“Do not start, Richard.”
“I shall start. I shall start with a great deal of pleasure. You have been a betrothed man for seven days. Seven. And you have, in the space of those seven days, gone from informing me in this ring that you intended a three-week courtship, a civil wedding, a brisk consummation, and a removal of your wife to Langton by the end of the month to a special license, a house party, and a not-on-the-whole-an-orangery-sort-of-visit. What did you do to that girl in the orangery, Langton?”
“Richard.”
“What did you do?”
“It is not your business.”
“Cassian, we have known each other for twenty years. It is exactly my business. What did you do?”
Cassian wiped the small bead of blood at his lip with the back of his wrist. “I did not do enough.”
Richard stared at him. Then he laughed. He had, on present evidence, been waiting some long time to see a particular thing happen, and now, he had seen it.
“Cassian Arnolds.”
“Richard.”
“You are besotted.”
“I am not besotted.”
“You are absolutely besotted with her. You are besotted with her, you have not slept in four days, you have moved up your wedding to eight days from today because you cannot last the three weeks, and you came here this afternoon to hit something because you do not dare go back to her parents’ house and ask her father if you might sit in his drawing room and look at her for an hour.”
“Richard.”
“Do not deny it.”
“I almost liked her better when she was my rival.”
Richard stopped and set the linen towel down. “What?”
“I almost liked her better when she was my rival,” Cassian repeated evenly. “For two years, she has been the bane of my existence. For two years, she has been the bright disaster I have been managing at the edge of every ballroom Joanna has attended. For two years, I have been telling her, in every drawing room and at every supper, that she ought to behave herself, and she has declined on every occasion. I had a system, Richard. I had a perfectly good system. I disliked her. She disliked me. We were both very satisfied with it.”
“And now?”
“And now…”
“Cassian.”
“And now, she has written me a letter in disciplined handwriting demanding to be courted. And now, she has worn a green dress to Almack’s and made a fool of me on a balcony. And now, she has, in her father’s orangery on a Friday morning in May, stood with her back against an orange tree and said my Christian name as though she had been thinking it for a long time and had only just decided to say it out loud.”
“Cassian.”
“And I have moved up the wedding.”
“Yes.”
“And I will not be moving it back.”
“No.”
“And I do not know what to do with any of it.”
Richard whistled very low between his teeth. “Liking your future wife is a blessing, my friend.”
“Not when you do not want children, Richard.”
