“I shall do so, my lady,” Prism said, turning from where he was supervising the tucking of a blanket around Eversley’s knees.
“This is not invalid’s jelly!” Eversley squeaked, recoiling from the steaming cup that Prism handed him.
“Lady Knowe’s hot dandelion wine is restorative,” Prism informed him.
Eversley scowled. “There’s no restoring a man on the threshold of death, you fool.”
“Endive à la française?” North asked, turning to his wife.
“Hmm, I think not,” Diana replied.
“I’m dying,” Thaddeus’s father said loudly, once he and his many blankets were arranged. Without all the blazing white ermine and velvet, he looked small and frail, with dark smudges below his eyes.
Joan’s hand closed firmly around Thaddeus’s again.
“Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return,” Jeremy commented. He met the Duke of Eversley’s enraged glare with a smile. “Some of the funereal language sticks with a chap, no matter how much I’d like to forget it.”
“You have acquainted us with the state of your health,” the Duke of Lindow said, intervening before Eversley could respond. “You refuse to retire to a bed or privacy, therefore I assume you want an audience. You have it.” He waved his hand. “My family and yours—minus your lady wife—are at attention.”
“That’s just it,” Eversley cried, struggling to sit upright. He began to say something and fell into a series of barking coughs.
“I don’t think he can manage all the verses of ‘Love Divine, All Loves Excelling,’” Thaddeus said to Joan.
“Why on earth would he?” Jeremy demanded, overhearing.
“My father considers the hymn an accurate accounting of his feelings toward his mistress,” Thaddeus said. “Lady Bumtrinket was treated to a solo.”
Jeremy grinned. “There are times when I think that I married into the daftest family in England, so I am truly enjoying the reminder that the Wildes are not as mad as others.”
“I feel as if I’m at a farce,” Joan observed.
“Your father did describe us as an audience,” Thaddeus replied.
Over by the door, Eversley had taken a gulp of Aunt Knowe’s wine, which managed to quiet his breathing to mere wheezing. “I count not one person under this castle roof as my family,” he croaked.
“Were I a poet, I’d say you had a face like thunder,” Joan whispered to Thaddeus. Her hand curled tighter around his. “Just remember that he isn’t your family either.”
The duke was coughing again, so Thaddeus turned to her. “Unfortunately, he is.”
“Some people lose their right to be termed a parent,” Joan said.
“Your mother and father.”
She nodded. “Remember that.”
“We are all aware of the heights to which you have elevated your mistress and her children,” the Duke of Lindow said, once Eversley had caught his breath.
Thaddeus’s heart had slowed to a normal rate. No one was throwing him sympathetic looks, or even looking particularly scandalized. All down the table, the Wildes looked disapproving and vaguely disgusted. They didn’t care that his father was a duke, and while other people had found Eversley’s “other family” titillating or scandalous, the Wildes were . . . bored.
“Rum sort of fellow,” he distinctly heard from farther down the table. Sir Reginald at his driest.
“Irksome,” someone else said.
“My wife is the love of my life!” Eversley said defiantly.
“All appearances to the contrary,” the Duke of Lindow commented.
Thaddeus’s father barked, “Not that wife!”
“One has only one at a time,” Lindow responded. “I’m an expert on that particular subject.”
Jeremy audibly choked back a laugh, but the duke’s own children felt no reluctance and snickers broke out down the table. For his part, Thaddeus felt as if his face were frozen into a blank slate, impassive and stony.
Beside him, Joan shifted until her left pannier pushed against his hip—and then collapsed. “Crickets,” she murmured, and slid her chair across the resulting gap between them. “Back up,” she murmured. She positioned herself in such a way that she was slightly before him.
Thaddeus felt a germ of amusement stealing into his chest as he glanced down. It seemed he had a defender, a slender warrior in a wig rather than armor.
“I married my dear Florence before I married the woman you think of as my wife,” the Duke of Eversley announced, having caught his breath. “I have tried to encourage my elder son to behave like a man of honor, to renounce the dukedom, so that his mother need never know that she bore a child out of wedlock.”
“You have offered no record of this supposed wedding, nor wedding license,” Thaddeus said. “My mother was legally married to you, for all that she undoubtedly wishes she could undo her vows.”
“An illicit marriage as I had already married Florence!” his father insisted, his voice rising.
“You have no evidence,” Thaddeus said. He wrapped an arm around the waist of the woman who would be the Duchess of Eversley someday. Joan leaned back against his shoulder, her expression a mix of curious and disapproving.
“You shouldn’t be such a stickler for certificates!” Eversley spat. “It’s part and parcel with the bloodless, tedious man you’ve grown to be.”
“The law is a stickler for certificates,” Thaddeus pointed out. “Your marriage to my mother is inscribed in the records of St. Paul’s Cathedral.”
“I don’t wish to humiliate her. I came here to ask you one more time: Will you renounce the dukedom so that I need not publicly disgrace your mother?”
“He cannot,” North said, speaking up.
Eversley swung his head in his direction, reminding Joan irresistibly of a vulture with a bony head and scrawny neck. “You plan to renounce the Lindow title. You’re the duke’s oldest living son, and all England knows you’re renouncing the title. My son can do the same.” He took a ragged breath and sucked down some more dandelion wine.
“At a moment of crisis, my father and aunt suggested just that,” North said, a faint smile on his lips. “I subsequently learned that the action would not be legal. Quite likely, my wife and I are stuck with the dukedom.” He leaned down and kissed Diana’s nose.
“Nonsense! An English duke can do as he wishes. Is this your last word?” Eversley shrilled, turning to Thaddeus, his eyes bulging from the blue skin that surrounded them. “You refuse to grant your dying father’s wish?”
“I do refuse,” Thaddeus replied. “I shall be the Duke of Eversley within the day, if your doctor is to be believed. I intend to make Lady Joan Wilde my duchess.”
Eversley’s eyes sharpened. “I know who you are,” he said, staring at Joan.
“Lady Joan is my daughter,” the Duke of Lindow said, with chilling exactitude.
“Why should you be able to name a child legitimate when I cannot?” Eversley screeched, his eyes bright, near feverish.
“Joan is mine because her mother was married to me, and I have the license to prove it,” Lindow stated. “Do you dare to contest me, Eversley?” The threat of immediate death lay behind his voice.