When she saw the laughter in his eyes, she added: “My great-uncle always insisted that it was an accident.”
“Do you mind if I take off my coat? It’s cold and wet. I promise that it’s not a first step to an undressing in your chamber.”
“You may.”
His white shirt was sodden as well and clung to the dips and valleys of his chest. If they married, she would have the right to sit here nightly and watch him undress.
Except she wouldn’t, because if they were married, she would pull that shirt off his head and rub him down in the warmth of the fire and then pepper his chest with kisses—
“It would help if you didn’t look at me with that expression,” he said.
Betsy felt red flood her cheeks. “What expression?” It would be awful if everyone could tell when she was overcome by desire. She had to learn how to disguise it.
He picked up his blanket, wrapped it back around his shoulders, and sat down in the chair beside her. Apparently, he refused to answer idiotic questions, because he stretched out his legs and contemplated his sopping breeches.
Betsy watched just long enough to register his muscled thighs and then looked away.
“I saw that,” Jeremy said.
“You should return to your chamber,” Betsy said. “Now that you’ve told me your dark secret. Unless there’s more to it?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
“Madness, et al? I am a Wilde. A good swath of the country considers us mad, and we’ve had many a madman in and about the house. You are a bad-tempered version but at least you aren’t writing a play.”
“How do you know?”
Betsy rolled her eyes. “In that case, good luck with it. Alaric’s madwoman made pots of money with Wilde in Love.”
“I have no need for money,” Jeremy said.
“Do you feel the need to elaborate on your madness? Do you sleepwalk like Lady Macbeth?”
“No.”
“Eat in your sleep? We had a footman who ate most of a cake that had been reserved for the queen’s visit.”
“No.”
Betsy’s heart was aching for him, but she was determined to show him no pity. She felt instinctively that he would hate her for it. He was the sort of man who spent his life solving problems. She’d bet that from the age of five he was toddling around after his father, being as competent as a five-year-old could be.
Until he found himself on that beastly battlefield.
“I can’t say much more than that,” he said. “I didn’t catch lice in Bedlam, which Parth thought was very good luck. Apparently, the sleeping quarters were not salubrious, though I can’t remember the hospital at all.”
“Your lack of memory suggests they gave you opium,” Betsy said. “If you fall into a stupor again, no one should bother with a hospital. Your man can tether you to a tree in the shade and ply you with sausages.”
She’d managed to shock him into a better mood. “It’s a good thing I decided not to marry you, isn’t it?” he said musingly. “Tether me to a tree like an unruly puppy?”
“I’ll just remind you,” she said loftily, “that marriage to me would only follow my decision to accept your hand.”
“I was saving you the trouble of making a decision by telling you about Bedlam.”
“Oh, that.” She waved her hand. Was she overdoing it? No, she didn’t think she was. When Jeremy first came to Lindow, a few months ago, he was drawn and white. Now his eyes were shadowed but his skin was healthy, thanks to spending most of the day in the stables.
“Yes, that.”
“You shouldn’t think of a stint in Bedlam as putting you out of the sweepstakes for marriage. I say that in the spirit of friendship, mind you, not as one who would want to string your proposal onto my daisy chain.”
Silence.
Then: “I’m sorry I was so brutal.”
“So you said.”
“I was a shite to say any of it.”
“You weren’t incorrect,” Betsy said, throwing him a bone.
“I like you as you are, as you truly are. You’re not very sweet, thank God. No, don’t glare at me. That’s a good thing. Sweet people skim along the surface of life. For example, you tell them you’ve been in Bedlam, and they cluck like hens.”
“Whom have you told?” Betsy asked.
“You.”
“Not your father?”
“No.”
“You can’t tell me that Parth clucked, when he found you in the asylum. Parth would never cluck.”
“After I woke up, he threw me in a carriage and blackmailed me into coming to Lindow so he could chase that woman of his.”
“You see? He didn’t leave you alone, but he didn’t fuss over you.”
“Your aunt pried it out of me.”
“Aunt Knowe is not a clucker either.”
“She fusses, though.” He reached out his hand.
Betsy looked at it thoughtfully. A man like Jeremy never asked for help. People had to intrude on his life, pouring tea down his throat and tossing him into carriages. Blackmailing him from pure love.
Yet here he was, holding out his hand.
She took her hand out of the cozy warmth of her eiderdown and reached toward him. His palm and fingers were callused from working with horses.
All she was doing was comforting him, the way any kind person would do. And she was kind, no matter what he said, and “kind” was almost the same as “sweet.”
After staring into the fire and parsing the two words, she felt a prickling awareness and discovered that he was staring at her.
“Is there a smut on my nose?” she asked.
“I give you fair warning: I’m about to be brutally honest.”
“I’ve had enough of your type of honesty for one day,” she said, pulling away her hand. “Why don’t you go back out in the snow instead?”
“I’ve never desired a woman the way I desire you. It’s like being in the teeth of a damned inferno.”
Betsy found herself smiling. “That’s frightfully improper, and a mixed metaphor as well.”
“You sound very pleased.”
“Oh, I am. I like to win, and if you remember, Lady Tallow made a play for your attentions, if not affections.”
“Are you tempted to marry me and take me off the market?”
Betsy snorted. “You just announced that you refuse to propose. And frankly, you’re not such a prize that I’d go out of my way. Lying about in the billiard room, pretending to be drunk and sliding under tables from pure boredom, saying fantastically unkind truths due to a whiff of jealousy. Throwing tea around the breakfast room. Now there’s a man I want to spend my life with!”
He laughed. “You’re not including Bedlam in the list?”
“Bedlam? No. It’s the daily encounters that make marriage intolerable, from what I’ve seen. You’re unlikely to go insensible again, but if you did, I’d stow you in that nice sanitarium where Diana’s murderous mother lives.”
“So she could shoot me again, thereby making you a merry widow?”
She grinned at him. “Exactly. There are women who are cut out to be widows, you know. I wouldn’t have to worry about—” She stopped.