Garson hardly heard his friend’s good-natured jibe. “Is Harslett really pestering Jane?”
He didn’t ask the question that really worried him. Did Jane encourage the chase? The most obvious answer to why she’d withdrawn from him was that she was attracted to another man. He’d feared such an outcome since the night he’d taken her to dinner at Silas and Caro’s.
“You married a beautiful woman, Garson, old man. Other fellows trying to poach on your territory is an occupational hazard.” Silas frowned as Garson downed his brandy, and the facetiousness vanished. “Dash it, Hugh, you think I’m serious. Jane isn’t the sort to stray. If that’s what’s worrying you, you need to see for yourself. Sulking in here isn’t doing you any favors.”
“I’m not sulking,” Garson said, resenting the childish description, and resenting even more that his reply really did make him sound childish.
Silas studied him with the penetrating intelligence that made him one of the world’s greatest botanists. “What would you call it, then?”
With a bang, Garson set down his empty brandy glass. “Can’t a man seek a moment’s privacy, without every fool and his dog nagging at him?”
As usual, Silas proved remarkably difficult to offend. He leaned back in his chair and extended his long legs in their black trousers toward the fire. He looked completely at home, whereas Garson felt like a scientific specimen under Silas’s microscope.
“Not when he retires to his burrow in the middle of one of the season’s most anticipated balls.” He still spoke in that deuced reasonable tone. “Not when he’s been slinking around like a sick cat for the last month or so.”
“Do you think anyone else has noticed?” he asked, although he’d had no intention of admitting that Silas was right.
Silas shrugged. “You know what the ton is like, always ready to sniff out trouble, even when there is none.”
Damn, damn, damn. He’d hoped his turmoil and confusion went unremarked. “There is no trouble,” he said, knowing he fought a losing battle.
“Glad to hear it,” Silas said peacefully, emptying his brandy glass.
“Really there’s no trouble.”
“What trouble could there be?” Silas’s lips twitched. If the sod laughed openly, he’d earn himself a punch on that beak of a nose.
“Exactly.”
To Garson’s relief, silence descended. Silas rose and filled both brandy glasses before returning to his seat. Garson didn’t touch his second drink, although he’d come in here, desperate for something to help him through the rest of this hellish evening.
After what felt like a long time, Garson finally spoke. “Marriage is harder than I expected it to be.”
Silas, to his credit, didn’t look smug—although Garson knew very well that his friend had manipulated him into confessing his worries. “Worth it in the end, though, especially with a good woman.”
“Jane’s a good woman.”
“I know. Are you unhappy that she’s become such a success?”
“She was such a quiet little thing when I married her.”
“She’s just kicking up her heels. I remember when Caro came out of mourning—she’d have danced all day and all night, if she could. She was making up for the time she’d wasted.”
As always when Silas spoke of his wife, love warmed his voice. Hugh stifled a pang of envy for his friend’s domestic contentment. “Jane’s life has been so restricted until now. I can’t blame her for wanting to squeeze everything she can out of her first season.”
He wondered if he was alone in noting the desperation behind her endless flurry of activity. As if pausing for even a moment’s reflection threatened annihilation.
“But that’s not what you signed up for.”
A grunt of unamused laughter escaped Garson. “Looking back, what I signed up for strikes me as completely unrealistic.”
“The marriage of convenience isn’t convenient after all?”
“No.” Garson was well aware that the world’s opinion was divided about his marriage. Some people were convinced he’d married Jane, while still in love with Morwenna. The more sentimental—boneheaded—members of the beau monde believed he loved his wife and made a new start.
“You appeared delighted with your choice when you came to dinner back in March. I know this started as a practical solution for both of you, but when I saw you together, I hoped that you might have fallen in love with your wife. That night, you certainly acted like you had.”
He shot Silas a dark look. “You should know better than that. Love was never part of the arrangement.”