“The first are those who are at the rank of squire or below: in short, from the gentry. For them, my beauty and dowry, combined with connections to a dukedom, are more than enough reason to write me worthless poetry and fall on their knees at any opportunity. They tend to court me with enthusiasm, expecting me to be fervently grateful that they are lowering themselves to a woman known to all as illegitimate.”
Her tone was wry, but not bitter.
“I see,” he said.
“The second aren’t courting me. In fact, their mothers have explicitly warned them to stay away from me. For mothers, my hair is a version of the flags that the peat farmers erect near a marshy area.”
“What sort of flag?”
“Danger.” She moved forward and examined all the boxes again before she pulled out a ripe strawberry and bit it. “Men from the nobility don’t want to marry me, because I am infamous, no matter what my father—to clarify, the duke—says.” Her eyes sparkled with mischief. “Except sometimes I cannot stop myself from teasing them, as I told you before.”
“By enticing them to kiss you,” he filled in. “They then offer marriage, which you refuse.”
“Exactly.” She leaned over and patted his knee. “You are safe, as you yourself told me that you are invulnerable to my most enticing look. This one.” She cast him that melting look, the one that announced he was the only man in the world whom she desired.
His cock responded with a jerk, so he snatched the napkin and wiped his mouth, sticking it hastily back in his lap.
The expression peeled off her face like water.
“You’re immune to my charms, such as they are,” she said. “Being a future duke, you can’t marry me, and there’s no pleasure in tormenting you by enticing you to kiss me. You’re not afraid that my father will force you to marry me.”
“I kissed you.”
She shrugged. “Not because I invited it.” She lay back down, apparently considering the subject closed.
He hated to admit it, but her reasoning was sound. He wouldn’t take advantage of her. He couldn’t marry her. They both knew it.
Still.
He tossed his napkin to the side and moved so that he was braced over her, knees on either side of her hips.
Her mouth opened, but no word escaped.
“You informed me that you wouldn’t judge me based on our kiss in the snake tent,” he said, scowling down at her.
She reached up and ran a finger over the crevice between his brows, forcing him to stop frowning. “So I did.”
“You were not trying to entice me to kiss you then, or now.”
Her face stilled, amusement gleaming in her eyes, not the carefully manufactured desire that she used as a weapon against unwary gentlemen. “No, I am not.”
The drop of plum juice was high on one cheek, a violet shadow. “Perhaps I won’t kiss you.” He lowered his head and licked her cheekbone instead. The juice on his tongue was tart and sweet, like Joan.
She sucked in a breath.
“I don’t care to be judged,” he said silkily. He licked her other cheekbone, because he wanted to.
His heart was thudding in his chest. She lay under him, quiescent, blue eyes wide. Would he ever believe her if he saw desire in them? Yet he wanted to see that emotion in her eyes, more than anything.
“You should never bring any man here,” he said, his voice harsh to his own ears. “The fallacy in your argument is your assumption that a man has to be enticed in order to want to kiss you.”
“I trust you.”
“You shouldn’t.”
Joan laughed at him. “You just informed me that you won’t even kiss me! The gentlemen who were horrified at the idea of being forced to marry me were lower in rank than my father. You’ll be a duke someday. You’re the only man who’s ever kissed me who’s had no fear of my father!”
That wasn’t entirely true.
In Thaddeus’s estimation, the Duke of Lindow was a reasonable and calm man. But if Thaddeus injured one of his children? His Grace would slice him into ribbons, and no hereditary degree would prevent the ensuing bloodbath.
“If you won’t kiss me,” Joan said suddenly, “perhaps I will kiss you.”
He stared down at her. “Why?”
Her cheeks turned rosy, and she fidgeted beneath him. No one can feign a blush.
“I’ve never kissed anyone,” she admitted. “I’ve been kissed.”
He waited.
Thaddeus was good at waiting. He stared down into her eyes, realizing something very important: Lady Joan Wilde made sure that people around her danced to her bidding.
He had every expectation that her father was privately flummoxed by the fact that he’d given permission for her to play the role of Hamlet. And then there was her close friend, Otis. Some men enjoyed dressing in women’s clothing; Otis was not one of them.
With a sudden movement, Thaddeus straightened and moved back to his side of the picnic cloth. Joan turned her head and watched him. Then she sighed and looked back up at the sky. “Well played, Thaddeus.”
His erection jerked against his stomach because—she said his name. If that reaction wasn’t the stupidest thing he’d ever experienced, he didn’t know what was.
Cleavage was enticing. Less so than when he was fourteen, but still delectable.
A delicately turned ankle, a shining pair of eyes, a slender waist.
But his name?
Simply his name, shaped by plush, laughing lips? From her, it was like a kiss.
“Would you like any more to eat?” he asked, leaning over to give her more wine.
“I’m starting to feel muzzy,” Joan said. “I shouldn’t drink too much. What if I skewer you by accident, once we begin practicing?”
“I brought these,” he said, putting his hand in his pocket and pulling out the tips that were used in training.
“I’m afraid to pull this rapier from its scabbard,” Joan confessed. “In the nursery, we had wooden swords. May I have a jam tart?”
He inspected the boxes and handed over a jam tart, the dough shaped into a blossom, with a ruby-red center. He took a couple for himself and sat back against the tree.
Joan was humming again.
Thaddeus was always thinking. He considered it intrinsic to his personality. When other men remarked that they hadn’t bothered to follow a lecture, a speech, or a sermon, Thaddeus was always faintly surprised.
It wasn’t in his power not to follow, to analyze, to dissect an argument.
Yet here, in a bee-loud glade, he just let himself be.
Taste jam. Watch a lovely woman hum to herself.
Be happy.
Chapter Ten
Joan was completely out of her depth. In the years since she debuted, she had happily played with fire, enticing boys to kiss her. She’d always made certain that they couldn’t possibly take advantage of her.
And yet . . .
Here she was.
Thaddeus Erskine Shaw was no “boy.” He was a man, sitting on the other side of the picnic cloth, eating a jam tart with as much enjoyment as if it were caviar. She had to swallow just looking at him.
A lock of dark gold hair kept falling over his eyes. His lashes were brown and very thick. Perhaps that was one reason why no one seemed to really know him; they were rarely able to meet his eyes.
Now she thought about it, she hadn’t seen much of Thaddeus in the last two years, ever since Viola chose Devin. He had gracefully bowed out of that courtship when Viola married, of course.
In the last two years?
There was the ball when he finally asked her to dance after ignoring her for a month. She’d been too irritated by his neglect to dance with him.
Which led to the foolishness with Anthony Froude: not one of her finest moments, she had to admit.
“What have you been doing the last two years?” she asked, licking her fingers. “I’ve only seen you occasionally at balls and the like. You haven’t been courting anyone, as far
as I know?” She turned her head, raising an eyebrow.
“No.”
“Here, is that your fourth jam tart?” she asked, sitting up. “I’d like another one, you greedy piglet.”
He laughed, a sound that was deep and relaxed. She liked it.
Joan held a finger up in the air. “Stroke one on the calendar: future duke laughs. Or is that stroke two?”
“Three,” he confirmed, handing her two tarts.
“In a week,” Joan said. “Likely a record.”
His mouth twisted in a wry smile that had nothing to do with humor.
Something was wrong. Thaddeus was so self-contained that she had the idea none of her brothers would know the problem, nor her brother-in-law Jeremy either, for all they’d been friends at Eton. Thaddeus wouldn’t share problems with his mother, because he was instinctively protective. He adored the duchess, that was clear. He would never worry her.
Joan finished one of her tarts, thinking hard. He wouldn’t respond to a simple question. There was a cloak of self-possession around him that seemed to be part of his character. Maybe future dukes were taught to be prudent in that respect.
But no, her father had once told her that he assessed a man’s strength by whether he was confident enough to admit he needed help. “Never choose a man who thinks he can rule the world,” the duke had told her, years ago now. “Your marriage won’t be a partnership.”
Not that she had any intention of marrying Thaddeus, of course.
For one thing, it wasn’t up to her.
He had cheerfully accepted her statement that he had no interest in marrying her. When she offered to kiss him, he promptly removed himself to the other side of the cloth.
The idea pinched, somehow. But what could she expect? He was so honorable that if they behaved improperly, he would feel obligated to marry her. Nothing to do with her father, and everything to do with honor.
He didn’t want to marry her, of course.
He didn’t want to.
It was odd how much she disliked that thought.
“So, the last two years?” she prompted, pushing away a train of thought that was likely to make her unhappy.
“I’ve engaged myself in the activities of a gentleman: nothing more, nothing less.”
His voice was flat. Joan was more and more certain that something was wrong. But she had to be careful. Thaddeus would never answer a straightforward question.
“I’ve often wondered what gentlemen do all day,” she said, changing the subject. She pointed at his chest. “You seem to have grown several inches around since I debuted, and not in the waist area. Since your coat is off, Lady Bumtrinket is wrong about your valet padding your garments. Have you been working with horses? My brother North complains that it’s made him burly.”
He glanced down. “Burly, I take it, is not a positive attribute.”
Joan decided not to answer that. As far as she could see, Thaddeus’s life had been a parade of one compliment after another. He didn’t need any shoring up about his looks. He generally looked so immaculate and handsome that he could be mistaken for a porcelain statue of a duke.
Not at the moment, though. She stole another look at his legs. There was nothing soft about him. Burly was a definite compliment, not that she had any intention of telling him that.
“Gentlemen are by definition willowy,” she said, instead. “Delicacy advertises high rank: white gloves, silken stockings prone to snags, towering wigs, cucumber diets even as others struggle to buy bread. A member of the nobility is a person who needn’t work with his or her hands and advertises that fact.”
“You would work as a stage actress, if life had dealt you a different hand of cards?”
“Yes. Even though being an actress is apparently brutally difficult work. Mrs. Wooty hopes for better for Madeline.”
“What would that be?”
“Marriage to a man of business, perhaps.” She looked at him over the rim of her cup. “Or to Otis. Did you notice how he brightened when she offered to help him learn his lines?”
“I did.”
“I suppose you would consider it a terrible mésalliance. A diluting of noble blood. Or gentry blood, in this case.”
“I have long believed that it is my responsibility to marry a woman from the nobility,” Thaddeus responded, dodging the question. “Marriages should never be enacted on the basis of rash emotion. Marriage is a contract entered into for the betterment of an estate.”
“That’s cold,” Joan said, thinking that she had to squash any weakness she felt for him now. Thaddeus truly was a bloodless fellow. The woman who married him would wither, given his general perfection, combined with lack of affection.
She got to her knees and began latching the wooden boxes that had held their lunch.
He immediately started helping her, and they closed the boxes in silence. “Napkin,” Joan asked briskly, holding out her hand.
Thaddeus neatly folded his.
Awkward silences didn’t happen often in Lindow Castle. There were too many people with big opinions, Joan among them. She had to accept Thaddeus’s fencing lesson and then go home.
His hand brushed hers, and she caught a scent of him: citrus with a touch of starch. It was pure stupidity on her part that her knees went boneless.
Go home, perform Hamlet twice, keep away from Thaddeus thereafter.
Once they returned to the castle, she could cling to Otis, who tended to control all conversation. Thaddeus was his opposite.
Yet the sight of him did something to her equilibrium, so she looked away, fast, before he could notice. Thaddeus was fitting the boxes into the picnic basket as if that were a new kind of puzzle. She opened her mouth, about to say something cheerful about pulling out their rapiers—without the slightest sensual innuendo—when he abruptly spoke.
“My father fell in love when he was eighteen.”
Her hands stilled.
She knew, of course. They all knew, all of England knew, that the Duke of Eversley had rebelled a month or two after producing an heir, and moved away to live with his “true love.”
Some people called it the greatest romance of the era. Others said His Grace was a degenerate beast.
Joan had never met the Duke of Eversley. He eschewed London and polite society, and lived in retirement with the woman he had chosen.
Thaddeus seemed to have lost track of where he was going.
“I actually know that,” Joan prompted.
“Everyone knows,” he said unemotionally. “A stationer once told me that prints of His Grace with the ‘family of his heart’ outsell every image but those of the Wildes and the royal family.”
“Ha! We rule!” Joan cried.
His eyes flashed to hers, startled.
“You can’t be taking that metric seriously,” she said to him, certain that if she offered even a hint of sympathy or pity, he would be completely mute on the subject thereafter. “Your father is portrayed all over England as a middle-aged Romeo not quite stupid enough to kill himself for love.”
Something eased in his shoulders.
“You do acknowledge that he’s a rum duke? My father calls him an addlepate, and generally he’s not harsh about adulterers.” She sighed theatrically. “For obvious reasons, given that my mother, his second duchess, is a famous member of that circle. What’s more, Aunt Knowe told me that your father is a debauchee, and your mother was well shot of him.”
Thaddeus was staring at the blue cloth, his brows knit.
“Are your feelings hurt?” Joan asked.
“Not at all.” He sounded unruffled, but when he looked up at her, his eyes had darkened to stormy blue. “I’ve spent the past two years fighting off my father’s determined attempts to ensure that his other son—the one whose birthday I share—can inherit.”
Joan’s mouth fell open. “Is he cracked? That’s impossible.”
Thaddeus’s mouth twisted. “You’d be surprised.”
“But—but the English
inheritance system is all about marriage. Who was born first, who was born in wedlock. You were born first, and the other son, whoever he is, is the product of an illicit liaison between a duke and his mistress!”
“Perhaps,” Thaddeus said. He reached for the bottle of wine and splashed more in his cup. “My father believes the system is immoral, and he is bringing everything he has to the fight. Luckily, the estate is entailed.”
“My father’s right,” Joan exclaimed. “Your father is a chuckleheaded fool.” She paused. “Actually, it is rare that my father isn’t right. It’s one of the most annoying things about being a member of the Wilde family.”
Thaddeus looked at her, and she was shocked by the intensity in his eyes. “But as I understand, your father is a Prussian.”
She shook her head, smiling. “Oh, no. My father is Hugo Wilde, Duke of Lindow. There’s never been any doubt in my mind.”
“I see,” Thaddeus said.
“Not that the Prussian in question didn’t make a contribution,” she offered. “The second duchess and he left me in the cradle and ran away together. But my father and Aunt Knowe loved me twice as much. I always knew I was loved, and that was enough. Really, that’s all a child wants to know.”
Thaddeus drank his wine. Joan watched his powerful throat move and pushed away an inconvenient wish to misbehave.
“Isn’t it odd that both of our parents behaved like lovelorn fools?” she offered. “I should have chosen Romeo and Juliet for my debut on the stage. The bottle’s empty, so if you hope to drown your sorrows, we’ll have to row back for another.”
“My mother loves me,” Thaddeus stated.
“Obviously.”
“My father can’t bear me.” His voice was utterly flat. “The feeling is mutual. He’s an emotional clown, who cannot believe I refuse to stand aside and allow true love to win. He accuses me of greed, intolerance, and far worse.”
“I actually don’t believe that you can simply give up a dukedom,” Joan said, frowning. “North wanted to do it, you know. I can’t remember how he’s getting around it, but Aunt Knowe said something once that made me think his plan was impossible. More importantly, even if you did give up the title, it would never go to a bastard child. Given your lack of siblings, the title would revert to a cousin.”
Wilde Child EPB Page 13