The bleak look in his eyes was gone, though it hadn’t been her silliness that chased it away. She had the feeling that was due to the prospect of marriage. Marriage to her. The thought gave her a prickle of nerves, but Aunt Knowe hadn’t raised a numbskull, to use her aunt’s word.
From the moment she allowed Thaddeus through her bedchamber window, the die had been cast.
“The dukedom,” she reminded him.
He smiled faintly, one of his hands closing around her thigh under the table.
Almost all the women had reseated themselves, but Joan’s stepmother remained on her feet. Now she walked toward the bier. The Duchess of Lindow was a quiet woman, but with great strength of character.
“Duke,” she said to Eversley. “I must ask you to leave. You have insulted one of our dearest friends, as well as my beloved sister-in-law.”
“I’m not leaving until I get what I came for,” Eversley said, with all the fury of Hamlet’s ghost. A drop of red wine was slowly rolling down his cheek to his jaw, and he had a manic gleam in his eyes.
“What do you want from us?” the Duke of Lindow inquired, moving to put his arm around his duchess. “We have no miracle cures; you profess to have no interest in speaking to your wife.”
“I need to talk to your eldest son,” Eversley said. “As well as my own,” he added.
Prism glided back into the room and offered smelling salts, which Eversley waved away. “Too slow, too late,” he sighed.
“May I bring you something else, Your Grace?” Prism inquired.
“Invalid’s jelly,” Eversley said. “I like it made with sweet herbs and just a touch of mace.”
Prism raised a finger. A footman slipped from the room.
“You’ll have to get off that bed if you want to eat,” the Duke of Lindow said. “Prism, have one of the brocade chairs from the library brought here.”
Prism nodded and left the room.
“Sitting is difficult,” Eversley said plaintively. “My lungs . . .”
“We can put you to bed; your son can visit you there.”
“No, no, I don’t have time,” Eversley said. For the first time, Joan thought she heard a real emotion in his voice. She glanced at Thaddeus and he nodded, just the slightest move of his chin.
Eversley was dying, or believed himself to be dying.
Chapter Nineteen
Thaddeus could feel his heart thudding behind his chest wall. Thankfully, his mother had left, and Lady Knowe would ply her with brandy and make fun of Eversley, histrionically lying in his bier, until his mother found herself giggling, despite herself.
The foolish thing was that some ragged, small part of his soul still loved this absurd man.
The boy who thought that if he won at cricket, excelled in mathematics, took a first in astronomy and philosophy . . . that boy was still under his skin, straining to make his father love him.
Failing.
But now, looking at his father posed on that bier like a battered version of the god Dionysius, splattered in wine, self-indulgent lines carved into his face . . . Thaddeus realized that he’d never understood the truth of it.
He had felt he was in a competition with his father’s other family. That they must be more lovable, more perfect than he.
Not true.
Eversley had never loved him, and never would.
“You indicated that you do not wish to speak to your son in private,” the Duchess of Lindow said, startling Thaddeus back to the present.
“Now that my wife has made her departure, I find it easier to voice my wishes,” Eversley said.
“Get on with it,” the Duke of Lindow advised. “I’m hungry.”
“Ah, hunger,” Eversley said, sighing again. “The desires of the living are beyond me. The doctors say I will die within a day or two. I likely shall not wake from my next sleep.”
“You traveled here in your condition in order to see your son?” the duke inquired. “Or my son, who doesn’t know you from Adam?”
“Not I,” Thaddeus intervened, putting an arm on the back of Joan’s chair. “My father and I said our farewells through a series of communications between our solicitors.”
“I find myself unsurprised,” the Duke of Lindow told Thaddeus. He turned back to the dying man. “Well?”
“Your oldest son told the whole country he was going to renounce the title,” Eversley began.
North, the duke of Lindow’s oldest living son, cleared his throat. “I did say as much.”
“My solicitors insist it is illegal,” Eversley countered.
North shrugged. “More to the point, I believe your oldest son has no intention of indulging you.”
“Indulging?” The duke’s voice went up an entire octave.
Thaddeus took a sip of wine. As he put it down, Joan reached out and interlaced her fingers with his. “I’m sorry about this,” he said, glancing at her.
She laughed. “Why? You know I love the theater. He’s a brilliant Dionysius, Thaddeus. The god of wine, remember? And indulgence?”
“I thought the same thing.” Despite the situation, he felt one side of his mouth curling into a smile.
“Are you laughing at me?” his father raged at him.
Thaddeus looked away from Joan toward his father, feeling her fingers lock even more tightly with his. He didn’t answer. He had no more words for the old man who had spurned him within a week of his birth. Eversley had made periodic visits to inspect his heir, but Thaddeus had never seen him after his thirteenth birthday when the boy he considered his “real” son had been born.
“Look at you,” Eversley said, apparently following the same train of thought. “You were as rigid as a starched collar as a boy, and now you look as harsh as a damned prison wall.”
Jeremy slid over into the seat next to Thaddeus that had been vacated by Aunt Knowe. Thaddeus gave him a questioning glance.
“I don’t want to miss anything,” his friend said, chuckling. “I’ve always enjoyed storms, and you’re the focus of this one.”
“Was that your final comment?” the Duke of Lindow asked irritably from the head of the table.
The door opened and Prism entered, followed by three footmen grunting as they bore in an enormous stuffed chair. Thaddeus saw the butler hesitate for a second. The table was full.
“He can stay where he is,” his master instructed.
Next to the door. The Duke of Lindow had taken a true dislike to Eversley.
“Prism, do I smell mutton? Serve the next course, if you please,” the Duke of Lindow ordered.
It took most of that course for Eversley to arrange himself in the chair. The stained ermine and velvet pillows were cast to the ground; Prism directed footmen to carry them from the room. His Grace’s bier was lowered carefully to the ground, and then he was drawn to his feet, groaning horribly.
Everyone at the table ate cheerfully, ignoring the performance. “Did you try the deviled lobster?” Sir Reginald asked Lavinia.
“Excellent!” she answered, raising her voice to be heard above the moaning as Eversley was hoisted into the chair. “The ragout of duck is one of the best I’ve ever tasted. Prism, do give my compliments to the cook.”