Grey’s eyes narrowed. “You are seeking to distract me from my course, but that is a Sisyphean feat. You know how I am when I get settled on a subject I feel strongly about.”
“Damned opinionated arsehole,” he mumbled good-naturedly under his breath, reaching for the bottle which had been left on their table for dinner and refreshing his glass.
Informality suited the both of them, and when they asked for a private room in which to dine at the Black Souls, the club owner implicitly knew it meant they wished for no interruptions.
“I will own it.” Grey shrugged, grinning. “Takes one to know one, friend.”
“It does,” he acknowledged, before taking a healthy sip of his newly filled wine glass. “We are both opinionated arseholes.”
“But only one of us is getting married.”
He knew well why his friend had an aversion to the state. His dead wife had bloody well tortured him with her faithlessness. Grey had shared that with him on a different drunken night. They were the keepers of each other’s secrets.
“For now,” he said pointedly. “One never knows what the future holds, Grey. Perhaps we are all just one drunken lady throwing herself into our arms at a ball away from the matrimonial gallows.”
“She threw herself into your arms?” Grey’s grin deepened. “Do tell.”
Christ, he had not intended to allow that particular bit of information to slip. And, odd though it was, he felt distinctly protective of Izzy now. She was going to be his wife, damn it. Whilst he had never imagined marrying anyone after Beatrice’s defection, he could not deny that there was something about his sudden nuptials with Lady Isolde Collingwood that felt somehow…right. She intrigued him, with her bruised heart and big green eyes and bold dresses. Hell, he did not even mind that ridiculous artichoke dress, the more he thought on it.
“She was brokenhearted and sad,” he said in her defense. “She had one flute of champagne too many.”
Or five.
But no need to mentionthat.
She was his now. His to protect. His to defend against society and Arthur Penhurst and anyone else who caused her distress.
And stranger still, he rather liked the thought of all that. Ridiculously lovely, ludicrously dressed, entirely wrong for him Lady Isolde Collingwood was going to be his wife.
“I can see you have no intention of sharing more,” Grey observed.
“I like her,” he shocked himself by admitting.
It was true.
There was…simply something about Izzy. She was awkward and clumsy, quite unlike any of the ladies in his past.Unique.She brought out his protective instincts. And he did not fool himself that he was merely using her to incite Beatrice’s jealousy. Naturally, that had been appealing. But the more time he spent in Izzy’s presence, the less weight Beatrice’s fury possessed.
He still enjoyed her outrage, of course. There was something positively affirming about holding the title she betrayed him for and her watching him prepare to take another woman as his wife. When she had married Horatio, Zachary had been crushed. A small part of him still hoped she would feel even a modicum of the same despair on his wedding day.
“You like her,” Grey repeated, his tone doubtful. “You want to marry Lady Isolde because youlikeher?”
“And for other reasons,” he said, refusing to enumerate them.
“The drunken kissing, you mean,” Grey added. “Followed by your tryst of the moment discovering you with Lady Isolde atop you. I must say, old chap. You have all the fun.”
“Rather dubious fun, in most instances.”
“The kisses were not appealing?” Grey raised a brow.
Cheeky arsehole.
“A gentleman never tells.” He drained some more of his wine. “I never intended to marry, but if a man must—and there is no way around what happened in your blue salon—then why not wed an eccentric lady who is not afraid to wear faux artichokes on her gown?”
“Why not, indeed?” Grey chortled before raising his glass in a toast. “To your future wife.”
“To Lady Isolde,” he agreed.
* * *
