Whitlock hissed. “I’m not sure I sought mine. It was more of a surrender to the inevitable when it arrived.”
Monty scoffed, his expression sardonic. “Surrendering is what we’ve all done. What should make you so unique?”
“If you’d known my wife prior to the love match we’ve found, you’d have thought I married a gorgon.”
“For which you have no one to blame but yourself.”
“Correction: I blame my father and her mother.”
“May she rest in peace,” Thomas said without thinking.
Whitlock stared at him in horror. “Bloody hell, I hope not. I sleep very well imagining her eternal torment, thank you.”
Blackmoor coughed a laugh, covering it with a drink, though whether it was the language or the statement that shocked him was unclear.
Thomas, for one, had forgotten about Lady Whitlock’s mother and held up his hands in surrender. He didn’t want to be responsible for upsetting Whitlock’s scheme for his wife’s late mother’s eternal rest, or lack thereof.
“At any rate,” Blackmoor said with a hint of a scolding look at the other two, “any of us will tell you it is not easy, particularly if you are being intentional. What have you tried?”
Thomas gave him a brief account of his miserable attempts in London, which seemed more pathetic the more he recited them. When Blackmoor’s expression didn’t change, Thomas knew he was correct.
He was pathetic.
“Right,” Blackmoor said slowly, his tone lower than his usual timbre.
“What would you have done when you were courting her?” Monty asked, tilting his head in inquiry. “Had you given that any thought?”
“I never got to court her,” Thomas reminded the group.
“Pity, that,” Pratt murmured from his seat, listening in while he played. “Would have given you some point of reference.”
Kit Gerrard, sitting near Pratt, shook his head. “Not sure they’ll appreciate your chiming in, Pratt.”
“Only trying to help,” Pratt replied, unconcerned. “My wife tells me to make more friends.”
“I seriously doubt she has ever said anything of the sort,” Monty said.
Thomas glanced over at the group of ladies, where Mrs. Pratt mingled with the rest, nearly in the center and somehow holding court with them all. She was comfortable, confident, and content in her present surroundings. Almost regal in her bearing.
There was no possibility that she would think her husband needed to have more friends.
“To answer your question,” Thomas said, turning to the others and lowering his voice, “I’d had a fairly sedate courtship in mind.”
“Sedate and courtship should not exist in the same sentence,” Pratt muttered with a shake of his head.
“Do you mind?” Thomas barked without looking, tired of the imposition.
Monty chuckled without reservation. “Finally. I was concerned I was the only one ready to lash out.”
“You contain it well enough,” Blackmoor complimented with a toast of his glass.
“Whitlock is better,” Monty countered, nudging his head in that direction.
Whitlock looked at them all unabashedly. “I’m not irritated. I’m friends with Colin Gerrard, so I am well versed in this.”
“I heard that,” Kit Gerrard called from the table. “And I’ll tell my twin.”
“And you agree with me,” Whitlock assured him, grinning. “Don’t pretend otherwise.”
Gerrard shrugged, returning to the game at hand.
Thomas shook his head, longing for the quiet of his home. “Why am I even here?”
“To find assistance in wooing your wife,” Whitlock recited as though in answer to a question from a schoolmaster.
“And you lot are supposed to be helping?” Thomas scoffed, sipping his drink and looking over at his wife.
Lily was looking at him too.
His breath caught in his chest, seizing his entire frame. There was no time to compose his features, no time to look away, no time to think…
She blinked, seeming just as surprised to see him looking at her, then, impossibly, she smiled.
Not a wide, beaming grin. Not a coy, flirtatious curve of her lips. A smile. A genuine, unadorned, friendly, almost shy smile that warmed him slowly from the tips of the toes to the ends of each strand of hair on his head.
She’d never been more beautiful to him. Never.
It took the space of four full heartbeats to realize he was smiling back. He hadn’t meant to. Hadn’t thought about it. Hadn’t planned anything.
He just smiled.
How long had it been since he had just smiled at his wife for no reason?
“Well…” Whitlock said from somewhere behind him. “There’s a promising beginning. Bravo.”
Thomas ignored him for the moment, willing to stare at his wife as long as she would stare at him. This was what he had come to London for. This connection. This unspoken something that constantly tugged at him.
But it had nothing to do with London. They were in the home of friends, surrounded by others, and yet they were smiling at each other across the room. Not with any great meaning, not with an intention of something being gained by it, but simply for the sake that the sight of the other made them smile.
Why, then, had he even bothered with London? Even as he asked the question, he knew the answer, at least in part. They had to get away from Rainford, their fortress of separation and distance, to get anywhere in their relationship, and London was where they had a house.
But if London wouldn’t do for them, where could they go?
Lady Whitlock addressed Lily then, and, slowly, she looked away from Thomas to speak with her, releasing him from his spell of helpless attention.
He sipped his drink quickly and turned to face his friends, all of whom were watching him with eerily knowing looks.
“What?” he asked, looking around.
Blackmoor scoffed once. “And he says he doesn’t know how to woo her.”
“I don’t,” Thomas insisted, panic hitting his chest.
“Then what was that?” Monty asked with a flick of his fingers toward the other side of the room.
Thomas shook his head. “I smiled at her.”
“Correction,” Whitlock announced, stepping forward with a raised finger, “you stared at her and smiled.”
“I didn’t mean to,” Thomas grumbled sourly. He looked down into his drink,
