from unconvincin
g coils.”

  Joan was silenced. She had been entirely duped. Of course, she loved make-believe and theater.

  “I thought they may have pinned his tail to the clay but he showed no signs of distress. I expect he was tied down,” Thaddeus continued.

  She raised an eyebrow. “What would you have done if he were pinned?”

  His face was inflexible, his mouth a thin line. “Set him free.”

  Of course he would have.

  The fact that Joan’s heart thumped to think of Thaddeus saving a grass snake was a further demonstration of the fact she’d lost her mind. At this rate, she’d find herself mad as poor Ophelia, but Thaddeus wouldn’t be writing her any love letters that she could return to him later.

  She considered his expression as he strode beside her, glowering at the beaten grass. His cold eyes had made it very clear that the knot of longing she felt in the pit of her stomach was felt by her alone.

  She refused to feel humiliated. He had kissed her, not the other way around. She had always declined to be pushed into marriage due to mere kisses—as when she kissed poor Anthony Froude just to irritate Thaddeus.

  Whispering matrons thought she should be humiliated that Froude didn’t offer marriage, not knowing that he had done so, three times.

  And been rejected each time.

  She wasn’t humiliated by their sympathy, and she refused to be humiliated by Thaddeus’s glower.

  “The next tent, the rabbit hutch, is my favorite,” she told him, speeding up as they approached it. This time she paid only for herself. Perhaps Thaddeus wouldn’t want to enter, given his response to Leviathan.

  “Careful going in, lad,” the man at the door told her. “They’ll be all around your feet.”

  Lad!

  He didn’t think she was a woman.

  “What is this?” Thaddeus asked a moment later, folding himself almost in half to get in the door, then standing up and rubbing the back of his neck.

  “Bunnies,” Joan said happily. She crouched down, waiting. Sure enough, an inquisitive brown baby bunny hopped over and sniffed her shoe, so she picked it up and held it in front of her face. “Oh, you are adorable,” she crooned, sitting down. Another baby hopped over and soon she had three funny, sweet balls on her lap.