“Send me anywhere, James,” Garret groaned. “Anywhere but here.” He turned towards his younger brother, Edward, as they strode towards the steps of the massive, new, Palladian mansion commissioned by the recently successful industrial revolutionary, George Trent, father of the bride.
“Edward,” he grabbed his brother’s shoulder, twisting the beautiful, fawn coat, and halted him on their path to their mutual doom, “you don’t need me here. You don’t.” He jerked his head in his older brother’s direction, his eyes wide with what he was sure appeared to be unmanly desperation. “You’ve got James here. And John is about somewhere.”
James, the eldest and now the Duke of Huntsdown, let out a beleaguered sigh and he stopped his confident, long stride. He glanced about the immense gravel drive. “Where the hell is John?”
“Rogering the nearest dairy maid no doubt,” Garret quipped, knowing it would only irritate the excessively proper and etiquette driven James. Although it was also probably true.
“A man after father’s heart,” Edward said, smiling like the marriage minded idiot he was.
After all, what else could you call a man who willingly put his head into the noose? Idiot was actually kind, considering some of the epithets Garret had in his vocabulary.
“Good God,” James huffed with the same affectation of a mother knowing her daughter was running full tilt at ruin, “you’d think, given his own bastardy, he’d be a bit more careful about siring more into this world.”
Garret snorted. “Please, that man will roger anything that stands still. I fear for the sheep in the area.”
Turning back to the youngest Hart, Garret took him firmly by the shoulders. Instilling all the elder brotherly importance he could bestow, he looked solidly into Edward’s eyes. “Now, listen to me carefully, Edward, and I will use very small sentences. It is too late for you. You have committed yourself to the dungeon of matrimony. But—I—hate—weddings.”
