aching moans.
A fierce male satisfaction grew inside him when she wound her legs around his hips, sobbing out demands with raw erotic fever. His cock deep inside her, he cupped her face in his hands and said, “I love you, and you’re mine.”
His heart squeezed, meeting her shining eyes.
“I love you too,” she whispered.
Afterward, he carried her home, wrapped in her white cloak. “She fell,” he told Prism, who looked mildly alarmed.
“I’m fine,” Betsy said, raising her head from his chest.
“I’ll take her upstairs,” Jeremy told the butler. “She may have twisted her ankle. She may have to rest in bed for the day.”
She managed to muffle her giggle against his coat.
Chapter Twenty-four
When Betsy called Winnie and asked for supper in her room hours later, Jeremy didn’t bother to hide behind the curtains or whatever it was that gentlemen did in melodramas.
She was his, and that was the end of it.
She had fallen asleep, her hair a midnight cloud tangled around her shoulders—he’d washed out the powder, but they made love rather than comb out her curls—when a gentle knock on the door brought a note.
It was from Grégoire: I am in the library. I wish to say goodbye, as I shall return to London early in the morning.
Jeremy frowned at the note. He hadn’t liked the look on Grégoire’s face when he talked of Bedlam. Nor that his cousin detailed the print that depicted Jeremy hiding behind a tree with a familiarity that suggested he sketched it. Grégoire’s anger seemed to hide a different emotion, a suggestive and disturbing thought.
He pulled the covers up to Betsy’s chin and dropped a kiss on her hair.
When he reached the library, Grégoire was seated, reading a book. Jeremy frowned. The scene was staged: but to what end? His cousin had always been a pain in the arse, but Grégoire’s instinct for drama was moving past annoying to something else.
“Cousin,” Grégoire said, rising, putting his book to the side, and sweeping into a bow. “I have a grave matter that I wish to raise with you before I leave for London.”
Jeremy dropped into the chair opposite him without returning his bow. “What is it?”
“I accept that you have formed an understanding with Lady Boadicea.”
“You could call it that.”
Grégoire’s eyes darkened.
“Since you sent that note to her bedchamber, you know that it is far more than an ‘understanding,’” Jeremy supplied.
“It would be morally wrong to marry her.”
Jeremy didn’t roll his eyes, but only because he had decided to limit insults to words. “Your reasoning?”
“You were damaged in the war,” Grégoire said, leaning forward. His eyes were so earnest that Jeremy almost missed the calculation in their depths. “You are not the man you used to be.”
He paused, presumably to allow Jeremy to absorb this terrible news.
“True,” Jeremy said. He leaned back in his chair, examining Grégoire as carefully as he might a colonial soldier. He’d always known that his cousin wanted to inherit the title, but now ambition seemed to have gone further than wistfulness.
It was remarkably annoying. Betsy lay in a bed upstairs, and he could be there, running a hand around her breasts, tasting her again, making her ache until her eyes softened and she began to beg him.
“Go on,” he ordered, irritation lacing his voice.
Grégoire arranged his features into an expression of deep concern, but something about his eyes looked feral. Jeremy didn’t move a muscle, but he abruptly realized that the room was a battlefield, albeit without cannon fire.
“You were in Bedlam for over a week,” Grégoire said, putting his cards on the table. “While there, you were violent and had to be restrained. I spoke to the attendants myself. They brought in three men to subdue you.”
“That was surprisingly solicitous of you,” Jeremy drawled.
“I do care for this family, unlike you,” Grégoire retorted. “If you marry Lady Boadicea, you will injure her the next time you fall into a fit. You will damage your wife, and quite possibly your children as well. You might kill them.”
Jeremy clenched his teeth together. It wasn’t a solution to kill his cousin, though it felt like a necessity. “Just to clarify, you didn’t know I was in Bedlam until Parth rescued me?”
“Certainly not. I dislike interfering in matters of the heart,” Grégoire said with a pious smirk, “but I feel that the duke ought to be informed of the particulars of your stay amongst the madmen. Any father would wish to know of it.”
“‘Amongst the madmen,’” Jeremy echoed. “Nice phrase.” He gave Grégoire