Iron-wrought railings.
A balcony . . .
He brought back an image of the inn. A narrow balcony ran along the front of the house and curved around both sides.
Looking out the window, the balcony seemed wide enough. A man could walk to the left, pass one window, stop at the next.
He waited until he hadn’t heard any footsteps for a good half hour. Then he opened his French window and stepped into snow that mounded over his ankle. It was coming down in an irresolute fashion, appearing from the blackness to float through the circle of light cast at his back.
He walked past the room next to his. It was lit from within, the curtains well-drawn against the cold. With a start, he realized that his father was inside, belting out “Amazing Grace,” which meant he was in the bathtub. The marquess always sang in the bath.
The sound brought him back to the family pew at Thurrock, standing beside his father as a little boy, listening to his deep voice growl out lyrics.
“I once was lost but now am found,” his father sang now. “Was blind but now I see.”
Jeremy kept walking, cold biting at the back of his neck. The next window was Betsy’s. Only a muted glow came from the split in the curtains. With luck she was tucked in bed, her maid . . .
What would he say if her maid came to the window? He could hand her the bundle and walk silently back to his room. Presumably her lady’s maid wouldn’t destroy her mistress’s reputation by telling others that a man had visited the room.
Before he changed his mind, he put his palm on the left-hand glass and pushed. Sure enough, the glass swung open gently, stopped by thick velvet.
He heard a muffled exclamation, so he stayed where he was on the balcony, snow building up on his shoulders and freezing his fingers.
The drape pulled back with a rattle of ironmongery and—
There she was.
God, she was beautiful. The fire burning in the hearth bathed her in golden light. Her hair was down, tumbling over one shoulder. Her dark eyebrows stood out in her face; her eyes were shadowed but, thank God, showed no signs of being swollen with tears.
He cleared his throat. “It’s me.”
“I can’t imagine that you somehow feel that your disquisition on my character gave you entry to my bedchamber.”
There was just a hint of a rasp in her throat. Jeremy’s gut clenched involuntarily. If he’d reduced her to tears, he would leave in the morning and never see her again.
“May I come in?” He held up the snowy bundle. “To deliver breeches.”
Her eyes flicked down and then back to his face. “I don’t think so.” She stepped backward.
“I was wrong,” he said. “I was jealous because Thaddeus caressed your cheek.”
She frowned. She apparently hadn’t noticed.
“Downstairs,” he clarified.
“He touched my face in passing, and you took it as an invitation to piss all over me and my life?”
One side of his mouth rose involuntarily because she was simply so delightful when she forgot to be a lady.
“No,” she said sharply. “You don’t get to feel better. Friends don’t speak that way to each other, and I was stupid enough to think we were friends. I won’t make that mistake again.”
“You are my friend,” he said.
“I may have been your friend, but you were not mine.”
He was silenced.
She reached out and took the bundle.
“I’m learning,” he said, hearing his hoarseness. “I won’t do it again. Ever. I don’t have other friends like you and I—I reacted badly. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“You do have friends. My brother North among them. Parth, who brought you to the castle, if you remember. Thaddeus. My aunt. Moreover, your father, who would love to be your friend and is worth your regard.”
“I was trying to talk myself into marrying you.”
“Better and better,” she said, biting off the words. “If you’ll forgive me, Lord Jeremy, it’s very cold standing before an open window.”
“I want to marry you.”
Betsy froze.
The light from the fire behind her cast rosy light on Jeremy’s face. If he had acted like a judge below, in the corridor, now he seemed a boy with true regret in his eyes.
“You want to marry me,” she said slowly. “Why?”
Snow had fallen on his shoulders. “Love, I suppose. I’m not certain how to recognize it. But I can’t marry you, Bess. I can’t.”
“Do you have a mad wife hidden in the attic?”
Her heart pounded erratically.
“No,” he said, a minute too late.
“A sane wife, then?”
“No.”
Despite herself, a sigh eased from her mouth.
“I’m the madman. I should probably be in an attic. I’ll end up there.” He hunched his shoulders.
She took a step back, and another.
“You’d better come in.”
Chapter Fifteen
Her bedchamber suddenly shrank to the size of a mousehole, all because of a large man, dripping melting snow, holding his hands out to the fire.
“Why didn’t you put on a coat and gloves? Or a hat?”
“I couldn’t call down for my coat or they’d wonder where I was going. As it was, I had to wait for people to stop climbing those bloody stairs. Every fifteen minutes, some other fool would set the steps creaking again.”
His broad shoulders were rigid and not because he was shivering. Apparently he was too manly to shiver, even though she felt like an icicle after a brief conversation at the window.
Taking up a blanket from the end of her bed, she marched over and pushed it at him. Then she pulled the eiderdown off, wrapped it around herself, and sat down by the fire, putting out one bare foot to make her chair rock before she tucked her legs under the coverlet.
And waited.
Meanwhile he looked at the fire, grim as could be, jaw set, and a vein ticking in his forehead.
“Madness,” she reminded him. “Yours, as opposed to the madmen in my family, or even the madwoman who fell in love with Alaric, or Diana’s mother, who shot you and will likely spend her life in the sanitarium.”
He raised his head and the edge of his mouth eased. “You’re trying to tell me that I’m only one amongst a crowd of madmen in Cheshire?”
“It could be the bog,” Betsy said. “Evil contagion caused by peat moss.”
“I caught mine in the American colonies.”
“On the battlefield, I expect,” Betsy said, curling her toes. She considered informing him that she’d decided not to marry either of them but rethought it. Jeremy ought to make this uncomfortable apology. Why should she let him off the hook?
“All jesting aside, Parth actually found me in Bedlam after that Vauxhall incident.” His voice echoed queerly in the room.
Betsy gasped before she could stop herself. “What were you doing there?”
“Lying about in a straitjacket, as I understand it. Drugged with laudanum. Supposedly incoherent and violent, though I have no memory of it.”
Betsy’s breath caught in her throat. Even through her shock, she realized that the worst thing she could do would be to dole out lashings of sympathy. He was glaring at the fire as if the flames were responsible for his failure of nerve. Or however he would describe that terrible experience.
“Did you murder anyone?” She put a fair amount of interest in her voice.
“Not so far as I know.”
That wasn’t the right tack. She tried again. “What brought on the attack?”
“Fireworks. They sounded like cannons, which is all I remember.”
“That makes sense,” Betsy said. “No Guy Fawkes Day for you. You’ll have to limit yourself to a peaceful bonfire in your garden.”
That brought his head about, if only so he could scowl at her, rather than the blameless logs. “I lost consciousness, Bess. Fell over like a log. More than a day
passed before Parth’s household could rouse me.”
She nodded. Inside she was horrified and afraid for him, but she was used to playing a role. “How did they wake you up?”
His mouth twitched.
“Come on, then,” she said. “Now you have the dramatic announcement out of the way, let’s have it.”
“Sausages,” he said with a wry smile.
He smiled so infrequently that the gesture struck Betsy like a blow. She had to stop herself from throwing herself at him like a maiden encountering the prince in a bad play.
“Sausages,” she echoed.
“Fried them up and stuck them under my nose and I awoke,” he confirmed.
Betsy couldn’t help giggling at the look on his face. “It could have been worse.”
“It could have been better,” Jeremy countered, rocking back on his toes and shoving his hands into his pockets.
“True. Whisky has a manly air. On the other hand, sal volatile is given to fainting maidens. Legend has it that my great-aunt Genevieve was so horrified by her wedding night that she fell into a faint and was only roused by having a chamber pot poured over her head by her indignant groom.”
When she saw the laughter in his eyes, she added: “My great-uncle always insisted that it was an accident.”
“Do you mind if I take off my coat? It’s cold and wet. I promise that it’s not a first step to an undressing in your chamber.”
“You may.”
His white shirt was sodden as well and clung to the dips and valleys of his chest. If they married, she would have the right to sit here nightly and watch him undress.
Except she wouldn’t, because if they were married, she would pull that shirt off his head and rub him down in the warmth of the fire and then pepper his chest with kisses—
“It would help if you didn’t look at me with that expression,” he said.
Betsy felt red flood her cheeks. “What expression?” It would be awful if everyone could tell when she was overcome by desire. She had to learn how to disguise it.
He picked up his blanket, wrapped it back around his shoulders, and sat down in the chair beside her. Apparently, he refused to answer idiotic questions, because he stretched out his legs and contemplated his sopping breeches.
Betsy watched just long enough to register his muscled thighs and then looked away.
“I saw that,” Jeremy said.
“You should return to your chamber,” Betsy said. “Now that you’ve told me your dark secret. Unless there’s more to it?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
“Madness, et al? I am a Wilde. A good swath of the country considers us mad, and we’ve had many a madman in and about the house. You are a bad-tempered version but at least you aren’t writing a play.”
“How do you know?”
Betsy rolled her eyes. “In that case, good luck with it. Alaric’s madwoman made pots of money with Wilde in Love.”
“I have no need for money,” Jeremy said.
“Do you feel the need to elaborate on your madness? Do you sleepwalk like Lady Macbeth?”
“No.”
“Eat in your sleep? We had a footman who ate most of a cake that had been reserved for the queen’s visit.”
“No.”
Betsy’s heart was aching for him, but she was determined to show him no pity. She felt instinctively that he would hate her for it. He was the sort of man who spent his life solving problems. She’d bet that from the age of five he was toddling around after his father, being as competent as a five-year-old could be.
Until he found himself on that beastly battlefield.
“I can’t say much more than that,” he said. “I didn’t catch lice in Bedlam, which Parth thought was very good luck. Apparently, the sleeping quarters were not salubrious, though I can’t remember the hospital at all.”
“Your lack of memory suggests they gave you opium,” Betsy said. “If you fall into a stupor again, no one should bother with a hospital. Your man can tether you to a tree in the shade and ply you with sausages.”
She’d managed to shock him into a better mood. “It’s a good thing I decided not to marry you, isn’t it?” he said musingly. “Tether me to a tree like an unruly puppy?”
“I’ll just remind you,” she said loftily, “that marriage to me would only follow my decision to accept your hand.”
“I was saving you the trouble of making a decision by telling you about Bedlam.”
“Oh, that.” She waved her hand. Was she overdoing it? No, she didn’t think she was. When Jeremy first came to Lindow, a few months ago, he was drawn and white. Now his eyes were shadowed but his skin was healthy, thanks to spending most of the day in the stables.
“Yes, that.”
“You shouldn’t think of a stint in Bedlam as putting you out of the sweepstakes for marriage. I say that in the spirit of friendship, mind you, not as one who would want to string your proposal onto my daisy chain.”
Silence.
Then: “I’m sorry I was so brutal.”
“So you said.”
“I was a shite to say any of it.”
“You weren’t incorrect,” Betsy said, throwing him a bone.
“I like you as you are, as you truly are. You’re not very sweet, thank God. No, don’t glare at me. That’s a good thing. Sweet people skim along the surface of life. For example, you tell them you’ve been in Bedlam, and they cluck like hens.”
“Whom have you told?” Betsy asked.
“You.”
“Not your father?”
“No.”
“You can’t tell me that Parth clucked, when he found you in the asylum. Parth would never cluck.”
“After I woke up, he threw me in a carriage and blackmailed me into coming to Lindow so he could chase that woman of his.”
“You see? He didn’t leave you alone, but he didn’t fuss over you.”
“Your aunt pried it out of me.”
“Aunt Knowe is not a clucker either.”
“She fusses, though.” He reached out his hand.
Betsy looked at it thoughtfully. A man like Jeremy never asked for help. People had to intrude on his life, pouring tea down his throat and tossing him into carriages. Blackmailing him from pure love.
Yet here he was, holding out his hand.
She took her hand out of the cozy warmth of her eiderdown and reached toward him. His palm and fingers were callused from working with horses.
All she was doing was comforting him, the way any kind person would do. And she was kind, no matter what he said, and “kind” was almost the same as “sweet.”
After staring into the fire and parsing the two words, she felt a prickling awareness and discovered that he was staring at her.
“Is there a smut on my nose?” she asked.
“I give you fair warning: I’m about to be brutally honest.”
“I’ve had enough of your type of honesty for one day,” she said, pulling away her hand. “Why don’t you go back out in the snow instead?”
“I’ve never desired a woman the way I desire you. It’s like being in the teeth of a damned inferno.”
Betsy found herself smiling. “That’s frightfully improper, and a mixed metaphor as well.”
“You sound very pleased.”
“Oh, I am. I like to win, and if you remember, Lady Tallow made a play for your attentions, if not affections.”
“Are you tempted to marry me and take me off the market?”
Betsy snorted. “You just announced that you refuse to propose. And frankly, you’re not such a prize that I’d go out of my way. Lying about in the billiard room, pretending to be drunk and sliding under tables from pure boredom, saying fantastically unkind truths due to a whiff of jealousy. Throwing tea around the breakfast room. Now there’s a man I want to spend my life with!”
He laughed. “You’re not including Bedlam in the list?”
“Bedlam? No. It’s the daily encounters that make marriage
intolerable, from what I’ve seen. You’re unlikely to go insensible again, but if you did, I’d stow you in that nice sanitarium where Diana’s murderous mother lives.”
“So she could shoot me again, thereby making you a merry widow?”
She grinned at him. “Exactly. There are women who are cut out to be widows, you know. I wouldn’t have to worry about—” She stopped.
“About what?”
“My reputation,” she answered. “Widows are expected to be lascivious and make their way through bevies of men. No one excludes them from society for it. They create scandal after scandal with anyone from a cannibal king to a pirate, and people throw dinner invitations at their feet.”
“Would that make you happy? The pirate king? I’ll leave the cannibal king out of it because one has to think that a dinner invitation from him might not be entirely desirable.”
She giggled at that, and then realized that he had pushed over his chair so that it was just next to hers, which allowed him to reach out, scoop her up, and plop her onto his lap.
“What the bloody hell!” she cried, exploding to her feet, wheeling about, hands on her hips. “I allowed you into my chamber with the understanding that you wouldn’t infringe on my person!”
Jeremy stood, eyes locked on hers. “I’m sorry, Bess.”
“Don’t call me Bess!” Betsy snapped. “No one says cruel things to someone they—they treasure.”
“Where in God’s name did you get this idea of marital bliss?” he asked. “Married people say all sorts of things to each other. It’s the nature of the beast. Your spouse is the one person who can be honest with you and still be loved.”
“You have a strange idea of marriage,” Betsy said, trying to make her voice chilly, and not quite succeeding. His eyes made it hard to be lofty. They were deep, dark, and whatever that expression was, she couldn’t stop drinking it in.
She hadn’t known him before he went to war, but presumably he had been more courtly. Now he was rough around the edges, untamed. He looked like a man who would enter a woman’s bedchamber and end up with her on his lap.
“More to the point,” Betsy said, reeling her imagination back to its proper confines, “we are not married, and we never will be. Out,” she said, keeping it short. “Now.”
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