The shock that jolted his body definitely wasn’t horror. It was a tide of lust over which he had absolutely no control. His cock fought the restriction of his breeches, which meant he could not remove his coat.
With another young lady, perhaps.
An innocent maiden who wouldn’t have any idea what was straining his breeches, or wouldn’t dream of glancing below his waist. But Joan? With her jests about foreplay and penetration? She might guess that his desire for her was nearly out of control. The very idea was horrific.
Luckily, Joan didn’t even glance at him. She quickly unwrapped her neck cloth, dropped it, and pulled off her waistcoat.
He had joined the hordes of men who couldn’t control themselves around her. Who proved their idiocy by succumbing to her smile or the way she touched their arms.
One would think that depressing realization would make his cockstand go down, but no.
Joan scrambled down the bank. “We’re lucky because sometimes the boat drifts under the willow,” she said, bending over to untie the rope from the gunwale of the rowboat. “It’s hard to pull through the reeds.”
Thaddeus remained where he was, willing himself under control and failing utterly.
“Aren’t you coming?” she asked, straightening and turning back to him. Her cheeks were flushed with exertion.
He caught back a groan by the slimmest of margins.
She cast him a narrow glance but apparently saw nothing, as her dimpled smile appeared again—not the seductress one, but the smile she gave family—and she pointed at the basket. “I’m ravenous, and there should be a few scraps of food left that we didn’t give to Fitzy or Gully. Come on, let’s get over to the island. Aren’t you going to take off your coat? You’ll be as hot as a black pudding by the time we get to the island.”
Thaddeus gave a firm shake of his head. Another woman might have argued with him, but he was coming to know Joan: Perhaps because of her unusual background, she was remarkably accepting. She offered advice; he refused; that was the end of it.
“I’m nominating you to row,” she announced.
Thaddeus untied and unwound his starched white neck cloth and added it to his belongings.
“Don’t forget to remove your rapier before you get into the boat,” he said, picking up the basket.
“Why?” She began obediently fumbling with the buckle.
“Always put it to the side in a carriage—or a boat.”
“All right.” She nodded, and he recognized with a bolt of something very like shame that he felt happy whenever she listened to him, when he was able to protect her from some danger.
His deep-seated happiness was entirely inappropriate. Unfounded.
Joan clambered into the boat, put her hilted rapier on her lap, and watched as he stowed the basket at her feet and sat down. “You look as proper as a gentleman in Hyde Park.” Then she glanced down and broke into giggles. “Even your feet are elegant for a man. Does your valet put wax on your toes?”
He was concentrating on his grandmother’s wart so that hopefully, by the time he got to the island, he could remove his blasted coat. “Wax? Why?” He put the oars in the water and gave them a powerful wrench that sent the rowboat skimming through the water lilies.
“To remove hair, of course,” Joan cried. “Haven’t you ever discussed hairy toes with other men?”
He glanced down at her delicately shaped ankles and slender feet as he pulled the oars again. “Your maid waxes your toes?”
She laughed. “Not women’s, men’s. Gentlemen’s, to be precise. My brothers once had a lively conversation about their disdain for such gentlemanly practices. You haven’t a single hair on your toes. So, Thaddeus—”
With another silent groan, he acknowledged the fact that his name on her lips was more powerful than the memory of his grandmother’s wart. At this rate, he’d sweat through his coat before he could take it off.
Whatever she meant to say was thankfully interrupted when they bumped into the shore of the island. He had managed to maneuver the boat so they arrived at the dilapidated landing, scarcely visible through mounds of water-crowfoot and lilies so thick that he upended the oar and stuck it into the muck to guide the boat through them.
Joan climbed forward and then scrambled off the boat, giving him a marvelous view of her rear.
Again.
Thaddeus stowed the oars while she was tying up the boat and took the opportunity to give himself a lecture.
She wasn’t for him. He wasn’t for her.
Given his father’s stated wish to disinherit him and, even worse, declare him illegitimate based on a wedding that supposedly occurred between the duke and his mistress prior to his documented wedding, Thaddeus had to marry in the very highest rank of society in order to fight off challenges to his dukedom.
Lady Bumtrinket didn’t even know that scandalous detail, nor did anyone else in polite society.
The last thing he could do was marry a woman who blithely flaunted her irregular birth.
Not that he wanted to marry Joan.
This flaring, mad desire was part and parcel with the confusion in his life. No one knew about his father’s claims, which meant that no one except solicitors knew that his father had gone stark raving mad.
He preferred to think of the problem as madness, rather than acknowledge that his father disliked him so much that he would do anything to disinherit his eldest in favor of his first “real” son, in the duke’s words. His “real” wife.
That did it.
Thankfully, his cock lay quiescent as Thaddeus hoisted the basket and followed Joan out of the boat. She seemed to dance through the reedy shrubbery, but he found himself walking slowly, his bare feet prickling with the strange feeling of being shoeless. It wasn’t unpleasant, but it was new.
A boy who is a future duke hardly touches the ground; he’d had no one to play with, and his nursemaids, and later his tutors, preferred improving activities to mucking about barefoot. He swore silently when he trod on a briar but all the same, the feeling was exhilarating.
At the top of the mound, he put down the basket and wrestled off his close-fitting coat. Sure enough, the lining was soaked with sweat.
“The boys used to play in the temple,” Joan said, waving at the simple structure made from white marble with airy columns and a round roof. “The mono-whatever-you-called-it. I’ll show you my favorite place that they don’t even know about.” She threw a conspiratorial glance over her shoulder.
Bloody hell.
He lost control again. He slung his coat over the basket and held the two of them in just the right position as he followed her.
A narrow path wound around the side of the temple and wandered off through honeysuckle bushes thick with blossoms. A heady perfume hung in the air as his shoulders brushed flowers on either side.
“Did you know that if you plant honeysuckle around the door of your house, a witch can’t enter?” Joan tossed over her shoulder. The path bent right, and she disappeared around the curve before he could think of an answer. Was there an answer?
If she hadn’t disappeared, he might have dropped the basket and kissed her, by way of answer. Thaddeus stopped for a moment to collect himself. The last two years had been horrific. That was no excuse to lose his mind now.
Taking a deep breath, he followed the path again.
Joan’s favorite place on the island turned out to be a small, weedy clearing marked out by a few yellowing larch trees and enough honeysuckle shrubs to crowd out sprouts that might have sprung from larch cones. A bee swooped by his head, and he realized the air hummed with the sound of industry.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” Joan asked happily. “Here, let me have the basket. We can eat before we practice fencing.”
Thaddeus put the basket down, and she unlatched the top, revealing a sky-blue cotton cloth that billowed as she shook it out. He caught the far side while she ran about and pinned down the edges with four large stones left there for the purpos
e.
“Viola and I have come here for years,” she explained, poking around behind a tall larch and pulling out a waxed cloth bag. “I was a horribly demanding sister. I made her read parts in Shakespeare plays over and over, until she detested the man and all his works.” She untied the bag and tugged out two shabby pillows.
“Here’s yours. That tree can be your chair. Viola would sit there, and I would make this space my stage.”
“Every day?”
Joan nodded. “I’m afraid so. I would rush through lessons, waiting to grab Viola’s hand and disappear. Our governess never found where we were going, though I don’t suppose she tried hard. There are so many Wilde children, you see. Later, when we went away to school, we’d come here during school holidays unless it was too cold.”
“Can you swim?” Thaddeus inquired, thinking that he would want to know if his little daughters were launching themselves in a rowboat across a lake.
“Oh, yes. We fell out of that boat a hundred times and quickly learned to paddle back. Sometimes we had to leave the boat behind and make for shore, and beg one of our older brothers to rescue it.”
She knelt beside the basket and began pulling out wooden boxes, one with an elaborate glass painting on top, others with simple latches, one with an elaborate gilt design.
Thaddeus crouched beside her and picked up the glass-topped box.
“From China,” Joan explained. “Alaric brought it back. The lady is painted in reverse on the back of the glass.”
Thaddeus turned it over. “A beautiful piece. Oughtn’t it to be residing in a cabinet somewhere?”
“My father doesn’t believe in useless decorative objects,” Joan said. She began to flip open the boxes. “None of us take snuff, so we use the boxes for picnics. We must have thirty or forty waiting in the kitchens. Sometimes the staff prepares three or four baskets in a single day.”
“Even the stuffed alligator has its use,” Thaddeus said, remembering Joan’s soliloquy addressed to its disembodied head.
“The poor fellow is among the least practical objects in the castle, I have to admit. We’re lucky! Cook’s given us meat pies. Would you like one?” She held up a small, beautifully browned pie. “Or three? We had six, but we gave one to Gulliver. I don’t want more than two.”
“Three, please.” He hesitated. “No fork or knife?”
“No need.” She put his pies in a napkin and handed them over. Then she took a bite of the pie she held, and grinned at him, her lips shiny.
Thaddeus turned to the tree she had designated as his chair. He put down his pillow and sat on it.
Joan burst out laughing. “You don’t sit on the pillow!” she cried. “You lean against it. Like this.” She moved to lean against a tree opposite, her half-eaten meat pastry in her hand, looking indescribably lovely.
“You’re very bossy,” he observed, moving his pillow to his back.
Joan shrugged, eyes happy. “I was born to play Prince Hamlet.”
“I believe that the French king and queen hold elegant picnics with china and silver cutlery, while sitting on silk-fringed pillows,” Thaddeus said.
“Poppycock. Picnics are for friends and family, ants crawling in your food, and drinking wine in the open air. Everything tastes better outside. Aren’t you going to eat? Cook’s given us a feast. These pies are excellent.”
Instead, he reached over and grabbed the wine bottle whose stem was peeking from the basket.
“Cups should be in the basket along with a corkscrew,” Joan said lazily. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her wiggle down into a more relaxed position as she began on a second meat tart.
The basket held two rather battered tin cups. He uncorked the bottle and poured wine into the cups and gave one to her. He wanted to ask how many men she’d shared a picnic with . . . and how many here, in her favorite place?
It wouldn’t be polite.
“So picnics are a regular practice at Lindow,” he said instead, wondering if his country estate had ever hosted a picnic. He doubted it very much.
“Of course,” Joan said, sliding down onto her back and stuffing the pillow under her head. She crossed one leg over the other. “There’s nothing better than grabbing a basket and heading out of the castle. The boys spent years of their life in the bog, Lindow Moss. Viola and I mostly came here.”
She wrinkled her nose. “The bog smells like peat.”
“I see.” He had finished his pies, so he picked up a piece of crusty bread and looked over the open boxes. He put a slice of roast beef on the bread, and then a salty pickle, and leaned back against the tree trunk.
The bread was warm and fragrant, and the rare beef tasted better than anything he’d eaten in his life. The pickle exploded in his mouth. A blackberry bramble must be nearby, as he could smell berries, so warmed by the sun that they smelled like a pie in the oven.
“Did you have a special place on your estate for picnics?” Joan asked. “I don’t believe I’ve ever visited Eversley Court, although I remember your mother inviting the family a few summers ago. That was very brave of her, given how many of us there are.”
Thaddeus swallowed his bite. “I’ve never been on a picnic before.”
Joan blinked at him. “That’s so sad.”
“Future dukes don’t share meals with ants. Like French royalty, they don’t eat without silver cutlery, and they drink from crystal goblets, not tin cups.”
“Enough,” she said, sighing. “My brother North is the ducal heir, if you remember, and he’s been on a hundred picnics. I’m already sorry for you. You needn’t beat the drum about the deficiencies of your childhood.”
Sun filtered through the trees, bouncing off the honeysuckle flowers and spangling Joan’s hair and face with dancing flecks of light. Thaddeus swallowed his bite and took another, suddenly aware that he’d never been so happy in his life.
On the other side of the blanket, Joan finished her second meat pie, shielding her eyes from the sun’s glitter and staring into the oak leaves overhead. She started humming rather tunelessly, waggling the bare foot on her crossed leg. “I wish I had a more melodic voice,” she said.
Happiness was not a manly pursuit. Thaddeus hadn’t been taught to venerate it, chase it, or even acknowledge it. Dukes didn’t care for such frivolities as feelings.
To be fair, he had hardened that concept into armor as he watched his father dive deeper and deeper into behavior dictated by feelings—his love for his other family. Perhaps his aversion to his father had turned an implicit lesson into a rigidly held rule.
And yet, here he was.
Happy.
He finished his wine and leaned over to splash more into Joan’s cup. “Have you brought other men here for a picnic?” he asked, the words slipping out because he couldn’t contain them.
She turned her face toward him, golden wisps of hair floating in the air, looking like a princess, albeit in breeches. And snorted again.
“You’re jesting, right?”
He shook his head, thanking God that his napkin covered his lap. Her blue eyes didn’t help his control. Or her delicately curved calf. Or her toes. God help him, he would like to nibble on her toes and then kiss his way up her leg.
“Forgive me if the question was too gauche.”
“You really aren’t from this century,” Joan said, looking back up at the trees. “I couldn’t possibly bring a man here. He might lose his head and molest me, to be blunt.”
Thaddeus finished his wine. He could feel a lazy, sweet intoxication at the base of his neck, not so much from the wine as the air. At least, that’s what he told himself. He had always been capable of matching gentlemen tossing back glass for glass of the best brandy and yet walking away steadily. But now . . .
“I am a man,” he observed, picking up another piece of bread and putting a slice of chicken on top.
“Try it with a slice of plum,” Joan ordered, pointing.
“Plum? One doesn’t eat plum with chicken.”
>
“Just try it.”
She truly was bossy. But he tried it. The sweet, slightly bitter plum perfectly married the juicy chicken.
“Have you ever had plum jerkum?” Joan asked. She had rolled over on her side so she could reach the boxes and was making herself a bread stack like his.
“No.”
“It’s a local drink that goes straight to your head,” she advised. “Makes me giggle like a chimney with a draft. Viola and I used to sneak it sometimes.”
Instantly he decided that plum jerkum was in his future. With Joan.
“I am a man,” he repeated, once she was settled on her back, one knee braced over the other, toes waggling.
“You know what I mean.”
He didn’t.
If he was less of a gentleman, he would be next to her in a flash. Or on top of her. Braced on his arms over her, swooping down to kiss lips that glistened with plum juice.
She waved her bread, and drops of plum juice flew into the air, one landing on her cheekbone. “I mean that you’re a duke, well, not quite a duke yet. But the key thing is that you’re not interested in me.”
She took a huge bite, and he had to wait until she finished chewing. Which was good, because it gave Thaddeus time to collect himself.
The hell he wasn’t interested in her. He had kissed her. Kissed a marriageable young maiden: his first, since he had never approached her sisters in that fashion.
Had she no idea that he was staring at the drop of violet-colored plum juice on her cheek and thinking about licking it off?
“I could never bring any of my suitors here because they would take it as an invitation,” Joan continued.
“You’re certain that I won’t?” His voice had dropped an octave, but she didn’t seem to notice.
“Never.”
She was right, of course.
The truth of it rang dully in his soul. He was bloodless, as she herself had said. She glanced sideways, and whatever she saw in his eyes made her sit up.
“Look, you don’t understand. Two types of men court me.”
“Yes?” He didn’t care about her suitors, but it wouldn’t be polite to say so.
Wilde Child EPB Page 12