Chapter 16 #2
“What the devil is wrong with your trousers, old chum?” Brandon asked King, casting a judgmental look down at his badly creased garments.
So much for no one taking notice, he thought grimly.
“Mind your own bloody wardrobe,” he growled, giving his friend’s attire a jaundiced eye. “Is your daughter choosing your waistcoats again?”
“As it happens, Pandy did select this one,” Brandon said with great pride, straightening his shoulders.
The waistcoat in question was a brilliant shade of vermilion.
“Being a father has made you utterly mad,” he said without heat.
There had been a time when he’d been horrified by the changes in his friend, but his own marriage to Verity had changed King’s perspective. He hadn’t been able to comprehend what true happiness was, having existed for all his life without it. But he had it now.
For how long?
King banished the unwelcome voice of fear, never far. He thought of the love and trust he so often saw in her eyes, and in that moment resolved to trust that those feelings were meant for him, not some phantom of her past. After the ball was over, he would tell Verity the truth.
“I do think I’ve always been rather a bit mad,” Brandon said, grinning. “Speaking of mad, I never thought I’d see the day you were hosting a ball of your own free will.”
King raised his flute of champagne in salute. “Touché. My wife is an angel, and I am persuaded I would carry the earth on my back for her if she but asked it of me.”
Brandon nodded. “Love has a way of doing that to a man.”
King didn’t even bother to deny it. What was the point? He was hopelessly in love with Verity. She made him a better man. She made everything better.
“Indeed. Who would have thought, years ago when we first convened, that we would all one day be happily married men, in love with our wives?”
“It seems impossible to comprehend.” Brandon’s face softened as his eyes settled on something across the room. “I never would have believed you, had you told me.”
King followed his friend’s gaze and realized it was someone rather than something that had captured Brandon’s attention. His duchess was engaged in an animated conversation with the Duchess of Camden. The two ladies were close friends, both equally renowned for their eccentricities and both lovely.
“Nor would have I,” King agreed, searching the colorful crush of guests for his own duchess.
Verity was with the Duchess of Riverdale and several other ladies, and he had no doubt that his wife was putting her angelic disposition to excellent use.
She had likely already secured sizable donations from half the ballroom on behalf of the Children’s Foundling Hospital.
Which reminded him, he truly needed to pull his fair share of the weight.
“I trust that we can count upon you and the duchess for a gift this evening,” he added.
Brandon was still gazing adoringly at his wife. “Naturally. My grandmother as well.”
King inclined his head. “That is most generous of Mrs. Carrington-Smythe.”
Brandon grinned. “The old bird can be quite munificent when she likes. And as for me, I simply do what my wife asks of me. If Lottie wants to donate a king’s ransom to the Children’s Foundling Hospital, then that is what we shall do.”
“Verity will be overjoyed to hear that.”
“How is the duchess faring as your wife?” Brandon asked, turning his attention back to King.
“No doubt Riverdale thinks I keep her locked in my dungeon all day and night, providing her nothing to eat save gruel and moldy biscuits,” he drawled. “However, I can assure you that she is well and, I think, contented.”
“Riverdale is a trifle bitter over the circumstances,” Brandon agreed. “But he will soften in time.”
The bastard had not yet.
King wasn’t certain he ever would.
He took a careful sip of his champagne, trying to tamp down the hurt that threatened to rise. “Perhaps.”
“He is in attendance this evening,” Brandon pointed out. “Surely that is an indication that his rancor no longer holds quite as much sting.”
“He is in attendance because his wife and his sister would no doubt brain him if he refused to come.”
“Richford and Whit have worked out their discord over Whit’s sister,” Brandon countered. “It shan’t be different for you and Riverdale.”
“Richford didn’t marry Whit’s sister whilst she was an amnesiac,” King said, self-loathing lacing his words.
The truth of it was, had Verity not suffered that head injury that caused her mistaken belief that they were in love, she wouldn’t have married him.
They were all wrong for each other. He had been a jaded sybarite who didn’t believe in love, and she had been in love with someone else.
Their friendship likely would never have led to a courtship.
There was the crux of the matter. If he hadn’t seized the moment and married her, neither of them would have known how beautifully they fit together.
But in so doing, he had also poisoned the well.
“At least she recalled you, old chum,” Brandon said brightly.
“She didn’t,” he admitted for the first time, the words torn from him.
But it felt good to admit. Practice, perhaps, for when he would have to unburden himself to the woman he loved more than life itself.
Brandon cocked his head, studying him, clearly confused. “What do you mean by that?”
“I mean that she confused me with her dead betrothed,” he elaborated grimly.
“Lord Leopold Douglas. The blow she suffered to the head robbed her of specific memories and confused others. I supplanted her beau in her mind, and she no longer remembers him. All that was left when she awoke was, for reasons I shall never know, me.”
Brandon stared at him, his expression inscrutable.
“And, no,” King added, “before you ask, no one else knows.”
“Not Riverdale?”
“No.”
“Your wife?”
King shook his head. “She has no recollection of Lord Leo. Nor does she realize she and I were never truly engaged to be wed.”
“Yet you married her.”
He held his friend’s gaze, unflinching. “I did.”
Brandon raised a brow. “Were you drinking one of your potions when you agreed to it?”
King bit out a laugh. “I was as sober as a vicar. We were taking tea, and she asked me when we were going to announce our betrothal to her family.”
“Riverdale is going to plot your murder if he ever finds out the truth,” Brandon said.
“I am aware. It isn’t Riverdale who concerns me most, however. It is my wife.” He paused, his gaze finding Verity across the ballroom. “I’ve fallen in love with her. I reckon I deserve my suffering for what I’ve done. But I’m going to have to tell her somehow.”
“The sooner you do, the better off you shall be,” Brandon advised. “Trust me on this matter. Honesty is of the greatest import in a marriage. You cannot keep secrets from each other. Tell her, and then beg for her forgiveness.”
“That is what I intend to do,” he said, still drinking in the sight of Verity.
She was radiant. The most beautiful woman in the room, with a heart to match.
He thought of how patient and caring she was with little Emma.
Of how tender and adoring she was with him, even though he didn’t deserve it.
He loved her more than he had ever imagined possible, and he was so proud to stand at her side as her husband that he might as well have gone about shouting to everyone in attendance how wonderful and kindhearted she was, and how grateful he was to call her his.
“Mayhap don’t tell Riverdale,” Brandon added. “If you value your life and limb.”
“It isn’t Riverdale that I fear,” he said, tearing his gaze away from Verity with great reluctance. “It is what I will do if she cannot forgive me.”