Sinking back under the water, he rinsed the soap from his hair and braced his hands on the sides of the tub. It was time to rise, to put on the garments and the comportment of a viscount bade to dinner in a castle, in company with a duke and two duchesses, one of whom was his mother.
As well as Lady Joan.
The image of her flickered in his mind, and he let out a groan before he slid back down into the tub, and watched his right hand slide down his wet chest and disappear under the sudsy water.
The moment he took hold of his cock, his head arched backward, and a rough sound broke from his lips.
Five minutes later he was forced to accept an unpalatable truth: The orgasm that tore through him like fire, that convulsed his body, had left him unsatisfied. Perhaps, like poor Anthony Froude, he would never be satisfied again.
At least, not by his own hand.
An hour later, he escorted his mother into the drawing room and discovered Joan standing before the great fireplace, reciting one of Hamlet’s soliloquies to an audience of her parents.
Except she’d mixed up the skull and the soliloquy. Joan was talking to a skull—albeit a stuffed one—but it wasn’t human. In fact, it had originally belonged to an alligator, given its pronounced snout. He recognized it as part of the stuffed alligator that normally resided in a corner of the drawing room after having been sent home, as he understood it, by the famous explorer Lord Alaric Wilde, though he hadn’t realized that the head could separate from its body.
The alligator’s eyes had been replaced by shiny green marbles, and his jaw hung open in a way that made him look as if he were laughing.
As Thaddeus remembered, Hamlet’s speech addressed to a skull was about the brevity of fame. But Joan was performing To be or not to be, and the way she was talking to the alligator had the duke and duchess in gales of laughter. Instead of delivering a profound treatise on suicide, Joan was poking fun at a rich and privileged prince, absurdly self-indulgent in his moaning.
“Oh, my goodness,” Thaddeus’s mother whispered, bringing him to a halt. “Let’s not interrupt her! I’d have never thought Hamlet could be funny.”
“Neither had I,” he said.
Joan’s low bodice framed breasts so plump and delicious that his knees felt weak at the sight—and yet, at this moment, she was a man.
Not any man: a prince. She was dressed as a woman, but her expressive face was that of an arrogant young man indulging himself with long-winded speeches.
The duke and duchess stood with their backs to Thaddeus and his mother. His Grace, the Duke of Lindow, was a tall, well-built man who carried his years lightly. His duchess was smaller, tucked under his arm. The soliloquy over, they both clapped wildly.
“Brava!” His Grace said, still chuckling.
“The most enjoyable Hamlet I’ve seen!” the duchess crowed.
Thaddeus and his mother began to walk toward them.
He felt like a moth drawn to a flame. It was a disconcerting feeling because—he reminded himself—he didn’t like Joan as a person. She was reckless. Scandalous. Her attitude toward Percy Piglet hadn’t made a difference in those essential traits.
“You were brilliant,” the Duke of Lindow told his daughter. “But I still don’t understand: Why Hamlet? Why not perform one of the great comedies? You stripped that prince to the bone; your version is an extremely foolish, funny prig.”
“I’ll be serious in performance,” Joan promised, leaning back against the stone of the unlit fireplace. “I chose Hamlet because the play has everything in it: tragedy, deaths, disclosures, ghosts, love and despair, illusion and disguise. Not too much comedy, but I couldn’t resist it tonight.”
Her eyes landed on Thaddeus’s mother, and she suddenly threw off Hamlet and became a young lady. “Your Grace,” she said, stepping forward to drop into a graceful curtsy. “Lord Greywick. Good evening.”
The duke and duchess turned to greet them. Sometime later, Thaddeus found himself seated beside Joan on a small settee.
No, he seated himself beside her. She hadn’t given him even an inviting glance. It was as if they had never kissed.
Which was precisely what he wanted, of course.
“Champagne, Prism,” the duke said, nodding to the castle butler.
“Where is the rest of the family?” Joan asked.
“Devin will eat with Viola, who can’t bear the idea of dressing for the evening meal,” her mother said. “The children are in the nursery, exhausted by an afternoon at the fair. I’m not sure where Aunt Knowe or Otis can be found.”
“Otis is always late,” Joan remarked. “It’s a habit of mind. I know he was only a vicar for two weeks, but I’d bet my dowry that church services, even weddings, never began on time.”
“I have so many children, and yet the castle seems terribly thin of company,” the duke said, accepting a glass of champagne from the butler.
His wife smiled at him and took his hand. “You are never happier than when all are safely in the castle.” Then she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “We all wish that Horatius could be here as well.”
It took Thaddeus a moment to remember that Horatius was the duke’s eldest son, who had died in an accident in the bog east of the castle. “I knew the Marquess of Saltersley when I was a schoolboy,” he said. “I’m very sorry for your loss.”
His Grace threw back his champagne, and a footman stepped forward instantly to refill his glass. “He was a troublesome heir, pompous and always right. One of the last things he said to me was that I should spend more time in Parliament, and dig more canals. Who would want to be around an heir who was convinced he would make the better duke?”
“You,” his wife said affectionately, kissing him on the cheek. “We all would. I knew Horatius for only seven years, but he was deeply lovable, no matter how bombastic.”
Thaddeus’s mother straightened. “It’s the anniversary of his death, isn’t it?” she exclaimed. “I’m so sorry, my dears. If I had realized, I would have delayed our arrival.”
“He’s been lost to us for a long time,” the duke said. “He died eleven years ago, in ’73. I took a long walk in the Moss today to commemorate him.” Lindow Moss was the bog where Horatius drowned.
“I think we should be very grateful that Horatius isn’t haunting the castle bellowing Remember me like Hamlet’s father,” Joan said, injecting just the right amount of humor into her voice. “He would frighten us to death. He was brilliant at playing pirates. Some of my earliest memories are the happy afternoons when he would come to the nursery and act out long adventure stories. Sometimes he would take us out to search for treasure.”
“That’s right,” the duke said. “He was obsessed with the lost treasure, wasn’t he?” He turned to Thaddeus and his mother. “One of my ancestors was besieged by Oswald of Northumbria back in the 600s. Family lore has it that he took a fortune in silver and buried it.”
“Not buried it,” Joan corrected. “He sank it. That means either the bog or the lake.”
“The boys used to dive in the lake,” the duke said. “There’s nothing there: It’s a shallow lake that my great-grandfather widened into a circle, turning its island into a garden retreat.”