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“Many thanks, butno,” Benedict interrupted, his voice garbled as his gaze climbed even higher.

“That is disappointing,” Lady Charlotte purred, patting his cheek and then motioning for her friend to follow her.

The moment they’d gone, Benedict shut the door.

“Benedict,” Andrew called in greeting, “to what do I owe this early morning pleasure?”

“It is not morning,”

“I was speaking metaphori—”

“It is afternoon.” The other man grabbed his timepiece and tapped the glass front with the tip of his respectably gloved finger. “Twenty minutes past twelve o’clock, to be exact.” His friend paused to frown at the doorway the young widows had just stepped through. “I’ll have you know it’s bad form entertaining one’s mistresses at one’s family townhouse.”

“It’s even worse form to interrupt a friend in the middle of a good fucking,” he drawled, and Benedict’s color blazed several shades redder. “But here we are.”

“You needn’t be crude,” Benedict mumbled.

“Is this why you’ve come?” he asked. “To lecture me on my behavior?”

“I have long since ceased to try.”

“Yes, and I appreciate that you abandoned your attempts.”

When they’d been around twelve or so, Benedict had proposed in the quiet of those midnight hours while the rest of their house had slept at Eton that they transform themselves. That they dedicate their efforts to becoming respectable and being men of honor.

Andrew had scoffed.

The other man had tried and succeeded in becoming everything their respective—but not respectable—fathers hadn’t been.

“What is the urgent matter that merited interrupting my morning pleasure?”

“Do you mean your morning pleasure that likely was a mere continuation of your last evening’s pleasure?”

Andrew grinned, and his friend rolled his eyes.

“You are late,” Wakefield said.

“I don’t—”

“Oh, don’t give me that nonsense,” Benedict interrupted. “Miss Gray.”

He stared too long.

“As in Marcia. As in—”

“I know who Marcia is,” he said, interrupting whatever lecture was forthcoming. “I considered going, but then didn’t want to make a scene by arriving late and detracting from the happy affair and all. I intend to put in a belated appearance at the wedding breakfast.”

His valet at some point had already filled the washbasin, and Andrew padded across the room.

“You were not the only one who would have been late,” Benedict muttered.

Andrew paused, water sluicing through his fingers as he looked questioningly over at his friend.

“Thornton,” the other man bit out.

Andrew noted something harsh in Wakefield’s voice when he spoke that name… which was odd as Wakefield and Thornton were both friends and partners in a number of business investments.

“Never tell me the fellow was late to his own wedding.” Marcia would have hated that. She deserved far better.