Page 34

Considering the Duke of Highcastle’s immense wealth, Malcolm really should have had a townhouse like his peers, or even one of the grander mansions, but he and his wife were in London so little that he had not seen the point. Instead, they rented apartments while they were in the city.

Walking from the glow of lamppost to lamppost, through the dark night, Anthony had no idea if his friend would even be awake. Malcolm and Octavia had their eldest son, Simon; a little daughter, Deborah; and a younger son, Elijah, who was just a few months old. It would not have surprised Anthony if the family had retired for the night.

Still, he would not be going to the gentlemen’s club alone, and he knew that Stanforth was at a dinner at the Royal College of Surgeons tonight. There were, of course, other friends he could have called upon, but Malcolm was his closest friend. Who else could he talk to the night before his wedding?

“Are you sure Octavia will not murder me?” Anthony asked with a smile, as he settled into a comfortable armchair in the parlor.

Malcolm rubbed his eyes and fetched a decanter of whiskey from a side-table, bringing it over with two crystal glasses. “Nae at all. I said I expected ye might come by tonight.” He looked at the clock, which showed ten-to-midnight. “Nae this late, but ye’re a bachelor still. A late night means nothing to ye.”

“How are the children?”

Malcolm smiled. “The light of my life, though the youngest have nay regard for their ma and da’s sleep.”

“I thought nannies were meant to deal with that,” Anthony said, as Malcolm poured.

“Neither Octavia nor I wanted any for our bairns. She raised Simon herself and insisted on doing the same for Deb and Elijah, though I shared the burden this time,” Malcolm replied. “Did ye have a nanny for William? I can’t remember.”

Anthony took his proffered drink and sipped. “Not before Emilia passed. She would not have one either. Afterward, he did.”

“Is it strange to be marrying again?” Malcolm swirled his whiskey.

There were few people who knew the story of Emilia, Anthony’s first wife, and Malcolm was one of them. Still, his friend knew better than to speak of her.

“Should it be?” Anthony replied.

“I daenae ken. Ye tell me.”

Anthony sat back in the chair and took a larger gulp of the amber nectar, already feeling the jagged edges of his anxieties blunting. “I at least do not mind the idea of marrying this time,” he said, after a pause. “It does not fill me with dread.”

“Congratulations to that.” Malcolm raised his glass, a sly smile curving his mouth.

Anthony raised his glass in return. “I mean, what is there to dread? She likes my son, and she wants what I want.”

“Which is?”

“An arrangement that benefits us both, nothing more,” Anthony explained. “She will have her freedoms, I will be left to my own devices, my grandmother will be happy, my son will have company, and I shall not have to deal with any of the chaos of the last time.”

Malcolm nodded along, leaning back into the chair as Anthony finished speaking. “And what is she like, this lass of yers? Octavia is desperate to ken more about her. If it werenae for us being busy with the bairns, I’d have had to hold her back from knocking on the lass’s door.”

Anthony liked Octavia, and considered himself an integral part in Malcolm ending up in a happy marriage with her after his bout of amnesia, but he was not sure how Marina and Octavia would get along. They were very different women.

Does Marina even have any friends?

He realized he had not asked, and had not seen her to ask. Indeed, they had not crossed paths since that unpleasantness at the modiste.

“She is… intriguing,” he admitted.

Bold yet painfully shy. Prideful at times, yet she withers around bullies. A startling intellect, though perhaps too single-minded. Beautiful when she smiles but she rarely does. A conundrum, really, he neglected to add, lest his friend think he had become sentimental.

“How so?” Malcolm smirked.

Anthony shrugged and finished his drink. “Is that not the point of a mystery?”

“To find out, aye.”

Anthony shook his head. “But then it would not be a mystery anymore, and I find that I have no desire to solve her.”

“Ye say that, but ye forget that I ken ye,” Malcolm said, chuckling as he poured a fresh measure into Anthony’s glass. “If ye truly were nae interested in finding out more about her, ye wouldn’t be here at my apartments at midnight, restless as a goose at Christmastide.”