“His actions in the matter were carried out very subtly,” Edward confided. “He's been doing it for weeks. I had to take matters into my own hands.”
“A drink,” Thomas proposed, hoping to put an end to this before it truly began. “We will have one drink, and then you will leave.”
“I love him dearly,” Edward told Jane, as though Thomas had not spoken. “He is my closest friend and I would do anything for him, but you should know that he has been deeply antisocial, practically for as long as he has been alive and I have been personally managing the consequences ever since.”
He tilted his head slightly – in what Thomas could only describe as an effort to look harmless. “Will you join us, Your Grace? I have seventeen years' worth of stories to share and he cannot stop me if you're interested.”
Thomas looked at Jane, hoping she could see how much he detested the idea and she gazed at him with an expression that could not conceal how much she wanted to say yes.
“One drink,” Thomas sighed, long-suffering.
They moved to the drawing room and Jane sat on the settee and Edward took the armchair across from her, easily making himself at home as Thomas poured three glasses. He toldhimself to say nothing, because if he said nothing, he could at least monitor the direction of the conversation.
This strategy lasted approximately four minutes.
“The wedding story,” Edward said. “Tell me about the details from your perspective.”
Jane tilted her head in surprise. “He told you about the wedding?”
“He told me about finding you.” Edward leaned forward. “He neglected to tell me how you actually made it away from the church. I need you to fill in the gaps.”
Jane's eyes moved to Thomas, amused. He gave her a look that showed he had made his peace with Edward and had nothing left to offer. Jane took that as permission and turned back to Edward.
“I had been waiting in a carriage outside, waiting for a distraction so I could steal a horse and ride it to an inn close to my friend’s estate,” she began, her lips pulling into a grin. “The aforementioned friend was meant to be the distraction, so she got out of the carriage and pretend to faint in front of my parents and all the onlookers close by –”
“You had been planning it,” Edward said with delight.
“For most of the morning,” Jane confirmed with a grin.
Thomas sat next to Jane but angled away from them and watched the window and drank his whiskey and told himself he was not jealous of his own friend for making his wife laugh. She had a particular quality to her laugh when she was genuinely entertained and he had grown to like it. He liked to watch how she'd throw her head back slightly, and close her eyes for just a moment, as though the feeling were too large to take in with all her senses open. He had been filing this in the deepest parts of his memories without intending to for weeks.
Edward was leaning forward in his chair, animated, delighted, telling her something about Thomas at seventeen and a horse that had not, technically, been his horse, and Jane was laughing, and Thomas returned his gaze to the window and thought about all the ways he was insufficient.
Edward was easy in rooms. Edward had always interacted with others as naturally as breathing, comfortable in his own skin, quick to warmth, the kind of man people gravitated toward without understanding exactly why. Thomas had never had that. He had been the third son first, which made him invisible; then the scarred soldier, which made him something to stare at and step around; then the grieving widower with the silent child, which made him an object of careful avoidance.
He had built something with Jane – improbably, inadvertently, but he had built it slowly and in private, with difficulty, and Edward was in there with his charm and his stories and his ease and making it look –
“That is absolutely not true,” Jane affirmed strongly, and Thomas came back to the present, surprised to see that she was looking at him. “Tell him.”
“Tell him what?” Thomas questioned in confusion.
“Edward says that you are not as – how did you phrase it?” She glanced at Edward.
“Formidable,” Edward supplied as though he was being helpful. “As he believes himself to be.”
“Which is a terrible thing to say,” Jane said firmly, and the warmth in her voice shifted into something that was no longer entirely playful. “Because he is absolutely that, and much more. He is – Thomas is one of the most–”
She stopped and Thomas wondered if she had come to the realization that he was not as wonderful as she claimed he would be. He had always known this day would come, had always tried to ready himself for it, but still... his heart shivered anxiously, not ready to hear what she had to say.
Jane began again with an inhale, looking absolutely sure of the words leaving her mouth.
“He is handsome. And kind, when he allows himself to be. And thoughtful, the particular kind of thoughtful that notices things people don't say and responds to the thing they meant, not the thing they said. And I would not want–” She paused. She waslooking at Thomas now, not Edward, and the drawing room felt smaller than it had a moment ago. “I would not want any other man as my husband.”
The words sat in the room, weighed down by earnest sincerity that made Thomas’ heart warm up greatly.
Edward had gone very still in his armchair, silent understanding etched across his features.
Thomas did not know what he had intended to do with his hand – reach for his glass, perhaps, adjust his position in the chair. What it did, without particular instruction, was find the curve of Jane's waist where she sat beside him on the settee and settle there, light and warm and entirely natural, as though it had simply been looking for that spot for weeks and had finally arrived.
