Too Wilde to Wed (The Wildes of Lindow Castle, #2)(13)

North let go of the soap and sat up so sharply that water sloshed out of the bath. “What in the hell did you just say?”

“I would have thought someone informed you. There are those who say that you despoiled your fiancée.” Boodle sniffed haughtily. “I have always denied it, and I shall to my dying day. I consider myself both loyal and discreet.”

For the first time since he heard of the scandal, anger heated North’s blood.

“You are the son of the Duke of Lindow,” Boodle explained. “Had you been overcome by passion, it would not be for one such as her.”

“There are no circumstances under which I would be overcome by passion, unless the lady shared my feelings,” North said.

“I said as much! A future duke has no need to force his attentions on any woman, from the highest to the lowest in the land.”

North stood up and grabbed the length of toweling before the valet could hand it to him. Boodle started babbling about his reputation again.

His reputation?

It was North who had apparently been accused of rape, though he could scarcely believe that nonsense.

“The prints have done the most damage,” Boodle was saying. “The sellers are like beetles, hiding under every rock. His Grace no sooner confiscates an actionable print than another is circulating the country.”

His brother Alaric, the author Lord Wilde, had been plagued by etchings that depicted him wrestling a giant kraken and fighting pirates. Neither of which his brother had ever done.

“I gather the depictions of me are not as heroic as those portraying Lord Wilde,” North said dryly.

Boodle snorted.

“What do they show?” Frankly, he didn’t care if he never received another invitation to an event in so-called polite society. Not that he, as a future duke, would be shunned.

A weary inner voice told him that even if he had committed something as terrible as rape, many people would forgive him. Manage to forget. Decide to pretend it had never happened.

“There is one in which you are emerging from a trunk in a lady’s bedchamber, supposedly that of Miss Belgrave. A scene taken from a Shakespeare play, I believe.”

North frowned. “A trunk? I wouldn’t fit in a trunk.”

“That is hardly the point. It had an offensive title: Lord Roland Seduces an Innocent, or the Despoiling of Virtue. From what I am told, it has proved extremely popular and sold copies throughout the country.”

North suppressed the curse that rose to his lips. He saw no point in fighting the fascination people had with buying prints of the Wildes, not after his father’s battle to eradicate images of his brother Horatius struggling in the bog that took his life.

Who in the hell would buy that print? Or one of a woman on the point of being “despoiled”?

He tossed the toweling over a bedpost and picked up the shirt laid out for him. It was exquisitely ironed and starched; Boodle was not wrong in lauding himself as one of the best valets in all England.

But its lace cuffs would fall over his knuckles.

“No,” he said, dropping it back on the bed. “No lace. Rip off the cuffs or give me another shirt.”

“That is not the best lace,” Boodle observed, a note of cunning entering his voice. “It was made in your friend Mr. Sterling’s factory. I judged that you would want to wear his product, as his reputation would be enhanced if the Marquess—if Lord Roland was seen wearing it.”

“No lace, Parth’s or otherwise,” North said, holding up the saffron-colored breeches. It wasn’t a color he liked, but he thought Boodle might faint if he suggested wearing his riding breeches to dinner.

After wrenching it up his legs, he managed to do up the placket. Glancing down at his front, he decided that he wasn’t entirely against the idea of Diana seeing him in these breeches.

Yellow silk stretched so tautly over his crotch that everything he had was on display. Some dark side of him wanted her to compare him to the man she had before him.

“Your thighs are monstrous,” Boodle moaned, concentrating farther down North’s legs. “As big as gourds. It’s all very well to pad one’s calves—but thighs shouldn’t look like that.”

North and his men had spent weeks fortifying Stony Point fortress with logs cut and dragged into position. He’d known it was a fool’s errand, but the commander wouldn’t listen to him, and it was better to do something than nothing.

When the fort was conquered in a mere fifteen minutes, it wasn’t for lack of logs. Just lack of intelligence, forethought, and soldiers.

It wasn’t as if he’d been in that one battle only. But that was the one that stuck with him, that he revisited in the middle of the night.

Lucky him.

Boodle knelt at his feet, reaching out to button the breeches below his knee, but North reflexively stepped backward. “I’ll do it.”

Alas, he no sooner bent over than a loud ripping sound indicated that the saffron-colored breeches had split from stem to stern.

To do him credit, Boodle didn’t shriek or curse. He rocked back on his heels and let out a sigh. Without a word, he stood up, turned to the wardrobe, and pulled out a pair of breeches that North used to wear for hunting. They were plain buckskin, worn to just the right softness in the rear.

“I might do damage to Parth’s reputation by being seen wearing his lace,” North suggested, taking up the buckskins. “People might call it the lace of louts and loose screws.”