“So are you foxed? Because I don’t think you are. Your speech is very clear.”
“I was sent to Eton and Cambridge,” he told her. “The accent disguises any amount of folly.”
“Untrue,” Betsy said. “On his fifteenth birthday, Alaric drank two bowls of punch all by himself. He could barely speak. We lured him up to the nursery so Aunt Knowe couldn’t sober him up, and then fell about in fits of laughter.”
“From what I know of your brother Alaric,” Jeremy said, “I’d wager a guinea that he was bent on amusing the youngsters and enjoyed playing the part of a drunkard as much as you enjoyed seeing it.”
Betsy took another shot and botched the angle again. “I can’t remember well enough.” She met his eyes. “I don’t remember whether he slid under the table and went to sleep, for example, but I definitely remember you being fished off the floor like a sleepy toddler.”
Jeremy raised an eyebrow. “Likely the nursery was a lively place and your squeals kept him awake.”
“Aunt Knowe was right!” she cried, straightening and planting her cue on the floor. “You didn’t pass out. You were merely bored!”
“Which time?” he asked genially. “Do you suppose if I ring the bell, Prism will send a footman? I could use another bottle of whisky.”
“Carper is outside the door, waiting to escort me to my chamber,” Betsy said. “You can send him if you like. Why do you bother drinking whisky if it does nothing for you? It leads to dropsy and tremors, and will turn your nose red.”
Jeremy’s eyebrow flew up. “That seems oddly specific.”
“Aunt Knowe made all of us read An Inquiry into the Effects of Ardent Spirits on the Human Mind and Body. Or perhaps it was Human Body and Mind. Are you hoping that liquor will send you to sleep if you drink enough of it?”
“I wouldn’t be so lucky.”
She sighed. There was nothing worse than a person who nagged about a friend’s bad habits. For example, her stepsister Viola kept urging Betsy to “be herself,” now that Betsy had proved so popular on the marriage market.
Won the war of the debutantes.
Whatever you wanted to call it.
“You should stop drinking,” she said, because Jeremy Roden was so ferocious that people likely felt they couldn’t tell him the truth. “If not for the sake of your liver, then because Shakespeare said it takes away the ‘performance.’ You don’t want to find yourself in proximity to a nightdress, flannel or otherwise, and be unable to play your part.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You think I’m losing my teeth at this young age? I assure you I can rip silk with one incisor.”
“You did tell Thaddeus that you had aged.” She rearranged the table, banking a right-angle shot off the left side.
“You are uncannily like your aunt,” Jeremy observed.
“I can’t imagine a better compliment,” Betsy replied. “Tell me again why you won’t give me a game?”
Silence.
Then a low voice drawled, “I’d be bored.”
“You’re a brute,” Betsy tossed over her shoulder.
Jeremy didn’t see any reason to answer that because, of course, she was right. “Why do you like billiards so much?” he asked instead.
That made Betsy actually turn around, her precious cue—he’d noticed how much she adored it—cradled in her arms. “It takes a great deal of concentration to stand on the back of a moving horse,” she announced.
“North boasted about your ability to do that. Just think: If all the gentlemen at your feet disappoint, you could join the circus.”
“It takes even more concentration to play billiards.”
“The tricky shots,” Jeremy said, nodding. “I have a friend who likes to send the ball backward.” He’d taught Jeremy the trick, though Jeremy didn’t add that.
Betsy made a scornful sound. “Billiards isn’t about flamboyance; those players lose to anyone who can make six or seven simple shots without making a mistake. I could beat your friend.”
He had no doubt of that, so in lieu of reply, he stood up and stuck his head out the door. A footman leaned against the wall, eyes half closed. “A pot of tea, if you please,” he said. “You might as well get yourself a cup before you return, as Lady Boadicea will be an hour or two at least. You’re no use to her if you’re asleep on your feet.”
“Of course, my lord,” the footman said, trotting away.
It was astonishing to realize that everyone in the castle—from Lady Knowe to a lowly footman—appeared to have concluded that he posed no danger to Betsy. That footman left without a second thought.
Jeremy could ravish her. Didn’t they think of that? They were putting a lot of weight on loyalty to the Wilde family, if that was their reasoning.
Maybe the household considered him akin to a Wilde, but that was absurd.
He’d only met Betsy two months ago. He wasn’t Parth, for God’s sake, who wasn’t related to the Wildes by blood, but a member of the family in every way that mattered.
He was just a friend of North’s and no more.
Jeremy returned to his chair. If he tried something untoward, she would ram the billiard cue into his stomach.
Maybe that was it. Maybe they knew Betsy would defend her honor to the death and they trusted her to fight him off.
She was bent over the table, lining up the cue and ball, her upper teeth clamped on her lower lip the way she did when she concentrated. She was a hell of a billiard player.
If they ever played and he actually wanted to win—because the two times she’d bullied him into it, he hadn’t given a damn—he could give her a true match. His father and he rarely saw eye-to-eye, but they had been most civil to each other over a billiard table.
Now he thought of it, that’s probably why he wouldn’t play her. Too much of an echo of his childhood.
Of course, the Wildes were right, whatever their reasoning: He would never ravish a woman. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy the view from the corner. Every time Betsy bent over the table, he had a delicious view of either her breasts or her arse.
The fact her skirts extended to the sides emphasized the round swell of her bottom. Her breasts peeked out the top of her corseted bodice, gorgeous handfuls that blushed pink when she was angry.
A man lucky enough to bed her would probably think up ways to annoy her, just to see that delightful haze of color flood from her bosom to her cheeks.
Perhaps when she was aroused . . .
Proving that she had no idea that his thoughts had wandered in a lascivious direction, Betsy bent down, eased her cue forward, and lined up a shot that apparently was meant to go from the left rail to the right, and from thence to the pocket.
Her eyes betrayed the angle she wanted, but her arm was at the wrong height. It wouldn’t work. And it didn’t.
One thing you could say for Betsy Wilde: She didn’t give up. She didn’t even sigh, just plucked up the ball and returned it to its place.
“You’re holding your right elbow too high,” Jeremy growled.
She immediately adjusted her elbow, one of the rare instances in which she’d listened to him. Then she replaced the ball and tried the shot again. It worked.