Home > Wilde Child (The Wildes of Lindow Castle #6)(9)

Wilde Child (The Wildes of Lindow Castle #6)(9)
Author: Eloisa James

Her whole body looked . . . smaller. She was so incredibly brave, never allowing the taunts of women like Lady Bumtrinket to bother her, but it couldn’t be easy.

“Right,” she said tonelessly. “Of course, you’re right. No stages other than in the castle, and no audiences other than my family.” She met his eyes. “They always clap. No matter how I do. Perhaps I’m just being boastful about my skills. I might be booed off a real stage.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Thaddeus said.

“How could you possibly know?”

“Because I’ve seen you perform.”

She frowned. “Were you here when we performed A Midsummer Night’s Dream last summer?”

“No,” Thaddeus said, and added, gently, “I’ve seen you perform any night for the last three years in London, on a public stage. During the Season, Joan.”

She gave him a lopsided smile. “That’s kind of you, I suppose. I just wish . . . I just wish I knew the truth about whether a real audience would clap for me. Even if only once.”

Thaddeus was used to making swift decisions. “I could accompany you,” he said, his voice coming out in a rasp. He cleared his throat. “Guard you. I could make sure you are safe.”

Her eyes grew round. “You would join the theater troupe?”

He recoiled. “Can you see me acting a part?”

“No,” she muttered. “You’re too much yourself.”

“One performance,” he said. “One audience.” His eyes searched hers. “What’s the next stop? Wilmslow?” He chose the closest town, the one where the auction had been held four years ago.

“I’m fairly certain that the company continues to Wilmslow,” Joan said, her eyes lightening. “On occasion, some of us have followed to see their performance, spending the night at an inn.”

She caught his arm. “Oh, Greywick, would you, truly? I’d have to ask Mr. Wooty, who directs the company, but I’m sure he’d allow it. He’s very kind, and fond of me.”

“You are good,” Thaddeus said with certainty. “And you know it, don’t you?”

Her smile was not the sparkling, blinding one that she wielded to such effect. It was small, and shy.

“Mr. Wooty says that I am. My father wouldn’t allow me to perform with the troupe until I turned twenty-one, but Mr. Wooty has always tutored me during his annual visits.”

“One performance,” Thaddeus said, shoving away his misgivings. “As Hamlet, because that’s the only chance you have of not being recognized as a lady.” He would have to pay every member of the troupe a bonus to ensure their silence.

“Of course,” Joan said, nodding.

“After which, you must return to the castle and—and get married.” The words growled out of some part of his chest that he didn’t recognize.

If she were married . . .

It would be different.

“I have to get married!” Joan cried. “What about you? You’re older than I am! In the last five years, you’ve courted only two ladies—both of whom happen to be my sisters—and done a pretty lackluster job of it. I don’t believe you’ve even tried to woo anyone since Viola married!”

“I’m aware that I need to find a bride,” Thaddeus said stiffly. “I have done my best to find the right woman, though not in the last couple of years, I admit.”

“You may accompany me to one performance,” Joan said, a swift glance from under her lashes telling him that she had accepted his point about safety. “After which, I’ll find you a spouse.”

He opened his mouth, and she interrupted him. “You’ve been looking at the wrong women. My sisters would never have accepted you, future duke or no. I’ll find you a candidate eager to be a duchess. Otherwise, you really may end up a withered bachelor, alone at Christmas, without children or anyone to love.”

Only years of discipline kept him from showing a reaction to that prediction, or to her conviction that the only women who would agree to marry him would do so for his title. “I’ll give you a list of honorable men,” he said, keeping his voice even. “You’ll marry one of the candidates I choose.”

“I’ll consider it,” Joan said.

Thaddeus choked back biting sarcasm, of a sort he hadn’t ever given voice to. Not even as an adolescent.

“Do you know how I can tell when you’re overwrought?” Joan asked. With one of her lightning changes of mood, her eyes were amused again.

He shook his head.

“You drum your fingers on the hilt of your rapier,” she said, nodding toward his waist. “You may look utterly calm and as if emotion never influences anything you do—”

“It doesn’t,” he said.

“Of course it does. When you’re angry, your face gets even more wooden than usual, and you start thumping your fingers on the hilt of your rapier. Like this.”

Frowning, he looked down and saw her long, slender fingers playing with the hilt of an imaginary rapier. His memory supplied him with the image of the plump curve of her thigh in breeches, sending a ferocious stab of lust down his groin. “I didn’t realize you were so observant,” he said, turning to the side so that his cockstand wasn’t evident.

Her face didn’t change, and he realized that she was as skilled as he at hiding her emotions. “Why should you? You consider me too selfish and careless to pay attention to others.”

She curtsied. “Good night, Lord Greywick.” She paused. “I just snapped at you again, but truly, I’m grateful.” Again her smile wasn’t the calculated curve of her mouth, but something more hesitant. “I—I have longed my entire life to perform in front of a real audience.”

Thaddeus bowed and watched her go.

Why did she accuse him of calling her selfish? He remembered calling her reckless. Perhaps careless.

But never selfish.

Joan was not selfish. Over the years, he’d noticed that she spent hours in the nursery every day, telling the younger children stories and acting out plays for them.

In her first Season, he’d watched her prop up Viola, who had suffered from crippling shyness. As one of the most beautiful women in any ballroom, she could have reigned over other unmarried ladies, but instead she coaxed wallflowers into conversations that allowed them to show their best aspects to the gentlemen primarily interested in flirting with Joan, not courting wallflowers.

She was infuriating, wildly intelligent, better read than anyone he knew—at least in the genre of plays.

Headstrong. Stubborn.

Reckless to the point of idiocy.

In fact, he ought to reconsider his long-held belief that the Duke of Lindow was making a huge mistake in not reining in this particular daughter. Lindow understood that trying to curb Joan would lead to disaster.

He, Thaddeus, was the one who had provoked her to recklessness.

It was his fault Joan would appear before the public, dressed in breeches, every curve of her body open to the audience’s lustful view, if for only one performance in Wilmslow.

His jaw set and he swallowed hard.

He would have unerringly pointed her out as the one lady he didn’t like in all London.

Yet she was the woman he had to protect.

Hot Books
» House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City #1)
» A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire
» From Blood and Ash (Blood And Ash #1)
» A Million Kisses in Your Lifetime
» Deviant King (Royal Elite #1)
» Den of Vipers
» House of Sky and Breath (Crescent City #2)
» The Queen of Nothing (The Folk of the Air #
» Sweet Temptation
» The Sweetest Oblivion (Made #1)
» Chasing Cassandra (The Ravenels #6)
» Wreck & Ruin
» Steel Princess (Royal Elite #2)
» Twisted Hate (Twisted #3)
» The Play (Briar U Book 3)