“About what?”
“My reputation,” she answered. “Widows are expected to be lascivious and make their way through bevies of men. No one excludes them from society for it. They create scandal after scandal with anyone from a cannibal king to a pirate, and people throw dinner invitations at their feet.”
“Would that make you happy? The pirate king? I’ll leave the cannibal king out of it because one has to think that a dinner invitation from him might not be entirely desirable.”
She giggled at that, and then realized that he had pushed over his chair so that it was just next to hers, which allowed him to reach out, scoop her up, and plop her onto his lap.
“What the bloody hell!” she cried, exploding to her feet, wheeling about, hands on her hips. “I allowed you into my chamber with the understanding that you wouldn’t infringe on my person!”
Jeremy stood, eyes locked on hers. “I’m sorry, Bess.”
“Don’t call me Bess!” Betsy snapped. “No one says cruel things to someone they—they treasure.”
“Where in God’s name did you get this idea of marital bliss?” he asked. “Married people say all sorts of things to each other. It’s the nature of the beast. Your spouse is the one person who can be honest with you and still be loved.”
“You have a strange idea of marriage,” Betsy said, trying to make her voice chilly, and not quite succeeding. His eyes made it hard to be lofty. They were deep, dark, and whatever that expression was, she couldn’t stop drinking it in.
She hadn’t known him before he went to war, but presumably he had been more courtly. Now he was rough around the edges, untamed. He looked like a man who would enter a woman’s bedchamber and end up with her on his lap.
“More to the point,” Betsy said, reeling her imagination back to its proper confines, “we are not married, and we never will be. Out,” she said, keeping it short. “Now.”
“One kiss. Please.”
“No.” And then, “Why would I kiss you again? It wasn’t something worth repeating.”
“To me, it was.”
Ugh. Her whole body responded to his expression. And his truthfulness. But she didn’t like his brand of honesty. Did she?
She could jerk her head toward the window and he would leave. She knew that in every part of her being. Even if she lost her head and followed her most reckless impulses . . . she could trust him to stop whenever she wished.
The thought that exploded into her head next was life-changing. If a yellow-haired Prussian came to a country house party hosted by Jeremy . . . she would never leave him. Never.
Perhaps she would have fled marriage with Thaddeus, but never Jeremy.
So she stayed where she was and he took that final step and put his arms around her. By rights he should feel cold and damp, but instead his chest was hot. She eased forward until her breasts flattened against him.
He said something under his breath and his arms tightened. Heat spread through her body, spiraling from every place they touched: his arms on her back, her cheek on his shoulder, her right foot against his boot. His cheek against her hair.
Fire kindled in improper places. She would like him to slide one of his callused hands down to her rump and pull her even closer.
“May I kiss you?” His voice sounded irritable, the tone with which he snarled comments from the corner of the room.
Those eyes that seemed mercilessly unkind were hot and desirous.
For her.
She leaned forward and put her lips on his, because if she was going to throw in her lot with her mother, she might as well go all the way. Their lips brushed softly for a moment and his tongue caressed her bottom lip.
All that lazy fire spilled into open flame. Her body prickled until even the backs of her knees felt hot and weak. She wound her arms around his neck and melted against him until her nipples flattened against his chest. Finally, finally, one of the hands on her back slid down and cupped her bottom.
She shivered and nipped his lower lip, which made him growl. She wanted more.
Yet Jeremy didn’t seem to follow her inclination to move toward the bed and she didn’t have the courage to step in that direction herself. In fact, he pulled away and she swayed toward him before she caught herself.
His eyes were raw with an emotion that went far past her experience of lust. Need, perhaps. Need for her.
“Not a good idea?” she asked with a little gasp.
“Not at this moment.” His eyes skated down her front and then jerked back to her face.
Betsy looked down too, and found her nipples making little bumps in the soft fabric of her nightdress. She squared her shoulders and gazed back at him.
“There’s my Bess,” he said, voice rasping.
She had floated through the Season as if it were a prolonged masquerade, a game in which the prize was a wedding ring. Here, in the middle of the night, facing a man with stubble on his jaw and no coat, with no more apparent similarity to a gentleman than she had to a queen . . .
This was real.
He was real.
“Please sit,” she said, pointing to the chair by the fire.
One eyebrow arched, but he sat.
“I will sit in your lap,” she told him. “We had better not kiss again, though. It seems to go to my head.”
“Nothing so depraved,” he promised, seating himself. Betsy sank onto his lap, his arms came around her, and her head settled against his chest. It felt like the end of a book, the part of a marriage that authors leave to the reader’s imagination: daily affection and sweetness, a layer of desire never alluded to on the page.
“So you’re my friend again, even though I was an ass?” he asked.
“If you find yourself in the grip of another temper, you must keep it to yourself.”
Jeremy rested his chin on her head. “He touched you.” There wasn’t an ounce of apology in his voice.
“What will you do if I marry him?” she inquired.
“Move to Italy, I suspect. Or Russia, as that’s even further away.”
He didn’t sound as if he was jesting, and his arms tightened possessively. Betsy felt a stab of such pure joy that she didn’t bother searching for a response, just snuggled closer.
“The Season is a game,” she said later, drowsily. “My father says I allow men to hang about me like horseflies at the trough.”
“I shouldn’t have been harsh.”
“Before I debuted, everyone viewed me as a version of my mother, and now they don’t. They think women can be bred for chastity and obedience.”
“You are a Wilde, and a magnificent example of the breed.”
Betsy puzzled over that and decided it was a compliment. Her eyes kept closing because the thump of his heart against her ear was mesmerizing. She almost missed what he said next.
“You’re the best of the Wildes,” he murmured. “The most loyal and true, a brilliant player at billiards and life.”
Did he really say that?
Betsy woke up when her maid pulled the curtains open the next morning. She was tucked in bed, alone.
“We won’t be returning to Lindow today,” Winnie said. “There’s more snow on the way.” She opened the door and ushered in a procession of Lindow grooms carrying buckets of hot water. Lady Knowe would never allow strange servants into an inn bedchamber when one of the family was in bed. It was too easy for strangers to be bribed.