“And I’m thirsty,” he added, sliding farther down, so he could lap water.
Chapter Seventeen
Later, much later, Joan found herself wide awake while Thaddeus slept.
He looked like one of those medieval knights, burly legs meant for coursing up and down the field, shoulders topped with muscle, the better for hoisting a heavy jousting stick.
Were they jousting sticks? Jousting rods? Lances?
Speaking of which . . . his rod lay on its side, still thick but not erect. The sight made a happy thrum run through her body.
She felt as if sparks of pleasure were still flying around her body, following the path of a shock that had curled her toes. Who would have thought the act of bedding was so sweaty and breathless? The illustrations seemed cold-blooded in comparison; a man positioning his tool in just such a way while his partner looked on approvingly.
She’d once seen two june bugs, entwined but still flying, gripping hard to stay together as they lurched up and down in the air like drunken mates leaving a pub. It was like that: mad or drunk with the act.
Thaddeus’s eyes opened up again, not even dazed: clear and wide awake. “What are you thinking about?”
“Our resemblance to mating june bugs,” she told him, propping her head up on her hand.
He nodded, seeming unperturbed by being compared to an insect. He rolled to his side and glanced down at himself. Sure enough, his tool had become even thicker and showed signs of stiffening. “It’s been eight and a half minutes, or thereabouts.”
She tipped toward him and rubbed his nose with hers. “Can you count moments internally? I have to look at a clock.”
“Minutes range themselves up in my head if I wish to pay attention,” he said.
“You’re frightfully intelligent,” Joan said, feeling quite pleased. She’d never been more than mediocre in school, so it behooved her to find a man who could give her children a dose of powerful brains.
“So are you.”
She wrinkled her nose at him. “In a different sort of way. My own way.”
Thaddeus nodded, accepting that.
“Do you care to discuss how to approach things with your father? Because it seems that we are going to—” She floundered to a stop.
“Marry,” Thaddeus said helpfully, obviously enjoying himself. “Claimed and reclaimed, remember? And will be once again, but with a ring.”
She couldn’t help noticing that his tool was announcing its readiness to go another round, a whole minute early.
Thaddeus smiled at her wryly. “Even the subject of my father doesn’t seem to dampen my enthusiasm for you.”
“First, we should discuss your father,” she said. “We both agreed that marriage was an impossibility, due to the fact that you may have to defend your dukedom in the courts, as well as polite society, and with particular attention to the latter, you ought to marry a lady of untarnished reputation.”
He shrugged his free shoulder.
“No, don’t shrug,” she said. “It’s important, Thaddeus. I can’t marry you if you’re not going to be a duke.”
He flinched.
“Don’t be silly. The title doesn’t matter, but you do. You’re a duke.”
“Not intrinsically,” he said slowly. “A duke is a role, like Hamlet. One of the reasons the man is so cross is because his uncle stole his crown.”
“Well, you can’t kill your half brother the way Hamlet did his uncle,” Joan said. “We have to figure out something else. Some way to make your father change his mind.”
“I don’t care,” Thaddeus said, looking peaceful. “I tarnished your reputation. We’d better marry immediately so that I can make you an honest woman.”
Joan rolled her eyes. “Are you trying to tell me that we should marry in order to head off a scandal, as if that would bolster your claim to the dukedom? Because I’m afraid I’m always going to be a scandalous choice.”
“I will marry you even if you are great with child on the way up the aisle,” Thaddeus said.
Joan felt a jolt of unfamiliarity, and then she realized what his expression was: happiness.
Thaddeus Erskine Shaw, future Duke of Eversley, was happy.
Because of her.
Because he loved her.
The words tumbled in her mind like tufts of wind-blown dandelion.
“No,” she said, clinging to the truth as she knew it. Thaddeus, her Thaddeus, would be lost without the dukedom. Perhaps he would blame her someday. “We have to work out the problem with your father before I’ll marry you.”
His eyes darkened. “You’ll marry me no matter what happens because of this evening.”
Joan sat up. Aunt Knowe had told all of the Wilde girls years ago that they had to make certain that their future husbands understood that they were not namby-pamby weaklings. The best marriage was a partnership, not indentured servitude, albeit at a ducal level. “I do not agree to marry you until I know that you will be a duke.”
His jaw was tight. “I wasn’t aware you were so interested in the idea of being a duchess.”
Joan looked down at him and felt a surge of love. Thaddeus was so wonderful—albeit dense, like all men. “Think whatever you like,” she told him kindly. “My point is that your father and his lies hang over us like a storm cloud.”
The look in Thaddeus’s eyes might have made a lesser woman quail. One who hadn’t been raised by Aunt Knowe.
“Why don’t we pay him a betrothal visit?” she asked, inspired.
“Oh, so you’ll agree to be betrothed to me, but not to marry?”
“Well, perhaps,” Joan said. “Although as I said, I refuse to be responsible for your losing the dukedom.”
“Do you think that I couldn’t support you without the estate?” he growled.
She gave him a sunny smile. Marriage was going to be fun; she loved fencing matches, albeit verbal ones. “Horse training? My brother North makes a great deal of money that way.”
Thaddeus narrowed his eyes at her. He was watching her the same way that he’d perused the skies the other night. Curious and purposeful.
“Or would you become a stargazer,” she asked, inspired. “What do they call them . . . an astronomer?”
“No money in that,” Thaddeus said flatly.
“Is that what you would have done, in a different world?” she asked, reaching out and linking their right and left hands together.
“Studying the unattainable,” he said wryly. “What’s the good of it?”
“Knowledge is a good of its own.”
He nodded in acknowledgment. “True. My tutors were fully cognizant of the depth of experience it takes to manage three estates, and all the souls who live in and around them, so they made certain I learned useful information, such as accounting.”
“Perhaps you will encourage your son to love knowledge for its own sake.”
“Which brings us back to the question of marriage,” Thaddeus said.
Joan got up on her knees, loving the way his eyes caught on her breasts. She grinned at him, seeing his tool jerk against his stomach. “No marriage until you know you’re going to be a duke,” she said cheerfully. “Think of your future wife as a mercenary wench with a passion for titles.” She sank back on her heels. “She has a passion for other things too. May I touch?”