Lady Cecily would do all that and more. She would share his home and his heart. She would give him children and fill his life with the contentment he ought always to have known.
If she had been a better person, a woman even halfway approaching Lady Cecily’s worthiness, perhaps she could have found it in her heart to be happy for the both of them. But she wasn’t that sort of woman. She never had been.
In this moment, she could only be sorry for herself. That she had somehow, quite without her leave, fallen victim to that most wretched of maladies—love.
“I don’t hate her,” she muttered sullenly, turning her face aside lest anyone else should happen to glimpse the curious sheen of her eyes.
“Of course you don’t,” Phoebe said. “You’re notthatpetty.”
Chapter Nineteen
Captain Sharp, come and ‘ave drink wiv us!”
Anthony’s head jerked up. And so had several others, the pointed glares of half a dozen other gentlemen presently occupying tables at the club staring in the direction from which the shout had come. Chris waved at him from across the room, from the rear of a table occupied by several other gentlemen whom Anthony did not recognize.
He hadn’t planned for company this afternoon, but at least heknewthis particular gentleman, in a manner of speaking. At the very least it would be a welcome distraction from the disorder of his thoughts. His glass was presently empty, besides, and it looked as though Chris’ table had been recently supplied with a bottle of some spirit or other.
With one hand he seized the small potted plant he’d gingerly placed upon his table, pushed back his chair, and crossed the room. “Your brothers-in-law?” he inquired of Chris as the gentlemen made a place for him there amongst them.
“One of ‘em, at least,” Chris said, with a nod at one of the gentleman; a dark-haired fellow. “Rafe. My sister’s ‘usband, not my wife’s brother, thank God. And this one ‘ere is Rafe’sbrother, Marcus.”
The two men did bear a sort of familial resemblance to one another, Anthony supposed. “Your brother-in-law’s brother,” Anthony said as he settled into the chair and extended his glass as the man in question lifted the bottle of spirits toward him to pour. “That’s more or less a brother-in-law, wouldn’t you say?”
“Fuck,” said Chris. “I s’pose it might as well be,” he said, and hiked his thumb toward the last gentleman. “Ben’s my sister’s ‘usband’s sister’s ‘usband. What does that make ‘im, then?”
“Confusing,” Anthony said.
In perfect unison, all four men cast back their heads and laughed uproariously, earning another round of glares from the other patrons of the club.
Anthony had not, in point of fact, intended to say anything amusing, but he found it somewhat heartening, for once, to be the originator of a joke instead of the butt of one.
“Ah, Christ,” Chris said, swiping his hand across his eyes. “Charity said we was to be nice to ye if we ‘appened upon ye in public. But I don’t think it’ll be so ‘ard as I thought it might.”
“Charity told you to be nice to me?”
“Well, just me, really,” Chris said. “The rest of ‘em—theyarenice, more’s the pity. But ye got to ‘ave friends of a sort, don’t ye?”
“Hell, I don’t know.” He’d had them, once, he supposed. In school; in the military. But it had been damned near two decades since then, and his closest friends in the years since had been his brothers, with whom he had regularly corresponded. In recent days, it had been a struggle only to hold the tatters of his family together. He’d had neither the time nor the inclination for friends—even if he might’ve managed to find anyone willing to claim him as such. “I suppose I must have, eventually.” Or try to, at any rate.
“Well, I’m not exactly the sort a man in yer position should claim,” Chris said. “But these ones? Ye couldn’t hope fer better.”
“What have you got there?” asked one of the brothers—Marcus, Anthony thought he had been called—with a nod toward the plant still in his hand.
Anthony lifted the pot, set it in the middle of the table. “Dionaea muscipula,” he said. “Venus’s Flytrap.”
“You brought a plant to a club?” the other brother asked, with an inquisitive lift of his brows. Strangely, there was no judgment in his voice; only a mild curiosity.
“I’ve only just acquired it,” Anthony said, “and I haven’t been home yet. It seemed imprudent to leave it in the carriage, as it cost a damned fortune.”
“Did it?” Clearly fascinated with the prospect of so small a plant commanding a significant price, Chris leaned closer to get a better look. “Can’t imagine why,” he said. “It’s ugly as sin.”
Anthony had thought there was an odd sort of beauty in the clamshell-like leaves, the prongs which stuck out from them like feathery teeth, waiting to trap something within. “It’s carnivorous,” he said. “It eats flies and other such insects. It was meant as a gift—”
“Not for Charity, surely,” Chris said, aghast.
“No,” Anthony said. “No, of course not. But—I’m not certain I wish to give it to itsintended recipient.”
“Whyever not?” Ben asked. “I don’t mind telling you I’d want it out of my sight as swiftly as was possible.”
