The Defiant Wife (The Three Mrs #2) - Jess Michaels Page 0,66
to discuss the issue with you.”
Gilmore’s eyebrows lifted. “The menace suggested this?”
Rhys narrowed his eyes. “Unless you’d rather discuss why the first Mrs. Montgomery knows your schedule well enough to tell me you were returning this morning and you shift in your seat every time she’s mentioned.”
“If she knows my schedule, it’s likely because she’s plotting some attack against my person,” Gilmore huffed. “And I shift because she is the most frustrating person I have ever had the displeasure to know.”
“Very well, a subject for another time, then,” Rhys said. “She isn’t wrong, though. I…need to talk to someone about Phillipa. And you are my dearest friend.”
Gilmore was immediately serious. “Then tell me.”
Rhys sighed and then gave a brief summary of his time in Bath with Phillipa. He offered few details, of course. He was no libertine, and this conversation was not to crow about a conquest.
“You are describing being in love with this woman,” Gilmore said when he was finished. “This is not a mere affair.”
Rhys pursed his lips. “I…am…in love with her. That isn’t something I can deny.”
“Though you should,” Gilmore said, not unkindly.
Rhys flinched. “Perhaps, yes.”
“You know it isn’t just perhaps. A man who was banned from his club and shunned from social events should not link himself to the second wife of his bigamist brother. A man trying to rebuild his reputation cannot do that.”
“I know all of that.” Rhys ran a hand through his hair.
“But you don’t want to do it,” Gilmore said quietly as he sat back in his chair. “What do you want?”
Rhys shifted. If he said out loud what he wanted, he feared he’d never be able to fit it all back inside, to pretend he didn’t desire it. To walk away from it. From her.
But Gilmore didn’t budge. He just held his stare, waiting, daring him to be truthful, even for a moment. Rhys sighed. “I want to be with her. When I’m honest with myself, all I want is to be with her for the rest of my life.”
“Knowing it will bash your recovery on the rocks?”
“Yes,” Rhys said, and was surprised by the swiftness and certainty with which he spoke.
Gilmore draped his elbows over his knees. “Knowing it would make economic recovery all the harder?”
“Yes.”
“Knowing it will tar her and that child with Erasmus’s feather, with Society’s brand, in a deeper way than they already are?”
Now Rhys hesitated and shook his head. “And there’s the rub.”
He got up and walked to the window, staring out at the street and seeing nothing. Gilmore let him for a moment and then he pushed to his own feet.
“She could be your mistress, you know. It’s fashionable to be in love with those.”
“Fuck.” Rhys pivoted to face his friend. “I don’t want to marry some woman I don’t care about, just to maintain a position, and then keep the one I do love on the side as a secret. That would be cruel to everyone involved. I would be as bad as my brother.”
Gilmore’s face went hard. “No. You would not.”
They stared at each other for a moment, and Rhys was oddly comforted. Gilmore was a difficult man to read, a harder man to know, but they had become close in the many years he had been lucky enough to call Gilmore friend. He knew the duke had his best interest at heart, even if he played devil’s advocate to make Rhys explore every option. It was why Rhys had desired to speak to the man, after all.
Gilmore stepped closer. “It’s complicated, trust that I know that. But answer me this, my friend: does your happiness play any part in your decision? Does hers?”
Rhys’s lips parted. That was not a question he had expected Gilmore to ask. He’d thought the duke too pragmatic to consider such things.
But before he could respond, his butler stepped into the room. “I beg your pardon, my lord, Your Grace, but Mr. Gregory has arrived.”
Rhys blinked and turned from Gilmore’s seeing stare. “Thank you, Coleman. Please show him in, we are ready for him.”
Gilmore hadn’t turned from him, and when the butler left the room, he said, “Perhaps it should. Perhaps your mutual happiness should be the only consideration that truly matters.”
“I just don’t know,” Rhys said, but nothing more as Owen Gregory entered the room.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” he said, stretching a hand out first to Gilmore and then to Rhys.
“Good morning,” Rhys said. “Thank you for coming at such an early hour.”