“No, to the auction,” Her Grace said.
She was smiling at Betsy as if she’d found a long-lost daughter. Perhaps she felt that way. Jeremy had the sudden realization that the duchess’s pink-clad barrel shape disguised a heart that would have loved to rampage about in breeches.
“We will all go to the auction,” she continued. “Lady Boadicea can pose as one of my nephews a few times removed. I have hundreds of them.”
“Unfortunately, not even duchesses are allowed to appear at the auction house in Wilmslow,” Lady Knowe said. “They have a rule keeping out ladies, which is frightfully old-fashioned.”
“I could wear pantaloons,” the duchess remarked.
“No, you couldn’t,” Lady Knowe retorted. “Your figure is unsuited to the task.”
The duchess looked down thoughtfully at her plump hips. “I know an excellent tailor in London.”
“Few men are shaped like a beehive,” Lady Knowe said, not unkindly. “My figure would not be flattered by breeches either. We’re like the girls in that Shakespeare play: One of them was a beanpole and the other was an acorn.”
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Betsy supplied.
Thaddeus still hadn’t said a word.
The carriage door swung open. Her Grace rose to leave the carriage, taking the hand of a waiting groom, followed by Lady Knowe, and finally Betsy.
Jeremy scowled at Thaddeus, who looked back at him with that imperturbable calm he’d affected ever since Eton. Yet Jeremy could see a tic near his eye.
Thaddeus didn’t want a wife who fancied wearing breeches.
How foolish.
Jeremy didn’t want a wife, but for the sake of seeing Betsy in breeches, he’d marry the baker’s daughter.
“Don’t make an ass of yourself,” he said. Though why he was helping Thaddeus in his courtship, he didn’t know.
“I shall not,” Thaddeus stated.
Others might have believed him, but Jeremy had his doubts. Thaddeus had always been obsessed by lineage. His father had drummed it into his head, the better to excuse himself for not marrying the woman of his heart.
Old fool.
By the time Jeremy left the carriage, Lady Knowe was already escorting the duchess into the teahouse. For her part, Betsy beamed up at Thaddeus with that sweetly biddable—and utterly dishonest, now Jeremy thought of it—expression with which she’d won over polite society.
“Betsy,” Thaddeus said haltingly.
Jeremy probably should leave the two of them to have this uncomfortable conversation in private, but instead he stayed where he was. His life had been sorely short of amusement lately.
“Yes?” Betsy asked.
“Perhaps you were joking about wearing breeches in public?”
“No, I was not,” Betsy replied. Her charming smile widened.
Thaddeus looked disconcerted. “Not a merry jest?”
“I often wore breeches as a young girl. It is easier to ride horses astride,” Betsy informed him, making it worse.
“I talked her into going to Wilmslow. She wanted to visit London and play billiards in White’s,” Jeremy said, feeling that he might as well chime in.
Betsy was testing her future husband, and he was failing the test. Not fair, because Thaddeus was a decent fellow.
“Come on, Betsy,” he said. “Tell him the truth: This is merely a taradiddle. You don’t plan to walk around your own house every day wearing breeches.”
Betsy had her eyes fastened on Thaddeus’s face. “I might,” she stated. “In the privacy of my own house.”
She was a minx who deserved to lose a dukedom.
“Come along!” Lady Knowe cried from the door of the teahouse. She was prone to acting as if people were a flock of sheep, likely because she had been in charge of her brother’s nursery. There were eight Wilde offspring. Or was it twelve?
The duchess appeared at her shoulder, like a plump duckling nestled beside its mother. “We have plans to make!” Her Grace called, with a surprisingly girlish laugh.
Thaddeus moved toward his mother, so Jeremy held out his elbow to Betsy. This time he decided that her hair smelled like morning sunshine with a touch of river water.
“The breeches were a stroke of genius, don’t you think?” Betsy whispered.
Jeremy looked down into her laughing, naughty eyes and felt the world shaking around him and settling into a different shape. As happens in the midst of battle, when all of a sudden you realize the skirmish is lost.
This battle had probably been lost from the beginning. He was beginning to suspect that mankind merely believed they governed their own affairs. Some embodiment of Fate, a deity with a sardonic humor, controlled them.
Betsy poked him in the side. “Don’t you see what’s happened?”
“What has happened?” Jeremy inquired.
“The duchess would marry me now, except that we’re the wrong ages for each other and not the right gender and the rest of it.”
“There are some serious barriers to that union,” he agreed.
“Come along,” Betsy said, drawing him toward the teahouse. Whoever married her was clearly going to be herded about, since Betsy had learned her skills at Lady Knowe’s knee.
Not the worst of all fates.
In fact, when Betsy gave him a genuine smile and whispered, “I don’t believe that Thaddeus agrees with his mother,” Jeremy decided that perhaps the fates . . .
Well.
The teahouse was small, with a few tables angled in front of windows composed of leaded glass triangles. Lamps glowed on every table, and a large fire burned on the hearth. The air smelled like gingerbread and strong tea. Their hostess was a cheerful woman wearing a mob-cap embellished with four layers of ruffles.
“I am so honored!” she cried, excitement making all her ruffles tremble.
Likely, she collected prints of the Wilde family—as did most of England—since she was staring at Betsy with awe.
“I’m so glad to be here,” Betsy said, with a warm smile. “Your gingerbread smells heavenly.”
Jeremy frowned, struck by a thought. He could wander into any inn in the country and no one would have the faintest idea who he was. Perhaps there was more to Betsy’s wish to wear boy’s clothing than he had imagined.
“Lady Boadicea, you must sit beside me,” the duchess called to Betsy. She had saved a seat between herself and her son.
Jeremy sat beside Lady Knowe.
“How charming these pink napkins are,” Her Grace said, shaking hers out.
“Don’t you dare turn your linens as pink as your gowns,” Lady Knowe exclaimed. “My dear, when are you planning to drop all that pink? There is a moment when an affectation becomes a burden.”
“It simplifies my life,” the duchess said, utterly unperturbed. “If I wore breeches, they would have to be pink.”
“We already agreed that breeches are not for you,” Lady Knowe proclaimed.
Her Grace snorted. “So you said, but I disagree. My coachman is a tremendously clever fellow; he can find me a pair and my maid will fit them to my shape.”
Thaddeus’s mouth tightened, but his mother jumped to another topic.
She began telling the table about their house in Bordeaux, from which she nimbly skipped to a discussion of the hall at Falconleigh, the seat of the duchy. The marble floors had been recently ground down. “His Grace insists on bringing a pack of bloodhounds with him into the study and they scratch the floors,” the duchess said, a distinct chill entering her voice.