With This Kiss

as when he first faced Griffin and his horde of pirates. “I’ll just point to Viscount Moncrieff if anyone looks at me askance. Maybe between the two of us we’ll start a fashion.”
    “My father’s still alive,” Griffin said, wondering whether he should go through the trouble of collapsing into a chair. It was damnably hard to get upright again. “I’m no viscount,” he added.
    “His lordship won’t live forever. Someday we’ll find ourselves old, gray, and tattooed, battling it out in the House of Lords over a corn bill.”
    Griffin uttered a blasphemy and turned toward the door. If his cousin wanted to pretend that it was going to be easy to return to civilization, let him revel. The days of being each other’s right hand, boon companion, blood brother, were over.
    “Coz.” James spoke from just behind him, having moved with that uncanny silent grace that served him so well during skirmishes at sea. “When will I see you again?”
    Griffin shrugged. “Could be next week. I’m not sure my wife will let me in the front door. Yours has already declared she’s leaving. We might both be busy finding new housing, not to mention new spouses.”
    James grinned. “Feeling daunted, are you? The captain of the Flying Poppy, the scourge of the seven seas, fearful of a wife he barely knows?”
    “Funny how I was the captain on the seas,” Griffin said, ignoring him, “but now you’re the duke and I’m a mere baronet.”
    “Rubbish. I was the captain of the Poppy Two, by far the better vessel. You were always my subordinate.”
    Griffin gave him a thump on the back, and a little silence fell. Male friendship was such an odd thing. They followed each other into danger because bravado doubled with company: side by side, recklessness squared. Now…
    “Her Grace will presumably be coming down for dinner soon,” Griffin said, looking his cousin up and down. “You should dress like a duke. Put on that coat you had made in Paris. Surprise her. You look like a savage.”
    “I hate—”
    Griffin cut him off. “Doesn’t matter. Ladies don’t like the unkempt look. Shark has been chatting with the household. Did you know that your wife is famous throughout London and Paris for her elegance?”
    “That doesn’t surprise me. She always had a mania for that sort of thing.”
    “Stands to reason Her Grace won’t want to see you looking like a shiftless gardener at the dining table. Though why I’m giving you advice, I don’t know. I stand to lose—what do I stand to lose? We made the bet, but we never established the forfeit.”
    James’s jaw set. “We shouldn’t have done it.” Their eyes met, acknowledging the fact that they were easing from blood brothers to something else. From men whose deepest allegiance was to each other to men who owed their wives something. Not everything, perhaps, given the years that had passed, but dignity, at least. A modicum of loyalty.
    “Too late now,” Griffin said, feeling a bit more cheerful now that he knew James felt the same twinge of shame. “Frankly, I doubt either of us will win. English ladies don’t want anything to do with pirates. We’ll never get them in bed.”
    “I shouldn’t have agreed to it.”
    “Damned if you don’t look a proper duke with your mouth all pursed up like that. Well, there it stands. The last huzzah of our piratical, vulgar selves. You can’t back out of it now.”
    James growled.
    Shark poked his head in the library door. “We’re all packed, milord.”
    “I’m off,” Griffin said. “Good luck and all that.”
    For a moment they just looked at each other: two men who’d come home to a place where they didn’t belong and likely would never fit in.
    “Christmas?” James asked, his eyebrow cocked. “In the country.”
    Griffin thought that over. Spending Christmas at the seat of the duchy would mean acknowledging that James was like a brother. They’d find themselves telling stories about times they had nearly died protecting each other, rather than putting it all behind them and pretending the last years were some sort of dream.
    James moved his shoulder, a twitch more eloquent than a shrug. “I’d like to know there’s something pleasant in my future.”
    The duke didn’t want to be a duke. Griffin didn’t want to be a baronet, let alone a viscount, so they were paired in that.
    “It’s as if Jason—or the Minotaur, for that matter—returned home,” Griffin remarked. “I’ve got this bum leg,