“I had to establish rules,” Lady Knowe explained. “Every locket went to a true devotee. Though some people had already bought their own.” She coughed delicately. “Helena Biddle owns a replica made from true gold.”
“What were the rules?” Lord Alaric was definitely grinding his teeth.
Almost … almost Willa felt sorry for him. But if he disliked his own fame that much, he shouldn’t have written books about himself.
“Lady Knowe held a contest,” Lavinia explained. “The questions were all drawn from your work. Oh, and the play, of course.”
“You surprise me, Aunt,” he said. “I didn’t have the idea that you read my books so carefully.”
“Oh, I didn’t come up with the questions,” Lady Knowe said blithely. “I went to the nursery for that. The children are forever acting out your adventures. They know the books by heart.”
He looked even more taken aback. “The children are reading my work? I visited the nursery this morning, but no one said a word.”
“Your father commanded that they not pester you on your first day home. Believe me, they have memorized every sentence. Their poor long-suffering governess has read the books over and over at bedtime. In fact, that might be one of the reasons why she left. We haven’t found a new one yet.”
Willa swallowed another grin. Lord Alaric had the look of a man contemplating a flight to the nearest port, perhaps to set sail for cannibal country.
“The children haven’t seen the play, but Leonidas gave them a thorough account on his last trip home from Oxford,” Lady Knowe continued. “Betsy does a fine, if somewhat histrionic, rendition of the missionary’s daughter declaring her love just before she is captured by the cannibals.”
Lord Alaric subtly shifted his weight. Willa guessed that he was irritated to the bone by the whole discussion, by the news about his siblings, by the lockets, and most of all, by the play itself. Every mention of it put a deep furrow on his forehead.
But he was too polite to explode before his aunt. It was rather adorable, actually.
“Are you more nettled by Wilde in Love, or by the missionary’s daughter’s untimely death?” she asked.
“They are one and the same,” he answered. “Both of them sprang up like a weed while I was abroad.”
“That makes the play sound like a black eye,” she commented, enjoying the way a muscle was jumping in his jaw. “As if it happened when you weren’t noticing. Explained by running into a door in the dark, that sort of thing.”
“It did happen while I wasn’t noticing—or rather, not even in the country. My brother tells me that the wretched playwright hasn’t even had the courage to acknowledge the piece. No one knows who he is.”
“Are you planning to shut down the production?” Lavinia asked. “I would appreciate advance notice, because my mother hasn’t allowed us to see it yet.”
He looked to Willa inquiringly.
“Lady Gray disapproves of the fact that your enthusiasm for your beloved is expressed in heated terms,” she told him.
It was clear Lord Alaric had no trouble interpreting what she meant because he scowled. “It’s reprehensible to stage a play about a living person, especially one that’s no more than a mess of inaccuracies and apparently lewd ones at that.”
Lavinia turned to Willa. “We must insist on attending it as soon as we return to London.”
“You’ll pay upwards of ten guineas for each ticket,” Lady Knowe warned.
“We could just visit the nursery,” Willa pointed out. “Request a command performance from actors with true knowledge of the hero.”
“It’s not fair to call the play entirely inaccurate,” Lady Knowe said to her nephew. “Act One begins with two boys playing at sword fighting. You and North, pretending to be a king and a warrior. I remember those bouts quite well.”
“I see.”
A quiet voice, Willa was discovering, did not necessarily mean that the man who possessed that voice was less dangerous than a man who bellowed.
She had thought that Lord Alaric was irritated by the play, but now—on hearing that true details of his life were playing out on the stage—his expression became truly forbidding.
“How cross you look! You oughtn’t to be,” Lady Knowe said. “Wilde in the Andes sold every single copy on the first day, and everyone says that part of its success must be put up to the triumph of Wilde in Love.”
Ouch.
“I suppose it is taxing to have so many admirers,” Willa said, changing the subject.
At that moment she made the unsettling discovery that not only was Lord Alaric outrageously handsome, but his eyes were nearly … irresistible.
The very idea made her feel a little ill.
The man was notorious.
Notorious. Whereas she was an adamantly private person.
Yet here she was, smiling at him with practically the same fervor that had driven Lavinia to spend her pin money buying those prints.
“I expect Lady Gray is looking for us,” she said.
Lord Alaric didn’t glance around the room, but his expression suggested that Lavinia’s mother would have appeared at their side if she wished to interrupt the conversation.
Likely he was unaccustomed to women cutting a conversation short.
“Are you disappointed?” Willa asked Lavinia, when they were out of earshot of Lord Alaric and his aunt. “So often an idol turns out to be unsatisfactory in person. You remember what a shock Mr. Chasuble, the Oxford philosopher, was.”
“You were put off by the luxurious black hair growing from his ears,” Lavinia agreed. “But did you see a single objectionable physical detail about Lord Alaric? Because I did not.”
“No,” Willa admitted. In fact, she still felt the shock of his raw earthy charm in her whole body.
It wasn’t something she would have anticipated, but—she reminded herself—it simply meant she was a member of the female sex.
And if she told herself that a few more times, she might actually believe it.
“Alas, I think he’s too masculine for me,” Lavinia said thoughtfully. “Too perfect.”
“He’s not perfect,” Willa objected. “He has a scar on his forehead as well as the one on his cheek; did you see it?”
“I don’t mean physically. He’s intelligent and yet there’s something almost brutal about him. I’ve lost the desire to love him madly.” She looked disappointed.
“Isn’t it more comfortable this way?” Willa inquired. “It’s not as if you’d want to become an explorer’s wife, Lavinia. Remember how seasick you became from rowing on the Thames.”
“True!” Lavinia said, her natural optimism asserting itself. “I’ll have to find someone to take my collection of prints. I don’t want them, now that I’ve met him.” She wrinkled her nose. “It would be odd to have him on my bedchamber wall.”
Willa had never, ever thought of buying a print of Lord Wilde. Or rather, Lord Alaric.
Of course she didn’t want Lavinia’s prints. “Right,” she said, “they should be easy enough to give away. Let’s find your mother.”
“He knew that that was an excuse,” Lavinia said. “I know you don’t think much of his books, but I promise you that Lord Wilde’s accounts are more captivating than you have assumed.”
“I am sure you are correct,” Willa said. Leaving it at that.
A footman presented a tray with glasses of sickly sweet ratafia. “I wish that young ladies were allowed to drink more than a single glass of sherry,” Lavinia said with a sigh.
“The Season is over,” Willa pointed out. “We can allow ourselves some leeway.” She sent the footman off for sherry instead.
“It’s a good thing Mother didn’t overhear you,” Lavinia said, very entertained.
“You’re not alone in your aversion to ratafia. I feel the same way about the drink as Diana does about Lord Roland.”
“Just look at Diana now,” Lavinia said. “She is in anguish.”
Willa?
??s imagination was a pale, stunted twig in comparison to Lavinia’s bountiful creativity, and as such she tended to discount Lavinia’s more fanciful opinions. But she obediently turned to look across the drawing room at Diana, trying to decipher signs of anguish.
They had spent a good deal of time together during the Season, since Diana and Lavinia were distant cousins, but somehow Willa never felt she got to know Diana. At the moment, she looked pale, but then Diana had a porcelain complexion. After Lord Roland fell in love at first sight, general opinion declared that her complexion must have played a signal role.
“She may have slept badly,” Willa suggested.
Lavinia shook her head. “It’s monstrously unfair that she caught Lord Roland when she obviously doesn’t want him. I wish a future duke would fall in love with my complexion. It’s such a pure emotion. I suspect most of the men who offered for me have far more indelicate inclinations.”
Willa agreed. Lavinia’s suitors had trouble keeping their eyes off her chest, and for good reason. “I watched Lord Roland talking to Diana at breakfast, and his motives are definitely not pure. His eyes were quite desirous.”
“Thank you!” Lavinia said to the footman, who had returned with sherry. “We can’t rule out the possibility that he was experiencing lust for her wig rather than her person,” she told Willa, with a wrinkle of her nose. “I don’t think I could bear to be with a man who took his attire so seriously.”
Lord Roland was certainly a peacock, from his golden heels to his tall wig. This evening he was wearing a coat of silver silk with cherry twill. The combination would have made most men look effeminate, but the violent black slashes of his eyebrows saved him. In fact, in an odd way that bouffant wig just made him more masculine.
“I have the impression that he wears lip rouge,” Lavinia added.
His lordship had a deep ruby lip, but it might be natural. “He has the courage to do so,” Willa acknowledged. “I’ve never seen a man in a wig that high.”
“He must have acquired it in Paris,” Lavinia said. “Mother doesn’t approve—although if he’d fallen in love with my complexion she would have changed her mind—but I must say that he carries it off.”
Lord Roland was a beautiful animal, and any woman in his vicinity would find her eyes resting on him pleasurably.
His brother was just as beautiful. But Lord Alaric was rougher. Untamed. Their features were equally pleasing, she supposed. But somehow the same jaw on Lord Alaric looked harsher, more stubborn.
More troublesome for anyone in his life, such as his wife. It was just as well that she hadn’t the faintest wish to audition for the role.
“We can’t join my mother until we finish the sherry, so we ought to talk to Diana,” Lavinia said. “Since she’s over there by herself. Again.”
Sure enough, Diana was standing with her shoulder turned to the room, staring out the darkened window with passionate interest. Enough to make it clear that she did not care for company.
“I’ll join you after a visit to the ladies’ retiring room,” Willa said. “Just imagine what a fuss there will be if she changes her mind about the marriage, given that this entire house party is in honor of her betrothal.”
“You may be a natural philosopher, Willa—and I’m still not certain what that entails—but I can read faces,” Lavinia said. “I could make a fortune if I set up a stall at the fair. My cousin is in despair.”
Diana’s expression was indeed curiously tragic, as if she’d prefer wearing sackcloth and ashes to a Parisian gown covered with ruffles and bows … to say nothing of all the fruit pinned to the top of her wig.
“Her eyes resemble a basset hound’s,” Willa said thoughtfully. “A basset looks glum even if given a bone all to itself.”
“Lord Roland undoubtedly has a very fine bone,” Lavinia said, deadpan.
Willa choked with laughter. “You have no knowledge on that subject. He might have a twig, for all you know.”
“I’m telling you now, Willa, that if Diana breaks her engagement, I mean to see what that man has to offer. Under his wig, I mean, of course.”
“A shaved head,” Willa said blandly. “As bald as a nut. To go with his bone, of course.”
“Wil-la!”
Chapter Five
What do you think of the young ladies I introduced you to?” Lady Knowe whispered, throwing Alaric a smirk. “They were the undisputed toast of the Season; the only question was which of them received the most proposals.”
He had no time to answer before he was surrounded by admirers. His aunt began tossing out introductions as if she were announcing the field of horses at the Royal Ascot.
The interruption was just as well, since he wasn’t at all sure how to answer her question.
He felt as if he’d taken a sharp blow to the gut.
For some reason, Willa Ffynche inspired intense interest, a fierce impulse to know everything about her. What she thought, and why she thought it. Willa looked as if she kept her thoughts to herself—and he wanted them. All of them. He wanted to learn her private language.
He couldn’t remember ever meeting an Englishwoman who managed to be so courteous while being transparently skeptical. Not just about his books, but about him. She didn’t like him. Even looking at him made her turned-up little nose wrinkle.
Frankly, she might as well have waved a red cloth in front of a bull. The uncivilized male inside him, the one who hated wearing a wig, had got wind of a hunt.
Willa Ffynche didn’t look flirtatiously from under her lashes. She didn’t want a signed book, a proposal, or a baby.
She had absolutely no interest in becoming Lady Alaric Wilde.
She wanted nothing from him.
In fact, he had the impression that she considered him akin to a circus barker trying to charm visitors out of ha’pennies by boasting of a two-headed giant hidden in his wagon.
At one point, she had flicked him a glance that implied she believed his travel accounts to be blatantly dishonest.
Another thing: she didn’t seem to giggle. He was surrounded by giggling women at this very moment, so he appreciated her restraint.
Add to those qualities her beauty. It wasn’t just the clean way her cheek swept to her jaw. Or the wide eyes that had undoubtedly been serenaded by a hundred dubious poets.
The sum of her was so much greater than the parts. Lashes, pale skin, arched brows—
Long legs and a surprisingly deep bosom. Nothing like her friend Lavinia’s, who had breasts about which men wrote real poems, as opposed to doggerel about pretty eyes.
Lavinia’s bosom wouldn’t suit him, though. Willa’s breasts were creamy mounds that would just fit his hands.
They were perfect.
He smiled mechanically in response to a fawning comment, even as his body tightened at the thought of those breasts.
Willa held herself apart, and it undoubtedly drove men mad. Put together with that face and figure, the poor sods who frequented polite society hadn’t a chance of maintaining their equilibrium.
Even as he kissed hands and accepted yet more compliments, most of which had nothing to do with his books but everything to do with his stage portrayal as a lovelorn fool, he kept sorting through the difference between Willa and, say, a pirate. “Fascination” wasn’t quite the right word.
He’d never wanted to kiss a pirate, for one thing.
He wanted to kiss Willa Ffynche’s impudent mouth into silence, and then coax her to talk again.
The thought gave him a feeling of vertigo, followed by a wash of nausea. What in the bloody hell was he thinking?
“Lord Wilde,” a lady insisted, and he realized that he had lost track of the conversation.
“I do apologize,” he said. “You were telling me of your ancestor in the East India Company.”
She nodded. “I have his diary, and my husband and I think you are just the person to turn it into a book. He was dreadfully brave, you know. Frightfully so. It’s a family trait; my son tak
es after him.”
Alaric thought about explaining that he didn’t write for hire, but discarded the notion. “Is your son also a member of the Company?”
She bristled. “I hardly think I can be taken for the mother of a grown man!”
“Margaret, your son is only six years old,” Lady Knowe said, intervening. “I don’t think he’s been on the earth long enough to demonstrate familial courage.”
Alaric stopped paying close attention after that. He had the feeling that Willa didn’t give a damn about her beauty, or how old people thought she was. In fact, it was more the other direction.
She would be put off by praise. All those poor dogs who courted her during the Season likely wrote poems to her eyes. She would give a poet a sweet smile, count him a fool, and disregard whatever he said thereafter.
His aunt poked him in the ribs. “Miss Haverlock asked a question, Alaric.”
“What punishment did you mete upon the cannibals? The play unaccountably neglected to finish the story,” Miss Haverlock chirped, clearly hoping to be told that he had laid waste to an entire tribe of men he’d never met.
His smile thinned to a grimace. “I’ve never encountered any cannibals, Miss Haverlock. The play is a fantasy written by someone who has never met me.”
The lady seemed unconvinced but she moved on. “Then what really happened in Chapter Six of Wilde Latitudes?”
“It was precisely as I described,” Alaric said. “I don’t have much of an imagination. I merely write down what occurs.”
“Impossible!” she said, smiling at him roguishly. “You must give me more credit, Lord Wilde. I am not one who shies away from the truth. I know perfectly well that natives wear little more than strategically placed coconut shells.”
He managed to stop himself from growling at her.
“You invented clothing in order to spare the gentle sensibilities of your readers,” Miss Haverlock persisted. “But my uncle voyaged to the Antipodes and he told me that the natives are practically naked.”
“There are many islands in the Pacific,” Alaric replied, “and peoples with many different styles of dress on them.”