Whitty.
Rhys had first met the Right Honorable Viscount Bartram Whitmore at Eton College, where they’d both been sent to board at the ripe old age of thirteen. As Whitty had been a viscount before he could walk, he’d been assured of his place in the hierarchy of the world and what his title and wealth bought him, which was everything.
It had even bought him more than a few friends.
But not Rhys.
From the start, their kinship had been fundamentally rooted in an aligned goal—to have fun at any and all costs.
And how they’d succeeded.
With Whitty’s wealth and recklessness, and Rhys’s looks and charm, they’d cut a wide swath through, first, school—where admittedly the stakes had been low—then on through society where the stakes seemed to rise higher each passing year.
Whitty even had a pet phrase: Can’t be arsed a whit.
Whitty thought it the wittiest cant ever coined, and Rhys hadn’t reckoned it was his place to disabuse his friend of the notion, even as Whitty said—or shouted, depending on his state of inebriation—the phrase on at least a dozen occasions on any given night, particularly after midnight.
So, here was Rhys in White’s intending to speak to his oldest friend—his oldest comrade in dissolution.
“Can’t be arsed a whit!” cut through the din.
Rhys’s feet gathered pace as he edged through the crowd, dodging and returning greetings as he went. In the general sense, Lord Rhys Osborne was liked by all—with the exception of a few husbands.
At last, he reached the Hazard table and took quick measure of Whitty. It had been several months since he’d last laid eyes on his old friend. That intervening time hadn’t been kind to Whitty, who’d gained a good stone about the middle and dark circles beneath his eyes. In truth, he looked closer to fifty than thirty.
Which gave Rhys a measure of confidence in what he was about to attempt.
It wouldn’t only be noble deed number two.
He would be helping Whitty, and wasn’t that what friends did for each other?
Whitty’s enlivened gaze lifted from the green baize of the Hazard table. As he registered Rhys’s approach, a broad smile broke across his sweat-sheened face. “As I live and breathe, if it ain’t Lord Rhys Osborne,” he exclaimed in that jolly way of his.
Rhys returned his smile, genuinely glad to see his old friend. “Whitty.”
“Come over here, old chap.” Whitty clapped Rhys on the back once he’d crowded next to him at the table. “Now,” he said, holding out his open palm whereupon perched two dice, “blow on my dice. I’ve been on a bad run.”
Rhys snorted and blew on Whitty’s dice, which he then tossed and immediately threw out.
His friend groaned, and Rhys said, “You know I’ve never had luck with the dice.”
Which was true.
Though he’d only realized how unlucky after this last year—after he’d stopped.
Whitty waved Rhys’s words away. “Can’t be arsed a whit.”
It surely wasn’t the second time he’d uttered those words tonight—nor the last.
Whitty used the back of his hand to swipe a bead of sweat off his forehead. “What are you doing here, anyway? Haven’t seen you in—” His eyes screwed up toward the ceiling. “When was the last time I laid eyes on you, anyway?”
“Thought I’d check in on an old friend,” Rhys replied neutrally.
Whitty cast his gaze around the room. “Who’s that?”
“You, Whitty.”
No one would mistake Whitty for the sharpest knife in the block, but somehow that was part of his charm.
