“Indeed,” James confirmed. “At the end of the day, all of us will do whatever our wives tell us, and one day, Julian, you will too.”
“I doubt that,” he said. “Upon my honor, I shall see pigs fly through the streets of London before I am married.”
“Now, now, old chum,” Nathaniel said and handed him a glass. “You were once not so far from the altar yourself. There is no reason to think that it would not happen again.”
“Pray, stop saying such things. You are depressing me,” Julian replied, and drank down his beverage in three swallows. It went down his throat and warmed his chest, and he savored it for a moment.
“Shall we return to the ballroom?” Gideon suggested. “I do have a mind to dance with my wife. This is, after all, the sort of ball where such a thing is not frowned upon.”
“Indeed,” Nathaniel said. “That is one of the reasons I am here. I always enjoy dancing with Evelyn in public. And you, Julian? We will find you someone to dance with yet.”
“To dance with, perhaps,” Julian said. “Although I have already attempted to evade one lady who was trying to force me onto herdaughters’ dance cards. I feigned an injured ankle, and I should perhaps stick with that.”
Lucian said, “If you like, I will be glad to kick you in the ankle, so you will hobble properly, and it will not be a lie anymore.”
“With friends like Lucian, I shall not need any enemies.”
Laughter filled the room, and then the six of them made their way to the ballroom. In short order, four of his friends had paired with their wives and stood on the dance floor, waiting for the next dance. Julian stood with Nathaniel because Evelyn, Nathaniel’s wife, was still deep in conversation with a lady he did not recognize. She looked quite done up, he thought, whoever she was.
As the music started, the couples made their way onto the dance floor.
“You cannot tell me that you truly have no desire to ever walk down the aisle again,” Nathaniel said, more serious this time.
“I truly am telling you that. I have no desire. Being humiliated once was enough.”
“I would not call it humiliation,” Nathaniel started, but Julian raised his hand and shook his head. He had indeed felt thoroughly humiliated.
Once, not quite so long ago, he had been excited about the prospect of marriage. In fact, he had proposed. He had planned a wedding, only to find out that his beloved had aimed higher and taken off with a duke’s son instead.
That union had quickly fallen apart, and she had come crawling back to him. He’d had the momentary satisfaction of sending her away, but it hadn’t soothed his anger much at all, nor had it helped his desire to join his friends in matrimony. She had made a cake of herself in the end, and yet somehow, he was the one still living with the consequences.
“Does it not bother you that you are the only one not married?”
“No,” Julian said. “What bothers me is that, once upon a time, you and I took a vow that we would not fall into the trap of marriage. And here you are: married with children.”
“Indeed. I must say, I am grateful that you were not present for my courtship with Evelyn because had you not been gallivanting across the continent at the time, you would have tried to prevent my marriage to her, and I would have been most miserable.”
Julian sighed. It was true. He had been in Europe when his friend had unexpectedly become not only a duke but also a husband. In fact, by the time he had made it back across to British shores, Nathaniel and Evelyn’s first child had been on the way. It wasn’t that he disliked Evelyn. In fact, he liked her quite a lot. However, he could never quite wrap his head around the idea that his dearest friend was now married. Not only him,but all the friends he had made by way of their friendship. All of them married now, all of them fathers.
He shook his head when someone caught his eye. A young woman was approaching from the direction of the ballroom’s double doors. He tipped his head to one side. There was something familiar about her, but he couldn’t quite place her.
“Who is that?”
Nathaniel looked at him, eyebrows raised. “You do not know her?”
“No.”
“You jest. You are well acquainted.”
“Are we?” he asked.
“Clara Hampshire.”
His jaw dropped.Clara?Now that she was closer, there was no denying it. It was indeed none other than Lady Clara Hampshire. Lady Clara and his cousin, Lady Arabella, had been close friends for a number of years, and he had, on occasion, met Lady Clara at family events due to this friendship. However, the Lady Clara he had known had looked somewhat different.
Clara had always been outspoken and somewhat wild. Her choice of attire was often not exactly what was fashionable but rather what she liked. Her hairstyle was the same. And she always carried herself in a way that suggested she did not care much about the world but rather that the world ought to care about her.
The young woman coming his way now didn’t have those wild tendencies. She was elegant. She was, he had to admit, quite beautiful. She walked with her head high but still with those walls all around her that she had built to keep away the people who came too close. There was a stoicism about her that he had never known in Clara when she was younger. She was not Friday-faced, exactly, but there was a gravity to her that had not been there before.
