She pulled her head back and closed the door.
Winnie was fast asleep on the truckle bed in the corner and didn’t even stir. Betsy leaned back against the door, eyes searching the ceiling. She would have to wake her maid in order to undress, but she could wait.
Why was she so upset? She had always known that she might have inherited her mother’s pleasure in bed sport. That didn’t mean she had to give in to weakness.
What a way to discover it, though: with a man who showed her no respect. If one kiss from him melted her resolution and made her weak at the knees, just imagine how she would feel when kissing a man for whom she actually cared.
Her mother’s bequest, so to speak, was this volcano of erotic desire swirling around in her, waiting to take over and force her to abandon her husband and babies. Lust felt like a windstorm that could sweep away her prudence. Her common sense.
She slid down the door until she was sitting against it. She could deal with this. She’d known it was a possibility. In fact, she’d sensed inside that it was a certainty. Look at how readily she’d gaped at Jeremy’s bare chest.
If Thaddeus kissed her, would she leap on him like an untamed cur? She had the feeling that she would not. But if she married Thaddeus, and then some years later met a Prussian with golden hair?
She could actually imagine lust driving her to extremes.
After twenty minutes of hard crying, she finally stopped and blew her nose.
Fate had offered her a chance to ameliorate her mother’s shame. Her mother had left a duke and her own children behind. She, Betsy, would be a good duchess. A perfect duchess. And a good mother too.
She would be everything her mother hadn’t been. She would never flirt with another man after marriage, or even consider such an abomination. She would be loyal and true and a perfect wife.
No one would ever whisper about her daughter’s corrupted blood.
She would marry Thaddeus.
Chapter Nine
It was ridiculous to hope that one kiss would make him sleep. Instead Jeremy stared into the dark, as he had night after night.
But somehow, tonight, the dark was a little less murky. For one thing, he kept puzzling over what went wrong with that kiss.
Betsy—Bess—had curved her arms around his neck and leaned into him as if she felt the same jolt of staggering pleasure as he had. For a moment, he’d been blinded by the ferocity of it.
The passion had to be due to his two-year drought: Desire returned in a rush that brought him near to groaning at the taste of her, every sense in his body flaming to unruly life.
He could have sworn she felt the same.
Her tongue had curled around his shyly, but he felt the breath catch in the back of her throat. He kept his hands to himself, but he felt her tremble with desire.
Then it all changed, which was a puzzle. He hadn’t done anything extraordinary. He hadn’t nipped her lip even though it was plump and delicious.
The memory seared down his body and his cock jerked up and fell back against his belly. It was still hard, an hour later. Straining to be—
Near her.
Heat sizzled across his skin and he almost moved to grip himself, but that didn’t feel right. Betsy hadn’t liked his kiss; it wouldn’t be right to relieve himself with thoughts of her.
Another thought occurred to him and he crossed his arms behind his head, trapping his hands to make certain that they didn’t wrap around his cock and pull, hard.
What if it was he? What if she liked the kiss—it was her first, after all—but then she realized she was kissing him?
Maybe she knew about his lost week after those bloody fireworks. The details that Parth had promised to keep to himself.
No.
He trusted Parth the way he trusted North and Betsy—all the Wildes. He and Betsy could trade insults all day long, but she’d never stab a man in the back.
He had faith in the Wildes, a gut-deep faith, the way some men believe in God, and others in king and country.
Betsy probably formed her own opinion about why he spent his evenings in a corner, brooding over lost men and lost opportunities.
A worse thought occurred, and he stiffened.
Perhaps she knew what had happened in Massachusetts. No Wilde would have lost his entire platoon. Her brother North had brought his men through multiple engagements safe and sound, but for an unlucky few.
Not he.
Every single man was lost; only he had walked off the battlefield without an injury.
His tool fell against his belly, and there was no need to trap his hands.
Someone could have told her. The War Office had investigated and declared him a hero—but who cared for that? They hadn’t been there, in the smoke and the sweat and the blood.
So much blood.
He had taken his men into the belly of the beast as he had been ordered to, rallied them again and again, went back and forth across that bloody battlefield—the one he still walked in his dreams—and every musket ball flew by his ear or his shoulder, never touching him, always striking one of his men instead.
At the time, he didn’t realize what was happening, too desperate to keep his men together, to get the wounded to safety. Waiting, waiting for the sign to retreat because the bloody engagement was lost from the beginning.
The order never came, and he found out later that his colonel had fled rather than bring in his battalion as ordered.
His men, his brave men, fought on because he rallied them. And perished, because he didn’t save them.
His cock lay on his thigh now, as dead to the world as the rest of him.
With an effort, Jeremy forced the memories away, even though they were so vivid that he could have sworn he smelled an acrid whiff of gunpowder.
Dawn would come.
He would get through this week, and carry out his promise to Betsy. Then he would leave. What had he been doing, sitting among good people as if he had a right to be here?
Kissing a woman who deserved so much better than he that she actually looked ill when she realized who she’d kissed?
He’d take Betsy to Wilmslow, let her bid on some fool thing, then leave. Go somewhere. Perhaps to his townhouse in London.
After a while he got up and moved to a chair by the open window. He lit a cheroot and sat in the dark, waiting for the sky to lighten, the only light in the room the glowing end of his cheroot. Hours later, the bullfinches woke, and began twittering.
They must have made nests in the gaps in the stones, because as soon as the sky turned a chilly pink they shot out from the castle, straight into the sky like arrows from a bow.
His throat burned from tobacco; he’d smoked three of the four cheroots he still had, imported from Madras. And he had told himself that he would buy no more.
As the finches dipped their wings against the sunrise, he realized with slow surprise that he wouldn’t even smoke the last of them.
He’d had his last glass of whisky as well.
A burning throat—caused by whisky or tobacco—was a reminder that he was alive. But it was no more than that; just a reminder that the body that breathed and coughed and peed was still on the earth.
Chapter Ten
Betsy woke the next morning and shook off the remnants of her sorry mood. Her fear was realized: She had inherited her mother’s lusty nature. It was no excuse for feeling sorry for herself.
Instead she would go on just as she had, but with special attention to anything that could destroy her reason and common sense. Send her into a haze of desire.
In short: Jeremy.
It was actually a fortunate event that she now had experience with a disreputable man, who’d kissed her only after making it clear that he had no wish for marriage. She had to avoid situations in which she might lose her head and end up married to the wrong man, for the wrong reasons.
Today the remaining wedding guests would return home. Parth and Lavinia were returning to London. Diana and North
were leaving as well, planning to take Diana’s nephew Godfrey to Scotland to visit the clan that the little boy would someday lead. Last night, her stepmother, Ophelia, had decided that she and the duke would accompany them, since Artie, Betsy’s little sister, didn’t like to be separated from Godfrey.
Among the family, only Aunt Knowe would remain to chaperone Betsy, Viola, and Joan. And that meant that only her aunt would be available to forbid Betsy’s plan to masquerade as a boy. Kiss or no, Betsy couldn’t ignore the yearning inside her to do something that wasn’t ladylike.
By the time she climbed from the bath, her good humor was restored. With her father and stepmother on the way to Scotland, it would be easy for her to escape the castle for a day. She merely had to talk Aunt Knowe into accompanying her to Wilmslow.
She was fairly confident that her aunt would agree. Every naughty idea she had as a young girl had been seconded by Aunt Knowe, who had even helped her collect tadpoles, so she could turn the boys’ beds into wet and squishy ponds.
“Everyone is chattering about you and Lord Greywick,” Winnie, her lady’s maid, reported as she helped Betsy towel her long hair.
“His proposal?”
Winnie nodded. “Are you quite certain that you don’t wish to accept him? He’ll be a duke someday. He’s handsomer than any footman I’ve met, I can tell you that. And his voice, the way it rumbles: I can feel it to the tips of my toes.”
Betsy straightened, pushing her wet hair over her shoulder, and grinned at Winnie. “Rumbles?”
“Deep and dark,” Winnie said, shaking out a chemise. “I’d marry him even if he didn’t have a ha’penny to his name, and that’s the truth.”
“I might marry him,” Betsy said cautiously.
“His mother’s lady’s maid says that Her Grace is very precise in her ways. She approves of you.”
Betsy had met Her Grace, the Duchess of Eversley, several times. She was a plump lady with her son’s beautiful bone structure, but her eyes were quite different. His were solemn. Hers were bright. Confident. She was . . . Betsy searched for the right word.
Capricious.
That was it: The Duchess of Eversley was her opposite. Betsy watched every gesture and facial expression to make certain that no one could judge her by her mother’s mistakes. Whereas the Duchess of Eversley expressed herself freely, and the self she expressed was unique.
To put it mildly.
“Oh!” Winnie squealed. She dropped the gown she was holding onto the bed, darted back over to the wardrobe, and pulled open a door. “I have an idea what you should wear this morning. This dress!”
It was a pale rose silk with a violet petticoat, a gown that Parth’s fiancée, Lavinia, had ordered for Betsy in London.
“I was saving that for a special day,” Betsy reminded her.
“Today is a special day,” Winnie said, her fingers flying over the gown’s fastenings. “Last night you refused Lord Greywick’s hand in marriage. Today his mother will seek you out and demand to know why you rejected her son.”
“Surely not,” Betsy said, somewhat horrified. “No other mother has done such a thing.”
“Her son will be a duke,” Winnie said, as if that explained everything. “Do you know that Her Grace always wears pink?” She deftly turned Betsy and began lacing her corset. “Everything, including her shoes, must be pink. Except her undergarments, of course. Carper asked Her Grace’s maid about her intimates and got a sharp reprimand from Mr. Prism. But not before she answered. They are white.”
Betsy couldn’t remember the color she herself wore to dinner a week ago, and she certainly hadn’t noted Her Grace’s penchant for pink.
“Why?” she asked, keeping it simple.
“The duchess believes in the healing power of the color,” Winnie said.
“Oh.”
“Lord Greywick is ever such a good son. He has a pink coat and pantaloons that he ordered solely so that he can wear them when his mother is worried about his health.”
“An excellent point in favor of marrying him,” Betsy said, though she privately felt unenthusiastic about a man in pink pantaloons.
“I would put the title first,” Winnie said, and then, with a giggle, “followed by his thighs. His legs are very fine for a man of his stature.”
“I hadn’t noticed,” Betsy said. She truly hadn’t noticed. That suggested that Thaddeus would make a good spouse. She hadn’t the faintest interest in sleeping with him.
She probably ought to marry him.
“There you are,” Winnie said sometime later. In Her Grace’s honor, Betsy wore the pink dress, with pink ribbons rather than powder in her hair.
“This doesn’t mean that I agree to marry Thaddeus,” Betsy said, staring at herself in the glass.
“Thaddeus?” Winnie’s eyebrows flew up. “You have never referred to any other suitor by his first name, Lady Betsy.”
Betsy’s bodice was a trifle lower than she liked. “Please hand me a fichu,” she said to Winnie.
“That bodice is absurdly high! It’s practically at your collarbone, and by rights it should skim your nipples.”
Betsy shook her head. “A fichu, Winnie.”
Her maid sighed and handed over a square of silver lace. Betsy folded it into a triangle, put it around her neck, and tucked the ends into her bodice.
She opened the door and almost collided into one of her sisters running down the corridor. “Viola!” she cried. “Where are you going?”
Viola turned around and ran back in her direction. “Joan needs a dentist,” she gasped. “We rang for Prism, but no one came, so I think the footmen must be busy putting people into their carriages. The courtyard is crowded with vehicles.”
“She has a sore tooth?”
“Aunt Knowe says it must be pulled. It’s in the very back, and it’s making the other teeth ache as well. All night Joan kept groaning and clutching her jaw. Hot flannel isn’t working, and neither is a cut onion.”
“How unpleasant for her.” Betsy turned to go to the nursery, but Viola caught her arm.
“Mother said to tell everyone to stay away. You know how Joan is; she hates crying when anyone can see her. She even asked me to leave.”
“Oh, but—”
“No,” Viola said firmly, pulling her in the other direction. “We shall tell Prism about the dentist, and then you must go in to breakfast. I expect Lord Greywick is waiting for you.”
Betsy looked down at her stepsister’s earnest face and felt a wash of love. The Wildes were tall, imposing creatures, but her stepsister was petite and delicate, with chestnut ringlets and a heart-shaped face. “You’re a dear,” she said, gathering her into a hug. “Joan is so lucky to have you as a best friend and sister.”
As soon as they arrived in the great marble entry, a groom was sent to fetch the dentist.
“Please join me for breakfast?” Betsy asked her stepsister.
Viola instantly shook her head and backed up a step. “I couldn’t.”
“You promised your mother that you would try to join us in the mornings.”
“Not when the castle is full of guests!” Viola whispered. “I can’t, Betsy. Please don’t ask me.” She took two more steps backward.
If Viola had her way, she would remain in the safety of her chamber or the library all day long and never encounter strangers. Especially unmarried male strangers.
After an initial shock, Miss Stevenson’s Seminary had been a happy experience for Viola; she had grown from a shy child, unwilling to meet any strangers, to one who was comfortable in female company.
But not with males, unless they were family.
“Please?” Betsy asked, reaching for Viola’s hand. “I don’t wish to encounter Lord Greywick’s mother by myself. Winnie thinks that Her Grace will demand to know why I refused her son’s proposal.”
Viola looked appalled. “We should avoid breakfast altogether.”
“Girls!”
They looked up as Aunt Knowe galloped dow
n the stairs. “I heard that foolishness,” their aunt said cheerfully, when she reached the bottom and put her arm through Viola’s. “My dear, I’ve told you that the only way to exorcise your shyness is to force yourself into rooms full of strangers.”
Viola gulped.
“I will sit with you,” Betsy promised.
“I came downstairs to fetch my dandelion syrup to dose poor Joan or I would join you as well,” Aunt Knowe said. “Not a single person in that room will bite you.”
“If a man engages me in conversation, you must rescue me,” Viola said to Betsy.
“Of course. Last night I saw you talking easily to the vicar.”
“Oh, well, Father Duddleston,” Viola said. “He’s different.”
Viola was capable of chatting with an eighty-year-old man like their vicar, but give her a flirtatious young man, and she had been known to throw up in a potted plant.
“Did Father Duddleston mention that he is retiring?” Aunt Knowe asked. “The position will soon be vacant. In normal circumstances, a younger son of the family would take the living.”
“It goes without saying my brothers are not suited for the position,” Betsy said.
“The Wildes are manifestly unfit for holy orders,” Aunt Knowe agreed. “I must fetch that dandelion syrup from the stillroom. Viola, if you must be sick, avoid the lemon tree. It hasn’t recovered from the last time.”
“I don’t want to do this,” Viola moaned. But she obediently began walking down the corridor to the breakfast room.
“It’s like acting in a pantomime,” Betsy advised. “Not real.”
“Not real to you,” Viola said, her voice rising a bit. “Everything comes easily to you, Betsy. You want to present London with an ideal debutante, so you do. You just do it, even though everyone in this family knows that the only person in the family naughtier than you was Parth. But all these people think you’re sweet. Sweet!”
“I’m—aren’t I sweet?” Betsy asked, disconcerted.
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