“Thank you for showing me the billiard table,” Thaddeus said to her, once he had emerged from the room.
“Wouldn’t gratitude be in order if I had accepted your proposal?” Betsy said, starting to walk down the corridor. “I am still unconvinced we would suit.”
“I never expected you to accept my hand tonight,” Thaddeus said, laughter gleaming in his eyes. “A lady of your stature must be won by a lengthy campaign.”
Betsy blinked at him, rather surprised. Apparently, Thaddeus had no plans to retreat, the way her other suitors had. Occasionally a man watched her mournfully from the side of the ballroom after she refused a proposal, but generally they accepted her word on the matter and never broached the subject again.
“I’m not very good at accepting no for an answer,” the viscount added. His smile was not wide, not overly confident, not arrogant. “Jeremy and I were well-matched in that. He could never bear to lose, and neither could I. We pitted ourselves against each other throughout our boyhoods.”
“I am not the prize in some schoolboy contest,” she said.
“Certainly not,” the viscount said. “I am merely saying that I refined the art of never giving up while arguing with Jeremy.” They had walked quite a ways before he said, “Though I think obstinacy is giving my old friend great pain these days. Stubborn people are particularly likely to curse fate rather than accept it.”
“I believe his . . . his discomfort stems from unfortunate experiences during the war. I know that my brother North finds himself unable to sleep on occasion.”
She was privately convinced that even before today’s marriage, North’s fiancée, Diana, had learned the trick of exhausting him.
So to speak.
North didn’t look nearly as tired in the last few months, whereas Jeremy had black smudges under his eyes.
“As a schoolboy, Lord Jeremy was the most blindly loyal man of us all. Such a man would find it hard to tolerate losses amongst his fellow men, let alone those who served under him.”
Betsy nodded.
“I would include his horse in the number,” Thaddeus said. “He loved that mare. He boarded her at school, obviously, but most boys left care of their horseflesh to the grooms. Lord Jeremy visited Dolly every day. We were fed horrible slop, but he spent his pocket money on carrots and occasionally a lump of sugar.”
“Oh, dear,” Betsy said.
“He was rather unkind to you,” Thaddeus said. “This may seem absurd, but if you are able, you might take it as a sign of his esteem.”
“I don’t return that esteem,” she said tartly.
It wasn’t precisely true. But it was safer to claim not to like Jeremy. More comfortable.
She couldn’t imagine a worse fate than having an evil-tongued aristocrat with a dark soul and a penchant for drink jumping to the conclusion that she was infatuated with him.
She’d never hear the end of it.
“I entirely understand. Any young lady would be affronted by his appalling manners. I apologize for not taking you away immediately.”
Betsy looked at him, raised an eyebrow. “I did not wish to go.”
Thaddeus blinked and visibly absorbed the fact that she was not a woman who needed to be rescued from discomfort that society had decreed she must be experiencing. “I gather from Lord Jeremy’s praise that you are a superb horsewoman?” he asked, making a quick recovery.
“I am,” Betsy admitted. “We were raised partly in the nursery and partly in the stables. North was always fascinated by horses, and we younger children used to follow the older boys about like ducklings. Do you enjoy riding?”
“I do. The happiest hours of my childhood were spent with our stable master, Barnes. He taught me a great deal about life. Eton was all very well in its way, but the most important lessons are learned at home.”
“I and my sisters had governesses, but then we were sent to a seminary for girls,” Betsy said. “It was an unusual choice for a duke’s progeny, but I loved it there, after a few growing pains. As you say, the lessons I learned were invaluable.”
Witness whereof: If she’d stayed at home, she would have debuted in blissful ignorance of the ton’s opinion. She would have tried to be herself and promptly been relegated to the side of the ballroom, if not thrown out of society altogether.
Her father’s rank could do nothing to prevent the judgments of the matrons who ruled polite society.
“Will you send your own daughters to school?”
“It would depend on their wishes,” Betsy said. “My sister Viola is extremely shy. She would have been much happier at home. But my smallest sister, Artemisia, will relish a classroom full of other girls.”
Thaddeus looked down at her, his eyes glowing. “The more I learn about you, the more perfect you seem.”
Betsy cleared her throat. “I assure you that I am far from perfect.”
“I necessarily strive for perfection due to my rank and responsibilities,” Thaddeus said. “Yet when I fail to achieve my own standards, as any man must, I am reassured by the fact that an excellent reputation can defeat gossip. Your reputation is impeccable.”
Betsy nodded her thanks, conscious of a gloomy feeling.
“Small moral faults are allowable under a guise of rectitude,” Thaddeus added, digging himself deeper.
It could be that thick eyelashes were not enough to counterbalance such deeply-felt righteousness.
Chapter Five
In the first hours after midnight, revelers began to leave. The newly wedded couple had long since vanished. The duke and duchess had bid farewell directly after a light supper was served, retreating to the North Tower, where the family was housed. Guests who lived nearby took to their carriages; those from afar returned to their beds, alone or in pairs.
Still, the ball continued, the music playing on for those who loved to dance or loved to gossip, and wouldn’t retire until after Prism served another light meal.
Those guests who had worn masks had removed them at midnight; those with halos had thrown them away long before. The ballroom floor was littered with crushed spangles fallen from angelic headdresses. The expanse of polished floor glittered under the candelabras like a lake shining in the moonlight, the skirts of dancing ladies sweeping spangles into ripples that followed in their wake.
Betsy sighed.
She felt lonely.
She had danced with Thaddeus twice.
Unsurprisingly, the viscount danced with perfect control, maintaining his elbow at just the right level as they wheeled toward and away from each other. One of those dances, late in the evening, had been a new dance called a cotillion. His every move was perfection itself.
As was hers, of course.
People drew back to watch them, a rustle of whispers going through the assembled guests like wind in the trees. Thaddeus’s face didn’t betray any recognition of the attention they were receiving.
He was used to it.
So was she, but that didn’t mean she liked it.
This would be her life if she married him; for a duke and duchess, privacy was a luxury, scrutiny a given. London stationers churned out prints of the Wildes, no matter how spurious the depictions: her brother Alaric wrestling the kraken, North as a Shakespearean villain.
Without a doubt, someone at this ball would report their two dances, not to mention the fact she and Thaddeus had left the ballroom for a time together. By next week, the two of them would be in the front window of every stationer’s shop, likely with a wedding ring encircling their heads for good measure.