Joan raised her glass of champagne. “That is why Thaddeus is truly a Wilde, not an Eversley. Because when push came to shove, the most law-abiding man in all the kingdom threw away the rules and made sure that the woman he loved would be happy for the rest of her life.”
Thaddeus’s heart thumped. He turned her about and began kissing her, irrespective of his audience.
If any Wilde still thought that Thaddeus Erskine Shaw, Duke of Eversley, was as rigid as a starched collar, as his father had described him?
They knew better now.
He didn’t stop kissing his future duchess, even when a crumpled print depicting the head of the Wilde family buying marriage licenses by the dozen flew over the table and bounced on the patriarch’s dish.
“Got a license to spare?” Jeremy asked his father-in-law, laughter in his voice. “Something tells me that the new Duke of Eversley would prefer not to wait until a license arrives from London!”
Epilogue
Nine years later
The pond had that summer afternoon feeling; the water was so warm that Horatius could feel it on all his limbs like a blanket. His mom and dad and baby Lou were back on the island, but he was lying on his back in the pond, his hands paddling now and then to keep him afloat. On all sides, flat cool lily pads bumped against him and then slid out of the way to let him pass.
Back in the castle, his cousins would be shrieking and running about the nursery; every one of his grandfather’s children was home for the first time in two years, and the castle was filling up with sound. But at nearly eight years old, Horatius was too old for most of the games. Not all, but definitely too old for the screaming.
He would have been playing with Otis, but his favorite cousin just turned nine years old, and the uncles took him off to choose a pony of his own. His family had a picnic instead, eating a fish that he and his father had caught by themselves. He could still taste the clean white flavor of it.
A rustle in the water told him that one of the frogs had just launched into the pond to cool himself off. Horatius turned over lazily, letting the sun hit his back. Face down, he opened his eyes to an underwater world, a complex maze of water lily stalks with small fish slipping between them. The surface glowed just out of his eyesight, at his shoulder.
A deep breath, and he looked back down, cataloguing all the various colors of green he could see. His father said that exactitude was important, and he agreed, so he summed up: verdigris, absinthe, terre verte, celadon, emerald . . . lots of emerald.
Another breath, and the tapestry of the world under the lake was his again. Off to his right, a great carp slid through two weedy stalks, its dorsal fin fluttering like a sail, the curved line of silver scales starting at his gills. The carp almost came face-to-face with Horatius, and his mouth gaped open with surprise.
Horatius drifted along, letting the sun heat his neck. When his father, the duke, cleaned the carp they ate for luncheon, scales had flown into the air like flecks of silver. His little sister, Lou, for Louisa, because she was named for his great-aunt Knowe, clapped her hands and screamed to hold one. But then she put it in her mouth and spat it back out indignantly.
“She’s learning,” his mother had said.
The duchess was the most beautiful lady in the whole world, but she said looks didn’t matter and Horatius agreed. What was truly beautiful was the world under the surface of the water, with stalks moving gently, the lily pads like a forest of skinny trees, thickest near the shore.
Dimly, when he came up for air, he heard his mother call, “Horatius!” He put his face back down, though, because it wouldn’t do to waste that deep breath. His father’s bellow penetrated the water, and he spluttered upright.
Not that his father was angry. He was never angry; he said that a gentleman, especially a duke, had to learn to control himself because too many people could be harmed if he said something irresponsible.
His family was standing on the shore looking for him, the three of them, so Horatius started swimming toward them carefully, so he didn’t rip water lilies from their stems. All around him, small frogs plopped into the water, annoyed by the noise he was making. A dragonfly whizzed past his ear, its sapphire-blue wings almost transparent, heavy head bobbing.
His sister wasn’t unlike a dragonfly, now he thought of it. Her head was too big for her body, even though his mother said she was absolutely perfect.
By the time he reached the shore, the family was in the punt, waiting for him.
The duke stood in the rear, manning the pole that they used to get across the lake. There were too many lily pads to row properly these days, so the rowboat stayed under the willow tree. Horatius clambered into the punt, water sheeting off his breeches.
His mother smiled and chucked him a cloth so he could wipe his face. Thankfully, she wasn’t at all like his friends’ mothers. He hadn’t started Eton yet because his parents said they couldn’t do without him, but he already had friends who were there, and one of them said that his mother didn’t remember his name.
Horatius had kept quiet, because his parents definitely knew his name; he was named for one of his mother’s brothers. But mostly, they loved him. A future duke doesn’t boast about stuff like that, about anything, really. There were lots of things a duke couldn’t do, but that was all right.
His father reached out and tousled his hair; it was a silly golden color, starting to curl up in a way he loathed. “Everything all right under the water?”
“Always,” Horatius said.
Lou reached out her hands to him, cooing, but he knew that she’d squawk if he actually took her. She didn’t like chilly water. “I got something for you,” he said, remembering. He shifted his hip so that he could dig into the wet bag he strung around his waist.
“It isn’t another snail, is it?” his mother asked.
“No,” Horatius said with a touch of indignation. Lou hadn’t even paused to think that he was giving her something alive; she just popped it in her mouth and swallowed it before anyone could stop her. He hated to think what that poor snail thought as it bounced down into her fat tummy.
“I saw this glinting, so I dove to the bottom.” He wrestled open the bag and pulled out a silver spoon, a little mucky. Reaching over, he doused it in the water a few times and then handed it over.
Lou gave an approving squawk and stuck the thin end in her mouth and chomped on it. Like a puppy, she was growing teeth and liked to chew.
His mother gently turned the spoon over to see the insignia.
“Lindow Castle crest,” Horatius said. “That makes sense, right?”
“Thaddeus!” his mother gasped.
“The treasure,” his father said, giving Horatius a big smile. “You found the lost Lindow Castle treasure.”
“It’s only a spoon,” Horatius pointed out, but then he brightened. “I can go back down and find more!”
“That will be up to your grandfather. Your uncles spent many hours trying to find that treasure, so they’ll be jealous.”
Mother was looking up at his father with that daft expression that they both got now and then. Sure enough, his father jammed the pole into the bottom of the pool and leaned down to kiss her, so Horatius jumped overboard before they could tell him no. They were halfway across the pond anyway.
He splashed his way to shore and tore up the slope and through the apple orchard looking for the castle billy goat. Gully had to be a hundred years old, with a white beard and all, but Horatius knew he loved company.
Sometime later, when the Duke and Duchess of Eversley made their way through the orchard, they found the future duke lying in the grass, his arms wound around an elderly goat, face buried in Gully’s malodorous fur, both snoring.
“Do you suppose Horatius will be a naturalist?” Joan asked, leaning against Thaddeus’s shoulder.
“He already is a naturalist,” Thaddeus said. “A brilliant one. He has a very good idea there.”
Joan looked up, laughing. “Nappin
g?”
Her daughter’s curls were nodding on her father’s broad shoulder, the silver spoon clutched in her chubby hand.
“Or something,” Thaddeus said, bending down to kiss her.
Acknowledgments
My books are like small children; they take a whole village to get them to a literate state. Wilde Child benefited from the expertise of Carola Dunn as regards the thorny aspects of British high society. The Royal Society of Astrologers and Eton College kindly responded to queries. I also want to offer my deep gratitude to my village: my editor, Carrie Feron; my agent, Kim Witherspoon; my Web site designers, Wax Creative; and my personal team: Daniel Camou, Franzeca Drouin, Leslie Ferdinand, Sharlene Martin Moore, and Ashley Payne. My husband and daughter Anna debated many a plot point with me, and I’m fervently grateful to them. In addition, people in many departments of HarperCollins, from Art to Marketing to PR, have done a wonderful job of getting this book into readers’ hands: my heartfelt thanks go to each of you.
About the Author
ELOISA JAMES is a USA Today and New York Times bestselling author and professor of English literature, who lives with her family in New York, but can sometimes be found in Paris or Italy. She is the mother of two and, in a particularly delicious irony for a romance writer, is married to a genuine Italian knight.
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By Eloisa James
Wilde Child
My Last Duchess
Say Yes to the Duke
Say No to the Duke
Born to Be Wilde
Too Wilde to Wed
Wilde in Love
Seven Minutes in Heaven
A Gentleman Never Tells (a novella)
My American Duchess
Four Nights with the Duke
Three Weeks with Lady X
Once Upon a Tower
As You Wish
With This Kiss (a novella in three parts)
Seduced by a Pirate (a novella)
The Ugly Duchess
The Duke Is Mine
Winning the Wallflower (a novella)
A Fool Again (a novella)
When Beauty Tamed the Beast
Storming the Castle (a novella)
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
Duchess in Love
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
wilde child. Copyright © 2021 by Eloisa James, Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, 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 hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins Publishers. For information, address HarperCollins Publishers, 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007.
Digital Edition APRIL 2021 ISBN: 978-0-06-287785-7
Print Edition ISBN: 978-0-06-287807-6
Cover design by Amy Halperin
Cover illustration by Anna Kmet
Cover image © Nisseikikaku/Shutterstock (flowers)
Avon, Avon & logo, and Avon Books & logo are registered trademarks of HarperCollins Publishers in the United States of America and other countries.
HarperCollins is a registered trademark of HarperCollins Publishers in the United States of America and other countries.
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