Say No to the Duke (The Wildes of Lindow Castle #4) - Eloisa James Page 0,26

fall into bed with a man.”

That included her future husband, but she kept that to herself.

She’d decided years ago that she had to get through the bedding part of marriage without giving her husband even the faintest suspicion that she enjoyed the act—if indeed she did. Enjoyment would be fatal.

If she expressed pleasure, he would watch her like a hawk. And rightly so. Just look at her mother, giving birth to four children in five years, before fleeing with the count. The evidence of her enjoyment of men’s favors had been written on Yvette’s body in language that anyone could understand.

“That is exactly why you and I cannot make a five-day journey in which you are dressed as a boy,” Jeremy said, his voice patient, as if he were instructing a slow student.

Betsy opened her mouth and stopped, floundering. He was right, of course. She rarely accompanied a man out of a ballroom without a chaperone. She zealously guarded her reputation.

And yet—

“It wouldn’t be me,” she said, looking back up at his eyes. “You could call me by a boy’s name. Fred or Pete. Don’t you see, Jeremy? It wouldn’t be me, so how could I lose my reputation?”

“Are you planning to bed down in the stables with the grooms and other male servants?” His eyes were sympathetic, but his voice was unrelenting. “It would still be you, albeit in breeches, and if you were discovered—which is likely—the consequences would be terrible.”

“How would I be discovered?”

“London is five days’ journey from here. Anything could betray you. Did you know that men whip out their cocks and piss against the wall?”

She blinked.

“You want to masquerade as a man,” he said. “What are you going to do if someone wagers that they can pee farther than you?”

“Is that likely?”

“It’s not unlikely. Men like to measure their prowess in ways that are related to the performance of their private parts, ridiculous though it seems.”

“I needn’t be disguised as a stableboy,” she pointed out. “I could pose as a young relative of yours.”

“If I travel from Lindow Castle to London with a well-dressed young lad, almost all will wonder if you are one of the Wildes. Everyone knows the duke has thirteen or fourteen children. They would stare at you.”

“Oh.”

“On the other hand, if I am merely part of a group that includes Lady Knowe, or North, or even one of your younger brothers, you simply become a young Wilde, traveling with an older relative. Nothing interesting to see . . . move along, if you please.”

“What?”

“Constables say that during street riots,” Jeremy explained. “My point is that if I travel to London with you, you would be a subject of interest. But if we brought along one of the older Wildes, that person would absorb the attention. People are fascinated by your family, in case you haven’t noticed.”

She harrumphed. “I’ve lived with their attention my entire life, so yes, I have noticed.”

“They would focus on Lady Knowe, or North, or Leonidas, not on a mere boy.”

“I think your argument is a weak one, Lord Jeremy.”

“We agreed on first names.”

“We didn’t really.”

“You have already addressed me as Jeremy. And I’m calling you Bess, or in extremis, Boadicea. Frankly, this breeches play you’re suggesting is not far from the warrior queen who took on the Romans. I don’t suppose she was wearing skirts, let alone panniers, when she led the charge.”

“I still don’t think a chaperone is necessary.”

“I suggest Lady Knowe.”

“This is ridiculous!” The words burst past her lips. “Yes, I see the danger if I pretend to be a stableboy, if I’m alone with a group of men. But I could be a stray young cousin of yours whom you were escorting to London.”

He shook his head. “You have the Wilde profile and eyebrows, Bess. There’s no mistaking the look. Every Wilde has it, except—”

“Except for my sister Joan,” Betsy said resignedly. “You needn’t elaborate. We all know that Joan’s hair is the precise shade of the infamous Prussian’s.”

“More to the point, the Wildes are well-known for eyebrows, high cheekbones, blue eyes with a tilt at the edges . . . Anyone in the south of England and most people in the north are able to identify a Wilde even from the worst-drawn prints.”

Betsy groaned.

She hated to admit that he was right. She did look like her father and her aunt. Joan stood out in the midst of them like a rose in a bunch of lilacs. Even the three younger children, Ophelia’s brood,