Page 57 of A Necessary Wife

“Rise and shine, sleeping beauty!” Rafferty yelled, making Milo groan again.

Something cool and wet slapped over his face, and he threw it away even as something round was pressed into his other hand. But the effort to grip it made him remember the indulgences of the night before had been great.

“Drink it.”

He cracked one eye open and realized Rafferty was holding a tankard under his nose. “What is it?”

“Ale.”

He pushed the tankard away. “Water.”

“No, ale. It’s best for what ails you right now.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m waiting for my carriage, to take Becca home again. Got tired of watching you snore your head off.”

Milo took in the stall around him and blinked. He had slept in the stables. And apparently, he’d drooled on his coat sleeve, too.

He sat up quickly, wiping his mouth. “What am I doing here?”

“Ensuring the survival of your marriage I suspect. Samuel here aided your departure from the ballroom last night, to prevent you from making a bigger fool of yourself than you already had, but you took off when his back was turned.”

“Then why am I in the stables?”

“That’s a good question. We think your horse brought you back when you fell asleep. It’s a miracle you didn’t slide off and break your neck. The stable hands put you in here, rather than risk your reputation as an expert horseman. The horse is fine, by the way.”

Milo frowned, trying to remember the evening before with any clarity. Amelia, the ball, and…

He drew a blank. He only vaguely remembered part of the evening—dancing with his wife, Rafferty upsetting her, then drinking too much whiskey as his marriage was toasted again and again to the sound of a distant harp. His stomach growled alarmingly, and he turned his head quickly to cast up his accounts all over the straw piled up beside him.

It was so violent an eruption that he barely managed not to collapse into it when he was done.

“I told you he’d do that!” Rafferty crowed. “You owe me a shilling.”

“That you did,” Samuel answered. “A stable hand will have to clean that up after he’s gone.”

Milo sprawled against the ground again, better yet feeling worse, somehow. His head pounded now, and he thought he might be seeing double because there were two horses in the next stall, and they never did that here. “Kill me now.”

“You don’t get out of this so lightly,” Rafferty argued. “Apologies are required.”

“Sorry,” he said wincing as he caught his brother’s eye.

“Not to us.”

Rafferty hauled him upright by his lapels and shook him hard. That did not help his memory, or his stomach but his vision improved dramatically as a result.

He shook off Rafferty’s grip and smoothed down his waistcoat. “Did you get me drunk on purpose last night?”

“You did that yourself, fool that you are. For the good of your marriage, I abducted you to father’s study, but you couldn’t stand still. I turned my back for a moment and you were gone,” Samuel complained. “You can clean up in the freshwater barrel if you need to, but you still won’t be as handsome as me.”

Milo considered punching his brother, but a good dunk might indeed help with his memory. He glanced down at the clothes he’d been wearing last night and winced. He was badly rumpled, but that hardly mattered around his relatives. “You’ve seen me in worse condition. I’ll change later.”

“I’ll bet your wife hasn’t seen you in such a sorry state,” Rafferty warned. “Becca would throw a fit if I came home in such a condition.”

That gave him a moment of doubt, but then he shrugged. “I’ve lived through a wife’s theatrics before.”

Rafferty clapped his hands together once. “It’s your funeral.”