“Is there something about the word ‘dangerous’ that you don’t understand?” he demanded. “Otis may be hampered by skirts, but he is a good boxer, and they have a groom with them.”
Joan took a deep breath and controlled her irritation. “Right. My favorite part of the fair is the animal tents.”
He didn’t move a muscle, but she could almost feel the wave of disapproval that broke over her head. “You don’t care for animals?” she inquired.
A moment of silence and he said, “If you don’t understand, there is nothing I can tell you.” Apparently, animal shows were beneath Thaddeus’s notice.
“I suppose ‘no one of quality or fashion’ would attend such a ‘ramshackle’ entertainment as an animal tent?” she asked, giving him a wide-eyed, innocent look.
“Unfortunately, they are all too likely to do just that,” he answered, with a satirical twist to his mouth.
“The reptile tent comes first,” she told him, not letting his disdain sink into her bones. If there was one thing that her unusual parentage had taught her, it was how to find pleasure in moments when people thought she ought to be ashamed.
Turning her back to him, she strode toward the tent marked Leviathan: A Snake Longer Than the Thames.
The old man at the door was missing a quantity of teeth so he burbled, “Leviathan, the Snake That Ate the World,” running the words together. “Enter at yer own risk! He could eat both of you an’ ask for breakfast. Loves human flesh so watch yerself near the fence. Want a ticket?”
“Yes, please,” Joan said, smiling at him.
His brow puckered, but he said, “Tuppence buys you five minutes to risk yerself alone with the giant serpent, or a penny to crowd in with others.”
Joan pulled some coins from her pocket and said, “We’ll take five minutes, and I’ll pay for my friend as well.”
Behind her shoulder, she caught a sharp movement. It seemed that Lord Greywick didn’t care to have a woman pay his entry fee?
Ha! She was already enjoying herself.
The tent was shady after the bright sunshine outside. A picket fence in the middle was shaped in an octagon. In Joan’s opinion, the boards were rather flimsy, given the purported appetite of the snake.
The reptile was truly huge. Coils and coils of fat, glistening snake wound on each other, moving from bigger to smaller until at the very top the snake’s head emerged from his grotesque body. He was a gray-green color, with black markings.
He looked at her unblinkingly and then raised his head, tongue licking at the air.
She drew in a breath and caught Thaddeus’s arm. “Do you see that? I think it scents prey!”
He lifted her hand off his arm, replaced it to her side, and said curtly, “I doubt it.”
His touch sent a shiver down Joan’s spine, which was particularly humiliating given that he acted as if she had contaminated him by her mere touch. “Don’t you ever get tired of sneering at people?” she asked, before she thought better. “That behemoth of a snake is terrifying, but you won’t allow me to touch your arm?”
“You’re dressed as a man,” Thaddeus said. “Gentlemen don’t clutch each other in alarm.”
“I paid tuppence for privacy,” Joan reminded him. “What did I ever do to you?” she demanded, putting her hands on her hips.
His face registered boredom, although his lips were tight. She glanced down: yes! His fingers were thumping the hilt of his rapier.
“Well?” she insisted, when he didn’t respond.
“I don’t know how to answer that question,” Thaddeus said. “I have a constitutional dislike of questions that are no more than clever traps without a genuine request for information at the heart.”
“Mine is a genuine question. I don’t understand why you look at me with such dislike.” She raised her hand when he opened his mouth. “Please do not prevaricate. Clearly you disapprove of my mother’s infidelity, but I am doing you the courtesy of assuming that you do not blame me for the sins of my parents.”
He still didn’t speak, just stared at her, so she cleared her throat. “I gather gentlemanly decorum dictates your silence.”
She could feel her face getting red as common sense intervened. Plenty of people in society considered her a disgraceful hussy, even without reference to her mother’s behavior. Why was she pushing him to be truthful?
So he didn’t like her.
Why should she assume that everyone would like her? Any number of people thought she was reckless, scandalous, and on the brink of ruin.
But inside, she had thought he liked her, even though he disapproved of her.
The Wilde family was so large, and so loving, that each of them had been told over and over how adorable they were. Lack of confidence didn’t come naturally to her, but hell’s bells, she felt it around Thaddeus.
She turned to watch the snake as it tasted the air until she was absolutely certain that she had her expression under control. Then she turned her head and found Thaddeus was looking at her, rather than the snake. “So what do you think?” she asked lightly, her tone perfect.
“Two minutes left!” the man outside bawled.
His eyes bleak, Thaddeus asked, “What do I think of Leviathan or of you?”
“We have concluded the discussion of your dislike . . .” She stumbled to a halt, feeling like a fool. “I mean, your lack of affable feelings toward me, which is absolutely your prerogative, because I know that I am . . . that I irritate people.”
A splintering noise drew her eyes, and she looked down to find that Thaddeus’s hand had cracked the flimsy board topping the fence.
“Careful!” she said, summoning a smile. “You don’t want to allow Leviathan to escape and come after us!”
He let go of the board, stepped toward her, and tipped up her chin. “You,” he growled.
Joan stared at him.
His mouth came down on hers hard, and her lips instinctively opened to his silent demand. Thaddeus’s tongue met hers, a silky, erotic stroke that made her pulse speed to a gallop. This was no gentle buss or courteous peck, such as she was accustomed to.
Joan had been kissed more times than she could count, in private and in public. She had kissed men out of boredom and out of curiosity.
She had never kissed, or been kissed, in a blaze of passion like this. Thaddeus shifted infinitesimally closer to her, making her fiercely aware of the subtle movements of his body, the possessive warmth of his spread fingers on her lower back, the taste of peppermint and strong tea on his tongue.
She wouldn’t have imagined that Viscount Greywick, the man famed for his faultless behavior, would give her this particular kiss. Not this rough, demanding kiss that made her blood heat and her heart throb against her ribs. Her skin prickled all over as she swayed even closer to him.
He lifted his head, and she made a small sound in the back of her throat, an urgent, embarrassing plea for more, that came from some part of her that she’d never known before. Their eyes met, and his mouth crashed down on hers again. She opened to him eagerly, her arms going around his neck—
“Zounds!”
The curse made them jump apart. The startled expression on Thaddeus’s face evaporated in a moment, and he turned toward the old man who had interrupted them, every lineament of Thaddeus’s body as regal as Hamlet at his best.