“Better than pretending to be maidenly?” He raised a devilish eyebrow. “Hmmm.”
“Hush, both of you,” Aunt Knowe ordered. “Back to my point, Betsy. You must keep your mouth shut or risk discovery.”
“Will there be dire consequences if we are caught?” she asked.
Her aunt was busily buttering her third piece of toast. “Emily and I will be with you. If we’re all in fancy dress, the event turns from a scandal to a lark.”
“In that case, you should wear a gown!” Betsy told Jeremy. “Perhaps one of yours would fit him, Aunt Knowe.”
Two appalled looks greeted this idea.
“Absolutely not,” Aunt Knowe cried. “His chest is twice the breadth of mine, Betsy. He’d ruin my bodice!”
Jeremy appeared to be struck dumb with horror.
“I think Jeremy would make a delectable lady,” Betsy said, giggling. “Yes, his chest is somewhat hairy—”
“I do not want to know how you are aware of that fact!” Aunt Knowe barked.
“He changed shirts in the stables,” Betsy said, ignoring Jeremy’s intrigued response to her comment.
“I believe it is likely that our escapade will result in more prints,” her aunt said. “If you will forgive my presumption, Jeremy, I have a strong feeling that Mr. Bisset-Caron will dine out on the story for weeks.”
Jeremy’s eyes darkened. “He’ll do nothing of the sort.”
The duchess marched into the room, her cheeks bright red from cold.
“We’ve been to St. Bartholomew’s,” Her Grace announced. “The butcher and baker are open no matter the snow, and the auction opens in two hours!”
Thaddeus followed her into the room, his brows knit. “There’s no sign of a footman,” he said testily. “Unless I burdened my mother’s maid, I had no one to take my coat.” He took off his snowy caped greatcoat and slung it over the chair, put his hat and gloves on a side table, and leaned his cane against the wall.
Apparently he didn’t care to eat in the vicinity of his outerwear, and he was visibly cross as the dickens. Though to be fair, he must have risen at six to escort his mother to church.
With that in mind, Betsy gave him a warm smile and handed him a platter of coddled eggs.
After eggs, toast, herring, and sausage had been consumed, the duchess let out a crow of excitement. “My goodness, I clean forgot! We picked up the auction catalogue.” She turned to Thaddeus. “Where has it gone to?”
He rose and took a rolled sheaf of paper from his greatcoat pocket.
The duchess flattened it on the table, putting a teacup on one corner and a sugar bowl on the other.
“Presenting a very extensive and valuable assemblage of drawings of all schools, and several specimens of the most valuable and rare works of the master of the miniature, Samuel Finney. I shall bid upon a miniature,” she announced.
“We were all painted by Finney a few years ago,” Aunt Knowe said idly. “Dear me, I wonder what happened to them. Small things are so hard to keep track of, don’t you think? In fact, I have been painted by him several times. I do like miniatures.”
“If your likeness is being auctioned, we shan’t let you go to a stranger’s home,” Betsy promised.
“I thought miniatures were primarily exchanged between lovers,” Her Grace observed, twinkling at her old friend.
Aunt Knowe waved her fork at the duchess. “Fiddlesticks! I am a pattern card of decorum, as you well know.”
Just when the tea had gone quite cold, the innkeeper appeared with a fresh pot and a message. The marquess never ate before noon, and Mr. Bisset-Caron would spend the day in bed.
“That will make the escapade easier, though I’m certain Bisset-Caron’ll hear of it from his manservant,” Aunt Knowe declared.
Thaddeus and Jeremy exchanged a glance that suggested Grégoire would risk his head if he gossiped.
To Betsy, Jeremy looked like a man ready to support her in wearing breeches, a man with a burden on his soul, with too many lines at the corners of his eyes.
He looked as if he were hers.
Chapter Sixteen
Betsy’s breeches were tight over her bottom, and the stockings itched. The shirt was so long that it hung to her knees and made it hard to stuff into her breeches.
“Hopefully no one will pay much attention,” her maid said, looking her up and down.
Betsy turned to the mirror. Her hair was braided, ready for a small wig that sat waiting. The wool stockings made her legs thicker, as if they might be a boy’s. She peered over her shoulder at her bottom. “I never knew my arse was so round. And I think of my bosom as small.” The shirt was tucked in but the buttons on her waistcoat gaped at the top.
“Your bosom is not small,” Winnie stated. “I wound the muslin as tightly as I could.”
“Your profile is not manly,” Winnie observed, after Betsy put on the velvet coat.
Betsy turned to the side. Her chest curved and her bottom curved. “I have a much better figure than I thought,” she said wonderingly, running her hands down her front.
“The problem is that no boy has that figure,” Winnie said.
“I will be wearing a greatcoat,” Betsy said. “That would cover up the rear, at least.”
“I’ll have to fetch it myself,” Winnie said. “You’re not going into the corridor dressed like that. Not with Lord Greywick and Lord Jeremy looking at you the way they do.”
“And how is that?”
“As if you’re a bone they’re scrapping over.”
Betsy wrinkled her nose and moved over to the window. Snow was still mounded on top of the stone wall, but the inn yard was mostly clear and she could see carriages tooling slowly up and down the road. A robin was hopping along the top of the stone wall, its feet leaving marks that looked like the scratchings of an ancient civilization.
Three grooms were clearing snow from the courtyard. The one on the right, with his back to her, had dark hair tied in a queue. It gleamed in the chilly sunlight. His shoulders rose and fell, scooping huge amounts of snow onto a shovel and throwing them on a pile to the side.
“Which one of the two do you think I should marry?” she asked Winnie.
“The viscount,” Winnie said from behind her back. “He’ll be a duke someday. What’s more, Lord Jeremy can be cross as the dickens. Mind you,” she added, “his valet talks about him as if he walked on water.”
Betsy put a great deal of store by what servants thought of their masters. Two of the grooms trotted away, as if the third had dispatched them.
He straightened and ran the back of his hand over his forehead. His breath puffed white as he wrenched off his greatcoat and tossed it over a hitching post. Then he began shoveling again. She knew those shoulders, even from the rear.
“The household loves Lord Jeremy,” Winnie said. “Mind you, the same goes for the viscount. I haven’t heard a bad word about him, whereas Lord Jeremy drinks himself into a stupor and slides on the floor. No, there’s no question at all about which to marry.”
“He is never truly inebriated,” Betsy said. The robin was tugging on a twig sticking out from the snow. It tilted its head and tugged, its claws tramping a flat space in the snow.