Jeremy forced himself to nod. “Lady Knowe sent the duke’s carriage back for our servants,” the duchess went on. “They should be here within the hour. I could not sit down to dine in this gown.”
“No, indeed,” Jeremy murmured.
Thaddeus was sitting beside Betsy. She would be a marvelous duchess. Just look at the squabble she had with his father in the carriage. Only a future duchess could lecture a marquess and then walk straight past him without a word of farewell.
Her Grace was blathering on about her lady’s maid—why would she think he was interested?—and Betsy was giving Thaddeus that smile, the one that would likely turn his head and make him forget that she was a breeches-wearing scandal in the making.
Damn it.
“If you’ll excuse me, Your Grace,” he said to the duchess, and made his way across the room.
Betsy and Thaddeus looked like a ceramic lord and lady, a flirtatious pair fashioned in France by a man who’d never seen a queen but pictured aristocrats with sweet faces and strong chins.
“Hello,” Jeremy said, pulling over a seat to Betsy’s other side. “How was the auction house?”
“Lady Knowe decided that the weather precluded the trip,” Thaddeus said, all amiable and gentlemanlike. “We came here, and she sent the carriage back to the castle.”
There was something in his eyes. Thaddeus had made up his mind.
Perhaps because the auction itself would be put off due to the weather. Yet if he thought that Betsy would forget the idea of breeches, he was due for a surprise.
“Lady Knowe has ascertained that the auction will be held tomorrow,” Thaddeus continued. “All the ladies plan to attend, dressed as men.”
“I thought you felt it disreputable for a lady to appear in breeches,” Jeremy observed.
“My mother has impressed upon me that she should be my guide in such matters,” Thaddeus said. “I have apologized to Betsy for any discomfort I caused with my naïve and inept response.”
“There’s nothing that makes an aristocrat look like a grocer as much as a robust love of respectability,” Jeremy observed. “My father is the first in my family to bother with reputation at all.”
“Aunt Knowe claims that the aristocracy is like a pond full of swans,” Betsy said, her eyes sparkling. “From above, we look elegant, if not regal. But under the surface, we’re all swimming madly, with not much difference between us and the ducks.”
“An acute observation,” Thaddeus said.
“The snow tonight looks rather swanlike,” Jeremy said idly. “Like the feathers of an unimaginable bird.”
The duchess called to her son, so Thaddeus rose and escorted her from the room.
“You can’t marry him,” Jeremy said. “You’ll spend your adult life watching a man ferry his mother about.”
Betsy threw him an inscrutable look and rose to her feet. “I would escort my mother, had she cared for my company.”
“Our maids have arrived, thank the Lord,” Aunt Knowe announced from the door. “Come along, you two. No dilly-dallying. Jeremy, your cousin is in a frightful state; Mr. Bisset-Caron fears he’s caught a cold. He shall have supper in bed.” She disappeared.
“Unchaperoned once again,” Jeremy said, strolling across the room. “One would almost think that Lady Knowe wasn’t championing Thaddeus as your future spouse.”
It was madness to discuss marriage with Jeremy, but Betsy found it irresistible as well. “If I became a duchess, the world would be at my feet.”
“You don’t want the world at your feet,” Jeremy said, shrugging. “You certainly don’t want the whole world to have your likeness on the wall. What do you want, Bess?”
You, she thought involuntarily.
But that way was madness. There was no question but that Jeremy brought out her worst, the carnal impulses she’d inherited from her mother.
“I want to be a duchess,” she said, echoing her fourteen-year-old self, the girl who fiercely longed to win at the game of marriage. “Thaddeus is a true gentleman.”
Jeremy leaned forward and brushed his knuckle across her cheek. “But are you a lady?”
She flinched.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, his eyebrows drawing together. “I didn’t mean it as an insult, Bess.”
“Why did you agree to walk me to the church?”
His eyes searched hers, and she saw the moment when he decided to be honest. “I hoped to kiss you again.”
She had always been so careful, so sure that she could avoid her mother’s mistakes. Yet she had walked out of the tearoom without thought of a chaperone, beside a man who lusted after her.
“Betsy,” Jeremy said softly. His eyes looked almost tender. “Don’t. Don’t think whatever it is you’re thinking.”
“I think nothing,” she said, walking out and leaving him behind.
He was confusing, bitter, dark-tempered. For all she yearned to soothe the anguish he sometimes let slip, she couldn’t.
She caught up with Aunt Knowe in silence. Once they had climbed a flight of stairs, her aunt paused.
“You’re going to have to choose between them.”
“There’s no choice,” Betsy said immediately. “The duchess is marvelous. She’s funny and kind.”
“I didn’t mean between the duchess and her son. You are not marrying Emily,” Aunt Knowe said dryly. “The choice is between Jeremy and Thaddeus.”
“A man’s mother is the mirror of her son,” Betsy said airily. “How could I be luckier? Everyone loves Thaddeus.”
Aunt Knowe pushed open a bedchamber door, and Betsy saw Winnie changing the bed into linens brought from Lindow Castle. Aunt Knowe was a firm believer that to sleep in strange linen, even once, was to court vermin, if not illness.
“Take a warm bath,” her aunt suggested, her eyes softening. “Remember, you have more choices than these two. The men flinging themselves at your feet are legion.”
Betsy came up on her toes and kissed her aunt’s cheek. “You’re wonderful.”
“I’m lucky,” her aunt said. “You children are endlessly amusing.”
As Winnie dosed her bath with vervain, Betsy sat next to the fire and tried to collect her thoughts.
If she was honest with herself, she loved flirting with Jeremy. She wanted to kiss him in a dark corner. She wanted him, with his dark soul and furious eyes, his brandy-drinking, sober-sided sarcasm.
His broad chest, battered hands, and beautiful lips. What man had lips like his? She was fascinated by his lower lip, by the little crease in the center of it. The way his tongue had slipped past her lips.
The way he spoke idly, a flow of words, and all the time his eyes ranged over her lips . . . her bosom, her neck.
He seemed to like her wrists. Was that possible? She caught him looking, his eyes drowsy.
She could swear . . .
But what did she know of lust?
Only that it danced in her limbs and made her mind flood with scandalous ideas. What if she teased Jeremy with kisses, with a lap of her tongue, even with a nip from her teeth? What if she kissed him so passionately that he—
That he what?
She knew nothing.