“I would hardly call my bride reluctant. She practically sprinted down the aisle.”
“A gross exaggeration, I’m sure,” Jonathan said, his eyebrows lifting when he spotted Ambrose’s cravat. “Though, I am not here to discuss your duchess, but rather an update on her sister.”
“What about her?”
“Where to start?” Jonathan pondered aloud. “Oh, yes, are you still planning to marry me off?”
“What do you suppose?”
“You know, as the second son, I always thought myself above arranged marriages.”
“Have you now? You can go into hiding as Miss Middleton has done. Perhaps don a wig for disguise?”
“Don a wig?” Jonathan lifted his hand to his hair. “On this hair? I’d rather pencil my eyebrows. And you really ought to work on your attempts at humor.”
Ambrose snorted.
“I’ve received a letter from mother,” Jonathan informed Ambrose. “She is still quite put out about the horror of your wedding.”
“She’ll get over it.”
Just as he got over it. Which, he realized in a moment of divine clarity, he had. Fully. Explicitly. Unequivocally.
“Perhaps you ought to join her in Bath and try the healing waters for yourself?”
Ambrose did not dignify that with an answer.
He glanced over to the damned letter, which held the power to snuff out his peace, and realized he held no true ill will against Holly Middleton. The pride, the need, that had driven him to pursue justice against her affront had all but drawn its last breath.
Furthermore, if not for her abandonment, he wouldn’t have married Willow. And he could not imagine being married to anyone else. A part of him, in fact, deep down, may have been rooting for Holly all along.
Not that he wouldeveradmit that aloud. Wild horses could trample him before he uttered those words.
But hecoulddo something else.
Like, say, let his pursuit go. That, he found, was no hardship at all. Not anymore. Because damaging the ground he had gained with his wife by administering a consequence to soothe his pride would bring him nothing but misery.
“Your wife seems truly taken with you.”
Jonathan’s comment drew Ambrose out of his thoughts. He looked up from his desk to see his brother eyeing him with interest.
Ambrose sat up straighter. “She told you that?”
“No, but I see how she looks at you.” Jonathan leaned forward, resting his arms on the table. “I see how you look at her.”
Ambrose narrowed his eyes. “Your point?”
“Just that I’d hate for you lose such a precious gift.”
Ambrose smirked. “That will never happen.”
He would make sure of that, looming catastrophe or not.
“So you have given up dwelling in the past?” Jonathan crossed his arms behind his head. “To dwell on the past is to dwell on destruction,” he finished merrily.
“Thank you, Aristotle, but I do not dwell where I do not belong, and I do not see how that has anything to do with why you interrupted my work.”
“Seems to me I’m not the first one to interrupt you.” Jonathan cracked a grin, nodding to the neglected cravat. “Decided to have more fun, did you?”
