Nobody ever recognized how much arguing came with smithing work, but there was always someone in the forge, trying to tell you how to do your job. Hector knew perfectly bloody well how to stand up for himself.
And yet, he had to admit it: Xander Lightholder made Hector’s hackles rise like few other men ever had.
It was a stupid feeling, of course. The man was an aristocrat, which meant that there was a vanishingly slim chance of him deigning to bloody his knuckles. And Hector would win in a physical altercation, mostly because he knew how to fight dirty in the kind of way you learned in village streets when other boys thought your leg made you an easy target. Xander wouldn’t have learned any such thing at Eton.
And it wasn’t as though Hector was intimidated by nobility on principle. For one, the Lightholders might be powerful and connected, but Godwin didn’t technically have a rank any higher than Hector’s own. Not to mention that Hector had never held with the idea that high birth made someone better than anyone else.
So. It had to be Clio. It had to be that Xander was Clio’s family.
Except that was stupid, too, because he’d argued plenty with Aaron Watson, andhewas Clio’s brother, not her cousin. He was the closest family she had, and Clio clearly loved her brother atop that.
The longer Xander sat quietly, though, not staring Hector down but notnotstaring at him, either, the more Hector had to admit something else entirely.
Something had changed between his wife and him. Something between her admitting her fears, laughing with him in the dark, and curling up contentedly at his side.
It had changed him.
And now—goddamn him—he wanted stupid bloody Xander— goddamn—Lightholder to fucking approve of him.
This was not good.
“Can I offer you a drink?” Xander said when they’d been sitting in silence so long that Hector felt as though his head was about to explode with the awkwardness of it.
“God, yes,” he said without thinking, sounding rather desperate for it.
Fortunately, though Xander chuckled, and by the time he’d poured two tumblers of very nice scotch, Hector was feeling less as though he wanted to claw off his own skin.
“I’m going to tell you something about my family,” Xander said, crossing his legs comfortably as he leaned back in his chair. “Something that I think will help you a great deal.”
Hector was immediately on his guard again.
“Very well,” he said cautiously.
Xander took a slow sip of his drink. He was rather compelling, for what that was worth. Hector tried to take mental notes, as he could benefit from some of this smooth arrogance that demanded compliance, at least when it came to wrenching back his title from his brother.
“I did not want to marry my wife,” Xander said eventually, shocking Hector, not just because this was a very revealing thing to say to a near stranger, but also because Xander and Helen Lightholder made eyes at one another every chance they got.
“You … didn’t?” Hector prodded carefully.
Xander laughed, the sound full of genuine humor. “No,” he said. “You might have noticed this about her, but Helen hasn’t a subtle bone in her body. She says what she wants and means what she says. It makes people furious. She is not at all suited for a life in the full eye of Society, and my family name guarantees her one.”
Hector wasn’t stupid enough to comment. The words that Xander was saying all sounded bad, but his tone was so drenched with love that they couldn’t actuallybebad.
“Clio’s brother, Aaron, didn’t want to marryhiswife,” Xander continued. “The details there aren’t quite so clear to me as in my own circumstance, but Phoebe has never met a risk she didn’t love, and Aaron just wanted everyone to leave him alone after he returned from the war.”
“Right,” Hector agreed cautiously.
“My cousin Hugh,” Xander said, seeming to be really enjoying himself at this point. “Well, can you guess what I’m going to say next?”
Hector was not pleased to be given a part in this little drama.
“Was desperate to marry his wife?” he said dryly.
“Ha. No. No, he found himself the guardian of three little girls—and if you think my children are wild, you ought to spend an afternoon with those little hellions—and felt obliged to give them a maternal figure. He did not want any wife, let alone the specific wife he ended up with.”
Hector just grunted and took a sip of his drink. This was a great deal of buildup, and it could not possibly be going anywhere good. If not for his stupid,stupiddesire for Xander’s approbation, he would have walked out of here ages ago. God, marriage had ruined him. He used to be sogoodat being rude.
Maybe Xander realized that Hector’s patience was growing thin, because he smiled at him over the rim of his glass.
