Chapter 16 #2
“Your marriage…” He grimaced. Good God. Was he truly standing here, speaking to DuMond—friend, business partner—to discuss not commerce, nor entertainment, nor the current war between gaming hells, but marriage?
The world had not lied when it claimed matrimony ruined a man. It most certainly did.
“My marriage…?” DuMond prompted when Argyll failed to continue.
Brimming with tension, Argyll turned fully toward him. “Your marriage. To Lady Faith—the marchioness.”
“Yes. Lady Faith. My marchioness,” DuMond said mildly. “I am familiar with her.”
Argyll ignored the sardonic grin tugging at the other man’s mouth.
“Your marriage began…problematically.”
“As in she entered my office, pilfered confidential information from our clients, and I then publicly ruined her to force her hand in marriage?”
“Yes.” Argyll seized on the answer with more relief than he cared to admit. So this…this disaster of a wedding night was not entirely unprecedented. Quite normal even.
That did nothing to ease the discomfort of his next question.
He tugged at his cravat. “Given all of that, your wedding night. That is to say, the night you married her.”
“Technically, I married her during the day. And at night—”
Argyll latched on. “Came the wedding night.”
“No.”
Relief struck with startling force.
“It did not?” Argyll asked, barely failing to keep the eagerness from his voice. If it’d happened to a fellow like—
DuMond frowned. “No, as in, I am not discussing my wedding night with you, Argyll.”
“I am not looking for details,” Argyll said, surging forward.
DuMond cleared his throat.
Argyll followed his gaze—down.
Only then did he realize he had seized his friend by the front of his lapels. Heat flooded his collar. He released him at once.
“No need for particulars,” Argyll said curtly. “I merely require confirmation that consummation does not necessarily occur on the wedding night.”
“Two days.”
Relief nearly bowled him over. It’d been but a day in Argyll’s case. He still had an entire morning and afternoon to seduce her before he had a story like DuMond’s to tell.
Or as the case would have it—never tell.
Argyll took a more measured drink. “Virgins,” he muttered under his breath. “They are…tricky.”
Here they were, men of the world, seasoned rakes with innumerable conquests, and yet the innocent women they had taken to wife proved curiously impervious to their charms.
“In what way?” DuMond’s hesitant question snapped Argyll’s eyes open.
Argyll fixed him with a pointed look. Then he nodded.
DuMond’s lashes swept low.
Argyll nodded again.
Confusion lingered stubbornly on the other man’s face.
“You know,” Argyll said carefully, “we need not venture into particulars regarding our wives.”
DuMond’s mouth opened, closed, then opened again. “What, precisely, is it you expect me to know?”
So much for friendship. He would make him say it.
“That they are not necessarily…agreeable to the whole consummation business.”
Horrified shock sent DuMond’s brows flying toward his hairline. “My God. You forced her?”
Outrage snapped Argyll’s spine ramrod straight.
“How dare you?” he demanded. “As though I would need to force a lady—or would ever wish to. What sort of blackguard do you take me for?”
Asking if I would rape a woman.
“Do you even know me?” he spat.
“My apologies, Argyll.”
Appalled, physically ill his friend should doubt him so greatly, he shook his head.
“…I do not want you coming to my bed after you’ve spent the day in some woman’s arms, Gregory. I will not do it…”
And yet, you took offense that your wife of not even a full day should have drawn the conclusion she had.
Argyll turned and selected the next most expensive bottle from DuMond’s sideboard.
“Why don’t you begin again?”
If he weren’t so bloody desperate, he’d have told the marquess to take his offer and stuff it up his arse.
“I referred,” he said tightly, “to a new bride wanting to…” Never. “Wait to consummate the union?”
This time he poured a modest measure of brandy into a snifter. Best to affect nonchalance. Far preferable to drinking straight from the bottle—even if that was precisely what he wanted to do.
“Argyll.” The weird quality to his friend’s voice brought him around. “I was the one who delayed my wedding night to my marchioness.”
Argyll sprayed amber liquid across the room, choking on what little he had managed to swallow. “Y-You—”
No. He could not even say it. And not merely because apoplexy had seized him whole.
DuMond crossed the room swiftly and thumped him between the shoulder blades.
The touch—so reminiscent of his mystifying wife’s assistance upon their first meeting—had Argyll jerking away at once. He glared murder at his friend and partner.
DuMond redeemed himself somewhat by sparing him the need to ask.
“I was occupied commissioning a token in honor of our wedding day,” he explained.
Argyll absorbed that slowly.
“A token,” he repeated, nodding. “For your wedding day.”
My God. Of course. What a bloody fool. Why had he not considered that?
“The ladies do enjoy a bauble,” he murmured thoughtfully. “Thank you, DuMond. This has been…most illuminating.”
He patted the other man’s shoulder, set his glass aside, and turned for the door.
DuMond stopped him at the threshold. “Argyll? Something tells me it wasn’t.”
“Oh, go to hell. If there’s one thing I understand, it is knowing what pleases a woman.”
And with the laughter filling the other man’s pronouncement, Argyll took his leave.