Page 27 of Duke of Wickedness (Regency Gods #4)

“ A re you having some sort of angina attack? Because if you don’t stop rubbing your chest like that, I’m going to call a physician.”

David looked up at Percy—whom he hadn’t even realized had sat down across from him at the club—then down at his hand, which was, indeed, rubbing at his chest.

“No,” he said, snatching his hand back down to his lap. “I’m—why are you here?”

“If you’re going to be an arsehole, I won’t call a physician,” Percy said. He was so annoyingly bloody sanguine these days. “Your last thought will be, ‘If only I was nicer to Percy.’”

“I feel as though you’re trying to annoy me into something,” David said peevishly, “but it isn’t going to work.”

“It kind of seems like it’s already working,” Percy observed.

David felt his hand inch up to rub his chest, then snatched it down to tap his fingers feverishly on the arm of his chair. His chest did feel tight, but he knew it wasn’t angina, though dropping dead might almost have been preferable to his current situation.

At least if he dropped dead, he wouldn’t have to face the truth.

He was jealous .

He’d had all the best intentions. He was going to bring Ariadne to the party, and he was going to see what interested her the most. And then, he was going to use that knowledge to help her find someone who was looking for a real partner, not just a dalliance.

Ariadne was on the marriage market; she was looking for a husband.

She could end up with some useless milksop like Hershire—though not literally Hershire; that would happen over David’s goddamned dead body—or she could end up in a satisfying marriage with someone who understood her.

Someone who saw her curiosity as the gift it was. Someone who would show her everything she wanted to see.

Someone who would understand that Ariadne was not just some typical miss, someone who would appreciate her properly.

It was a good plan. A reasonable plan.

And somehow he had ended up abandoning the plan, taking her upstairs—to the private places of his home —and pleasuring her.

He had gotten her all to himself, and still, he was jealous. Jealous, because he’d seen how many covetous eyes rested upon her. Jealous about her hypothetical future partner—the one that he himself had planned to introduce her to.

It was ridiculous. Ridiculous .

Yet, here he was.

“What has put you in such a dour mood?” Percy asked, peering at him.

David shot him a rude gesture, which, to his dismay, made Percy grin.

“My, my, my. David Nightingale. Is it a woman ?”

“You may have forgotten this,” David snapped, knowing he was being unreasonable but completely unable to stop himself, “but not all of us are enjoying blissful matrimonial constraints. Women are complicated.”

Percy opened his mouth, then closed it again.

“Oh, just say it,” David commanded tiredly.

It wasn’t as though he could escape his problems, not when they lived inside his own head. He’d fled his house because everywhere he’d looked, he’d seen Ariadne.

In his study, sprawled across his settee, languid after her pleasure. In his library, cheeks flushed with excitement as she praised his collection. In his parlor, curious and open as she watched his guests indulge their desires.

She’d been a ghost. She’d haunted him.

“Well, I have two observations, actually,” Percy said. David waved a hand, urging him to get on with it. It wasn’t as though he could get more miserable. “First, it is that you are an idiot.”

“Oh, thank you , you are so helpful?—”

“Because,” Percy went on, “women do not become less complicated once you marry them. But if you ever decide to put this theory to my wife—that matrimony has made her simple —please do so while I’m there. I want to see how hard she hits you.”

David scoffed. “Catherine would never hit me. She’s much too subtle for that. She would destroy me in a way that was much more painful than a blow to the chin. I’d never see it coming.”

Percy spread his hands. “You’re likely right, but we cannot say for sure. And do you know why? Because she remains complex and mysterious, even to me. It’s part of the joy of the thing.”

“Before I lose you to your raptures, what was the second thing?”

David couldn’t listen to Percy talk about how happy he was with his wife.

He just couldn’t. The whole thing was unpalatable to him at the best of times—happily married people were always so sure that others could be like them, despite the overwhelming deluge of evidence to the contrary in every corner of the ton —but now, he simply could not stand it.

Especially because Percy was waxing delighted about the other Lightholder sister, which really didn’t help.

Percy looked at him like he had walked right into a trap.

“Well, my second suggestion would be that you try it.”

“Seaton, I try to protect you from the details, but if you think there is anything that you have tried that I haven’t?—”

“Marriage,” Percy interrupted. “I think you should consider trying marriage.”

For five whole seconds, David stared at him.

“Have you,” he asked very calmly, “lost your mind?”

“No,” Percy said, just as calmly.

“What,” David returned, perhaps not quite as calm as he’d been before, “would make you think that I am at all interested in marriage? Have I ever said anything to you that makes you think that I want to get married ?”

This was the problem with having happy friends. When Percy had been a bitter curmudgeon, furious because so many people in the ton mocked his father’s humble origins, he had never asked David annoying questions like, Why don’t you try getting married ?

But now, after David had gone to the trouble of matchmaking him with the perfect woman for him, Percy was driving him to the madhouse.

No good deed went unpunished, did it?

But stupid Percy’s stupid happiness made him impervious to David’s jabs.

“I’ve never seen you twisted up about a woman, either,” he observed. “Perhaps things change.”

“That’s not what this is,” David protested swiftly—not because he feared that idea would take hold, just because of how utterly wrong it was.

“This woman is different, yes, but they’re all different.

I may be a rake, but I’m not the kind of bastard who treats every woman like she could be replaced by any other. ”

Now that he thought about it, he was offended that Percy would even suggest it, and maybe this showed on his face, because his friend looked contrite.

“Come, now, man, that isn’t what I was?—”

“No matter what the gossiping biddies might suggest,” David went on, anger rising within him, “it is not actually unjust to seek novelty in relationships as long as everyone knows what is happening. I have never misled a partner, Percy, you know that. That’s the sin.”

“David—”

“And if I want to brood about that, it seems like it’s my own bloody business, isn’t it? So you can take your preaching elsewhere, take it to someone who is suited to marriage. Because I am exactly what I’ve always been. And you know that.”

He forced himself to stop talking. There was a beat of silence.

“I’m not judging you, David,” Percy said gently, as though David were a horse he feared would startle. “I just… Is this still making you happy?”

Right now? No, it bloody wasn’t.

But that was a sign that he needed to find Ariadne the right partner, not that he needed to suddenly embrace the conventional life that Society wanted for him.

“Nobody is happy all the time,” he said.

It was true, but it did not seem to placate Percy.

Even so, his friend didn’t say anything more, didn’t push any further.

“Of course,” he said. “You’re right, of course.”

There was another silence, one that was not entirely comfortable. But it faded, eventually, and the two began discussing a business concern that they’d collaborated upon, and by the time David left, there were no lingering traces of the tension between them.

The tight feeling in David’s chest, however, remained.

Emotions aside, he told himself as he headed home, the things he’d said to Percy weren’t incorrect. Things with Ariadne were new and different. And yes, each relationship was different, but this one…

Well, maybe it was a touch more different than others.

But that didn’t mean—it didn’t mean anything.

Nothing except that David had to stick to his original plan. He needed to find someone who could give Ariadne what she needed—everything that she needed—before someone ended up getting themselves hurt.

“Oh, Ari, don’t you look grand!” Catherine exclaimed when Ariadne met her at the Beauchamp ball the following week. “I’ve never seen that gown on you before.”

“Do you like it?” Ariadne asked, spreading her skirts a little to give her sister a good look. “I know it’s a little more…risqué than my normal look, but I thought the color might suit me.”

It wasn’t a terribly suggestive gown, not when Ariadne compared it to the silvery gown from David’s party, but it was a bit bolder than what unmarried young misses were encouraged to wear.

The blue was rather bright, and the cut of the gown was simple in a way that made the shimmering weave of the fabric stand for itself, rather than relying on the usual baubles and embellishments to stand out.

She knew she looked good, but it also defied most of the usual rules she followed, the ones that did everything Society recommended—nothing more, nothing less.

“You look marvelous,” Catherine said, appraising Ariadne. “But it’s not just the gown. It’s you. You seem so very confident.”

It was clearly intended as praise, and Ariadne took it as such.

There had been a time when each of these Society events made her practically dizzy with nerves.

She’d even tossed up her accounts a time or two before she had embraced that an exacting adherence to the rules could provide a sense of security when facing the terrifying vultures that made up most of the ton .