James stared."You are biased.Lena has softened your brain."
"I don't know whether you are 'that man,' because I don't know what Esme will require in five years, or ten.Neither do you.That's the point of marriage.It's not a guarantee of perfection.It's a promise to stay while you both trip over your own feet," Niall said.
"I trip quite a lot," James said."Have you considered that?"
"Frequently," Magnus replied."I have also considered that you are at your worst when you are bored.Lady Esme has never, in all the time I have observed her, permitted anyone to be bored in her vicinity.Including herself."
"I saw you at the battledore pitch.You looked as though missing one shuttlecock mattered a great deal.I haven't seen you look like that about cards in ten years," Niall said.
"Cards do not fall into lakes."
"Esme did not fall into a lake at Foxmere," Niall said calmly."But you're drowning all the same."
James pressed his thumb hard into the stack of cards until the edge bit his skin."It is moot.She has made it clear she prefers to be sensible.She ended our little society herself."
"Ah," Magnus murmured."So the lady you told would be better off without you has taken you at your word.And you are offended by her obedience."
James shot him a glare."I am not offended.I am relieved."
Niall arched a brow."You look thrilled."
He knew he looked exactly as he felt: as though someone had quietly shut a door on a room he had only just begun to enter.
He thought of Esme's face on the lawn, her eyes cool, her voice precise, the way she had called him Lord Redford with distance in her tone.
You never overstep.Not where it matters.
The words stuck.
"I am relieved," he insisted, because to say anything else would be to admit he wanted what he had sworn not to."She will find some suitable gentleman who can discuss ledgers at breakfast and never once consider dragging her into a fountain."
"Watford?"Magnus said, incredulous."You would prefer Watford and his ink?"
James forced a joke."Ink is very dependable."
"James," Niall said, dropping the humor altogether."You, who interfere at every turn when you see someone being forced into a dull fate, are now standing back and letting it happen to a woman you care for."
"I am protecting her," James said, the words harsher than he intended."From me, from my inability to remain content, from my father's debts, which are not as comfortably buried as the world believes, from the fact that I am, by my own admission, a man who will not marry."
Magnus's gaze did not waver."Then perhaps you must admit something else."
"And what?"James demanded.
"That you are a coward," Magnus said, not unkindly."You hide behind that vow because it allows you to be noble without doing anything that frightens you."
The word landed.
James's stomach turned."Careful, Berkshire."
"Or what?"Magnus asked quietly."Rake my reputation?You already tried that, and I went and got happily married instead.You may scowl.You want her.You are afraid to say so.And you would rather watch her marry a man she does not laugh with than risk becoming your parents."
Niall drained his wine and set the glass down."If you cannot imagine yourself married to Lady Esme," he said, "then fine.Stay away.Let her find someone who is not half in love with her and pretending indifference.But if the only thing between you and asking is fear?—"
"Then that," Magnus finished, "is not protection.It is selfishness."
The club noise swelled around them.James stared at the cards in his hands and saw nothing.
Half in love.