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 purpose.
“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.