“Which means the treasure has to be in the bog,” Joan said. “Even Horatius never looked there. Too dangerous. On special occasions, he would fetch us from the nursery. We’d dress in old clothing, and collect spades, and go dig a hole in the apple orchard, or the banks of the lake. It was glorious.”
“Horatius condescended to everyone under the king,” her father said with a wry smile, “but never to his siblings.”
“Nor to me,” the duchess put in. “I was ill prepared for the role of duchess, having never had the ambition to marry a duke, nor to have more children. Horatius was endlessly kind.”
“I was younger than he, but I remember that quality from our schooldays at Eton,” Thaddeus said.
“What do you remember?” the duke asked, bending toward him.
Thaddeus realized that His Grace was brimming with emotion, longing to talk of the son he lost. “Lord Saltersley was kind, if somewhat arrogant, if you’ll forgive me.”
Joan cast him a look under her eyelashes that he interpreted as “Pot, meet kettle.”
“He had reason to be arrogant,” Thaddeus clarified. “He was the best at almost everything, from cricket to oratory.”
The duke’s forehead crinkled. “Didn’t he bring you to join us for luncheon?”
“Yes,” Thaddeus said. “It was half term. My mother generally paid me a visit, but on this occasion, my father had expressed interest.”
“Your thirteenth birthday,” his mother murmured, sounding pained.
Thaddeus nodded. “Lord Saltersley saw me waiting long after most children had been fetched by their parents and realized that my father had changed his mind. If he had shown pity or sympathy, I would have refused to accompany him. But he snapped his fingers at me in a superior manner, and ordered me to go with him. As a younger boy, I had no choice but to obey him.”
“I remember the afternoon. Tea at the Crown & Cushion,” the duke said, a smile playing around his mouth. “Horatius could eat a leg of mutton at a sitting.”
“As could I,” Thaddeus said. “We were always hungry in those days.”
“I used to send you boxes of food,” his mother recalled, patting his knee.
Otis burst in the door, wearing an aubergine coat with a frothing neck scarf. “Good evening!” he called, stopping to accept a glass of champagne from Prism, before he seated himself across from Thaddeus and Joan. “Where’s Lady Viola? Has a new member of the household joined us?”
“My new grandchild shows no imminent signs of arrival,” the Duchess of Lindow said, smiling at him. “Good evening, Mr. Murgatroyd.”
Thaddeus nodded to Otis. “If you’ll forgive me, I’ll just finish a tale from years ago.” He turned back to the duke. “I was so grateful not to be left in the reception chamber, pitied by all the boys who knew my father’s absence from my life.”
By which he meant his father’s well-known adoration of his mistress’s family.
The Duke of Lindow nodded. “Thank you for telling me that story.” The quiet rumble of his voice showed how much he still grieved for his late son.
Otis was chattering away with Joan, who began chortling with laughter. Thaddeus watched them with the odd feeling that the two were a different species from him. Where did that joy that bubbled up so easily come from?
His mother’s hand tightened on his knee. “It was kind of you to tell that memory,” she said quietly. “I’m sure you wish to forget the afternoon.”
She had guessed the truth. He had loathed the demoralizing experience of being surrounded by a loving family. It was particularly horrible to sit at a table headed by a father who was eager to hear the result of every cricket game, the reason for a failed examination paper, the intricacies of surviving Eton.
His own father had no interest in him and never had, no matter how many cricket runs he made, or examinations he took.
He had spent the entire afternoon wishing to be anywhere but the Crown & Cushion, but that didn’t make Horatius’s gesture any less kindly.
Joan was looking at him, eyes bright and interested. “If you don’t mind my asking, did you ever learn why your father didn’t arrive to collect you?”
His mother turned away, blurting out a compliment about Otis’s cravat.
“The birth of my half brother,” Thaddeus said, pitching his voice so that only Joan could hear him. “I already had two half sisters, but as it turned out, my half brother and I share birthdays.” He didn’t enjoy the revelation, but frankly, the details of his father’s second family could be seen in any stationer selling scandalous prints.
“Your father is pestilent,” Joan said fiercely. “So once he knew he had a second son, he felt free to neglect you?”
“I was scarcely neglected,” Thaddeus pointed out. “I was relatively happy at Eton, certainly well fed and well clothed. I had spending money, and my mother regularly sent boxes of food. I didn’t need him.”
“Perhaps not,” Joan said. “But I’m sure you wanted him. One always—” She stopped. “I was so lucky in my parents, but even so, I sometimes wonder about the two who left me behind as a baby.” Her eyes narrowed. “I gather we have that in common. Oddly, I thought we had nothing in common!”
Thaddeus didn’t know what to make of that comment. “We share a piglet,” he said. “I checked on Percy just before the meal, and he is happily sharing a stall with a friendly cow.”
“Who is Percy?” the duke asked, breaking in.
“Our new piglet,” Joan told her father, smiling. “Lord Greywick saved him from being stuck with pins at the fair. I was worried Percy would miss his mother, but he has been joined by a young heifer rejected by her mother. When I visited, she was licking his face, so I think she’ll keep him from being lonely.”
“‘Our new piglet,’” Thaddeus’s mother said, her voice thoughtful. “As in yours and my son’s?”
“No, no, the castle’s new piglet,” Joan explained. “Lord Greywick granted me Percy in exchange for . . .” She faltered, and a faint wash of pink showed in her cheeks. “He gave me the piglet, after I most earnestly asked for Percy to return home with me.”
“I would guess that Percy had to be rescued,” the duchess said.
“A sapient pig,” Thaddeus told her. “Who was being stuck with a pin to prove his unlikely intelligence.”
“I am grateful to you for taking Percy, my dear,” his mother said to Joan. “Our house and grounds are full of rescued animals, from donkeys to cats. We have no room for spare swine.”
Thaddeus’s mouth tightened. He would have preferred to keep that information to himself.
“Really?” Joan asked, flicking a surprised glance at Thaddeus. “Because I was under the impression that Percy would be handed over to the swineherd, only to reappear on the breakfast table as bacon.”
“More likely on a platter,” Thaddeus said. “Suckling pig is a great delicacy in these parts.”
“We live with two donkeys, one missing a rear leg, rescued after being ill-treated,” his mother retorted. “A sheep named Petra who was kicked by a horse, convalesced in the stables, and was never made into mutton. A whole barnful of horses too old to be ridden. Some exotic chickens who aren’t even penned. The rooster is particularly annoying, having a tendency to crow just outside my bedchamber window.”
“I see,” Joan said, one eyebrow raised. “I wouldn’t have imagined it, given Lord Greywick’s disdain for the animal tents at the fair.”
“I dislike seeing animals abused for human entertainment,” Thaddeus said, knowing how woodenly he spoke. He tried to smile, but it probably looked more like a grimace.
“We could give you a couple of peacocks for your zoo,” the duke suggested.
“No, we couldn’t!” Joan said indignantly. “Fitzy and Floyd aren’t going anywhere.”
“They scream at each other,” His Grace told the duchess. “I’m sure you’ve already been an unwilling audience to their nightly battles.”
Joan laughed. “Parth always says t
hat when the day of Revelation arrives, we will miss the announcement, because Fitzy and Floyd are louder than angelic trumpets.”
When the gong rang for the meal, Thaddeus, as the second-most highly ranked gentleman in the room, ought to have escorted his mother to the dining room. But she attached herself to Otis, which left Joan.
Tonight she was dressed like a perfect lady, a member of the peerage. Her gown was yellow, paler than a lemon, with skirts embroidered in golden leaves. The sleeves ended at her elbow with fine pleats falling away from her arm.
She looked like a lemon ice, one of his favorite things in the world.
As they followed the others from the room, Joan slipped her hand into the crook of his arm. “I’ve been trying to think how to break the news to my father that I plan to perform Hamlet on a public stage in Wilmslow,” she said thoughtfully.
A curse escaped his lips before he could catch it back.
“Goodness me,” she said, laughing. “I can scarcely believe what I heard, Lord Greywick. The paragon of English society indulging in disrespectful language!”
He stared down at her, lips pressed into a line, and then made himself open them to say, “You called me Lord Greywick.”
She smiled up at him, and he realized with a jolt to his gut that she didn’t wear a scrap of face paint. Nothing on her lips. No beauty patch, nothing.
She was ordinarily, intrinsically this beautiful. Every day.
Thanks to the Prussian, a voice in his head pointed out, but the words meant nothing. Except they did.
A future duke couldn’t consider marrying a woman whose bloodlines weren’t impeccable. Something he knew long before Lady Bumtrinket began handing out her unwanted advice.
“I was shielding your reputation,” Joan explained, her eyes earnest. “Your mother may be within earshot.”
“My mother,” Thaddeus repeated, trying to pull his thoughts together.
“The duchess?” She looked at him inquiringly. “Your mother, that duchess. I’m sure you don’t want her to think that we’re on intimate terms.”
“In case she assumed that we were courting?”
“Well, she wouldn’t assume that, would she?” Joan said matter-of-factly. “No one above the rank of squire has properly courted me, unless I forced the issue. I enticed a few aristocrats into kissing me, but that was just to see the panic on their faces when they realized that honor obliged them to propose. My father would have enforced marriage, even over their parents’ strenuous protests. I enjoyed terrifying them into proposing, but I never wished to marry any of them.”
He frowned at her. “Conversation with you is trying. I generally follow the subject, but I find myself at sea. Are you talking about kissing that poor fool Anthony Froude?”
“I had reasons,” she said secretively.
He waited.
“One of my sisters overheard him telling a friend that I gleamed like false gold,” she admitted. Any other young lady would be unhappy, recounting the tale. But Joan merely sounded a trifle disgruntled and broke into a smile. “It took me a mere twenty minutes to bring him to heel and then kiss him in full view of his mother. I wanted him to panic.”
“About marrying you? A few days later, he told me that he’d never be happy with another woman.”
Joan shrugged. “He was just embarrassed and making up for his flirtation with gilt, not gold.”
“No,” Thaddeus stated. “He’s not. You are gold. You brought him to his knees, and he stayed there. As did the others, Joan. Their proposals had nothing to do with honor, and everything to do with desire.”
Joan looked up at him with a faint smile. “I don’t believe you, but I think it’s kind of you to suggest it.”
Prism bowed as they passed the butler to enter the breakfast room, where only one table was set this evening. The butler ushered Joan to a place, and an odd possessive twinge went through Thaddeus like a shrill noise when he realized she wouldn’t be beside him. He drew out her seat, and she happily settled between Lady Knowe and Otis.
For his part, he moved around the table to sit between the Duchess of Lindow and his mother, two charming ladies.
But . . .
Not what he wanted.
That was such an odd thought that he spent most of the meal wrestling with it. He never bothered about what he “wanted.” In fact, the idea was anathema. Only weak people had “wants” and “desires,” impulses that they put ahead of gentlemanly conduct.
Like his father, for example.
He hadn’t seen his father for over two years, not since His Grace made such a horrendous suggestion that Thaddeus nearly threw a punch at his sire, barely restraining himself in time.
They existed in a state of frigid warfare. The only engagement he had with his father was missives from the duke’s solicitors.
The very thought of those letters put Thaddeus in a foul mood.
From the moment he was born, he’d been molded to become a duke. His nanny, his tutors, his schools, his friends, his mother . . .
All of them.
They looked at him and saw a title, and a man who needed to be shaped to live up to the honor.
At some point he glanced to his left and right, just to make sure that he could keep gnawing over his childhood. His mother was happily chatting with Lady Knowe, and the duchess was flirting with her husband. The Duke of Lindow looked ten years younger than his age, and his duchess was beautiful.
Why the hell shouldn’t His Grace give his wife a smoldering look, particularly since Thaddeus had the distinct impression that the Duchess of Lindow would do everything in her power to distract her husband from his lingering grief over Horatius’s death tonight? Hell, he envied the man.
He wanted the same in his—
The idea startled him so much that he physically jolted and then snatched up his wineglass and emptied it.
“Is everything all right, dearest?” his mother asked, turning to him with a look of concern.
“Of course,” he said, summoning a smile from somewhere. “Do return to your conversation.”
“If you don’t mind,” his mother said. “Lady Knowe is telling me about some fascinating cures for a cold.”
Thaddeus went back to brooding. He’d like to have a healthy, satisfactory intimate life even at the age of fifty. Or sixty. He wasn’t actually sure of the duke’s age.
Of course, he had to marry for that to happen. He would be a duke someday, and that required a duchess.
The problem was that if he thought about marriage, the sound that echoed in his ears was the sweet, throaty moan that Joan uttered when he was kissing her.
Just like that, his cock went from placid to hard as a rock, straining the front of his breeches, so sensitive that he could feel the weight of the napkin that covered his lap.
His lips moved, uttering curses that he would never say aloud. He glanced up and met Joan’s eyes across the table.
She raised an eyebrow, letting him know that she could read lips, and his silence hadn’t protected her sensibilities.
Thaddeus raised his shoulders just a fraction. Merely meeting her blue eyes made his cockstand harden until he had to clench his teeth to get himself under control. He ended up scowling at her.
True to form, Joan didn’t flinch or look startled by his bad temper; instead she began chuckling, and a moment later the table was laughing with her, not even knowing why.
That’s what she was like. Wherever she was, whether in the bosom of her family or a ballroom, people laughed with her.
Thaddeus couldn’t stop looking at her lips. The sweets course included a marbled confection made of chilled rose-colored jelly. Watching Joan slide a spoonful of jelly through her lips made his pulse thrum through his body.
It wasn’t until he caught her glancing at him with a mischievous glint in her eyes and then slowly taking another spoonful that he realized she was performing for an audience: him.
He froze.
Was this one of her tricks, li
ke that practiced smile? He narrowed his eyes in a silent question, and she smiled at him blithely.
No.
It wasn’t practiced.
All the same, she knew what she was doing to him, and she was reveling in it. Even as he watched, the tip of her tongue stole out and lapped up the last of the jelly on her spoon.
Unforgivably gauche.
Any governess would rap her knuckles for being so unladylike. And Joan would only laugh, he realized, because all the people who had informed her that she was illegitimate?
They had told her over and over that she was no lady.
They had given her freedom that no other woman in the aristocracy had. No wonder she confidently strode onto a private stage and showed nothing but excitement thinking of a public one. No wonder she pranced through the fair in tight breeches.
As he watched, she took another bite, her lips closing lovingly around her silver spoon. She wasn’t just beautiful; she was like one of the ancient Greek sirens, created by the gods to bring a man to his knees whenever she chose to unleash her joy and sensuality.
“My dear,” his mother said, interrupting that rather grim train of thought, “Mr. Murgatroyd says that the two of you plan to accompany Lady Joan to a public performance of Hamlet in Wilmslow.”
Joan’s head jerked up, and sensuality slid off her face like water.
It seemed that Otis had come up with a plan that would allow Joan to perform the role of Hamlet in Wilmslow without her father’s knowledge.
“I thought it’d be amusing to see someone perform Ophelia better than I,” Otis said, giving Thaddeus a look that directed him to support the scheme.
“I gather the troupe will continue on to Wilmslow after their performance here in the castle,” Thaddeus said, playing his part. He flicked a glance back at Otis. “I, for one, would like to see an Ophelia who knows her lines.”
“I don’t mind admitting that it strains belief to think that I’m attractive enough to catch the eye of a prince,” Otis said.
“You have winning attributes,” Joan said, leaning over to kiss him on the cheek. “Plus I truly love you, so our relationship will feel real on the stage.”
Wilde Child EPB Page 9