Why Lords Lose Their Hearts by Manda Collins Page B

he considered the out the other man offered, Archer decided he might as well spill the beans. Mostly because although Georgina hadn’t told Con yet, he would needle her until she had no choice but to tell him. He could be relentless like that. “Very well,” he said, dropping into the chair opposite Con’s. “The duke and duchess walked in on me, ah, comforting Perdita in the study.”
    “Comforting, is it?” Con asked slyly. “Was it ‘full comforting’ or maybe just a bit of ‘light comforting’? Inquiring minds want to know!”
    “I want to know,” Trevor chimed in.
    “You were there this morning,” Archer protested. “Unless you’ve got something wrong with your eyesight, you cannot have missed it.”
    Ormond shrugged. “I was looking at Isabella’s bosom. It’s very impressive right now.” He raised a finger. “Not that I wish either of you to comment upon it because I’ll be forced to throw you in the dungeon.”
    “There is no dungeon in this house,” Archer said automatically. As the duke’s personal secretary, he’d know about such things.
    “Keep your smarmy bosom-watching to yourself, Ormond,” Con said, looking very pointedly at Archer. “Now, I believe there is another question on the floor. Full or light, Lord Archer? It will have an effect on your final score.”
    “You’re a lunatic, you know this, right?”
    “As my wife likes to inform me at least once a day. Now tell.”
    “Fine,” Archer said, taking the glass of brandy that Ormond offered him. “Light. It was really just a kiss. And perhaps my hand was somewhere that would not be appropriate were we in a public place.”
    “Excellent,” Con said, clinking his glass with Archer’s. “I have a great deal of fondness for those days.”
    “What days?”
    Coniston stretched his legs out before him and crossed them at the ankles. “Before you’re quite involved. The exploratory stage, I suppose you’d call it.”
    Since that was a fairly accurate description of where he and Perdita were—now, but hopefully not five hours from now—Archer didn’t argue.
    “So, have you talked marriage yet?”
    “Con, don’t be such a damned busybody,” Ormond said with a frown. “It’s none of our business.”
    Surprised to have such faith from Ormond, who by rights should be threatening to blacken his lights and give him a hearty punch in the breadbasket, Archer smiled. “Thank you, Your Grace.”
    “She’s my sister-in-law, Archer,” Ormond said with a glare. “You’d better have marriage in mind. Else we will have to do some serious ‘talking.’”
    God, that’s just what he needed. The Duke of Ormond out for his blood. Which of course meant the duchess as well. Frankly he was more frightened of Isabella than her husband. “Of course I mean to marry her. What do you take me for?”
    “That’s more like it,” Ormond said, nodding as if Archer had said just the right thing. “I suppose she’ll wish to wait until after the babe is born so that Isabella will be able to stand up with her.”
    Since Archer wasn’t sure if she had given the matter any thought, seeing as how she expected to marry someone else entirely, Archer simply gave one nod. It was not an agreement so much as a “good idea.” At least that’s what he told himself.
    “That will be a long wait,” Con said with a raised brow. “Will you be able to endure it?”
    “I’m not an animal,” Archer said resentfully, though why he was so annoyed considering that he planned to consummate the relationship later tonight, he couldn’t say. It was Coniston’s implication he supposed. “I’ve waited this long. Surely I’ll be able to wait a few months more.”
    “That’s what you think,” Ormond said. “But once you’re betrothed, things change.”
    “Yes, they do,” Coniston said, taking a drink of his brandy. “I don’t know what it is precisely but something about knowing you’ll be married in the not too distant future makes the