Page 71 of Duke of Wickedness

“You don’t have anyone else,” Percy reminded him. “You don’t let other people get close enough. In hindsight, it’s a bloody miracle that we managed a friendship, as you hide behind your devil-may-care exterior and I was the fussiest bastard in existence.”

David felt his jaw drop.

“That’s right,” Percy said, with no small amount of smug satisfaction. “I’m not pulling my punches today, Nightingale. I’ve been waiting for my turn at retribution since you pulled that stunt with the house party.”

“I didn’t—” David protested halfheartedly.

“Oh, shut your gob,” Percy said amiably. “You did. I know it, you know it, and I’m grateful for it. Catherine is the finest woman in creation. I’m sure whoever has gotten you all twisted up in knots is grand herself, too, though. So. Who is she?”

“Ha! I’m not telling you that.”

Percy shrugged a shoulder. “I can’t really fault you for your discretion, but it was worth a try. At least tell me what’s going on, would you?”

David wanted to balk on principle, but…well, hehadcome here for advice.

“There is a woman,” he admitted.

“The one whom you said was so interesting to you, I gather,” Percy said. “I can see you spending time with more than one woman in such a short time, but I doubt that you’d let more than one partner get her hooks in your emotions in such a period.”

“She hasn’t got herhooks—” David gave up protesting when Percy feinted toward his correspondence again, as if he intended to go back to his work. “Yes.Fine. Yes. It’s the same woman.”

Percy set the pen down again.

“And she doesn’t want you back?” he prodded.

David shook his head. “No, that’s not it.” He had been practically drowning in self-doubt these past few days, but whether Ariadne wanted him back? No, that much was certain.

“I find myself…unwilling to share her attentions,” he confessed.

Percy—the bastard—laughed at him.

“Oh, sod off,” David snapped.

“I’m sorry,” Percy said, not sounding sorry in the least. “It’s just—Well, you sound as though you’ve admitted to the most grievous crime, and not feeling a bit territorial over a woman you fancy.”

David took great affront over the termfancy, but if he fought Percy on every issue of semantics, they’d never get anywhere.

“It is—it’sdistasteful,” David spat. “I’m not… I don’t plan to try topossessa woman. She’s a person, not a thing. I don’t need to hoard her like a dragon sitting upon its gold. I won’t… I’m not suited to that.”

He pushed a frustrated hand through his hair, feeling entirely at sea with all of this—thisemotion. It was distracting, overwhelming. How were people supposed to get things done when they were just constantlyfeeling things?

He shuddered to think of all the poor souls that felt thisevery timethey engaged in a bit of casual bed sport. Truly. It was a burden.

Percy frowned. “Well, that’s more than one thing, isn’t it?”

David jolted out of the proper spiral of despair he’d been working up. “What do you mean?”

Percy shrugged. “Well, loving someone and wanting to possess them—I’d argue that those are always different things. Catherine is my wife, yes, but I don’townher. If she belongs to me, it is only insofar as I belong to her, as well.”

“Most men wouldn’t agree with you,” David pointed out.

“Yes, well, most men are areseholes,” Percy said lightly. “That’s why I also only have the one friend, you idiot.”

Despite the insult—and despite the careening feelings that roiled inside him—David laughed at that.

“And wanting not to share someone, at least when it comes to matters of the bedchamber… That’s not being a dragon, David. That’s just being a person in love.”

David considered this for long enough that he missed his opportunity to respond…and, he realized belatedly, his opportunity to contest the wordlove.