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.”