“It’s only a spoon,” Horatius pointed out, but then he brightened. “I can go back down and find more!”
“That will be up to your grandfather. Your uncles spent many hours trying to find that treasure, so they’ll be jealous.”
Mother was looking up at his father with that daft expression that they both got now and then. Sure enough, his father jammed the pole into the bottom of the pool and leaned down to kiss her, so Horatius jumped overboard before they could tell him no. They were halfway across the pond anyway.
He splashed his way to shore and tore up the slope and through the apple orchard looking for the castle billy goat. Gully had to be a hundred years old, with a white beard and all, but Horatius knew he loved company.
Sometime later, when the Duke and Duchess of Eversley made their way through the orchard, they found the future duke lying in the grass, his arms wound around an elderly goat, face buried in Gully’s malodorous fur, both snoring.
“Do you suppose Horatius will be a naturalist?” Joan asked, leaning against Thaddeus’s shoulder.
“He already is a naturalist,” Thaddeus said. “A brilliant one. He has a very good idea there.”
Joan looked up, laughing. “Napping?”
Her daughter’s curls were nodding on her father’s broad shoulder, the silver spoon clutched in her chubby hand.
“Or something,” Thaddeus said, bending down to kiss her.
Acknowledgments
My books are like small children; they take a whole village to get them to a literate state. Wilde Child benefited from the expertise of Carola Dunn as regards the thorny aspects of British high society. The Royal Society of Astrologers and Eton College kindly responded to queries. I also want to offer my deep gratitude to my village: my editor, Carrie Feron; my agent, Kim Witherspoon; my Web site designers, Wax Creative; and my personal team: Daniel Camou, Franzeca Drouin, Leslie Ferdinand, Sharlene Martin Moore, and Ashley Payne. My husband and daughter Anna debated many a plot point with me, and I’m fervently grateful to them. In addition, people in many departments of HarperCollins, from Art to Marketing to PR, have done a wonderful job of getting this book into readers’ hands: my heartfelt thanks go to each of you.
About the Author
ELOISA JAMES is a USA Today and New York Times bestselling author and professor of English literature, who lives with her family in New York, but can sometimes be found in Paris or Italy. She is the mother of two and, in a particularly delicious irony for a romance writer, is married to a genuine Italian knight.
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By Eloisa James
Wilde Child
My Last Duchess
Say Yes to the Duke
Say No to the Duke
Born to Be Wilde
Too Wilde to Wed
Wilde in Love
Seven Minutes in Heaven
A Gentleman Never Tells (a novella)
My American Duchess
Four Nights with the Duke
Three Weeks with Lady X
Once Upon a Tower
As You Wish
With This Kiss (a novella in three parts)
Seduced by a Pirate (a novella)
The Ugly Duchess
The Duke Is Mine
Winning the Wallflower (a novella)
A Fool Again (a novella)
When Beauty Tamed the Beast
Storming the Castle (a novella)
A Kiss at Midnight
A Duke of Her Own
This Duchess of Mine
When the Duke Returns
Duchess by Night
An Affair Before Christmas
Desperate Duchesses
Pleasure for Pleasure
The Taming of the Duke
Kiss Me, Annabel
Much Ado About You
Your Wicked Ways
A Wild Pursuit
Fool for Love
Duchess in Love
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
wilde child. Copyright © 2021 by Eloisa James, Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins Publishers. For information, address HarperCollins Publishers, 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007.
Digital Edition APRIL 2021 ISBN: 978-0-06-287785-7
Print Edition ISBN: 978-0-06-287807-6
Cover design by Amy Halperin
Cover illustration by Anna Kmet
Cover image © Nisseikikaku/Shutterstock (flowers)
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HarperCollins is a registered trademark of HarperCollins Publishers in the United States of America and other countries.
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