“Lady Knowe’s hot dandelion wine is restorative,” Prism informed him.
Eversley scowled. “There’s no restoring a man on the threshold of death, you fool.”
“Endive à la française?” North asked, turning to his wife.
“Hmm, I think not,” Diana replied.
“I’m dying,” Thaddeus’s father said loudly, once he and his many blankets were arranged. Without all the blazing white ermine and velvet, he looked small and frail, with dark smudges below his eyes.
Joan’s hand closed firmly around Thaddeus’s again.
“Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return,” Jeremy commented. He met the Duke of Eversley’s enraged glare with a smile. “Some of the funereal language sticks with a chap, no matter how much I’d like to forget it.”
“You have acquainted us with the state of your health,” the Duke of Lindow said, intervening before Eversley could respond. “You refuse to retire to a bed or privacy, therefore I assume you want an audience. You have it.” He waved his hand. “My family and yours—minus your lady wife—are at attention.”
“That’s just it,” Eversley cried, struggling to sit upright. He began to say something and fell into a series of barking coughs.
“I don’t think he can manage all the verses of ‘Love Divine, All Loves Excelling,’” Thaddeus said to Joan.
“Why on earth would he?” Jeremy demanded, overhearing.
“My father considers the hymn an accurate accounting of his feelings toward his mistress,” Thaddeus said. “Lady Bumtrinket was treated to a solo.”
Jeremy grinned. “There are times when I think that I married into the daftest family in England, so I am truly enjoying the reminder that the Wildes are not as mad as others.”
“I feel as if I’m at a farce,” Joan observed.
“Your father did describe us as an audience,” Thaddeus replied.
Over by the door, Eversley had taken a gulp of Aunt Knowe’s wine, which managed to quiet his breathing to mere wheezing. “I count not one person under this castle roof as my family,” he croaked.
“Were I a poet, I’d say you had a face like thunder,” Joan whispered to Thaddeus. Her hand curled tighter around his. “Just remember that he isn’t your family either.”
The duke was coughing again, so Thaddeus turned to her. “Unfortunately, he is.”
“Some people lose their right to be termed a parent,” Joan said.
“Your mother and father.”
She nodded. “Remember that.”
“We are all aware of the heights to which you have elevated your mistress and her children,” the Duke of Lindow said, once Eversley had caught his breath.
Thaddeus’s heart had slowed to a normal rate. No one was throwing him sympathetic looks, or even looking particularly scandalized. All down the table, the Wildes looked disapproving and vaguely disgusted. They didn’t care that his father was a duke, and while other people had found Eversley’s “other family” titillating or scandalous, the Wildes were . . . bored.
“Rum sort of fellow,” he distinctly heard from farther down the table. Sir Reginald at his driest.
“Irksome,” someone else said.
“My wife is the love of my life!” Eversley said defiantly.
“All appearances to the contrary,” the Duke of Lindow commented.
Thaddeus’s father barked, “Not that wife!”
“One has only one at a time,” Lindow responded. “I’m an expert on that particular subject.”
Jeremy audibly choked back a laugh, but the duke’s own children felt no reluctance and snickers broke out down the table. For his part, Thaddeus felt as if his face were frozen into a blank slate, impassive and stony.
Beside him, Joan shifted until her left pannier pushed against his hip—and then collapsed. “Crickets,” she murmured, and slid her chair across the resulting gap between them. “Back up,” she murmured. She positioned herself in such a way that she was slightly before him.
Thaddeus felt a germ of amusement stealing into his chest as he glanced down. It seemed he had a defender, a slender warrior in a wig rather than armor.
“I married my dear Florence before I married the woman you think of as my wife,” the Duke of Eversley announced, having caught his breath. “I have tried to encourage my elder son to behave like a man of honor, to renounce the dukedom, so that his mother need never know that she bore a child out of wedlock.”
“You have offered no record of this supposed wedding, nor wedding license,” Thaddeus said. “My mother was legally married to you, for all that she undoubtedly wishes she could undo her vows.”
“An illicit marriage as I had already married Florence!” his father insisted, his voice rising.
“You have no evidence,” Thaddeus said. He wrapped an arm around the waist of the woman who would be the Duchess of Eversley someday. Joan leaned back against his shoulder, her expression a mix of curious and disapproving.
“You shouldn’t be such a stickler for certificates!” Eversley spat. “It’s part and parcel with the bloodless, tedious man you’ve grown to be.”
“The law is a stickler for certificates,” Thaddeus pointed out. “Your marriage to my mother is inscribed in the records of St. Paul’s Cathedral.”
“I don’t wish to humiliate her. I came here to ask you one more time: Will you renounce the dukedom so that I need not publicly disgrace your mother?”
“He cannot,” North said, speaking up.
Eversley swung his head in his direction, reminding Joan irresistibly of a vulture with a bony head and scrawny neck. “You plan to renounce the Lindow title. You’re the duke’s oldest living son, and all England knows you’re renouncing the title. My son can do the same.” He took a ragged breath and sucked down some more dandelion wine.
“At a moment of crisis, my father and aunt suggested just that,” North said, a faint smile on his lips. “I subsequently learned that the action would not be legal. Quite likely, my wife and I are stuck with the dukedom.” He leaned down and kissed Diana’s nose.
“Nonsense! An English duke can do as he wishes. Is this your last word?” Eversley shrilled, turning to Thaddeus, his eyes bulging from the blue skin that surrounded them. “You refuse to grant your dying father’s wish?”
“I do refuse,” Thaddeus replied. “I shall be the Duke of Eversley within the day, if your doctor is to be believed. I intend to make Lady Joan Wilde my duchess.”
Eversley’s eyes sharpened. “I know who you are,” he said, staring at Joan.
“Lady Joan is my daughter,” the Duke of Lindow said, with chilling exactitude.
“Why should you be able to name a child legitimate when I cannot?” Eversley screeched, his eyes bright, near feverish.
“Joan is mine because her mother was married to me, and I have the license to prove it,” Lindow stated. “Do you dare to contest me, Eversley?” The threat of immediate death lay behind his voice.
“No, no,” Eversley squawked. “My point is that my real son, my true son, would make a better duke. I should have the right to choose!” He looked around the table wildly. “This—this serpent who calls himself my son refused to break the entail as well, so the family of my heart will be left destitute. The poorhouse awaits!”
“You left the duchy and estates to the care of my mother and myself over two decades ago,” Thaddeus said, sounding impatient now. “Your allowance has been more than adequate to support your current household, and I shall continue it.”
“Not to mention all those ermine robes,” Jeremy put in. “Royal regalia is bloody expensive.”
“Your other children are my half siblings,” Thaddeus added. “I will not condemn them to destitution.”
“This is growing tiresome,” the Duchess of Lindow said in her clear, calm voice. “I believe that we have granted His Grace a sufficient audience.” She raised her hand. “Prism, if you would be so kind as to escort the duke to a bedchamber. Or his carriage, if he would prefer.
”
Eversley’s eyes kindled with rage, and his wizened hands gripped the arms of the chair as if he expected the butler to try to rip him from his seat. “I intend to send an announcement to the Morning Post, to be published after my death, explaining that I married Florence before my family forced me into a false union! Your mother won’t be happy,” he spat at Thaddeus.
He lifted a visibly shaking hand in the air and clawed inside his waistcoat before he drew out a folded piece of parchment. “Here it is!” he screeched. “It’ll be in all the stationery shops in London. I closed it with the ducal seal, so no one can question it.”
“Oh, they’ll question it,” the Duke of Lindow said. “I don’t know where you got the idea that the ducal seal is more than a picture pressed into wax.”
“I can eliminate that threat,” Viola’s husband, Devin, said. “I keep a sharp eye on all the printing presses in London since my wife is not fond of seeing her image in stationery shops’ windows. It’s the work of a moment to send a groom around to each. I’ll have a man in London by noon tomorrow.”
“That’s right!” the Duke of Lindow said. “I’ll send along a man as well, with instructions for my solicitor. They will inform every newspaper in London that publication of such an announcement will result in immediate and expensive legal challenges. Financial ruin will follow any such publication.” He turned to Thaddeus. “My wedding present to you.”
Thaddeus let go of Joan and stood, smiling at Devin and the Duke of Lindow. “Thank you both.” Then he turned to his father. “Eversley, your cruelty to my mother has been documented in the press. Should this publication happen, she would be pained, but unsurprised. The rest of England would be disgusted, but also unsurprised.”
“The Wildes will support the rightful heir to the Eversley dukedom,” the Duke of Lindow said, standing as well. Then he added, “The heir who plans to marry my daughter, although he has unaccountably neglected to ask me for her hand.”
Joan rose and leaned against Thaddeus’s shoulder, winding an arm around his waist. “As a matter of fact, I have not yet agreed to marry him.”
Around the table the family jumped to their feet in a clamor of congratulations, completely ignoring her disavowal.
Thaddeus met the Duke of Lindow’s eyes, nodding, before he turned back to his own father.
Eversley gave Thaddeus a burning look, closed his eyes, and slumped back in his chair, rubbing his heart. “The newspapers won’t be able to resist it.” He closed his eyes. “Sharper than a serpent’s tooth is a thankless child.” He gasped for breath and managed to bellow, “You are no longer a son of mine!” before he collapsed back against his chair, eyes closed.
Prism stepped forward. Six footmen arranged themselves around Eversley’s chair.
“Out,” the Duke of Lindow said, unemotionally.
Without ceremony, they hoisted the invalid into the air and whisked him out the door.
“I can’t decide whether your father’s side whiskers, his ermine, or his arrogance is more objectionable,” the Duchess of Lindow said, giving Thaddeus a wry smile. “I am glad that your mother missed this distasteful performance.” She turned to the butler. “Prism, we have always taken comfort in the fact that our household has never betrayed us to the press. I must ask you to make it clear that Lord Greywick is a member of the family and should be protected as if he were a Wilde.”
“On that front, I gather you have something to ask me,” the Duke of Lindow said to Thaddeus, throwing a meaningful look at Joan.
“No, he doesn’t,” his daughter retorted. “I haven’t accepted his proposal. Perhaps I shan’t.”
Thaddeus consciously relaxed his jaw, the anger spurred by his father’s behavior coursing through him, making it difficult to engage in the Wildes’ version of light badinage.
Joan glanced up at him and slid her arm from around his waist. “If you please, Thaddeus, escort me on a visit to Percy.”
“Percy?” Thaddeus ripped his attention from the memory of his father—his father—renouncing him. He had never been a true son of Eversley’s. As a child, he couldn’t understand his father’s languid disdain, any more than he could understand why his parents lived separately. Thaddeus had consequently devoted his life to the pursuit of perfection, the perfect son, the perfect athlete, the perfect scholar.
To no avail.
“Our piglet,” Joan clarified, slipping a hand in his arm and guiding him toward the door. “If you’ll excuse us,” she called behind her.
They walked into the corridor and out of the castle without another word.
Chapter Twenty
Joan loved to act; ergo, she ought to enjoy drama when it came her way.
That was not the case. She felt ill at the revelation of Eversley’s hard heart and selfish demands. “How did your mother ever bear living with him?” she asked Thaddeus, as they walked around the side of the castle, heading for the cowshed where Percy resided.
“They weren’t in the same household for long,” he replied. “Only until she gave birth to a son. I believe that his parents managed to exert some sort of promise that he would remain at Eversley Court until an heir was born, but no one ever spoke of it.”
The night was lit by a near-harvest moon that cast a silvery glow over the grass. To their left, light shone from a few windows in the castle, but most were dark. A breeze was rustling the poplar trees, and somewhere an owl announced the start of a hunt.
Percy had been housed in a fine shed built for Viola’s two beloved cows. Thaddeus hung the lantern he had brought with him from a nail in a beam, so it could light the small room.
Joan walked straight over to the pen. Percy was nestled against the side of a sleeping heifer, but he bounded to his feet and came over to sniff her hand, his mouth curled in an eternal grin. “You’re growing up, Percy old fellow. He’s losing his fuzz,” she added, over her shoulder.
The only answer was a hard thump behind her that caused the shed timbers to shiver. Percy gave a squeal and ran back across the pen to press his body against his friendly bedmate.
Joan turned to find Thaddeus with his head resting against his fists, braced on the shed wall. She walked over and put a hand on his raised biceps. “I’m sorry,” she said simply.
Thaddeus made a rough sound in the back of his throat. “I haven’t lost control, in case you are frightened.”
“You could never frighten me,” Joan said. She turned just enough so she could wiggle between his body and the rough wood of the shed. Then she looped her arms around his neck. “My father always says that there are people whom the law supports, and those whom the law slights, such as a destitute child thrown into a prison for stealing a loaf of bread. Those who have, and those who have not.”
Thaddeus shifted his head to look down at her.
Joan knew enough about him now to interpret his look as willingness to listen, if not precisely encouragement to keep talking.
“Your father is the sort whom the law inevitably favors, and yet it’s never enough for him. You see what he’s doing, don’t you? He was born a duke, the highest nobility in the land below royalty, and that’s not good enough.”
“My mother—”
“It has nothing to do with your mother or you not being good enough, for all Eversley squealed about that. He has, and yet he wants more. He wants to be king, to set the law himself. I don’t believe he cares so much for his other family. He just wants to make law himself.”
Thaddeus stared down at her, his eyes shadowed.
“Ermine,” she reminded him, going up on her toes to kiss his chin, because it wasn’t like her future husband to be slow on the uptake, but after all, it was a painful subject. “When’s the last time you saw someone with an ermine throw—in the end of August, moreover? Ermine is the fur of kings. In Shakespeare’s time only royalty was allowed to wear ermine.”
Thaddeus’s brows drew together. “Interesting.”
Joan’s hands slid down his shoulders. He was
built like a Roman gladiator. This was a serious moment, and yet she felt a pulse of liquid heat that went straight down to her knees with a significant pause on the way.
Thaddeus had no idea that his mouth was sensual, or that the muscled ridges of his body were utterly delectable. She was ogling him shamelessly, even as frustration and banked rage shone from his eyes.
Unable to help herself, to be honest.
She swallowed hard and pulled her mind back to the subject at hand. “To sum it up, your father is morally corrupt and worthless.”
To her relief, he gave a reluctant bark of laughter. “Worthless. I like it.”
“If you’d like an elaborated version: He is a rotter who wishes to be king. I also think he’s annoyed by the fact he’s turned out to be a member of the human race and thereby vulnerable to death.”
“He’s always been half cracked,” Thaddeus said slowly. “He’s grown significantly worse.”
“The nonsense about sending a notice to the papers is just a pathetic way to ensure that he isn’t silenced by death,” Joan said, easing back against the shed wall because his hard body was very distracting.
She glanced down. Her low bodice wasn’t doing much to disguise the fact her nipples felt as desperate for attention as the rest of her.
“I see,” Thaddeus said. He didn’t sound angry any longer, but his voice rasped all the same.
Joan’s eyes flew to his face and saw not anger, but raw, hungry need. “Oh,” she said with a gasp. “I see.”
“We have settled the question of my title,” Thaddeus stated. “My father has no proof; the newspapers will not publish his nonsense. I will be the duke.”
“I do think that we should wrangle that letter away from him, if only so no servant gets hold of it,” Joan said, bringing her hands around to fiddle with one of the buttons on his waistcoat. She felt shy, an emotion uncommon for her. “I have an idea how to do so, not the angel, a different idea.”
“I promise you that Eversley is no danger to us,” Thaddeus said.
She nodded.
His hands came down from the wall, and he took a step back. Her hands slid from his waistcoat. “You make sense of my life, Joan,” Thaddeus said. His face was impassive, but that didn’t matter. He said enough with his eyes.
Wilde Child EPB Page 25
