Page 27 of My Darling Mr. Darling
As one they glanced toward him, then back at each other once again for a drawn out, shared speaking glance, and broke out once more into snickers that would have been better suited to school children. Apparently therewasa joke—and John was the butt of it.
“To what do we owe the pleasure of your company?” John directed the inquiry to Grey as he took a seat. A barely-restrained grin lingered at the corner of Grey’s mouth. John might have been tempted to call it a smirk, but Grey hadn’t done all too much smirking in recent weeks.
“As a matter of fact,” Grey said, “you owe it to the flowers you sent your wife.”
Alex tried and failed to suppress another round of laughter; his shoulders shook with mirth as he bent over his glass in an effort to contain it.
John felt a muscle twitch beneath his eye and subtly worked his jaw to ease the tight clench of his teeth. Damned women told each othereverything. “I don’t take your meaning.”
“Daisies, John?” Grey asked. “Really.Daisies?”
Defensively, John snapped, “They seemed an inoffensive choice!”
Alex howled with laughter.
“Not to Violet, apparently,” Grey said. “It seems that she was overtaken by a sudden fit of sneezing. Apparently, she evinces a similar reaction whenever she is in close proximity to daisies. The attack was violent enough that she has been sent to bed to recover, and Serena’s gone to play nursemaid.”
“You’re joking,” John said, aghast. “I have a portrait of her—she’s painted in a damned field of them!”
Grey shrugged. “Likely an artist’s embellishment,” he said. “I’m told she’ll recover in a few days, so you need not overburden yourself with guilt. But I would strike that particular flower from any potential future gifts, were I you.”
John scrubbed at his face with one hand and reached for the bottle of liquor with the other, pouring a measure into a glass. Another mark against him—and Violet had little enough tolerance for him as it was. She had asked only too recently why he had not had her declared dead; perhaps now she might begin to suspect that he meant to do away with her himself.
What sort of husband sent his wife to her sickbed on account of a poorly chosen gift of flowers?
“Butdaisies, John?” Alex asked. “Come now—you can surely afford roses.”
Of course he could have; it was just that they had seemed such atypicalchoice—bland, omnipresent, trite—and Violet was not a typical woman. He had wanted to give her something that would have carried fond memories of a happier time in her life. A time which had, apparently, never existed at all.
“I think,” Grey said slowly, “unless I am much mistaken, that it was an honest attempt to be thoughtful.” He followed this with a faintly approving nod. “Considerate of you. Wretchedly misguided, as it has turned out, but considerate nonetheless.”
John refused to succumb to embarrassment. There was nothing wrong with a man sending his wife flowers—excepting, perhaps, the outcome that had resulted from it this time. “I couldn’t have known,” he said. “I assure you, an aversion to daisies never came up before now.” Again, he was struck by the strange dichotomy of knowing somuchof her…and still somehow so little.
Alex seemed to have swallowed down the last of his laughter. “Somehow I doubt your intentions will count for very much at all,” he said, but the glimmer of satisfaction in his eyes suggested that he was still nursing a grudge over John’s long-kept secret, and that he considered John’s untenable situation a kind of karmic retribution.
Well, if Alex was determined to be in a snit, John could easily give him something worth being in a snit about. “It occurs to me,” he said, summoning up a caustic smile, “that although this business with Violet may drag on longer than I’d like, Icansolve another problem I’ve struggled with lately.”
Wariness flickered across Alex’s face. They had grown up together, he and John, and he ought to know well enough that the particular tone that John had employed bespoke trouble. “Oh?” he said, his fingers tightening imperceptibly around his glass.
“Mm,” John said. “Your mother. She wants me married off nearly as much as you. But then”—John performed a careless flip of his hand, a blasé gesture designed to ruffle Alex’s metaphorical feathers—“I have already got a wife. She couldbe focusing the whole of her efforts upon you. If she learned of it, that is to say.”
“You wouldn’t.” A tight, even declaration—a dare, more than anything else. Alex’s green eyes had become shards of glass, glinting and bright.
“He’s bluffing,” Grey said to Alex with such certainty that Alex instantly relaxed.
John had forgotten for a moment Grey’s uncanny ability to read people, to ferret out truth from lies as easily as breathing. It had served Grey well, and John did not appreciate Grey turning it against him.
“ButImight,” Grey added, and when Alex shot him a killing glance, he shrugged and said, “What? Secrets are my bread and butter. I find it’s so much easier to secure someone’s cooperation when I’ve got a few of their secrets tucked away in my pockets. Andyou”—he tipped his glass toward Alex—“have been sulking like a child. It’s unbecoming. You’re a bloody duke, man.”
For a moment, Alex tightened his jaw in truculent obstinacy, and John thought he would dig in his heels in the service of nursing his grudge for a bit longer—but apparently Grey’s level stare delivered with threat of blackmail had served its purpose, and he said to John, in a voice dripping with petulance, “Oh,all right. You are forgiven.”
“Gracious of you,” John remarked dryly.
“Don’tdo it again.”
“I assure you, I have absolutely no intention of marrying in secret and then regrettably losing track of my bride for the better part of a decade at any point again in the future.” John sipped his whisky. “Incidentally, I would not recommend it. Learn from my mistakes.”
Alex gave a soft huff of laughter, and it contained not even the faintest trace of ill-humor. “I think I am safe from that particular mistake,” he said at last. “Though I am curious to see how you intend to get yourself out of yours.”