she didn’t make it to a boat, or did she?”
“Caught at the pier,” Her Grace said. “Hauled back and married off the next morning. Rumor has it she was tied to a bedpost all night to make certain that she didn’t escape, but my mother said that was apocryphal. She never liked my great-great-uncle, though, and we children considered him an ogre who might well have imprisoned his daughter, albeit temporarily.”
“I don’t expect that their marriage was very happy,” Betsy said, which showed that she hadn’t been around le monde very long.
“Oh, no, it was very happy,” the duchess said, sounding as surprised as Betsy was sorry. “Now if my great-aunt had scampered off to Italy with some black-haired conte, she likely would have been miserable. Not a good draught of ale in the whole country.”
Betsy grinned at that, and Jeremy could practically see the duchess’s happiness blossom as she smiled back.
They liked each other; Thaddeus and Betsy was a marriage made in heaven.
“Beer is what saves a marriage,” the duchess said, spilling all her secrets before her son even had a ring on Betsy’s finger. “A good ale has often saved this country from rack and ruin at the hands of the idiots in Lords. The husbands go home at night, and their wives explain what they should do after they’re mellowed by a tankard of excellent beer.”
“I could drink some ale,” Jeremy said, mostly to cover up the fact that Thaddeus still hadn’t said a word.
Just then the coach began bouncing as the duke’s springs encountered the knobbly stones lining Wilmslow’s main street.
“I wish I had more to contribute to a discussion of successful marriage,” Lady Knowe said, “but given my ignorance, and our impending arrival at the teahouse, I think we’ll have to postpone the conversation.”
“We shall all go,” the duchess announced.
“To tea? I should hope so,” Lady Knowe responded. She had clearly noticed Thaddeus’s silence. In fact, Jeremy had the sense that not much ever got past Lady Knowe. “I like ale, but it has its time and place.”
“No, to the auction,” Her Grace said.
She was smiling at Betsy as if she’d found a long-lost daughter. Perhaps she felt that way. Jeremy had the sudden realization that the duchess’s pink-clad barrel shape disguised a heart that would have loved to rampage about in breeches.
“We will all go to the auction,” she continued. “Lady Boadicea can pose as one of my nephews a few times removed. I have hundreds of them.”
“Unfortunately, not even duchesses are allowed to appear at the auction house in Wilmslow,” Lady Knowe said. “They have a rule keeping out ladies, which is frightfully old-fashioned.”
“I could wear pantaloons,” the duchess remarked.
“No, you couldn’t,” Lady Knowe retorted. “Your figure is unsuited to the task.”
The duchess looked down thoughtfully at her plump hips. “I know an excellent tailor in London.”
“Few men are shaped like a beehive,” Lady Knowe said, not unkindly. “My figure would not be flattered by breeches either. We’re like the girls in that Shakespeare play: One of them was a beanpole and the other was an acorn.”
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Betsy supplied.
Thaddeus still hadn’t said a word.
The carriage door swung open. Her Grace rose to leave the carriage, taking the hand of a waiting groom, followed by Lady Knowe, and finally Betsy.
Jeremy scowled at Thaddeus, who looked back at him with that imperturbable calm he’d affected ever since Eton. Yet Jeremy could see a tic near his eye.
Thaddeus didn’t want a wife who fancied wearing breeches.
How foolish.
Jeremy didn’t want a wife, but for the sake of seeing Betsy in breeches, he’d marry the baker’s daughter.
“Don’t make an ass of yourself,” he said. Though why he was helping Thaddeus in his courtship, he didn’t know.
“I shall not,” Thaddeus stated.
Others might have believed him, but Jeremy had his doubts. Thaddeus had always been obsessed by lineage. His father had drummed it into his head, the better to excuse himself for not marrying the woman of his heart.
Old fool.
By the time Jeremy left the carriage, Lady Knowe was already escorting the duchess into the teahouse. For her part, Betsy beamed up at Thaddeus with that sweetly biddable—and utterly dishonest, now Jeremy thought of it—expression with which she’d won over polite society.
“Betsy,” Thaddeus said haltingly.
Jeremy probably should leave the two of them to have this uncomfortable conversation in private, but instead he stayed where he was. His life had been sorely short of amusement lately.
“Yes?” Betsy asked.
“Perhaps you were joking about wearing breeches in public?”
“No, I was