Isaac looked up at him with his mouth slightly open. “That,” he said, “is the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me.”
“Do not repeat it.”
“I shall repeat it at every dinner for the rest of my life.”
On the fifth day, he gathered his friends at Threadgill’s.
Matthew sat on the long bench against the wall with his cane between his knees and his one good eye on the ring while Richard stripped down to his shirtsleeves and put up his fists.
Victor—restored, forgiven, a little quieter than he had been but more himself for it—leaned on the ropes and hurled insults that had no edge of envy underneath them this time.
And Cassian boxed the way he always had to express everything he could not say. Except now, there was less that he could not say, so he boxed badly, distracted, smiling, and Richard got past his guard three times in a row and crowed about it.
“You are hopeless,” Richard said, dancing back. “You used to be the best blade in this room, and now, you box like a man thinking about his woman.”
“Iamthinking about my wife.”
“She is not your wife yet.”
“She will be on Thursday.”
“Are you sure this time? You will not give her a horse and a head start and a fond farewell?” Richard grinned to take the sting off it.
Cassian, who would have flattened any other man for the joke a week ago, only dropped his guard entirely and let Richard tap him gently on the jaw.
“I am sure,” he replied. “I have spoken to her father. I have her hand and his blessing and a special license. And if you make one more reference to the carriage, Richard, I will set her dog on you. It has eaten two of my boots, and it is only just beginning.”
Victor laughed from the ropes. “Let me attend this one,” he said. “The first wedding, I missed the best part, having been told to sit with Joanna and hold her fan, and then it was canceled. Let me come to the one that holds.”
“You will stand up with me.”
The room fell quiet. Even the men sparring at the far end seemed to pause. Richard looked at Cassian and then at Victor, whose charming face had gone still.
“Cassian,” Victor said. “I hit your oldest friendship in the teeth at a house party and spoke of your bride in a way I am ashamed of now. You do not have to?—”
“You are my oldest friendship, Victor. We made our peace. Stand up with me.” Cassian wiped his face with the back of his wrist. “We were nothing once, you said. Two second sons and no future between us. Well, you will stand up beside me on Thursday while I marry the best thing that has ever happened to me, and you will be the first to congratulate me, and then we will all go and get extravagantly drunk, the way nothings do. And you will forgive yourself, Victor, because I have, and it is tiresome being forgiven by everyone except oneself. I should know, I have only just stopped.”
Victor turned his face away for a moment, toward the high dirty window. When he turned it back, it was wet. He did not pretend otherwise.
“Thursday,” he said roughly. “I will be there. Sober, even, until it is done.”
Suddenly, Matthew cleared his throat. They all looked at him. The old man had been silent the whole match, watching with his one good eye the way he had watched ten thousand matches.
He levered himself up on his cane and surveyed the three of them, the Duke and the Duke and the Earl, all of them grown, all of them his in a way, all of them better men than the boys he had first taught to put up their fists.
“I will tell you the only thing I know about love,” he said. “And then I will need someone to buy me a very large dinner, for I have earned it. I have done more matchmaking this fortnightthan in my whole previous life, and it is exhausting work for an old soldier.”
He planted his cane. “A man spends the first half of his life learning to hold himself together. Discipline. Guard up. Take the blow, give nothing away. It is a fine art that the world rewards, and I taught it to every one of you, God forgive me.”
His voice gentled, the way it did when he stopped being dry and started being true. “And then, if the man is very lucky, he meets the one person in the world in front of whom it is finally safe to come apart, and the whole art reverses. He spends the second half of his life learning to put his guard down, to let himself be seen, to be at last a man and not a fortress. You have found her, boy. The hard half is behind you.
“Now comes the part the poets write about. I never got it for myself, the youngest son of a baron with one good eye and a borrowed title. But by God, I have watched you get it, and that is nearly as good, and I find I am content.”
A brief silence fell over the room.
“That,” Richard said thickly, “is the most you have ever said at once in eleven years.”
“Yes.” Matthew nodded. “And I will not say so much again, so you had better remember it. Now, my dinner.”
