“You’re very bossy,” he observed, moving his pillow to his back.
Joan shrugged, eyes happy. “I was born to play Prince Hamlet.”
“I believe that the French king and queen hold elegant picnics with china and silver cutlery, while sitting on silk-fringed pillows,” Thaddeus said.
“Poppycock. Picnics are for friends and family, ants crawling in your food, and drinking wine in the open air. Everything tastes better outside. Aren’t you going to eat? Cook’s given us a feast. These pies are excellent.”
Instead, he reached over and grabbed the wine bottle whose stem was peeking from the basket.
“Cups should be in the basket along with a corkscrew,” Joan said lazily. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her wiggle down into a more relaxed position as she began on a second meat tart.
The basket held two rather battered tin cups. He uncorked the bottle and poured wine into the cups and gave one to her. He wanted to ask how many men she’d shared a picnic with . . . and how many here, in her favorite place?
It wouldn’t be polite.
“So picnics are a regular practice at Lindow,” he said instead, wondering if his country estate had ever hosted a picnic. He doubted it very much.
“Of course,” Joan said, sliding down onto her back and stuffing the pillow under her head. She crossed one leg over the other. “There’s nothing better than grabbing a basket and heading out of the castle. The boys spent years of their life in the bog, Lindow Moss. Viola and I mostly came here.”
She wrinkled her nose. “The bog smells like peat.”
“I see.” He had finished his pies, so he picked up a piece of crusty bread and looked over the open boxes. He put a slice of roast beef on the bread, and then a salty pickle, and leaned back against the tree trunk.
The bread was warm and fragrant, and the rare beef tasted better than anything he’d eaten in his life. The pickle exploded in his mouth. A blackberry bramble must be nearby, as he could smell berries, so warmed by the sun that they smelled like a pie in the oven.
“Did you have a special place on your estate for picnics?” Joan asked. “I don’t believe I’ve ever visited Eversley Court, although I remember your mother inviting the family a few summers ago. That was very brave of her, given how many of us there are.”
Thaddeus swallowed his bite. “I’ve never been on a picnic before.”
Joan blinked at him. “That’s so sad.”
“Future dukes don’t share meals with ants. Like French royalty, they don’t eat without silver cutlery, and they drink from crystal goblets, not tin cups.”
“Enough,” she said, sighing. “My brother North is the ducal heir, if you remember, and he’s been on a hundred picnics. I’m already sorry for you. You needn’t beat the drum about the deficiencies of your childhood.”
Sun filtered through the trees, bouncing off the honeysuckle flowers and spangling Joan’s hair and face with dancing flecks of light. Thaddeus swallowed his bite and took another, suddenly aware that he’d never been so happy in his life.
On the other side of the blanket, Joan finished her second meat pie, shielding her eyes from the sun’s glitter and staring into the oak leaves overhead. She started humming rather tunelessly, waggling the bare foot on her crossed leg. “I wish I had a more melodic voice,” she said.
Happiness was not a manly pursuit. Thaddeus hadn’t been taught to venerate it, chase it, or even acknowledge it. Dukes didn’t care for such frivolities as feelings.
To be fair, he had hardened that concept into armor as he watched his father dive deeper and deeper into behavior dictated by feelings—his love for his other family. Perhaps his aversion to his father had turned an implicit lesson into a rigidly held rule.
And yet, here he was.
Happy.
He finished his wine and leaned over to splash more into Joan’s cup. “Have you brought other men here for a picnic?” he asked, the words slipping out because he couldn’t contain them.
She turned her face toward him, golden wisps of hair floating in the air, looking like a princess, albeit in breeches. And snorted again.
“You’re jesting, right?”
He shook his head, thanking God that his napkin covered his lap. Her blue eyes didn’t help his control. Or her delicately curved calf. Or her toes. God help him, he would like to nibble on her toes and then kiss his way up her leg.
“Forgive me if the question was too gauche.”
“You really aren’t from this century,” Joan said, looking back up at the trees. “I couldn’t possibly bring a man here. He might lose his head and molest me, to be blunt.”
Thaddeus finished his wine. He could feel a lazy, sweet intoxication at the base of his neck, not so much from the wine as the air. At least, that’s what he told himself. He had always been capable of matching gentlemen tossing back glass for glass of the best brandy and yet walking away steadily. But now . . .
“I am a man,” he observed, picking up another piece of bread and putting a slice of chicken on top.
“Try it with a slice of plum,” Joan ordered, pointing.
“Plum? One doesn’t eat plum with chicken.”
“Just try it.”
She truly was bossy. But he tried it. The sweet, slightly bitter plum perfectly married the juicy chicken.
“Have you ever had plum jerkum?” Joan asked. She had rolled over on her side so she could reach the boxes and was making herself a bread stack like his.
“No.”
“It’s a local drink that goes straight to your head,” she advised. “Makes me giggle like a chimney with a draft. Viola and I used to sneak it sometimes.”
Instantly he decided that plum jerkum was in his future. With Joan.
“I am a man,” he repeated, once she was settled on her back, one knee braced over the other, toes waggling.
“You know what I mean.”
He didn’t.
If he was less of a gentleman, he would be next to her in a flash. Or on top of her. Braced on his arms over her, swooping down to kiss lips that glistened with plum juice.
She waved her bread, and drops of plum juice flew into the air, one landing on her cheekbone. “I mean that you’re a duke, well, not quite a duke yet. But the key thing is that you’re not interested in me.”
She took a huge bite, and he had to wait until she finished chewing. Which was good, because it gave Thaddeus time to collect himself.
The hell he wasn’t interested in her. He had kissed her. Kissed a marriageable young maiden: his first, since he had never approached her sisters in that fashion.
Had she no idea that he was staring at the drop of violet-colored plum juice on her cheek and thinking about licking it off?
“I could never bring any of my suitors here because they would take it as an invitation,” Joan continued.
“You’re certain that I won’t?” His voice had dropped an octave, but she didn’t seem to notice.
“Never.”
She was right, of course.
The truth of it rang dully in his soul. He was bloodless, as she herself had said. She glanced sideways, and whatever she saw in his eyes made her sit up.
“Look, you don’t understand. Two types of men court me.”