Say No to the Duke

by James, Eloisa

  “And what were you running toward?”

  “My men kept falling, one after another,” Jeremy said, swallowing.

  “If you had left the field, your men would have fallen without notice,” his father said. “A general watches the battle as a whole, but you were told to watch over your men. You did that, Jeremy. You did that. The fact your colonel shamefully deserted his post is not your responsibility.”

  Jeremy clenched his jaw because the English language didn’t seem to have the words for what he felt. Or what he should say.

  “We can’t leave your warrior queen out in the snow.” The marquess’s hand closed tightly around Jeremy’s knee for a second before he bent forward and stepped out the door.

  Jeremy sat still, capturing the whiff of linen and tobacco in his memory. He finally jolted himself out of the carriage and gave the shivering footman a shilling.

  By the time he entered the inn, the marquess and Betsy were seated on opposite sides of a private parlor, which wasn’t as awkward as it might have been because Lady Knowe, Thaddeus, and the duchess were crowded around the fireplace with them.

  Apparently, they had appropriated the entire inn.

  “Isn’t this marvelous?” Lady Knowe called, flying to meet him. “We are warming up, and then we shall retire upstairs for baths. We can feel as comfortable as if we were in Lindow Castle. There was only one guest for the night, and he was perfectly happy to go off to the Honeypot. I’m paying for his stay, of course.”

  She burbled on, but Jeremy looked to Betsy. She looked back at him, wide mouth solemn and one eyebrow arched, so delicious that Jeremy moved directly toward her.

  A hand on his arm stopped him. “Lord Jeremy,” the duchess said, “I wish to apologize.”

  “There is no need,” Jeremy said mechanically, bowing. He had no idea what she was talking about.

  “I left you and Lady Boadicea at a teahouse unchaperoned. Naturally you both felt uncomfortable, which forced you out into a winter storm. What a marvelous piece of luck that you found your father’s carriage when needed!”

  Jeremy forced himself to nod. “Lady Knowe sent the duke’s carriage back for our servants,” the duchess went on. “They should be here within the hour. I could not sit down to dine in this gown.”

  “No, indeed,” Jeremy murmured.

  Thaddeus was sitting beside Betsy. She would be a marvelous duchess. Just look at the squabble she had with his father in the carriage. Only a future duchess could lecture a marquess and then walk straight past him without a word of farewell.

  Her Grace was blathering on about her lady’s maid—why would she think he was interested?—and Betsy was giving Thaddeus that smile, the one that would likely turn his head and make him forget that she was a breeches-wearing scandal in the making.

  Damn it.

  “If you’ll excuse me, Your Grace,” he said to the duchess, and made his way across the room.

  Betsy and Thaddeus looked like a ceramic lord and lady, a flirtatious pair fashioned in France by a man who’d never seen a queen but pictured aristocrats with sweet faces and strong chins.

  “Hello,” Jeremy said, pulling over a seat to Betsy’s other side. “How was the auction house?”

  “Lady Knowe decided that the weather precluded the trip,” Thaddeus said, all amiable and gentlemanlike. “We came here, and she sent the carriage back to the castle.”

  There was something in his eyes. Thaddeus had made up his mind.

  Perhaps because the auction itself would be put off due to the weather. Yet if he thought that Betsy would forget the idea of breeches, he was due for a surprise.

  “Lady Knowe has ascertained that the auction will be held tomorrow,” Thaddeus continued. “All the ladies plan to attend, dressed as men.”

  “I thought you felt it disreputable for a lady to appear in breeches,” Jeremy observed.

  “My mother has impressed upon me that she should be my guide in such matters,” Thaddeus said. “I have apologized to Betsy for any discomfort I caused with my naïve and inept response.”

  “There’s nothing that makes an aristocrat look like a grocer as much as a robust love of respectability,” Jeremy observed. “My father is the first in my family to bother with reputation at all.”

  “Aunt Knowe claims that the aristocracy is like a pond full of swans,” Betsy said, her eyes sparkling. “From above, we look elegant, if not regal. But under the surface, we’re all swimming madly, with not much difference between us and the ducks.”

  “An acute observation,” Thaddeus said.

  “The snow tonight looks rather swanlike,” Jeremy said idly. “Like the feathers of an unimaginable bird.”

  The duchess called to her son, so Thaddeus rose and escorted her from the room.

  “You can’t marry him,” Jeremy said. “You’ll spend your adult life watching a man ferry his mother about.”

  Betsy threw him an inscrutable look and rose to her feet. “I would escort my mother, had she cared for my company.”

  “Our maids have arrived, thank the Lord,” Aunt Knowe announced from the door. “Come along, you two. No dilly-dallying. Jeremy, your cousin is in a frightful state; Mr. Bisset-Caron fears he’s caught a cold. He shall have supper in bed.” She disappeared.

  “Unchaperoned once again,” Jeremy said, strolling across the room. “One would almost think that Lady Knowe wasn’t championing Thaddeus as your future spouse.”

  It was madness to discuss marriage with Jeremy, but Betsy found it irresistible as well. “If I became a duchess, the world would be at my feet.”

  “You don’t want the world at your feet,” Jeremy said, shrugging. “You certainly don’t want the whole world to have your likeness on the wall. What do you want, Bess?”

  You, she thought involuntarily.

  But that way was madness. There was no question but that Jeremy brought out her worst, the carnal impulses she’d inherited from her mother.

  “I want to be a duchess,” she said, echoing her fourteen-year-old self, the girl who fiercely longed to win at the game of marriage. “Thaddeus is a true gentleman.”

  Jeremy leaned forward and brushed his knuckle across her cheek. “But are you a lady?”

  She flinched.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked, his eyebrows drawing together. “I didn’t mean it as an insult, Bess.”

  “Why did you agree to walk me to the church?”

  His eyes searched hers, and she saw the moment when he decided to be honest. “I hoped to kiss you again.”

  She had always been so careful, so sure that she could avoid her mother’s mistakes. Yet she had walked out of the tearoom without thought of a chaperone, beside a man who lusted after her.

  “Betsy,” Jeremy said softly. His eyes looked almost tender. “Don’t. Don’t think whatever it is you’re thinking.”

  “I think nothing,” she said, walking out and leaving him behind.

  He was confusing, bitter, dark-tempered. For all she yearned to soothe the anguish he sometimes let slip, she couldn’t.

  She caught up with Aunt Knowe in silence. Once they had climbed a flight of stairs, her aunt paused.

  “You’re going to have to choose between them.”

  “There’s no choice,” Betsy said immediately. “The duchess is marvelous. She’s funny and kind.”

  “I didn’t mean between the duchess and her son. You are not marrying Emily,” Aunt Knowe said dryly. “The choice is between Jeremy and Thaddeus.”

  “A man’s mother is the mirror of her son,” Betsy said airily. “How could I be luckier? Everyone loves Thaddeus.”

  Aunt Knowe pushed open a bedchamber door, and Betsy saw Winnie changing the bed into linens brought from Lindow Castle. Aunt Knowe was a firm believer that to sleep in strange linen, even once, was to court vermin, if not illness.

  “Take a warm bath,” her aunt suggested, her eyes softening. “Remember, you have more choices than these two. The men flinging themselves at your feet
are legion.”

  Betsy came up on her toes and kissed her aunt’s cheek. “You’re wonderful.”

  “I’m lucky,” her aunt said. “You children are endlessly amusing.”

  As Winnie dosed her bath with vervain, Betsy sat next to the fire and tried to collect her thoughts.

  If she was honest with herself, she loved flirting with Jeremy. She wanted to kiss him in a dark corner. She wanted him, with his dark soul and furious eyes, his brandy-drinking, sober-sided sarcasm.

  His broad chest, battered hands, and beautiful lips. What man had lips like his? She was fascinated by his lower lip, by the little crease in the center of it. The way his tongue had slipped past her lips.

  The way he spoke idly, a flow of words, and all the time his eyes ranged over her lips . . . her bosom, her neck.

  He seemed to like her wrists. Was that possible? She caught him looking, his eyes drowsy.

  She could swear . . .

  But what did she know of lust?

  Only that it danced in her limbs and made her mind flood with scandalous ideas. What if she teased Jeremy with kisses, with a lap of her tongue, even with a nip from her teeth? What if she kissed him so passionately that he—

  That he what?

  She knew nothing.

  Oh, she knew the mechanics. But that was nothing.

  Chapter Thirteen

  They gathered for dinner in the inn dining room, and even Grégoire Bisset-Caron joined them, complaining of a cold but never sniffling.

  The duchess carried the conversation through the first course, as she had apparently decided to woo Betsy by describing Thaddeus’s innate aptitude for being a duke, on display from the age of two months.

  Betsy listened carefully to the story of Thaddeus’s generosity toward an orphaned hedgehog, but she allowed her mind to wander when his mother described his courage after being stricken with ringworm.

  “His beautiful curls fell off in patches all over his scalp,” the duchess lamented.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Thaddeus groaned under his breath.

  Betsy liked him for that, because he was irritated but didn’t cut his mother off.

  The ringworm finally vanquished, the marquess entered the lists, and the table was treated to the harrowing tale of Jeremy’s childhood bout of mumps.

  “You’ve missed the point,” Jeremy observed, when the story of bulbous glands wound down. “You forgot to say how wildly courageous I was in the face of near death.”

  “Death?” His father snorted. “You were a frightfully naughty child, but your disobedience wasn’t fatal or near to it.”

  “I notice you are not mentioning my cousin’s service in the colonies,” Grégoire said.

  Jeremy smiled faintly. “Mumps is easier to excuse.”

  “Nonsense,” the marquess said, frowning mightily at his son. “Your military service earned you a rare mention in the dispatches, even if you chose to ignore it.”

  The duchess nimbly jumped in at this point and launched into a tale about Thaddeus’s remarkable talent at the billiard table.

  “As has my son,” the marquess said mulishly.

  Each story the duchess told was capped with a parallel. Thaddeus was brave; so was Jeremy.

  Both men greeted these stories with silence, but Betsy noticed that Grégoire was becoming more peevish with every passing minute.

  “I find tales of childish heroics frightfully tedious,” he said after a third glass of wine.

  “Do you indeed?” the duchess asked, dangerous quiet in her voice.

  But Grégoire had apparently reached the point of inebriation at which one no longer pays attention to disapproval, even when wielded by those at the very top of polite society. “Who cares if a boy was brave when he fell into a horse pond?” he demanded, waving his wineglass. “The real test of a man is how he behaves as a man.”

  “I take it you are accusing me of lack of courage,” Jeremy said with complete indifference. “I will readily admit to being terrified on the battlefield.”

  “That says a great deal about you, doesn’t it?” Grégoire replied with a smirk. “In school, I was forced to memorize a speech given by your namesake, Lady Boadicea. Jeremy could have used it to rally his men rather than leaving them to die.” He leapt to his feet and struck a pose. “Have no fear whatever of the Romans; for they are superior to us neither in numbers nor in bravery.”

  Aunt Knowe turned to the marquess. “Have you ever suspected that there may be madness in your family?”

  “We’re all mad as March hares,” Grégoire said, seating himself. “Only a fool would marry into our family, more’s the pity.”

  “I beg to differ,” the marquess said frigidly.

  Grégoire shrugged. “I wish it wasn’t the case, but I’m afraid that Jeremy doesn’t make a good case for our bloodline.”

  “It’s all true,” Jeremy said, sighing. His eyes, gleaming with amusement, met Betsy’s. “If only I could have sparkled on the battlefield. Perhaps I should woo a wife in a vaudeville troupe in order to give my children the ability to scintillate at the dinner table.”

  “My family does not approve of dramatics,” the duchess said. She had obviously written off Grégoire, who just as obviously didn’t care.

  Betsy was struck by curiosity. What possible goal could Grégoire have for discouraging her from marrying his cousin—not that Jeremy showed any sign of proposing to her?

  Could he truly believe that Jeremy would die without leaving a son, allowing him to inherit?

  That was absurd.

  But Grégoire launched into a supposedly amusing reference to a print sold in London that showed Jeremy hiding behind a tree. Aunt Knowe was regarding him with narrowed eyes and the marquess was apoplectic.

  “You are an ill-bred young man,” Her Grace decreed, before launching into an account of the time when Thaddeus almost brought down a Scottish stag with an arrow.

  Betsy watched as Thaddeus winced at the depiction of the stag leaping over his eight-year-old body and disappearing into the Highlands, an arrow waving from its haunch.

  It wasn’t until the dessert course that Betsy’s mind presented her with a dilemma. What if she married Thaddeus, and then Jeremy accepted an invitation to their country house?

  Had her mother felt the insistent desire that crawled through Betsy’s veins and urged her to glance at Jeremy under her lashes? Think about licking his bottom lip? Think about what his arms felt like around her? Think about what his hands would feel—

  One of the more irritating aspects of attending a girls’ school was that Clementine’s voice was vividly memorable. If Clementine knew of the seething lust Betsy felt for a sarcastic, annoying man, who was adamantly not an appropriate suitor, she would scoff.

  Betsy sighed. Miss Clementine Clarke had married a wealthy man who might, someday, be the Lord Mayor of London. They were unlikely to meet again. So why, why couldn’t she simply forget Clementine’s insults? She saw Octavia frequently during the Season, so why couldn’t she remember Octavia’s laughter rather than Clementine’s slights?

  Jeremy’s white neck cloth brought out the shadows under his eyes and made him look like a devil, but not the sort who began as an angel and fell. He was the Demon King from a Ben Jonson play, frolicking about while plotting how to condemn the entire cast to the fiery depths.

  “Drinks by the fire in the parlor,” Aunt Knowe announced. “I recommend stiff brandies all around as the bedchambers promise to be chilly tonight.”

  “I have requested another eiderdown,” Grégoire said. “The one I have is entirely insufficient. I demanded that the innkeeper change the sheets as well. I suggest everyone do the same; it can be fatal to sleep in damp sheets.”

  It seemed that Aunt Knowe had not instructed the Lindow maids to change Grégoire’s bedding. Betsy was certain that the marquess’s and Jeremy’s bed linens had been switched for those embroidered with the Lindow crest.

  After the meal, Grégoire headed to bed to nurse
his cold, and the rest of them set out for the room Aunt Knowe had designated as the parlor. Betsy found herself walking beside Jeremy, who prowled down the corridor, brows knitted, not bothering to speak after giving her a burning glance.

  Once they were all in the parlor, the duchess demanded a game of piquet, and cast a betrayed frown in Betsy’s direction when she confessed to disliking the game. The marquess banded with Thaddeus, and Lady Knowe claimed the duchess.

  Which left Betsy sitting with the Demon King. Jeremy glared into the fireplace as if each flame was an enemy combatant. She had accepted brandy; he was nursing a cup of tea. In fact, he seemed to have left his ever-present whisky bottle back at Lindow.

  No member of the Duke of Lindow’s family was allowed to be missish about liquor, so Betsy savored every drop and tried not to feel as if she were seated next to a steaming volcano.

  “What is it?” she asked finally, not lowering her voice because Aunt Knowe was in a pitched battle with her childhood friend over a betting fiasco.

  “What?” he growled.

  Growled.

  She didn’t like men who growled. She liked men who kept their temper to themselves.

  “Your sulk,” she said, not bothering to curb the irritation in her voice. “Presumably from the aggravation caused by your father’s arrival, but one never knows with two-year-olds; it’s so difficult to coax them into coherence.”

  Jeremy stared at her in slack-jawed astonishment.

  “Yes?” she asked, when he didn’t reply.

  Only to feel disconcerted when he broke into laughter.

  She saw from the corner of her eye that all four players glanced up from their cards. Since Thaddeus was watching, Betsy smiled at Jeremy.

  Who recoiled.

  “Jesus,” he muttered. “What was that in aid of? One moment you’re scolding me like a nanny after a sleepless night, and the next you’re serving up a society grimace?”

  Thaddeus turned back to his cards.

  “Well, what are you brooding about?” she asked.

  “I wasn’t sitting about in a melancholy. My face merely falls into detestable lines. Likely a matter of inheritance.”