Page 39 of The Subtle Craft of Courting Kate

“With one’s male friends? Oh, absolutely it is,” Richard said. “I’m sorry to say that it is precisely the sort of ribald talk that is more often than not the subject of conversation in places frequented by gentlemen. Too many men are overeager to impress their peers with shocking tales of their mistresses or lovers—”

Rebecca nudged him again with her elbow, thrusting her lower lip out in a pout. “You might have been one of them,” she accused. “You aspired to be!”

“That much is true,” Richard admitted sheepishly. “In fact, it was Elliot who informed me—in so many words, I might add—that the vast majority of gentlemen who keep mistresses do so because they have chosen cold, loveless marriages of convenience for the purposes of some material advantage, and so find themselves unsatisfied. That the coarse talk which frequently reached our ears was little more than empty, bloviating nonsense meant to convince themselves of their virility and masculinity, and that I would be better served all around to find a woman I loved and eschew altogether the pallid imitation of it.” He slipped his arm about Rebecca’s shoulders. “And do you know? He was right.”

“He usually is,” Rebecca said, in a faintly sullen tone, as if it galled her to admit to it. “It’s quite irritating, really.”

Kate blinked. “Is it?”

“Oh, yes. He’s alarmingly astute, much more so than a man of his whimsical nature has got any right to be.” She gave a soft sigh as she imparted, “There was an occasion in the early days of our marriage when Richard and I had had quite a nasty row over something rather petty. We were both quite hurt by it, and it had been a few days since we had said more than a few words to one another out of pique and perhaps a little spite. Elliot, I am afraid, grew rather irritated with both of us on account of it, as it made his visits rather unpleasant.”

Fascinated, Kate could only inquire, “Oh?”

“Yes, indeed. And so when he could bear it no longer, he swooped in and made off with Richard. They spent all evening at their club, getting proper soused. It was well past midnight when he delivered Richard home at last, and though they both reeked of spirits, Richard was abjectly apologetic, blubbering like a baby—”

“Blubbering!” Richard interjected, a hot flush of mortification painting his cheeks. “I did no such thing!”

Rebecca laid one hand lightly upon his chest. “Darling. You blubbered,” she assured him in a sweet, cajoling croon. “And you were so pickled with liquor that it required three footmen to heft you up the stairs and into our bed, which you did not leave for two days. Now, hush.”

Richard subsided with a sulky murmur, ducking his head.

“Elliot was hardly holding his feet,” Rebecca continued. “And as I was still supremely irritated—more so even than I had been, since Richard had been returned to me in such a state—I was prepared to snap his head clean off of his shoulders. But before I could say anything at all, he just looked me straight in the eye and said, in such a clear, stern voice, ‘I am going to ask you the same question I asked of him. When you wake in the morning, are you still happy to be his wife?’” Rebecca gave a helpless little sigh, rolling her eyes heavenward. “And I realized—I was. Of course I was, even when I was at my angriest, even when I was at my most hurt. Of course I was happy, because despite our disagreement, Richard was still the love of my life.”

Kate smothered a snicker beneath her palm as Richard cast such a besotted look down at his wife that she decided instantly that he had blubbered, despite his protestations to the contrary. “Did you take Elliot to task anyway?” she asked.

“I hadn’t the heart,” Rebecca confessed sheepishly. “I deflated like a collapsed soufflé, I’ll tell you. And when I admitted that of course I was still happy to be Richard’s wife, Elliot only told me that I had best not let petty disagreements snatch that happiness away from me, then.”

“And then?” Kate asked, pursing her lips against the smile that threatened.

Rebecca heaved a sigh and offered an exasperated shrug. “And then he walked past me out into the garden and cast up his accounts into my begonias.”

Yes; that sounded rather more like the Elliot that Kate had known. And yet, somehow it did not surprise that he had put himself in the unlikely position of counselor to his friends. He’d been the product of such a happy marriage himself. It stood to reason he would not wish to witness a perfectly good one collapse beneath the weight of sheer stubbornness.

“A rake,” Richard said again, with a small shake of his head, the remnants of a grin still clinging to his mouth. “Do you know, I can’t decide if he’d be more offended or amused.”

Amused, probably, Kate decided. Elliot dearly loved to laugh and rarely found himself in a situation at which he could not poke fun—even at himself. “For such a staunch defender of the institution of marriage,” she said, “is it not strange that he hasn’t found himself a wife before now?”

“Is it strange?” Richard asked, lifting his glass of port to his lips. “I’ve never thought it so. He could have married any time he pleased, if he had wished to do so.”

“But he didn’t,” Kate said. Her fingers tightened on the stem of her glass, her brows drawing. “Wish to marry, that is to say.”

“No,” Richard said. “I’ve never known him to show notable attention to any one woman in particular during the Season.” He issued a little huff of amusement over his glass. “Truly, I would have expected you to know as much already,” he added.

But she had never asked. And he had never offered. And, really, it had seemed…safer, in some regard which she could not fully explain even to herself to let London be a far-off place made up of only the stories Elliot had cared to share with her. If she never asked, then she had never had to contend with the answers she received. If he never offered, then she could pretend that nothing would ever change.

Perhaps there had always been a part of her that had never asked because she had never wanted to know the answers, never wanted to acknowledge that change was an inevitable fact of life. Only now, in London, was she forced to confront it at last. That change which she had stood solidly against was inescapable. Elliot had changed.

Had she?

From without the drawing room came the pound of feet upon the stairs, followed by a high-pitched, shrieking laugh. A few moments later amidst a flurry of giggles, Elliot bounded into the room, a bundle of white linen dangling from his shoulder.

No; not linen—a girl. A mop of dark brown curls emerged from beneath a fluff of flounces and tiny bare feet kicked in the air over his shoulder.

“You’ll never guess,” Elliot said as he stalked across the room with purposeful strides that jounced the child upon his shoulder, much to her apparent delight, “who I caught wandering the halls.”

“Uncle Elliot!” the girl screeched through her tangled curls. “I can’t see!”

“Oh, you can’t?” he asked, and she gave another ear-splitting shriek of glee as he hefted her easily into the air and caught her in his arms as she tumbled back down. “How’s that, then, poppet?”