“Which was?”
She waited until he had seated her in a chair before she said, “Convincing would-be spouses that their opinion is not irrelevant, exactly, but . . .”
“Immaterial?” he suggested. “I will admit that Betsy took a great deal of convincing. Luckily, I knew how to play billiards, or I might never have succeeded. I’ll advise Thaddeus to find your fatal flaw, the billiards in your life.”
Joan laughed. Thaddeus had already found it: He had instantly supported her foray onto the public stage.
“I gather he’s in no need of advice,” Jeremy said, a wry crook to his mouth.
“Hush,” Joan said. A footman shook out her napkin and handed it to her. “Thank you, Putter.”
A chair scraped beside her, and she turned, startled to find that Thaddeus was seating himself beside her. Shouldn’t he be seated beside his mother? “I like the remade gown,” he said, as if they had never been parted. “Does scarcity of fabric explain the fact that your nipples are very nearly exposed to the air?”
“I’ll have you know that some robes à l’anglaise are designed precisely for that reason,” she said loftily.
Behind his shoulder, she saw Prism leading one of her brothers-in-law toward her, only to find the seat occupied so he veered away. “You aren’t supposed to sit here,” she told Thaddeus, a giggle escaping her.
He raised an eyebrow. “I want to sit beside you. What if someone tried to paw you under the table?”
She laughed outright at that. “The room is full of Wildes.”
“They’re very inspiring,” he said, leaning over to murmur in her ear. “Gentlemen by training but . . .”
Joan followed his eyes and saw that Parth was seated beside his wife, and not only had an arm around her, but had just dropped a kiss on her ear. North was similarly entranced by his wife, who was impishly scolding him while he smiled down at her.
“Do you suppose that North knows what a fool he looks?” Thaddeus asked.
Joan glanced at him. “He doesn’t care.”
“True.”
“I have an idea of how to deal with your father,” Joan said.
“What?”
“We’ll travel to the estate. Then I’ll dress all in white, tiptoe into his room and inform that I’m his guardian angel, and he’s risking damnation.”
Thaddeus broke into laughter. “You refused to marry me, and therefore you cannot travel to my father’s house. You can’t have it both ways, Joan. The only way to perform the role of an angel is to marry me, or at least accept my proposal.”
“Nonsense, I could bring a chaperone,” she said. She poked him. “We’re partners.”
He blinked, as if the concept hadn’t occurred to him. Hadn’t she told him that already? But she couldn’t remember exactly whether the concept had been aired.
“Where does your father live?” Joan asked. The very idea of letting Thaddeus out of her sight made her feel restless and unhappy. Infatuated. In love.
“One of our estates,” Thaddeus said. “Eversley comprises three estates, not counting a vineyard in Portugal that makes terrible wine and a fishing retreat in Scotland.”
“I’ve never been to Portugal,” she said.
“No traveling together unless you marry me.” Thaddeus turned to his left, edging his chair back so that Joan could see across him. “Lady Knowe, I have a question to ask you.”
“Are you certain you want to ask me this question?” Aunt Knowe said, twinkling at him. “I can think of a question or two you might want to ask my brother. I couldn’t help overhearing snippets of conversation.”
Joan felt herself turning pink. “I haven’t agreed to marry him.”
Her aunt Knowe had the winged eyebrows of the Wilde family, and they flew up. “You surprise me, dearest.”
“Joan will accept my proposal soon,” Thaddeus said, sounding completely unperturbed.
“Pride goeth before a fall,” Joan remarked.
“My father, the Duke of Eversley, proposes that I give up the dukedom in favor of my younger half brother,” Thaddeus said, pitching his voice beneath the hum of conversation.
Aunt Knowe glanced down the table at her closest friend, the duchess.
“My mother shares a passion for dyeing cloth with Lavinia,” he said. “They are completely absorbed.”
“Sometimes I find myself wondering whether I have finally lost my wits,” Aunt Knowe commented. “Did you just say what I thought you said?”
“I did,” Thaddeus replied.
“Where on earth did Eversley get such a tomfool idea?”
Joan reached out and took Thaddeus’s hand under the table.
He curled his fingers around hers and smiled wryly at Aunt Knowe. “I’m afraid that it springs from this family. It was widely reported some years ago that North intended to renounce his title, when the time came.”
“I knew we should have kept that idea to ourselves,” Aunt Knowe said with a gusty sigh.
“My solicitors strongly feel that renunciation is not legal.”
“Ours agree. Luckily, my brother seems remarkably healthy,” Aunt Knowe said, waving her hand. “The Wildes will make it work, if need be; the family has a knack for getting what they want, legal or no. Witness my brother’s divorce, for example. Rarely granted, but he got one.”
Joan was rather glad that the footmen arrived with the first course. Her father’s divorce from Yvette, her mother, was indeed unusual. But so were flagrant exhibitions of adultery.
Thaddeus edged his chair back to the table and they spooned up a delicious potage au lait d’amandes, chatting of this and that.
Joan noticed as Prism moved unhurriedly to her father’s side and bent to murmur in his ear. That was unusual; the duke greatly disliked being interrupted during a meal. Hopefully, Lady Bumtrinket hadn’t paid them another visit or, if so, her stepmother would imprison her in a bedchamber.
As it turned out, the duchess had no say as regards their guest.
The great double doors to the dining room flew open. Prism straightened in outrage, his eyes bulging like a surprised frog in livery, but before he could march back and reassert his command, four men walked through the door carrying a litter.
Thaddeus made a sudden jerky movement, but Joan didn’t turn to him; the scene before her was too fascinating. The litter bore a gentleman with a full head of unpowdered yellow curls. He was lying on his side, propped up on white velvet pillows, his face gaunt and ashen. The remnants of great beauty could be seen there too, in the jaw, the hawkish nose, the commanding, heavy-lidded eyes.
Joan was irresistibly reminded of a performance of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra that she’d seen in London. The Egyptian queen had been carried across the stage while supposedly floating down the Nile on her pleasure boat, dressed from head to foot in cloth of gold, servants fanning her with peacock feathers.
This entrance could definitely compete with Cleopatra’s.
The man lay on a bed of glistening white silk, the velvet cushions nestled around his head. Despite the August heat, a magnificent white ermine robe had been thrown over his lower half, below which his toes could be seen, garbed in pointed white silk slippers adorned with pearls.