And shrugged when both men looked at her, surprised. “You surely don’t think that my father would name all of us after warriors and leave it there? He had us memorize any number of fiery speeches delivered on battlefields.”
Then she flinched, thinking she shouldn’t have mentioned a battlefield.
Jeremy’s lips compressed. Perhaps it wasn’t the battlefield, but the question of what one should say on it. Too late now.
Next to her, Thaddeus moved slightly, his shoulder brushing hers. “Tell Queen Bess how intelligent I was, Jeremy,” he said, his voice a command. A gentle one, but a command. “I need help or this queen will look for a consort elsewhere.”
For a suspended second, she and Thaddeus watched as Jeremy wrestled with darkness. His chin was square; it seemed even squarer when he ground his teeth.
“Right,” he said, just a pulse too late, his voice strained. “I need to hawk the merchandise since the merchandise is failing to do so himself.”
“Exactly,” Thaddeus said. “The lady says she doesn’t know me; who better to explicate my attributes than the most eloquent man in our year?”
“Are you talking about Lord Jeremy?” Betsy asked, startled.
“Eloquent?” Jeremy snorted. “Hardly.”
Thaddeus turned to Betsy. “Indeed, he was the best orator at Eton, not just our year, but those above us, even in our first year. Able to coax the stars out of the sky.”
“Too bored to stay in their courses once I started babbling,” Jeremy said, his voice back to its usual rough indifference. His hair was disheveled, thanks to the bandage that wound over his ears. His neck cloth was half undone, as if he’d tugged it free of his neck.
Betsy glanced up at the viscount, who was a study in contrasts: his wig snowy white, no halo to be seen, and his clothing both exquisitely tailored and beautifully worn. That was one thing she’d realized lately: It wasn’t really about how well-made a man’s clothing was; it mattered how he wore it.
Thaddeus looked like a king ready to be painted by Holbein.
“You have to imagine all of us blighters sitting around in a schoolroom at Eton, obsessed by women’s breasts and playing with ourselves incessantly—those two things not unconnected,” Jeremy said, taking another swig from his bottle.
“There is a lady present,” Thaddeus said quietly. One knew without hesitation that he would never mention such a topic in the company of women.
He had a nice deep voice. Not as deep as Jeremy’s, but that was a matter of whisky and exhaustion, to Betsy’s mind. Jeremy never seemed to sleep.
“She’s got brothers,” Jeremy said indifferently. “And the myth that women don’t pleasure themselves, Thaddeus? Just that, a myth. We won’t ask Good Queen Bess to confirm, as it might embarrass us.”
Thaddeus looked at her. “Do you wish me to escort you to the ballroom, Betsy?” It was the first time he addressed her by her given name, and a nicely judged moment to use it too.
Unfortunately, she hadn’t the slightest impulse to blush, and she was still interested to hear what the viscount had been like as a schoolboy.
She smiled at him. “I would like to hear what Lord Jeremy has to say of your prowess in the schoolroom.”
“If you’re using Greywick’s first name, you must do the same for me. Particularly since I’ve been calling you Betsy for two months,” the devil in the corner said. “No longer, though. From now on, Queen Bess will do.”
“By addressing you formally, the lady is directing your commentary to a polite level,” Thaddeus said. His voice had changed: He was demanding that Jeremy stop trying to shock her.
She ought to rethink the question of marrying the viscount. She really, really ought to reconsider it. Marriage wasn’t so terrible.
Marriage to a man like Thaddeus would be . . . lovely. Truly.
He would run the country, or whatever it was dukes did if they weren’t her father, who only reluctantly went to Parliament.
She had the feeling that Thaddeus would enjoy speaking in the House of Lords.
She would have beautiful daughters with thick eyelashes. That was important. It would break her heart if her babies were born with scrawny eyelashes. She could teach them how to dance and shoot, but no daughter of hers would glue rabbit fur to her eyelids in lieu of eyelashes.
“To return to my theme,” Jeremy said, with only the faintest hint of mockery in his voice, “the schoolrooms were bursting with boys thinking of nothing but unmentionable topics. Except for Thaddeus.”
Betsy almost said “Excellent,” and then saw the trap he’d laid, the one where she would affirm Thaddeus’s disinclination to do that. Her brother Alaric had explained it to her by means of a flood of synonyms for “gild the lily.”
“Churn the butter” confused her at first, but then Alaric handed her an illustrated broadside of an erotic ballad and said that he didn’t hold with any of his sisters being surprised by male anatomy.
There were times when she missed the mother she didn’t remember. But her siblings, her father, her stepmother, Ophelia, and particularly Aunt Knowe had made up for a mother’s loss ten times over.
“You should marry him, Bess. The first Bess made a mistake not marrying, you know.”
“I ought to return to the ballroom,” Betsy said deciding not to defend Queen Elizabeth’s unmarried state. She was uneasily aware that if she stayed away too long, gossipers like Lady Tallow might start a rumor that she’d disgraced herself in order to force the viscount into offering marriage.
“Wait! Was I successful?” Jeremy asked, squinting at her. “Are you overcome with the wonders of the winsome lad beside you?”
Thaddeus crooked an eyebrow. “Lad?”
“North and I are old before our time, and you still have the glow of youth,” Jeremy said flatly.
Betsy took it for granted that Thaddeus would be able to translate that as “aging due to time lost in the American colonies in a fruitless war.” Hopefully, he wouldn’t be insulted. She’d often heard Jeremy divide mankind into those who had seen a battlefield and those who hadn’t.
“Right,” she said, sliding down to stand on her aching feet again. “Time to go. I don’t want to miss supper.”
“May I escort you to the meal?” Thaddeus asked.
She hesitated. If she dined with him, society would assume she had agreed to his proposal.
“Lady Knowe will be disappointed in you, Bess,” Jeremy said. “Yet another suitor tossed away.”
“I am not yet tossed away,” Thaddeus said, smiling down at Betsy. It was a statement . . . and a question.
Betsy was suddenly vividly aware of Jeremy watching them. “Perhaps you are not,” she said, pulling in her skirts so she could edge sideways into the corridor. The doors of Lindow Castle were hopelessly narrow, given the current fashion for skirts the width of three women.
Behind her, the viscount bid Jeremy goodbye. Affection deepened his voice and made him far more appealing than did his title or estate. A man who remained friends with a reprobate like Jeremy might not have very good sense, but he had loyalty.
The Wildes valued loyalty above all else. Loyalty to the family, obviously, but also to friends.