Chapter 6
Six
James had never played so many hands of cards and taken so little pleasure in winning. He should have felt at home in the familiar haze of the club. Instead, he felt like an impostor.
"Three kings," said the gentleman opposite him.
James glanced at his cards, barely seeing them. "Straight flush. My apologies."
Groans met the slide of coins toward him.
"Devil take you, Redford," Lord Bertram complained. "Can you not at least look pleased when you fleece a man?"
James narrowed his gaze. "I am saving my smiles for more meaningful occasions like when the Bishop misquotes Horace, for instance, or when you attempt poetry again."
The table chuckled.
Bertram clutched his heart. "Barbarian."
"You knew that when you sat down," came a drawl from behind James.
Magnus sank into the nearest empty chair. Beside him, Niall dropped into another and signaled for brandy.
James's hand tightened on his cards.
"Gentlemen," he said. "Come to rescue my opponents from ruin?"
"Hardly," Magnus said. "I owe Lord Bertram revenge, and I intend to enjoy it. However," his gaze flicked over Redford," we also came to see whether the rumors were true."
James arched a brow. "Which rumors? That Mrs. Dalrymple has taken up archery, or that the Bishop cried at Foxmere's battledore tournament?"
Niall's mouth twitched. "Both true, as it happens. But I meant the rumor that you have been losing at diversion and winning at melancholy."
Bertram, recognizing the tone of a conversation about to become serious, excused himself and gathered his coins. The other gentlemen drifted away, leaving James with his two oldest friends.
"Melancholy does not suit your complexion," Magnus remarked. "You go sallow. It offends me."
"You offend easily," James said. "It's one of your many charms."
Niall leaned his elbows on the table, studying him. “Lady Esme Jones."
James's fingers stilled.
He kept his voice light. "You have narrowed the entire Season down to two words. Impressive. The gossip columns should hire you."
"There are no columns about this," Niall said. "Everyone at Foxmere saw you in that garden. Saw her. And saw the way you both looked when you were not looking at one another."
James shuffled the deck. "And how did we look?"
"Like two people midway across a bridge," Magnus said quietly. "And too stubborn to admit the boards are cracking."
James's laugh sounded like a cough. "Then perhaps it is better to step back before we both fall into the river."
"You have already fallen into the river," Niall said. "Twice, by my count. Once literal, once not."
"I do wish you would stop keeping track of my aquatic humiliations," James muttered.
"We heard you told Woodmere you had no designs upon his sister," Magnus said.
"I did. Because I do not. Designs suggest intent. I have never intended, never planned, to marry anyone. You both know that."
"Yes," Niall said slowly. "I remember. Several years ago, after that business with Miss Cavendish—"
James's jaw tightened. "We agreed never to mention Miss Cavendish."
"You declared marriage was a cruel joke played by optimists upon themselves," Niall went on. "That you would not subject any woman to your... 'restless incompetence at being a proper man'?"
"You have always had a gift for dramatics," Magnus said.
"It was not drama. It was a resolution." James's voice hardened. "My parents' marriage was a battlefield. My father gambled away half his sanity and most of our comfort. My mother spent twenty years pretending she did not mind. I have no intention of recreating that."
"You are not your father."
"And ladies are not ledgers," Niall added. "However much Woodmere treats his sister like one."
James exhaled sharply. "Esme deserves safety. Steadiness. A man who doesn't wake some mornings wondering whether he has already ruined everything simply by existing. Do you truly believe I am that man?"
"Yes," Magnus said, without hesitation.
James stared. "You are biased. Lena has softened your brain."
"I don't know whether you are 'that man,' because I don't know what Esme will require in five years, or ten. Neither do you. That's the point of marriage. It's not a guarantee of perfection. It's a promise to stay while you both trip over your own feet," Niall said.
"I trip quite a lot," James said. "Have you considered that?"
"Frequently," Magnus replied. "I have also considered that you are at your worst when you are bored. Lady Esme has never, in all the time I have observed her, permitted anyone to be bored in her vicinity. Including herself."
"I saw you at the battledore pitch. You looked as though missing one shuttlecock mattered a great deal. I haven't seen you look like that about cards in ten years," Niall said.
"Cards do not fall into lakes."
"Esme did not fall into a lake at Foxmere," Niall said calmly. "But you're drowning all the same."
James pressed his thumb hard into the stack of cards until the edge bit his skin. "It is moot. She has made it clear she prefers to be sensible. She ended our little society herself."
"Ah," Magnus murmured. "So the lady you told would be better off without you has taken you at your word. And you are offended by her obedience."
James shot him a glare. "I am not offended. I am relieved."
Niall arched a brow. "You look thrilled."
He knew he looked exactly as he felt: as though someone had quietly shut a door on a room he had only just begun to enter.
He thought of Esme's face on the lawn, her eyes cool, her voice precise, the way she had called him Lord Redford with distance in her tone.
You never overstep. Not where it matters.
The words stuck.
"I am relieved," he insisted, because to say anything else would be to admit he wanted what he had sworn not to. "She will find some suitable gentleman who can discuss ledgers at breakfast and never once consider dragging her into a fountain."
"Watford?" Magnus said, incredulous. "You would prefer Watford and his ink?"
James forced a joke. "Ink is very dependable."
"James," Niall said, dropping the humor altogether. "You, who interfere at every turn when you see someone being forced into a dull fate, are now standing back and letting it happen to a woman you care for."
"I am protecting her," James said, the words harsher than he intended. "From me, from my inability to remain content, from my father's debts, which are not as comfortably buried as the world believes, from the fact that I am, by my own admission, a man who will not marry."
Magnus's gaze did not waver. "Then perhaps you must admit something else."
"And what?" James demanded.
"That you are a coward," Magnus said, not unkindly. "You hide behind that vow because it allows you to be noble without doing anything that frightens you."
The word landed.
James's stomach turned. "Careful, Berkshire."
"Or what?" Magnus asked quietly. "Rake my reputation? You already tried that, and I went and got happily married instead. You may scowl. You want her. You are afraid to say so. And you would rather watch her marry a man she does not laugh with than risk becoming your parents."
Niall drained his wine and set the glass down. "If you cannot imagine yourself married to Lady Esme," he said, "then fine. Stay away. Let her find someone who is not half in love with her and pretending indifference. But if the only thing between you and asking is fear—"
"Then that," Magnus finished, "is not protection. It is selfishness."
The club noise swelled around them. James stared at the cards in his hands and saw nothing.
Half in love.
He had never allowed the phrase purchase in his mind.
But when he thought of Esme—of her laughter in the park, her stubborn chin on the terrace, her eyes when she said mischief was over—the truth was no longer something he could outrun with jokes.
"Leave it," he said hoarsely. "Please."
Magnus and Niall exchanged a look. Magnus rose. "Very well. We have said what we came to say."
Niall clapped James's shoulder. "There is to be a musicale at Haverleigh in three nights' time," he said. "The Woodmere household will be there, as will we. Consider yourself invited."
James did not answer.
They left him alone at the table, surrounded by winnings that felt like useless metal disks.
A coward, he thought, staring at his empty glass. That is what you are.
The realization did not hurt as he had expected.
It burned.
Esme had never heard so many arias and wanted to scream through every one.
"Is it possible," Genny whispered in the Woodmere drawing room, "for a woman to die of a surfeit of tenors?"
"If it is, we shall discover it tonight," Esme murmured back, eyes on the door as the butler showed Viscount Watford out.
Her mother watched from the settee, hands folded, expression serene. Harrison stood at her shoulder. The room still rang faintly with Watford's last gallantries.
"Such a sensible young man," Mother said as the door closed. "So reliable. So orderly. I am very pleased he has not been put off by... recent incidents."
Esme's jaw ached. She unclenched it. "You mean the Serpentine."
"And the battledore business," Harrison added. "Haverleigh's butler informed me you very nearly brained Lord Bertram."
"I was nowhere near Lord Bertram," Esme said. "The shuttlecock simply fell."
Genny coughed to cover a laugh.
"Regardless," Harrison said, "Watford has shown himself forgiving. That speaks well for his character."
Or poorly for his imagination, Esme thought.
Aloud, she said nothing.
Mother’s gaze softened as it moved from Harrison to Esme. "We have been invited to a musicale at Haverleigh in three nights' time. The Duke and Duchess are hosting. Lord Watford has requested a place on your dance card, Esme. I assured him we would be delighted."
Esme felt a chill. "You assured him before asking me?"
"One does not insult a serious suitor with unnecessary hesitation," Mother said. "You liked him well enough before."
"He has excellent penmanship," Esme said flatly.