“I spoke to your father, Lady Boadicea, and he agreed that I might ask you for the honor of your hand in marriage.”
This was fantastic. Jeremy had a front row seat on a proposal, and he could mock Betsy about it for weeks.
Her suitor didn’t kneel.
Thaddeus would never kneel.
The man currently asking Betsy to marry him was Thaddeus Erskine Shaw, Viscount Greywick.
Duke of some damned place, someday.
Something pinched deep in Jeremy’s chest, and he narrowed his eyes. Oh, hell no. Whatever that emotion was, he didn’t like it.
Wouldn’t accept it.
Her Grace, Betsy the Duchess.
Sounded good.
Chapter Three
“Lord Greywick, the honor is mine,” Betsy said, allowing her gloved hand to rest in his.
“That sounds very much like a preface to a refusal,” the viscount replied, which showed him more observant than most of her suitors, who generally looked stunned, as if they’d never considered the possibility that she might refuse them.
After all, they had weighed her mother’s scandalous behavior and her possible illegitimacy against Betsy’s beauty, dowry, and exquisite manners. To a man, they judged themselves prescient, even liberal, to ask for her hand at all. They thought her fortunate to receive a proposal.
They couldn’t believe it when she rejected them.
She paused for a second, questioning this particular decision. Viscount Greywick was tall and very handsome, with hazel eyes and cheekbones that came straight from some ennobled ancestor.
Her father liked him.
Her brothers liked him.
Aunt Knowe trusted him. She’d waved her hand and sent Betsy off with Lord Greywick without the faintest concern. Actually, since she sent them to the billiard room unchaperoned, she probably wanted Betsy to marry him.
Putting her family’s approval to the side, the viscount had no need to marry for her dowry or her status, so presumably he wanted her. He wasn’t lustful, precisely, but his eyes were warm and appreciative.
Betsy tried to make herself feel excited about that and failed.
“It is indeed a refusal,” she said, withdrawing her hand. “I regret to say that we would not suit, my lord. My answer is no.”
“Why not?”
That stumped her. No one had anything bad to say about Viscount Greywick. He was, hands down, the most elusive and sought-after bachelor in London. She hadn’t even tried to lure him, and yet here he was.
What could she say?
You’re a paragon and I have a weakness for rascals?
Or, worse: I’m so bored at this moment.
“We don’t know each other,” she said, realizing the moment the words crossed her lips that her reasoning was weak. She’d given him an opening to tell her about himself, or worse, suggest that they spend time together.
“Is there someone else?” the viscount asked. “Because if not, and with your permission, I would like to attempt to convince you otherwise.”
By now, the wedding guests knew that she had left the ballroom with a future duke. Lord Greywick was the picture of rectitude. He would never spend time with a young lady in private unless he had permission to ask for her hand in marriage.
The ton would be surprised to find that she had refused him, but they wouldn’t doubt it had happened.
The battle was over.
Won. Done.
A low, rough voice answered him before she could. “You should take him.”
Betsy barely stifled a curse that would have shocked her suitor. “For goodness’ sake,” she cried instead. “I should have guessed that you’d be hiding here.” She slid sideways so she could see around Greywick’s shoulders.
Sure enough, the bane of her existence was regarding her lazily from the corner of the room.
“I am not hiding,” Jeremy Roden protested, managing to sound halfway sober and—even more surprisingly—almost convincing. “To return to the important point, Greywick is a good man and was cleverer than the rest of us at Eton. That includes your brothers, by the way. Not me, but then I put myself in a different category.”
The viscount, who had swung about, chuckled at that. “I assure you that we all put you in a different category as well, Lord Jeremy.”
“Ne’er-do-wells?” Betsy suggested. “Or perhaps Lord Jeremy was already cockeyed with drink at that early age.”
“Tsk, tsk,” Jeremy said, regarding her with an expression that never failed to irritate. “Proper young ladies don’t use words like ‘cock.’ I’m pretty sure angels don’t either, and you happen to be wearing a halo at the moment, if you’ll forgive my reminder. Angels probably don’t even know what a ‘cock’ is.”
The infuriating thing was that everything in her prickled into life the moment Jeremy Roden threw down one of his challenges. He was an intoxicated mess of a man and she still—
The viscount intervened before she could come up with an appropriately blistering response. “I thought I saw you across the ballroom, Lord Jeremy. I was glad to hear that you returned from the army safe and sound.”
Perhaps Greywick had no idea what Jeremy had endured in battle, not that she did, precisely. But the viscount was about to say one of those commonplace things that would make darkness roll over Jeremy’s face like a storm moving in over the ocean.
“I’m amazed that you missed the spectacle when Lord Jeremy stalked off and left poor Miss Peters on the edge of the dance floor by herself,” Betsy said quickly.
Jeremy’s dark eyes moved to her face, and to her relief, exasperation smoothed away that other expression, whatever it was.
Well, exasperation or perhaps pure dislike.
She let her smile widen, just to annoy him even more.
She’d decided weeks ago that he was better off irritated than despondent, and fortunately for Jeremy Roden, she had an aptitude for irritating men, thanks to growing up with all those brothers.
Her adopted brother Parth had been the first to put a frog under her covers, probably in league with Alaric. The second time was definitely Alaric, though North had something to do with it.
Aunt Knowe had helped her with slushy tadpole puddles that had mysteriously appeared in their beds.
“My halo failed me,” Jeremy said, without a bit of regret in his voice. “Unless I was going to strike Miss Peters in the face with evidence of my piety, I had to get off the floor. She didn’t complain. I don’t think she liked it when I kept turning the wrong way.”
The viscount had a nice chuckle, Betsy had to admit. “All those hours with a dancing master came to nothing?” he asked. He turned back to Betsy. “In our day, Etonian masters believed dancing was a critical skill, whereas we boys were far more interested in swordplay.”
Jeremy Roden had broad shoulders that ladies giggled about in the ladies’ parlor. They didn’t care which direction he turned in the ballroom, as long as he was paying them attention.
“The lessons didn’t stick,” Jeremy said indifferently.
“He is a disgrace to your tutors,” Betsy told the viscount. “He blunders around like a cow on ice.”
True to form, Jeremy merely shrugged, making his halo, which was resting on one shoulder, twinkle from the shadows. It was infuriating to find that her pulse sped up at the way shadowy light touched his cheekbones. His black hair had a touch of silver, even though he couldn’t be older than North since they had been at Eton together.