“I wasn’t planning to,” Jeremy said, in response to Audley’s original warning. “Do I need to advise you to stop mooning?”

Audley, unruffled, gave his wife one last lingering look before turning his gaze fully on Jeremy. “If you think I’m mooning, then I’d be interested to hear what you consider what you’re doing to be.”

Jeremy narrowed his eyes. “I haven’t the faintest idea what you mean.”

“Of course you don’t,” Audley said amiably, lifting a glass of claret in a mocking salute. “You know, for someone who has blunt on the line, you don’t seem to be doing a very good job of avoiding the parson’s mousetrap.”

“You must be joking,” Jeremy said, crossing his arms over his chest, feeling vaguely like a petulant child. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been keeping a healthy distance between Rothsmere’s sister and myself all day.”

“Indeed,” Audley agreed. “But she wasn’t the lady I was referring to.”

Unable to help himself, Jeremy let his eyes drift to Diana. She was speaking animatedly to Violet and Lady Emily, gesturing with one hand. Like all of her movements, the motion seemed calculated to be neither too fast and frenetic nor too lethargic. It was just lazy enough to put one in mind of other slow, languorous activities.

“You continue to prove my point,” Audley murmured. With great difficulty, Jeremy tore his eyes from Diana to glare at his friend.

“You must be mad.”

“You only say that because you can’t see the look on your own face,” Audley said with a grin. “It’s practically indecent.”

“That is my normal facial expression,” Jeremy said.

“No,” Audley said firmly. “If it were, you’d never be invited out in polite society. It’s positively lecherous.”

Jeremy, sensing an unproductive line of debate, redirected the conversation. “Never mind all that. I’ve no intention of marrying Lady Templeton—or anyone else,” he added hastily.

“If you say so,” Audley agreed—except that he agreed in a fashion that somehow made it sound as though he was doing just the opposite, but Jeremy couldn’t work out how to call him out on this without sounding like a madman.

“I do say so,” was the response he settled on, which even to his own ears sounded a bit feeble. “Even were I the marrying type—perish the thought—Lady Templeton is hardly the lady I’d set my sights upon. In case you haven’t noticed, she and I don’t get on. Never have.”

Audley’s mouth flattened into a line as he gave Jeremy a long, surveying sort of look that Jeremy didn’t like one bit. “I don’t know if that’s exactly how I’d describe it,” he said after a moment. “You two have been at each other’s throats for years—since she made her debut, at least—but I’ve always gotten the impression that you rather enjoyed it.”

Jeremy opened his mouth to reply, then shut it again. He thought back on the long years of his acquaintance with Diana, which dated back to his days at Eton; back then, the five years’ difference in their ages had stretched between them like an uncrossable void. For years, he hadn’t given her much thought—she was Penvale’s annoying little sister, who laughed a bit too loudly and spoke a bit too boldly for her own good. However, as they’d grown older, their interactions had taken on an edge. She had begun to mock him mercilessly, and he, a young buck with a hot head, had given as good as he received.

It was in her debut Season, however, watching the calculating light in her eyes as she surveyed the gentlemen at a ball or during an outing to the theater, that the first hints of something… different had begun to make themselves known in his feelings for her. And how had he handled this? He, who took nothing seriously, who tried his damnedest to treat everything in his life as a joke? He’d proposed to her, half in jest—and she had shot him down, as he’d surely deserved.

And they’d barely been able to hold a polite conversation since. And yet… wasn’t Audley right, much as it pained him to admit it? Wasn’t needling Diana all part of the fun?

He realized that, as he’d been occupied by his own thoughts, Audley had stood there in silence, awaiting his reply, a maddeningly superior expression upon his face.

“I don’t know that I’d go that far,” Jeremy hedged.

“I would,” Audley said smugly. “You bicker with each other because you’re too much alike. You see too much of yourselves in each other, which is why you can’t carry on a conversation for more than ten seconds without trying to get a rise out of one another.”

Jeremy sputtered. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Of course,” Audley agreed solemnly.

“I grant you, there are some passing similarities, but I can hardly help it if she’s the best-looking woman of my acquaintance, and I myself am obviously a fine specimen of masculine glory”—at this, Audley rolled his eyes so hard that Jeremy was surprised they didn’t roll out of his head entirely—“and so it is only natural that you find us superficially similar.”

Audley shrugged, clearly regretting having begun this conversation, and made to move past him toward the ladies. “Whatever you say, Jeremy. Do try to keep your hands off of her when Penvale’s about, though—I’m not sure he’ll react so benignly if he catches you in flagrante again.”