open in colorful but fruitless displays.
When Lady Tallow did the same, he couldn’t even manage a twitch of his cock, a failure she had read in his eyes, given that she’d flounced away before he could refuse her offer.
Yet his cock twitched every time Betsy neared him. And now, when she was leaning over as if she were offering her breasts for his pleasure, he was far past a twitch.
It felt damned good to have a hard cock again after months of inertia.
That had nothing to do with her. It just meant that his body was getting ahold of itself again. He was healing, the way Lady Knowe kept promising when she poured noxious cups of soothing draughts down his throat.
Betsy glanced up at him, and apparently realized her breasts were on full view. “You must be desperate,” she said, straightening and hauling up her bodice.
“Oh, I am,” he agreed, upending his glass. “These old stone walls are crowded with Wildes, each more luscious than the last. I meant the Wildes, obviously, not the walls.”
“You’re desperate and blind,” Betsy snapped, setting up the table again. Whatever else you could say about her, she was not a quitter. He’d never seen anyone work so hard to master the angles that ruled billiards.
Blind?
Surely, she knew how beautiful she was. One of the things he liked about Boadicea Wilde was that she wasn’t nervous about her looks. She wasn’t one of those women who were forever peering into their glasses and poking at their hair or coloring their lips.
She sailed into every room, the confidence of a beautiful woman hovering around her like an ermine wrap. She was fit for a king, in other words.
Or a duke.
“I don’t have proper breasts,” she said, surprising him. “Not like Lady Tallow’s, for example.”
He blinked but managed to keep his face expressionless. “I can assure you that from a man’s point of view, every pair of breasts is ‘proper.’”
“I could put on boy’s clothing and no one would know the difference.”
She was probably right about that. Other women overflowed with fleshy parts, lush breasts so plump that they rose from their chests like overgrown gourds.
Betsy was perfectly proportioned. Nothing overly ripe.
Jesus.
“Not true.” He managed to give the words a touch of contempt, even though the contempt was really about his unruly desire for her. He set his glass down on the floor. Maybe whisky was finally affecting him. “You don’t walk like a boy.”
What’s more, he couldn’t be anywhere near her breasts without noticing them. Even flattened by the wretched bodices women wore, you could see—
He wrenched himself back from the edge of saying something stupid and resorted to brutal honesty instead.
“If a man hadn’t already noticed your breasts, you might get away with it on top. But you wiggle when you walk. Makes a man want to watch your arse.”
Likely that would shock her. He was tired of prevarication. Talking of men who “passed to a better reward,” for example.
They died.
They were buried. Gone.
After a moment, he wrestled his mind back into the room. Betsy’s mouth had eased. She wasn’t shocked; she was complimented.
“You hurt my feelings,” Betsy told him, the plaintive note in her voice obviously false. She pursed her lips in a mock pout that made his cock throb against his silk breeches.
He eased backward in the chair to hide his condition, just in case she happened to glance in that direction.
“I didn’t hurt your feelings,” he said, taking another swig. “I can tell.”
“You must play me a game of billiards, or I’ll tell my father that you praised my arse, and guess who’ll be asked to leave the castle?” Her voice was triumphant.
He’d walked straight into her trap.
He didn’t want to leave. This shadowy room was a perfect place to wrestle with his demons. And now he had his cock back . . .
Fine.
He stood up. “I don’t play without a wager.”
Betsy shrugged. “What will you wager?” Her voice was confident. Of course, she expected to win. He had sat around the billiard room for weeks, not to play but to brood. Or heal, as Lady Knowe had it.
That and to argue with Betsy. And watch her play.
Her bosom and her arse were simple pleasures. Private ones. She had no idea that he could have drawn the outline of her body with charcoal if he wanted. Hell, he could do it in the dark, his fingers tracing her curves.
Not that he ever did anything about it, even in the privacy of his