Will and Dec exchanged looks. “We can’t have incidents like tonight occurring—”
Max laughed and held up a hand in supplication. “Come now. It was a little amusing, was it not?”
They stared back at him, their expressions stone-faced.
His own smile slipped and he sighed. “You would have found it so once. Marriage has rid you both of your humor.”
“Someone could have been hurt, Max. What if Arlington came here with a pistol? Have you considered that?” Dec demanded. “Ladies were present. My wife was here—”
“As was mine,” Will interjected, his face flushed. “And she’s with child.”
Max dragged a hand through his hair, feeling like the veriest wretch right then. “Of course. They should not have been subjected to such . . . barbarism.” Not Rosalie or Violet. Not Lady Peregrine—she had been like a mother to him since his own died. Not even Aurelia—for all that she probably enjoyed witnessing him getting struck in the face. “Perhaps I should keep my distance?” he asked. “I’ll see you both at our clubs or—”
“That’s not what we’re saying, you idiot,” Dec snapped. “We don’t want to cast you out of our lives. We simply want you to stop your philandering ways and—”
“I’ll not marry—”
“We bloody well understand that. Take a mistress, then. Cease dallying with married women . . . cease flitting from woman to woman like you require a new flavor every day of the week.”
“Max,” Will said earnestly. “I’ve never known you to be with the same woman more than once.”
“That’s not true. There was . . .” He paused, thinking. “ . . . Margaret.” He stopped. “Wait, no.” Their trysts had totaled two times. It had just taken a little longer to woo the actress into his bed.
“See there,” Will announced.
“I cannot help it that I bore easily.” He wasn’t about to confess that he refused to get attached to any single female. He knew love existed. He’d been witness to it. He’d been a part of it. And then he’d stood by as it was lost. As it destroyed everything in his life. He simply took precautions against letting it happen to him.
“We’re simply asking that you behave more responsibly.”
They were asking for more than that. Perhaps they didn’t realize it, but he did. They were asking him to change. He didn’t have the heart to tell them that he couldn’t. That he wouldn’t.
Staring at his friends, he realized this was the beginning of the end. The three of them had been together all these years, but they would never be the way they used to be. Will and Dec loved nothing more than their wives. Will was going to be a father. Dec would soon follow in his footsteps. His friends were moving in another direction.
He was on his own now.
Max departed the office half an hour after Will and Dec left him there. He saw no sense in letting good brandy go to waste, so he remained, finishing his drink and having another one before rising to leave. He supposed this would be his lot now. Ending his nights alone, drinking in the shadows of a fire-lit room.
Stepping out into the corridor, he cursed the near darkness. Apparently the household had retired for the night, forgetting that he lingered in its expanding silence. Or perhaps they were so exasperated with his behavior and the spectacle he had created this evening that no one cared if he stumbled about in the dark and made it home to his bed or not. That sounded about right. Friends with their own lives to attend. No wife. No mistress. No one to give a damn.