“I wasn’t good,” Joan said flatly.
The duke’s face darkened even more. “Of course you were!”
“You were undoubtedly the best actress ever to appear in Wilmslow!” Lavinia cried.
“No, I wasn’t,” Joan said. She smiled around the table, still leaning on Thaddeus, who wound both arms around her. “I was funny in a part that is supposed to be serious. The audience roared with laughter as Hamlet died. My point is that Thaddeus heard me. And he did something about it. He gave me my dream.”
Joan raised her glass of champagne. “That is why Thaddeus is truly a Wilde, not an Eversley. Because when push came to shove, the most law-abiding man in all the kingdom threw away the rules and made sure that the woman he loved would be happy for the rest of her life.”
Thaddeus’s heart thumped. He turned her about and began kissing her, irrespective of his audience.
If any Wilde still thought that Thaddeus Erskine Shaw, Duke of Eversley, was as rigid as a starched collar, as his father had described him?
They knew better now.
He didn’t stop kissing his future duchess, even when a crumpled print depicting the head of the Wilde family buying marriage licenses by the dozen flew over the table and bounced on the patriarch’s dish.
“Got a license to spare?” Jeremy asked his father-in-law, laughter in his voice. “Something tells me that the new Duke of Eversley would prefer not to wait until a license arrives from London!”
Epilogue
Nine years later
The pond had that summer afternoon feeling; the water was so warm that Horatius could feel it on all his limbs like a blanket. His mom and dad and baby Lou were back on the island, but he was lying on his back in the pond, his hands paddling now and then to keep him afloat. On all sides, flat cool lily pads bumped against him and then slid out of the way to let him pass.
Back in the castle, his cousins would be shrieking and running about the nursery; every one of his grandfather’s children was home for the first time in two years, and the castle was filling up with sound. But at nearly eight years old, Horatius was too old for most of the games. Not all, but definitely too old for the screaming.
He would have been playing with Otis, but his favorite cousin just turned nine years old, and the uncles took him off to choose a pony of his own. His family had a picnic instead, eating a fish that he and his father had caught by themselves. He could still taste the clean white flavor of it.
A rustle in the water told him that one of the frogs had just launched into the pond to cool himself off. Horatius turned over lazily, letting the sun hit his back. Face down, he opened his eyes to an underwater world, a complex maze of water lily stalks with small fish slipping between them. The surface glowed just out of his eyesight, at his shoulder.
A deep breath, and he looked back down, cataloguing all the various colors of green he could see. His father said that exactitude was important, and he agreed, so he summed up: verdigris, absinthe, terre verte, celadon, emerald . . . lots of emerald.
Another breath, and the tapestry of the world under the lake was his again. Off to his right, a great carp slid through two weedy stalks, its dorsal fin fluttering like a sail, the curved line of silver scales starting at his gills. The carp almost came face-to-face with Horatius, and his mouth gaped open with surprise.
Horatius drifted along, letting the sun heat his neck. When his father, the duke, cleaned the carp they ate for luncheon, scales had flown into the air like flecks of silver. His little sister, Lou, for Louisa, because she was named for his great-aunt Knowe, clapped her hands and screamed to hold one. But then she put it in her mouth and spat it back out indignantly.
“She’s learning,” his mother had said.
The duchess was the most beautiful lady in the whole world, but she said looks didn’t matter and Horatius agreed. What was truly beautiful was the world under the surface of the water, with stalks moving gently, the lily pads like a forest of skinny trees, thickest near the shore.
Dimly, when he came up for air, he heard his mother call, “Horatius!” He put his face back down, though, because it wouldn’t do to waste that deep breath. His father’s bellow penetrated the water, and he spluttered upright.
Not that his father was angry. He was never angry; he said that a gentleman, especially a duke, had to learn to control himself because too many people could be harmed if he said something irresponsible.
His family was standing on the shore looking for him, the three of them, so Horatius started swimming toward them carefully, so he didn’t rip water lilies from their stems. All around him, small frogs plopped into the water, annoyed by the noise he was making. A dragonfly whizzed past his ear, its sapphire-blue wings almost transparent, heavy head bobbing.
His sister wasn’t unlike a dragonfly, now he thought of it. Her head was too big for her body, even though his mother said she was absolutely perfect.
By the time he reached the shore, the family was in the punt, waiting for him.
The duke stood in the rear, manning the pole that they used to get across the lake. There were too many lily pads to row properly these days, so the rowboat stayed under the willow tree. Horatius clambered into the punt, water sheeting off his breeches.
His mother smiled and chucked him a cloth so he could wipe his face. Thankfully, she wasn’t at all like his friends’ mothers. He hadn’t started Eton yet because his parents said they couldn’t do without him, but he already had friends who were there, and one of them said that his mother didn’t remember his name.
Horatius had kept quiet, because his parents definitely knew his name; he was named for one of his mother’s brothers. But mostly, they loved him. A future duke doesn’t boast about stuff like that, about anything, really. There were lots of things a duke couldn’t do, but that was all right.
His father reached out and tousled his hair; it was a silly golden color, starting to curl up in a way he loathed. “Everything all right under the water?”
“Always,” Horatius said.
Lou reached out her hands to him, cooing, but he knew that she’d squawk if he actually took her. She didn’t like chilly water. “I got something for you,” he said, remembering. He shifted his hip so that he could dig into the wet bag he strung around his waist.
“It isn’t another snail, is it?” his mother asked.
“No,” Horatius said with a touch of indignation. Lou hadn’t even paused to think that he was giving her something alive; she just popped it in her mouth and swallowed it before anyone could stop her. He hated to think what that poor snail thought as it bounced down into her fat tummy.
“I saw this glinting, so I dove to the bottom.” He wrestled open the bag and pulled out a silver spoon, a little mucky. Reaching over, he doused it in the water a few times and then handed it over.
Lou gave an approving squawk and stuck the thin end in her mouth and chomped on it. Like a puppy, she was growing teeth and liked to chew.
His mother gently turned the spoon over to see the insignia.
“Lindow Castle crest,” Horatius said. “That makes sense, right?”
“Thaddeus!” his mother gasped.
“The treasure,” his father said, giving Horatius a big smile. “You found the lost Lindow Castle treasure.”