“Yes?” He didn’t care about her suitors, but it wouldn’t be polite to say so.
“The first are those who are at the rank of squire or below: in short, from the gentry. For them, my beauty and dowry, combined with connections to a dukedom, are more than enough reason to write me worthless poetry and fall on their knees at any opportunity. They tend to court me with enthusiasm, expecting me to be fervently grateful that they are lowering themselves to a woman known to all as illegitimate.”
Her tone was wry, but not bitter.
“I see,” he said.
“The second aren’t courting me. In fact, their mothers have explicitly warned them to stay away from me. For mothers, my hair is a version of the flags that the peat farmers erect near a marshy area.”
“What sort of flag?”
“Danger.” She moved forward and examined all the boxes again before she pulled out a ripe strawberry and bit it. “Men from the nobility don’t want to marry me, because I am infamous, no matter what my father—to clarify, the duke—says.” Her eyes sparkled with mischief. “Except sometimes I cannot stop myself from teasing them, as I told you before.”
“By enticing them to kiss you,” he filled in. “They then offer marriage, which you refuse.”
“Exactly.” She leaned over and patted his knee. “You are safe, as you yourself told me that you are invulnerable to my most enticing look. This one.” She cast him that melting look, the one that announced he was the only man in the world whom she desired.
His cock responded with a jerk, so he snatched the napkin and wiped his mouth, sticking it hastily back in his lap.
The expression peeled off her face like water.
“You’re immune to my charms, such as they are,” she said. “Being a future duke, you can’t marry me, and there’s no pleasure in tormenting you by enticing you to kiss me. You’re not afraid that my father will force you to marry me.”
“I kissed you.”
She shrugged. “Not because I invited it.” She lay back down, apparently considering the subject closed.
He hated to admit it, but her reasoning was sound. He wouldn’t take advantage of her. He couldn’t marry her. They both knew it.
Still.
He tossed his napkin to the side and moved so that he was braced over her, knees on either side of her hips.
Her mouth opened, but no word escaped.
“You informed me that you wouldn’t judge me based on our kiss in the snake tent,” he said, scowling down at her.
She reached up and ran a finger over the crevice between his brows, forcing him to stop frowning. “So I did.”
“You were not trying to entice me to kiss you then, or now.”
Her face stilled, amusement gleaming in her eyes, not the carefully manufactured desire that she used as a weapon against unwary gentlemen. “No, I am not.”
The drop of plum juice was high on one cheek, a violet shadow. “Perhaps I won’t kiss you.” He lowered his head and licked her cheekbone instead. The juice on his tongue was tart and sweet, like Joan.
She sucked in a breath.
“I don’t care to be judged,” he said silkily. He licked her other cheekbone, because he wanted to.
His heart was thudding in his chest. She lay under him, quiescent, blue eyes wide. Would he ever believe her if he saw desire in them? Yet he wanted to see that emotion in her eyes, more than anything.
“You should never bring any man here,” he said, his voice harsh to his own ears. “The fallacy in your argument is your assumption that a man has to be enticed in order to want to kiss you.”
“I trust you.”
“You shouldn’t.”
Joan laughed at him. “You just informed me that you won’t even kiss me! The gentlemen who were horrified at the idea of being forced to marry me were lower in rank than my father. You’ll be a duke someday. You’re the only man who’s ever kissed me who’s had no fear of my father!”
That wasn’t entirely true.
In Thaddeus’s estimation, the Duke of Lindow was a reasonable and calm man. But if Thaddeus injured one of his children? His Grace would slice him into ribbons, and no hereditary degree would prevent the ensuing bloodbath.
“If you won’t kiss me,” Joan said suddenly, “perhaps I will kiss you.”
He stared down at her. “Why?”
Her cheeks turned rosy, and she fidgeted beneath him. No one can feign a blush.
“I’ve never kissed anyone,” she admitted. “I’ve been kissed.”
He waited.
Thaddeus was good at waiting. He stared down into her eyes, realizing something very important: Lady Joan Wilde made sure that people around her danced to her bidding.
He had every expectation that her father was privately flummoxed by the fact that he’d given permission for her to play the role of Hamlet. And then there was her close friend, Otis. Some men enjoyed dressing in women’s clothing; Otis was not one of them.
With a sudden movement, Thaddeus straightened and moved back to his side of the picnic cloth. Joan turned her head and watched him. Then she sighed and looked back up at the sky. “Well played, Thaddeus.”
His erection jerked against his stomach because—she said his name. If that reaction wasn’t the stupidest thing he’d ever experienced, he didn’t know what was.
Cleavage was enticing. Less so than when he was fourteen, but still delectable.
A delicately turned ankle, a shining pair of eyes, a slender waist.
But his name?
Simply his name, shaped by plush, laughing lips? From her, it was like a kiss.
“Would you like any more to eat?” he asked, leaning over to give her more wine.
“I’m starting to feel muzzy,” Joan said. “I shouldn’t drink too much. What if I skewer you by accident, once we begin practicing?”
“I brought these,” he said, putting his hand in his pocket and pulling out the tips that were used in training.
“I’m afraid to pull this rapier from its scabbard,” Joan confessed. “In the nursery, we had wooden swords. May I have a jam tart?”
He inspected the boxes and handed over a jam tart, the dough shaped into a blossom, with a ruby-red center. He took a couple for himself and sat back against the tree.
Joan was humming again.
Thaddeus was always thinking. He considered it intrinsic to his personality. When other men remarked that they hadn’t bothered to follow a lecture, a speech, or a sermon, Thaddeus was always faintly surprised.
It wasn’t in his power not to follow, to analyze, to dissect an argument.
Yet here, in a bee-loud glade, he just let himself be.
Taste jam. Watch a lovely woman hum to herself.
Be happy.
Chapter Ten
Joan was completely out of her depth. In the years since she debuted, she had happily played with fire, enticing boys to kiss her. She’d always made certain that they couldn’t possibly take advantage of her.
And yet . . .
Here she was.
Thaddeus Erskine Shaw was no “boy.” He was a man, sitting on the other side of the picnic cloth, eating a jam tart with as much enjoyment as if it were caviar. She had to swallow just looking at him.
A lock of dark gold hair kept falling over his eyes. His lashes were brown and very thick. Perhaps that was one reason why no one seemed to really know him; they were rarely able to meet his eyes.