Say No to the Duke (The Wildes of Lindow Castle #4) - Eloisa James Page 0,81
saw that the duchess was backing down with a great waggling of her eyebrows. “We should have arranged among ourselves which paintings we wished to buy. Thank you, but no. These are far too expensive.”
“I agree,” said a grumpy voice behind her. “That’s an early effort, and it isn’t even enameled.”
“Money is not a concern,” Jeremy told Betsy.
His father leaned from his other side. “Neither of us has anyone to spend money on.” He began to lift his catalogue.
“Make him stop!” Betsy whispered, laughing. “Just imagine how angry my aunt will be if your father outbids her.”
“I shall paint Mr. Peters with enamels,” Mr. Finney said conversationally, hitching his chair forward. “That’s the great thing now. I might as well turn out a few more of them between quelling riots and jailing malcontents and the like. Enamels catch the tender gloss of a beautiful woman’s cheeks as mere paints can never do.”
Betsy smiled at him. “Stop,” she whispered.
But the old man was irrepressible. “I’ll paint you in breeches,” he whispered back, “but perhaps with an overskirt? In a rose garden.”
“Sir,” Jeremy said, turning to him with a ferocious scowl.
“You are lucky to have such a protective companion.” Mr. Finney reached over to tap on Aunt Knowe’s shoulder.
She startled on seeing him and smiled. The moment she won the miniature of the boy, she rose and beckoned to Mr. Finney. They left the room together.
“You’re going to be painted by a famous miniaturist,” Jeremy said. “What do you think of that?”
“He wants to paint me in breeches,” Betsy breathed into his ear.
“So do I,” Jeremy said. “I don’t know how to paint so you’d have to pose for hours. Days.”
Another miniature was knocked off, but without Mr. Finney’s exclamations and Aunt Knowe’s excitable bidding, the auction was less interesting. The duchess managed to win a portrait, A Lady in Brown.
Aunt Knowe was waiting for them in the carriage. “Yoo-hoo,” she called, opening the door. “The most marvelous thing, darlings! We’re going to Fulshaw Hall for supper. It’s Samuel Finney’s manor house, just south of here.”
Snowflakes were whirling around Jeremy’s shoulders, tiny ones catching the light from the open door of the auction house.
“I have one addendum to our discussion of shame,” he said to Betsy.
“Yes?”
“Shame cannot be my daily companion, if I’d like you to be my daily companion.”
The duchess was being hoisted into her carriage; apparently she found breeches somewhat confining.
“The same is true for you,” Jeremy said, his eyes searching hers: tender, ferocious, longing. All kinds of emotions that she’d never seen from any man who’d proposed to her. There was nothing respectful about Jeremy. He would challenge her every day. Her whole life.
Her aunt was biding her time in the carriage, but any moment she would bellow for them.
“Or you can say Yes to the duke, instead of No,” Jeremy continued. “When you are certain about your choice, let me know. If you decide to become a duchess, tomorrow my father and I will return to his—to our—house.”
Chapter Twenty
The temperature had fallen by the time the carriages reached the inn, allowing their passengers to dress for dinner, including Thaddeus but not Grégoire, who was still bed-bound, before taking them on to Fulshaw Hall. The air had turned to a thick blanket, hanging close to the ground. Snowflakes were everywhere, quickly blinked from eyelashes and settling again a moment later.
The manor was barely visible through the swirling snow, although light spilled from windows and the open front door. Jeremy squinted at it. Seven bays, plum-colored, patterned brick . . . the painter had done nicely for himself.
Or perhaps Finney had inherited it.
Inside, he looked for miniatures, but didn’t find any: In fact, it was a perfectly ordinary house. Mr. Finney lived with a widowed cousin named Mrs. Grabell-Pitt, who looked somewhat faint when she realized that her house had been graced not merely with a duchess, but with two Wildes. After that, she did nothing but smile, displaying long rows of saffron-colored teeth.
Jeremy went through the meal without looking at Betsy more than three or four times. She was seated beside Samuel Finney, the canny old man who had known instantly that she was a woman and a Wilde.
He was at the other end of the table, seated beside his hostess. She talked about snow and quince jelly and her fear that songbirds would freeze on their boughs.
“Not a song will be heard in the spring,” she predicted, her eyes owlish with alarm.