Who: Terence Higgs, Gwen Montgomery-Higgs
Where: The Maldives
When: 24 March 2002, daytime
How did the vows go? They did say ‘for richer or poorer’, didn’t they? And Gwen had agreed, or the two of them wouldn’t be basking in the Maldivian sunshine at present.
That was enough reason to ’fess up to losing thousands of galleons during his stag night, Terence thought. Married life wouldn’t be off to a great start if Gwen had to hear it from someone like Amelia.
Thank Merlin everything on the honeymoon had been pre-paid.
Terence put down his fizzy, alcoholic and very pricey drink and turned to face her.
“Guess what happened on my stag night.”
Gwen pushed her oversized sunnies up onto her head and raised an eyebrow at her darling husband. In all the years that she’d known Terence, she didn’t remember a single instance where a conversation started with a question like that and ended well.
“If the answer has anything to do with either shagging or accidentally murdering a stripper, I think it would be better for you not to finish this story,” she drawled.
Terence laughed. “No and no. I don’t remember if there even were strippers. If there were, they weren’t very memorable.” He made a face. “Though I suppose if I did murder one I wouldn’t remember either.”
His smile turned into a neutral expression. “No, I was a model citizen. Very charitable, you might say.”
Gwen’s eyebrow rose even higher. Terence had many wonderful and admirable qualities, she wouldn’t be married to him if he didn’t, but she wouldn’t have put charitable high up on the list usually. Not unless he was donating to some animal related cause that was important to her, anyway.
“Care to elaborate?”
“I may have given away a lot of money.” He paused and furrowed a brow. “I had been drinking.”
Oh. Was that all? Gwen settled back into her chair and breathed a sigh of slight relief. Ter had more money than God and he got his yearly allowance from his parents’ company every July at the beginning of the fiscal year. Not to mention, she was hardly poor. Yes, it might be stupid to give away a lot of money, but they were hardly going to starve.
“Loser,” she teased. “How much?”
“I don’t know. Thousands.” He made a face at Gwen.
“Well you married this loser so what does that make you, eh? Eh?” He teased in return.