Unhelpfully.
Torrie scowled at his supposed friend. “You aren’t helping matters.”
“By refusing to agree with you, or by pointing out you’re falling in love?” Monty asked, undeterred.
He sighed, trying and failing to look away from Bess moving gracefully over the polished floor, her breasts bouncing temptingly in her daring gown. “I’m not falling in love. I am merely fiercely protective. Bess has been mistreated all her life. First by her greedy relatives, and then by thetonduring her Seasons.”
Including himself, but Torrie was doing everything in his power to make amends for his past self’s mistakes in every way he could.
“And if I find the sight of the Earl of Rearden mooning over my wife irksome, I can hardly be faulted,” he added for good measure. “It hasn’t a thing to do with love or jealousy.”
“Hmm,” Monty hummed at his side, as if he didn’t believe a word Torrie had just spoken.
Which only succeeded in nettling him further.
Torrie tore his gaze from Bess—thank Christ the reel was soon coming to an end—and pinned Monty with a glare. “What does that mean?”
Monty flashed his devil-may-care grin. “It means that I know what it’s like to realize you’ve fallen in love. It’s rather akin to a fist to the jaw, so stunning is the blow.”
Realizing he was rubbing his jaw in a reflexive action, Torrie dropped his hand and straightened his shoulders. “What nonsense.”
It wasn’t love he felt for Bess. Was it?
Dear God, how would he know? Had he been in love before? He didn’t think he had. He didn’t have the first inkling of what being in love entailed.
“Is it nonsense?” his friend asked quietly.
He sighed. The reel had ended and Bess was coming his way. Rearden had melted into the crush of revelers.
Tenderness washed over him when she smiled in his direction, catching and holding his stare. Another feeling rose, swelling like the banks of an overflowing river. He felt, undeniably, connected to her in a way that transcended all else. He felt as if she knew him, saw him, cared for him as no one did. And he didn’t know quite when it had happened, or how she’d done it. But she was the half of himself he’d been missing, and she was the only half that was worth a proper goddamn.
“I don’t know any longer,” he admitted grimly. “I married her out of a sense of obligation. It was to be a marriage of convenience. I intended to send her to my country seat and carry on as I wished. And yet…”
“And yet?” prompted Monty, his tone knowing.
“And yet I knew, from the moment I kissed her, that I would never want to send her from my side,” he said with a rush of searing emotion. “I knew that I wanted her with me, that she was rare and good and kind.”
“Is she all you can think about?”
“Bloody hell, yes.”
“And you’re secretly imagining planting facers on every poor chap who dares to partner her in a dance?”
Another sigh left him as he watched Bess nearing them. She radiated happiness. And she was so damned beautiful in her new ball gown, this one trimmed with pink roses and blond lace, the fabric swirling about her curves with diaphanous elegance.
“If you must know, yes,” he conceded. “But let this be enough of your foolish talk of love, Monty. My wife is approaching.”
Not a moment too soon, either. Bess stopped before them, a strand of pearls clasped at her creamy neck that he had given her earlier that evening when they had finished preparing for the night’s festivities.
“My lord,” she greeted, breathless from her exertions on the dance floor. “Your Grace. I hope I haven’t interrupted the two of you. It looked as if you were engaged in a rather serious debate as I arrived.”
Torrie sent a meaningful look in Monty’s direction. One that clearly saidstubble it, old chap.
“We were merely speaking about a subject on which I am a tremendous authority,” Monty said unrepentantly.
He gritted his teeth.
“A tremendoussomething,” he muttered.
