Betsy glanced up at Jeremy from under her lashes and her heart beat even faster. “Are you ready to take a turnip on an outing, Lord Jeremy?”
“It’s been one of my long-held ambitions,” he said gravely. “Lady Knowe, I think we should congregate in the sitting room first.”
“Why?” Lady Knowe demanded. “I don’t want to miss anything!”
“A lesson in manhood is in order,” he said, nodding to the duchess. “For one thing, Her Grace is now His Grace and probably shouldn’t be holding your elbow.”
“Oh, my!” the duchess squealed.
“Fine,” Lady Knowe said grumpily. “You can give us a few brief lessons. How hard can it be to be a man?”
“To be a gentleman?” Jeremy corrected, his eyes glinting with an edge of wicked laughter. “Hard. Very hard.”
Lady Knowe took off her cocked hat and swatted him, and he laughed like a boy, ducking through the door into the sitting room.
Betsy found herself watching Jeremy’s father, whose eyes were clear and shining.
She followed the group into the sitting room, feeling a complicated knot of emotions: uncertainty warring with excitement warring with desire, happiness, recklessness . . .
“I like wearing these breeches,” she told the room.
“You enjoy looking like a stuffed sausage?” Jeremy asked.
“You have obviously never worn a corset if you think there’s anything new to the sensation.”
Whatever was going on between them felt risky and exhilarating, not like the practiced chatter with which she had enticed her suitors.
“I might wear a corset someday,” Jeremy said conversationally.
Her mouth fell open. “Why?”
“My grandfather used to creak when he bent over; I was twelve by the time I realized that the sound was protesting whalebones.”
“‘Protesting whalebones,’” she repeated, and then laughed. “Are you planning to grow into your grandfather’s girth?” She flicked a glance at his body. “You’ll need to eat more regularly than you do now.”
“I’ll take that under advisement,” he said.
They’d reached the duchess. Walking like a man wasn’t an easy task if you had large hips, as did the duchess.
“That’s better!” Lady Knowe cried, clapping her hands. “Lengthen your stride!”
“This is as long as physically possible,” Her Grace said, with an edge.
“You try it, Betsy,” Lady Knowe said. “Walk from the fireplace to the chair.”
Betsy was waddling, but Jeremy’s imagination nimbly removed the padding from her waist and freed her poor, confined breasts.
Her aunt narrowed her eyes at him.
He moved his gaze to Betsy’s neck. The curls of her white wig hid the back of her neck, but framed the proud lift of her chin. Her throat was satin smooth. He’d like to pull off her cravat, lick her throat, and then bite her ear. She would gasp. He let himself think about what Betsy’s gasp would sound like, until it occurred to him that his breeches were now as ill-fitting as hers.
Lady Knowe had her hands on her hips. “Betsy is passable, but Emily, if you don’t stop swinging your hips, we shall have to leave you in the inn. Do you need me or the marquess to demonstrate again?”
Lady Knowe had perfected a long-legged, raw stride without a trace of femininity.
“Good enough,” the duchess barked, ignoring her comment. “The horses will take a chill if we don’t make haste. Has anyone seen my son?”
“No,” Lady Knowe said.
“He was cross as a child too,” Her Grace said. “Didn’t get his way and he’d be as pickled as a pear.”
Jeremy saw Betsy’s eyes light up. Her pink lips shaped the phrase “pickled as a pear.”
He allowed the duchess to leave the room, followed by Lady Knowe and his father, and then he said, “It wouldn’t be comfortable to be matched with a pickled pear, Betsy.”
“I didn’t know that pears could be pickled,” Betsy said, her eyes shining.
He’d been driven half mad, hungering after the curve of her neck, so he drew her into his arms and waited just long enough so that her eyelashes swept shut before he brought their lips together. She sighed, a sound so erotic that wildfire leapt over his body.
Their tongues were shameless, but Jeremy didn’t allow his hands to slide down to her arse and grip it the way he’d love to do. He didn’t pull Betsy against him so that her legs in those scandalous breeches could wind around his hips, and the better parts of each of them would rub against each other in fierce pleasure.
She tasted joyful and sweet and lustful. “I want to ravish you,” he said, his voice rasping like that of a boy of fifteen. “For God’s sake—”
“Say No to the duke?”
“Exactly.”
“Then you’ll ravish me?” She had a bewitching twinkle in her eyes.
“No, no, I won’t,” he said hastily.
He saw a flash of hurt go through her beautiful eyes.
“Not until we’re married.”
He had spoken the word aloud.
“An ultimatum.” She looked over her shoulder as she walked from the room, giving him an impish—sweetly feminine—smile. Which he didn’t entirely understand until he realized that she was swaying her hips.
Her bottom in breeches was enough to drive a man to madness. Or to marriage.
“You are the most erotic turnip I’ve ever seen,” he called.
She just laughed.
Chapter Nineteen
The auction house was a large building fronted with shallow steps and a sign decorated in gold that announced the ownership of Mr. Phillips, renowned auctioneer of London, Stratford-upon-Avon, and Wilmslow.
A butler opened the door as they approached, bowed, and asked for their names.
“The Marquess of Thurrock and party,” Jeremy’s father said, pulling off his tricorne.
A well-proportioned man wearing an excellent suit and a superior, though not extravagant, wig made his appearance. “Your Lordship,” Mr. Phillips said to the marquess, “it is my honor to welcome you to the smallest of my auction houses.”
“I knew Finney as a boy,” the marquess told him. “I’ve a mind to acquire one of his little pieces, as long as the price is right. Brought some friends with me.”
The auctioneer’s shrewd eyes paused for a moment on Betsy, who gave him the smallest of chin nods. For a moment, he looked puzzled, then, to Betsy’s satisfaction, he looked past her to Jeremy, Aunt Knowe, and the duchess. He blinked, visibly registering their clothing and deciding that the Marquess of Thurrock’s party was not as tasteful a group as he would expect of a nobleman’s friends.
“You are most welcome to enter the salon,” he said, waving in a stately manner toward large open doors. “We will begin with drawings that I acquired at great effort on the continent and follow with exquisite examples of Samuel Finney’s miniatures.”
The salon proved to be a tall-ceilinged room, every inch of which was painted with a relentless number of cupids, interspersed with a cloud here or there.
“Look up,” Jeremy murmured in Betsy’s ear, nudging her as they sat down.