Jeremy went through the meal without looking at Betsy more than three or four times. She was seated beside Samuel Finney, the canny old man who had known instantly that she was a woman and a Wilde.
He was at the other end of the table, seated beside his hostess. She talked about snow and quince jelly and her fear that songbirds would freeze on their boughs.
“Not a song will be heard in the spring,” she predicted, her eyes owlish with alarm.
He and his father stayed mostly silent, watching Thaddeus, Betsy, and Lady Knowe draw out Mr. Finney regarding his career, the experience of painting a queen, the reasons he left the painting world behind.
After the meal, Lady Knowe talked Mr. Finney into displaying his miniatures, but neither Jeremy nor his father moved to join the group hovering around a glass-topped cabinet.
“Were we always this silent together?” Jeremy asked.
“I do not easily put things into words,” the marquess replied, regret and love in his eyes.
“I thought you condemned me for cowardice,” Jeremy admitted. “I heard your words wrong, or I remembered them wrong. You didn’t follow me to London; I decided that I had been thrown out of the family. I felt I didn’t deserve to be in the family any longer.”
His father scrubbed his hands over his face, and Jeremy realized with a shock that his favorite gesture was borrowed.
“I failed you.” The marquess’s eyes were anguished. “I was trying to explain that I understood guilt, and you thought I was blaming you. You were gone before I could mend it. I thought . . . I gave you time.”
“Exactly one year,” Jeremy realized.
“To the day,” his father said. “As for guilt . . . your mother died in childbirth while you were at war. We didn’t let it be generally known.”
Jeremy froze.
“We were so startled to find she was with child,” his father continued. “She was too old. Sometimes I think that perhaps if I had begged her . . . I should have begged her to take a draught.” His eyes met Jeremy’s. “Yet I wanted the child too. So I lost them both.”
His jaw clenched. Jeremy knew that gesture, the way it felt when the press of guilt clamps one’s jaws tight to stop agony from escaping.
He was seated on a sofa beside his father; he turned toward him and awkwardly put one arm and then the other around his father’s shoulders. Their embrace was brief and embarrassing.
“The child was my brother or sister,” he told his father, after they drew apart. “My mother would never have taken a draught. You did the best with the hand that fate dealt you.”
“As did you.”
“Right,” Jeremy said. “I know. Now I know.”
And finally, perhaps, he was beginning to believe it.
Chapter Twenty-one
Betsy waited until Aunt Knowe was poring over Mr. Finney’s miniatures before she drew Thaddeus to the side under the pretense of looking out at the snow.
Which meant that they stood shoulder-to-shoulder before a window that showed nothing back but their reflection.
“We look like a couple, but we are not, are we?” Thaddeus asked very quietly.
Betsy was staring at their reflection, thinking the same thing. They looked like etchings of aristocrats. After her day in breeches, Betsy had felt gloriously feminine. She was wearing a coquettish gown of raspberry pink, as Winnie had brought from Lindow only gowns in shades of pink. Much to her maid’s approval, she hadn’t added a fichu, so her breasts were on display.
“We are not a couple,” Betsy confirmed, meeting Thaddeus’s eyes in the mirrored glass.
A rueful smile cocked one corner of his lips. “I couldn’t lose to a better man. I mean that.”
“You and I would never suit,” Betsy said, putting a hand on his arm and smiling up at him. “You truly disapproved of our wearing breeches today, didn’t you?”
“Not simply from a puritanical impulse, but because gossip can be damaging. I loathe scandal.” He hesitated. “My mother has often been hurt over the years on hearing gossip concerning my father’s second family.”
Betsy nodded.
“That filth affected my mother, never my father. It is dangerous for women to stray outside the bounds of proper society.”
“I don’t think that ‘filth’ would describe the gossip following a revelation that a duchess mischievously dressed in breeches to attend an auction,” Betsy said. “My guess is that it would begin a craze, and ladies would begin crowding into the doors of White’s and other gentlemen’s clubs.”
The appalled look in his eyes made her laugh.
“I am grateful that you asked me to marry you, given the scandal attached to my mother’s name.”
He frowned at that. “No one should besmirch you based on your mother’s decisions.”
“Nor you or your mother, based on your father’s,” she pointed out gently.
“Touché,” he replied. “Are you absolutely certain that you don’t wish to be my duchess? I think we would be happy. I would very much like to marry you, Betsy.”
He meant it; she could see that in his eyes.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I’ll choose a less decorous path.”
“I have a feeling it will be a happier one,” Thaddeus said. He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it, before bowing and walking away.
After everyone bid farewell to Mr. Finney and his cousin and returned to the inn, Betsy retired to her bedchamber very conscious of one thing: She did not care to be ignored by Jeremy as she had been during the meal.
She was used to meeting his eyes when someone said something foolish. She’d overheard a prediction that all the songbirds in England had died in the storm, but Jeremy just nodded, his head courteously bent toward Mrs. Grabell-Pitt. She was used to being the one he turned to, and virtually the only person he spoke to.
That realization made her twitch because she wanted Jeremy to have friends, to carry on conversations with others.
She just didn’t want him to overlook her.
Sometime later she sat by the fire, drying her hair as Winnie fluttered about the room, then finally took her leave. Slowly the old inn quieted, with just a shudder now and then as a gust of snow struck the windows with particular force. What had been pretty swirls of snow had transformed into a gale that hurled itself against the building with the force of gravel tossed at a lover’s window.
Clementine’s hateful voice kept echoing in Betsy’s ears. But she had made up her mind to do this thing that society forbade.
As her choice.
She chose Jeremy, here and now, and not merely when a ring would mark her as his possession. In fact, he hadn’t even asked her to marry him; simply discussed their marital future. It was that memory that brought her to her feet and into the dark, chilly corridor.
She paused, hand flat against his door, just to make certain that her inside landscape entirely agreed with this decision.
It did.
Jeremy was hers.
His door swung open soundlessly and she walked forward just enough to ease the door shut behind her. His fire was still burning high, so it cast rosy light around the room: over the great four-poster and its high canopy, over the looming chest of drawers—
Over the man who had risen to his feet from a chair by the fireplace. Light flickered over him as if with love, shaping the planes of his face like one of Mr. Finney’s artworks.
“Hello,” Betsy said, reminding herself that she didn’t believe in being nervous. She had allowed herself that emotion only when she met the queen.
“Hello,” Jeremy replied. His smile said a great deal more.
They moved toward each other as if they were following the steps of a very slow, very grand country dance. One that was danced by kings and queens and countryfolk alike.
When they were beside each other, she squared her shoulders and met his eyes. “I decided to come to you. I hope that is all right.”
“I do believe that you are the bravest
woman I’ve ever met,” he replied.
He couldn’t have said anything better; Betsy felt herself begin to glow. “I haven’t been brave to this point, but I have made up my mind to change. I outlawed being nervous, but now I need to outlaw being afraid.” She hesitated. “I have chosen courage, and now I choose happiness.”
“I love you as you are,” he whispered, and then his mouth came down on hers.
Her breath caught in her throat because their tongues met as if they kissed every day, every night. He tasted right, which sent a shiver through her whole body, and pushed her against him gently, the way a pebble might roll up a beach when the tide comes in.
One doesn’t fight the tide.
All the time they kissed, Betsy’s tongue danced to the pulse she felt in her throat. Her arms were around his neck, but it wasn’t enough, so she let one slip down his side and then around to his back, caressing him through the thin fabric of his shirt.
She was delighting in the pure strength under her fingers when he eased away.
“No,” she said, her voice an aching whisper.
“I have to know that you want me, not just this,” Jeremy said. His lips ghosted down her throat, and the tip of his tongue traced patterns over the tender patch under her ear.
“I want you,” Betsy said. And then, not in answer to what he said, but because it was the truth of her heart: “I love you.”
He stiffened and lifted his head, then drew her over to the fireplace. “I need to see your face,” he muttered.
Betsy could feel her lips were swollen by his kisses. Her hair tumbled down her back. Her nipples were tenting the fabric of her nightdress.
She smiled at him, letting her hands hang loosely by her sides. From the time she was fourteen, she’d concealed her body in underskirts and corsets, fichus and side panniers. Not tonight.
His eyes came back to her face, and the desire in them felt like a lick of fire over her body.
“You had a question?” Betsy prompted, smiling at him. Fear was gone.
“You love me?”
She nodded, not a shred of reluctance in her, and then spread her arms, letting them drop to her sides again. “Not a future duchess to be seen in this room.”
“Will you become my future marchioness, instead, Bess? I cannot—I cannot allow you to be here without marriage.”
“Because you are a gentleman,” she said, nodding.
“No.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“Because you’ll break my heart. It’s already cracked,” he said, his voice steady. “All those men knelt at your feet, Bess. Do you wish me to kneel?”
The image of cavorting cherubs came straight into her mind.
He caught it, of course. Likely he’d always catch her errant thoughts.
“Next time,” he promised, a glint in his eye. “I need to know that you didn’t just say No to the duke: You said Yes to the marquess.”
Betsy took his hands in hers. “I don’t want you to kneel at my feet. I want you to be my partner and stand at my side.”
“I fell in love with you one of those days that I spent lurking in the corner of the billiard room,” Jeremy said, drawing her hands toward him and holding them over his heart. “With you, Betsy, not with the lovely woman you present in the ballroom.”
Betsy’s heart bounded and she swallowed hard. “You did?”
She was holding her breath, memorizing every intonation, the strength of his large hands curled around hers, the way his eyes were searching hers. Joy crashed through her as if that gentle surge of the tide had turned to a wave larger than her body.
“I would run away to Prussia with you, Jeremy,” she said, truth ringing in every word. “I wouldn’t leave my children, but I would leave everything and everyone else.”
“In the face of society’s outrage?” His voice was almost casual, curious. And yet they both knew that the question carried a huge weight.
Betsy smiled at him. And then she drew her hands free and threw herself at him, arms around his neck. “Yes, I would,” she said fiercely, against his mouth. “It’s you, and only you, even when you were rude to me, when you slid under the table, when you laughed at me. When you were the only person who really listened, and knew what I loved most. When you actually saw me.”
He grunted as her weight hit him and then he kissed her. Or they kissed each other, because her hands were in his hair, pulling his head down to hers. Then she walked backward, one, two, three steps until she reached the side of the bed.
He scooped her up and put her on the bed, his eyes full of feeling. Then he stood back and pulled his shirt from his breeches.
“I was looking forward to seeing you in a nightshirt,” she breathed.
“I don’t wear one.” He wrenched his breeches over his thighs and they fell to the floor.
Betsy rolled on one side and propped her head on her elbow. Their bodies couldn’t be more different. His was chiseled, from broad shoulders to a narrow waist, and below it . . .
“The cupids weren’t that size,” she said faintly.
“I noticed the poor fellows didn’t seem to be properly endowed,” Jeremy said, cheerfully. “As small as their wings.” He ran a hand under his balls and then slowly up his length. “This is designed for a woman, not a naughty cherub.”
Betsy sat up, fascinated. She had known what a man looked like. She even knew what they were about to do—and no thanks to those frolicking cupids, either. But she had imagined something smaller and less virile.
Courage, she reminded herself.
“Come here,” she said, reaching out her arms. “Come here.”
“Always.” Jeremy had a knee on the bed and she toppled back again, her hands flat against the thick muscles of his chest.
Her hands slid lower and his body went rigid.
“Yes?” he whispered, his voice a rasp.
“Yes,” she said. Then, her hand finally curling around the hard, silky length he had caressed a moment ago, she said, “Don’t ask me again, Jeremy. You and I are here, and this is the way it’s going to be. I’ll follow you wherever you go.”
Seeing a flicker in his eyes, she added, “Yes, to Bedlam, but you won’t go there. I’ll wave sausages under your nose until you wake up.”
“You could just take me into the bedroom and undress before me, slowly,” he suggested. “I’ll come back to my senses.”
“What if I undressed you instead?” She gave him an impish smile and tightened her hand.
A rough sound erupted from his throat. “You could do that,” he managed.
“What about this?”
His answer was a hoarse curse. And then: “Enough, unless you want to unman me.”
“It’s more the opposite,” Betsy said, giggling. But she brought her hands back to his chest. He had a scattering of black hair that arrowed down his stomach. “This feels wonderful against my breasts,” she whispered, arching to press her taut nipples against him.
Their groans entwined, the breathless, rapturous echo of bodily pleasure.
“I have to see your breasts,” he said, moving to the side and slowly easing her nightgown up her legs and then over her head.
“You don’t know how many times I’ve traced their curves in my head, imagined these.” His fingers shaped her. “You’re so much softer than I could have imagined,” he whispered. His fingers reached her nipples, and her breath quickened.
“There’s a wonderful bit in Romeo and Juliet,” he murmured. “Let lips do what hands do, or something like that.”
Betsy closed her eyes. His warm mouth was tracing a pattern on her right breast, coming closer to her nipple and then falling away until she was shivering with anticipation. Even so, his rough lick startled her into a throaty sound that turned to a moan.
One large hand held her breast, and as if his fingers were hers, she felt the heavy weight of its curve, the silky feel of her skin. Heat forked through her as if the veins of her body had dissolved and her body ha
d become a conduit for sparks and fire.
She found herself arching instinctively, pushing her breast more firmly into his caress, silently begging for a rougher touch. He responded instantly, his mouth tightening into a delicious pull that made her cry out, her hips writhing, one knee coming up as she turned toward him. Eyes still shut, her hands blindly closed on his shoulders, taut muscles flexing under her touch.
Betsy was gasping for air by the time Jeremy raised his head, his eyes hungry but with a gleam of satisfaction. Betsy could feel sweat on her forehead and behind her knees, which was disconcerting and slightly embarrassing.
Jeremy smiled, a slow, happy smile. “Hello, you,” he said, his voice a rasp.
Betsy managed to catch her breath, but she was still reverberating inside from his smile. “We should marry and stay in bed all day,” she whispered, tracing his lips with her fingers. His tongue swept over her fingertips and she shivered again.
“Mmm,” he groaned, and rolled on top of her again, his thumb rubbing over her nipple and his tool throbbing against her legs. With a throaty moan she arched, rubbing herself against him.
He said something, husky and too low for hearing, and took her mouth in a kiss that had her shaking and pressing against him desperately.
In the back of her mind her hunger led to a flare of alarm. Was she being too—too forward? It seemed a ridiculous thought to be having at this precise moment, but it wasn’t easy to cast off years of determination to make certain her husband never thought she found bed play pleasurable.
Embarrassment flooded her and she pulled away from his kiss. She felt suddenly messy and sweaty.
“I would spend my life in bed with you, if you asked me to,” Jeremy said, his eyes on hers. He braced himself on his elbows, nipped her ear, and whispered, “I’m enthralled, in case you haven’t noticed, Bess. I’m at your feet, or I would be if you wanted it. Perhaps you do want it?”
She bit her lip, trying to think what a lady would say. He didn’t wait, just moved down the bed and began kissing her toes, and then suckled one, which made her squeal—and lose the embarrassment that was making her shoulders tight.
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