Wilde in Love(6)

Lord Alaric’s eyes glittered under their heavy lids but he said nothing. Willa hadn’t the faintest idea what he was thinking.

“Lord Alaric,” she asked—again—“what do you think about the possibility of a union   between members of warring cannibal tribes?”

“The likelihood would change from tribe to tribe,” he answered. “The respective reasons for the practice of cannibalism would be important. For example, some cultures view dog meat as a delicacy, while others view eating it as unthinkable.”

“Are you saying that for some tribes, cannibalism might be just an efficient way to dispatch of an enemy while putting supper on the table?” Lavinia asked. “That wasn’t my understanding.”

“You are both morbid!” Lady Knowe exclaimed. “What has happened to young ladies? In my day they understood a great deal about needlework and hardly anything else.”

“In some cultures, sacred animals are never eaten because they are believed to be incarnations of gods,” Lord Alaric put in. “In another, the same animal might be eaten daily.”

Willa was in the grip of an overwhelming urge to prove him wrong—somehow, anyhow. Unfortunately she knew nothing about sacred animals.

“My father viewed his hunting dogs as sacred,” Lavinia said, “but my mother could not abide the way they would cluster around his chair at supper. Talking of sacred objects, Lord Alaric, I gather this locket is not symbolic of a lost love? Lady Knowe was kind enough to give me one.” She held up her locket.

“I’m afraid no meaning can be attached to that object, other than my aunt’s reckless inclination to part with money.”

Lady Knowe gave an exaggerated sigh. “Your lockets are beautifully designed, decorated on both sides, and so pretty, Alaric darling. Everyone adores them.”

“Do you have a locket as well?” he asked Willa, his voice forbidding.

She had the idea that people usually quaked in fear at the mere hint of his disapproval. If so, she was just the person to acquaint him with a new emotion.

“I didn’t qualify,” she answered, giving him a sunny smile.

He frowned. “What were the qualifications?”

“Devotion,” Willa said. “When Lady Knowe disclosed her purchases, there was very nearly a squabble.”

“Like bulldogs fighting for territory,” Lavinia put in, her eyes gleaming with laughter. “I assure you, Lord Alaric, that my possession of this locket was hard won.”

“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.”