Say No to the Duke (The Wildes of Lindow Castle #4) - Eloisa James Page 0,22

room. Forget his boasts to Thaddeus about self-pleasuring. He couldn’t remember the last time he touched himself.

For months he had felt as if his body was merely a container for emotions that he didn’t want and couldn’t get rid of. The fierce pleasure he used to experience from righteous exercise of his favorite body part?

Gone.

Instead of raging desire, the kind that reminded a man that he was a man, Jeremy went through the day with a muted, passive lack of interest in anything connected to the female body.

Perhaps every soldier felt that way.

But a memory countered that thought. A few weeks ago, he’d walked around a corner silently and come on North in the act, his fiancée hitched high against a wall, her skirts spilling over his braced arms, her legs curled around his waist.

North had laughed unsteadily as Diana threw her head back and cried out as if—

Jeremy wasn’t a pig. He had retreated as silently as he’d come, eyes squeezed shut. But that one image was burned in his memory.

He hadn’t felt even a twitch in his loins, though.

Until now.

“What do you want if you win?” he asked. Obviously, Betsy assumed he was a rotten billiard player.

“An adventure,” she said instantly, propping her hip against the table and staring at him.

That was surprising. Perhaps that was Betsy Wilde’s appeal: She was surprising, and nothing else in life was.

“Adventure,” he repeated, trying to imagine what a young lady considered to be an adventure. Going to the theater? Betsy had spent a good part of her life in London; hell, her father had brought in an entire troupe to act the outrageously successful drama Wilde in Love, written about Alaric.

“Three syllables shouldn’t be too hard for a drunkard like yourself to understand.”

Jeremy dismissed that taunt. She had caught on to the fact that he couldn’t get drunk. Perhaps Lady Knowe had told her. The duke’s sister was one of the most observant people he’d ever met. She would have made a hell of a general.

“What sort of adventure?” he asked.

Betsy gave him a fierce look, nothing like the gentle, sweet gaze with which she mowed down her suitors. “The sort men can have,” she stated. “I want to put on breeches and be a boy for a day.”

Jeremy’s mouth fell open. “What?”

His mind immediately presented him with an image of Betsy wearing a snug pair of breeches. What had been desire became a forest fire. He took a deep breath.

It was very uncomfortable to discover that he wanted her more than he’d ever wanted a woman before.

She was not the right woman.

Not the right moment.

“I want you to take me to London and show me things that only men can see,” Betsy added.

He scowled at her.

“Not a brothel,” she said, obviously disgusted. “A gentlemen’s club like White’s or Brook’s, where I can play billiards.”

“Just billiards?” he clarified.

She nodded.

Actually, that made sense. She was obsessed by billiards.

“That’s it? That’s your adventure? Going to London and playing billiards? You’ll likely beat almost anyone,” Jeremy pointed out.

“You’re not as drunk as I thought, if you realize that,” Betsy said.

“Much to my dismay, I never am.”

“I’d like to go to an auction at Christie’s too, and bid on something. I loathe the fact that women aren’t allowed to place bids.”

“Why so much passion?”

She stared at him. “As a woman, I’m not allowed to have my own money. I am required to buy fripperies, but nothing of any import, reflected in the fact that I am not allowed to place a bid at auction. And you ask me why it matters?”

Jeremy winced. “I apologize for my sex.”

She gave him a lopsided grin. “So, are you ready to take me on an adventure?”

“Impossible.” He brought out the one weapon he knew would horrify her. “You might be compromised. Forced to marry me.”

“Nonsense. A woman can’t be compromised unless a man wants to sleep with her.”

Jeremy narrowed his eyes. It was almost as if she knew that he hadn’t had a cockstand in months, not until this evening. She was treating him like a toothless old dog.

He rose to his feet and stepped toward her. The fact she brought a footman with her to protect her from male attention went through his brain, along with the fact that she hadn’t blinked an eye when he sent her chaperone away. In fact, she suggested the man leave.

Damn it, she thought he was neutered.

“What is it?” she demanded. “My father wouldn’t let the two of us spend so much