She jumped into the coach, beaming. “I saw you laughing!” she cried breathlessly.
Thaddeus’s hands actually twitched; he was about to pull her into his lap, but Otis fell across his knees, having been given a vigorous shove by the groom; his heavy hat and wig fell off and hit the floor with a thump.
“I am never putting on these garments again,” Otis said, pushing himself upright with a grunt as the carriage door closed behind them.
“I can’t imagine why you would want to,” Joan agreed.
“You were both marvelous,” Thaddeus said. “Are you worried about being seen by your father, Otis, or my mother, as we enter the inn?”
Otis shook his head. “I told my father and swore him to secrecy. He said if it was another play, he would come along but he can’t bear Hamlet.”
“I’ll just wrap up in my cloak and sneak down the corridor,” Joan said, pulling the garment from the other seat. “Did you really think we were marvelous?”
Thaddeus reached out to steady a lamp, swaying as the carriage rounded a corner. “Yes.” Ridiculous twaddle flooded his mind. Your eyes looked like forget-me-nots. I want to kiss you. I want to tear off your clothing.
I want to marry you.
You are my duchess.
Joan was fidgeting with the fold of her cloak and finally looked up at the two of them. “I find myself grateful for my birth.”
“So you’re no longer pining to tread the boards of London’s finest theaters,” Otis exclaimed, while Thaddeus was still trying to figure out whether she was talking about the Prussian or the duke. Illegitimacy or privilege?
Privilege, it seemed.
“This evening and the last were exhausting,” Joan said. “My hip hurts from falling onto the hilt of my rapier. I felt like a drunken swallow swooping back and forth across the stage. My arm aches from all the twirling I did with my foil at the end.”
“That was the funniest part,” Otis said. “We were all howling with laughter behind the stage.”
“I’m so grateful that I had the chance to act before an audience,” Joan said, looking at Thaddeus. “Thank you. I shall . . . I won’t be longing for a life that I wouldn’t have enjoyed. You’ve taught me so much.”
In her eyes he saw a future in which she would serenely circle ballroom floors, laughing up at the husband she chose while he—
Until this moment, the whole of it had been hanging in the balance. He hadn’t let himself plan ahead.
But in the shadowy carriage, the swaying lamp striking sparks on Joan’s hair—for she’d thrown her wig to the side—Thaddeus realized something.
He was far more like his blasted father than he would have thought.
There was only one woman for him, and she wasn’t appropriate for the dukedom. His father had surmised that about his love, and succumbed to his parents’ urgings to marry another.
His beloved—the mistress with whom the duke had spent his life—had been a baron’s daughter before her family cast her off for the crime of living in sin with a married duke.
Lady Joan Wilde was far less eligible than his father’s inamorata had been.
Yet Thaddeus refused to make his father’s mistake.
Lady Joan, illegitimate or not, fathered by a Prussian or a baker, was the only woman he would love in this life.
She was leaning forward, teasing Otis about his come-hither look. “No one was surprised to learn that your Ophelia climbed in Hamlet’s window!” she chortled.
Thaddeus’s eyes rested on her shining head and bright, laughing eyes. She hadn’t taken any other man to the island.
She would marry him.
Chapter Sixteen
Joan crept into the Gherkin & Cheese and made it to her bedchamber without misadventure. After a bath, she bade good night to her maid and sat down by the window to eat a thick, rich piece of plum cake. It had been a magical evening.
A life-changing one.
She had spent her girlhood railing against the fate that had put her in Lindow Castle rather than in a theater troupe. After the last two nights, she felt as if a burden had fallen from her shoulders.
She was in the right place.
She was a lady, albeit one with a penchant for private theater.
The inn had fallen silent. Her room looked onto a Wilmslow street, rather than the inn yard. The air was clear and crisp, with the August heat blown away. Somewhere a chaffinch was singing to his mate.
The babies would have been born by May, and had flown away. But still he tinkled on like a silver bell in the darkness. Joan sipped a rapidly cooling cup of tea, thinking about chaffinches mating for life, when she heard something else: a scrabbling noise, like a dog turning around before he sleeps, or . . .
She stood up, went to her window, and looked out.
Nothing.
Wilmslow lay before her, a cluster of rustic cottages and shuttered shops tiger-striped by moonlight, St. Bartholomew’s church tower triumphantly rising above them all.
Then she glanced down.
A dark head was making its way up the vine-covered wall of the Gherkin & Cheese. A man was climbing silently, his hands moving unerringly from brick to brick.
“I always wondered how people could climb ivy,” she said, leaning against the window frame and taking another sip of tea. “Now I see that bricks are the true ladder.”
Thaddeus grunted. He had cleared the first story but her room was on the third.
“Do you propose to sing a ballad about this tomorrow?” She put her tea aside and shifted so her elbows were on the windowsill. With anyone else, she would have been frightened that they might tumble to the ground—but not Thaddeus.
He was climbing as easily as if the wall were horizontal, strong fingers reaching up, disappearing in the vines, and pulling his body up. It was enthralling, even more so because he wasn’t wearing a coat. His white shirt caught the moonlight as it molded against the muscles of his shoulders and arms.
When he almost reached her windowsill, she drew back in case he tumbled through the frame. But that would be far too ungentlemanly. He reached high enough to swing his legs through and landed with a gentle thump on her bedchamber floor.
“Hello,” she said, smiling at him. “Would you like a cup of tea? I don’t have another teacup, since my maid didn’t anticipate midnight visitors, but I could give it to you in a glass.”
Thaddeus shook his head and pulled a bunch of purple thistles from his pocket. “For you.”
“Globe thistles,” Joan said, enjoying herself hugely. It seemed that midnight callers brought flowers, just as did morning callers: Who would have thought?
“They are the color of your eyes,” Thaddeus said. He was standing beside the window still, his large form outlined against the moonlight.
He followed her gaze down his body to his bare feet. “Shoes might have impeded my way up the wall. I haven’t been outside my bedchamber or bath barefooted in years, except on your island.”
Joan swallowed because for some reason, strong male feet—his feet—made a pulse run through her body that started at her loins and spread slowly through her like warm honey. She turned away, feeling herself blushing. He hadn’t asked for tea so she poured water from the pitcher into a glass and stuffed the purple thistles inside. They had long stems and prickly, beautiful globes on top.