Julia Quinn - Mr. Cavendish, I Presume

“It really depends,” he said, “on the subject of the sarcasm. And the tone.”

“Of course,” she said, although she was still not sure he had all his wits about him.

“Most people of my acquaintance intend their sarcasm as insult, so no, I do not find it interchangeable with humor.” He looked at her with a certain level of question in his eyes, and she realized he desired her opinion on the matter. Which was astounding. Had he ever requested her opinion before? On anything?

“I agree,” she said.

He smiled. Just a little, as if anything more vigorous might make him queasy. “I thought you would.” He paused, just for a heartbeat. “Thank you, by the way.”

It was almost embarrassing how lovely it felt to hear those words. “You’re welcome.”

His smile stayed small, but turned a little wry. “It has been some time since someone has saved me.”

“I imagine it has been some time since you needed saving.” She sat back, feeling oddly content. She believed him when he said he did not make a habit of drunken revelry, and she was glad for that. She had little experience with tipsy males, but what she had seen-usually at balls at which her parents had allowed her to stay later than usual-had not impressed her.

Still, she could not help but be glad that she had seen him this way. He was always in charge, always supremely composed and confident. It wasn’t just that he was the Duke of Wyndham, second in rank to but a handful of men in Britain. It was simply him, the way he was-his authoritative manner, his cool intelligence. He stood at the back of the room, surveying the crowds, and people wanted to let him take charge. They wanted him to make their decisions, to tell them what to do.

John Donne had got it wrong. Some men were islands, entire of themselves. The Duke of Wyndham was. He always had been, even to her earliest memories.

Except now, just this once, he had needed her.

He had needed her.

It was thrilling.

And the best part of it was that he hadn’t even realized it. He hadn’t had to ask for it. She had seen him in need, judged the situation, and acted.

She had made the decisions. She had taken control.

And he had liked it. He said he liked her bossy. It was almost enough to make her want to hug herself.

“What has you smiling?” he asked. “You look quite contented.”

“Something you would never understand,” she said, without a trace of bitterness. She did not begrudge him his self-possession. She envied it.

“That’s unfair of you,” he said with gentle accusation.

“I mean it as a compliment,” she replied, knowing he’d be unable to understand that as well.

One of his brows rose. “I shall have to trust you on it, then.”

“Oh, I would never lie about a compliment,” she said. “I don’t give them out willy-nilly. I think they should mean something, don’t you?”

“Even if the subject does not understand the meaning?”

She smiled. “Even then.”

He smiled back, a little wry thing involving just one corner of his mouth. But it was full of humor and maybe even a touch of affection, and for the first time in her life, Amelia Willoughby began to think that marriage to the Duke of Wyndham might be about something more than duty, something greater than rank.

It might turn out to be a most pleasant endeavor, indeed.

It was probably a good thing that he’d still had rather too much liquor in his veins when Amelia came across him, Thomas reflected, because he hadn’t had the good sense to be mortified. And now-when the only remnant of his night of drunken excess was a pounding in his left temple (and a throb in the right)-he reckoned she’d already seen the worst and hadn’t gone off screaming. In fact, she seemed quite content to ride along in the carriage with him, gently scolding and rolling her eyes at him.

The thought would have made him smile, if the sudden bump in the road hadn’t sent his brain jostling against his skull-if indeed that were possible. He was not a scholar of anatomy, but this scenario seemed far more likely than what it felt like, which was an anvil flying through the window and impaling itself in his left temple.

As to why his right temple was pounding in a similar manner, he could only assume it was out of sympathy.

He let out an unattractive groan and pinched hard at the bridge of his nose, as if the pain of that might be enough to blot out the rest of it.

Amelia didn’t say anything, and in fact didn’t even look as if she thought she ought to be saying something-further reinforcing his newly arrived belief that she was a most excellent female. She was just sitting there, her face remarkably placid, given that he must look like death itself, ready to spew noxious substances all over her.

Not to mention his eye. It had looked rather vicious the night before. Thomas couldn’t imagine what sort of hue it had turned overnight.

He drew in a deep breath and opened his eyes, glancing at Amelia’s face around his hand, which was still doing its completely ineffective magic on his nose.

“Your head?” she asked politely.

She’d been waiting for him to acknowledge her, he realized. “Pounds like the devil.”

“Is there something you can take for that? Laudanum, perhaps?”

“God, no.” He almost passed out at the thought. “It’d do me in completely.”

“Tea? Coffee?”

“No, what I need is-”

A Gladdish Baddish.

Why hadn’t he thought of it earlier?

It was a ridiculous name, but as it was only needed when one had behaved in a ridiculous manner, he supposed it was fitting. Harry Gladdish had perfected it the summer they were eighteen.

Thomas’s father had elected to spend the season in London, leaving him to his own devices at Belgrave. He and Harry had run wild. Nothing too debauched, although at the time they fancied themselves the worst sorts of profligates. After having seen how other young men chose to ruin themselves in London, Thomas now looked back at that summer with some amusement. By comparison, he and Harry had been innocent lambs. But even so, they had drunk far too much and far too often, and the Gladdish Baddish, administered in the morning (with a pinched nose and a shudder), saved them more than once.

Or at the very least, rendered them able to walk straight enough to make it back to their beds, where they could sleep off the last of their miseries.

He looked at Amelia. “Can you spare another half an hour?”

She motioned around her. “Apparently I can spare the entire day.”

It was a bit embarrassing, that. “Ah, yes”-he cleared his throat, trying to hold himself very steady as he did so-“sorry for that. I hope you were not forced to abandon important plans.”

“Just the milliner and the cobbler.” She pretended to pout, but anyone could see it was really a smile. “I shall be poorly hatted and shod for the winter, I’m afraid.”

He held up a finger. “Just one moment.” Then he reached across the carriage and gave the wall two pounds with his fist. Immediately, they rolled to a halt. Normally, he would have hopped down to redirect the driver, but surely this time he could be forgiven for trying to limit his movements. The last thing any of them wanted was for him to lose his stomach in a closed carriage.

Once the new arrangements had been made, and the driver had got them back on their way, he resettled himself in his seat, feeling decidedly more chipper just at the thought of the Baddish that awaited him. Harry would wonder why he’d been drinking and why he’d been drinking somewhere else, but he would never ask. At least not this afternoon.

“Where are we going?” Amelia asked.

“The Happy Hare.” It was a bit out of their way, but not drastically so.

“The posting inn?”

Indeed. “I shall be cured.”

“At the Happy Hare?” She sounded dubious.

“Trust me.”

“Said by a man reeking of gin,” she said, shaking her head.

He looked over at her, lifting one of his brows into the famously regal Wyndham arch. “I wasn’t drinking gin.” Good Lord, he had more breeding than that.

She looked as if she might smile. “So sorry. What were you drinking, then?”

He was quite certain this wasn’t the sort of conversation one ought to conduct with one’s fiancée, but nothing about this meeting was the sort of thing one ought to do or see or say with one’s fiancée. “Ale,” he told her. “Have you ever tried it?”

“Of course not.”

“Tsk tsk. Such outrage.”

“That wasn’t outrage,” she shot back, outraged now. “It was simple fact. Who would have ever served me ale?”

She did have a point. “Very well,” he said, everything gracious. “But it wasn’t gin.”

She rolled her eyes, and he almost laughed. They were like an old married couple. Not that he’d had much cause to witness old married couples doing anything but insulting (his father) and accepting it (his mother), but Grace had told him that her parents had been wondrously devoted to each other, and from what he’d seen of Lord and Lady Crowland-Amelia’s parents-they seemed to get on reasonably well, too. Or at the very least, neither seemed consumed with desire to see the other one dead.

“Do your parents like each other?” he asked quite suddenly.

She blinked several times in rapid succession, obviously surprised by the change of topic. “My parents?”

“Do they get on?”

“Yes, I suppose.” She paused, and her brow wrinkled adorably as she considered it. “They don’t do very much together-their interests really don’t mesh-but I do think they hold each other in some affection. I haven’t given it much thought, to be honest.”