Page 62 of Duke of Wickedness

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 notquiteas calm as he’d been before, “would make you think that I am at all interested inmarriage? Have I ever said anything to you that makes you think that I want toget married?”

This was the problem with having happy friends. When Percy had been a bitter curmudgeon, furious because so many people in thetonmocked 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’sthe 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 relationshipwasdifferent, 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.”