Page 52 of The Dueling Duchess

Oh, yes there was; Guy feared he’d come to blows with Barry if he was forced to spend too much time in close proximity.

Barry waved an arm to encompass the room around them, or perhaps the house. “There’s plenty of room for my tiny family in this huge pile.” His smile grew larger. “Just me and my poor, motherless child rattling around in this enormous house like two little peas in a pod.”

“Yes, your son.” The man had mentioned having a child when he’d first arrived, but Guy had forgotten all about it while listening to the rest of his story. “How fortunate that you were able to have a family while you were so busy following the drum.”

“Ah, well—never too busy for love,” he said, his smirk grating more every second. “I met and married poor Jenny five years ago.” He pulled a wry face. “I’m afraid she hadn’t the lineage necessary for our grand family, but it is too late to do anything about that. She was the daughter of a captain in my regiment. It was love at first sight.”

Somehow Guy doubted that. He’d known the man less than an hour and had already surmised that everything he did was done with one motivation: personal gain.

“Alas, poor Jenny caught a putrid fever when Alan was still at the tit—oh, I mean still an infant.” He grimaced. “Lord, I suppose I’ll have to watch that rough soldier talk now that I’m a . . .” He trailed off, as if he were afraid to say the word.

“How old is your son?” Guy asked.

“Not yet five.”

Guy wondered if he’d married poor Jenny at the end of her father’s saber. Not that it mattered. Barrymore was the duke and his son, no matter his age, was Marquess of Carlisle.

That meant Guy was, for the first time in years, plain Gaius Darlington. He’d been stripped of his home, responsibilities, and name in less than an hour. Quite remarkable, when one thought about it.

“—although I wonder if that will be possible.”

Guy realized the man had been talking while he’d been gathering wool. “I beg your pardon?”

“I was talking about the dukedom’s properties.”

Guy’s eyes narrowed. “What about them?”

“I understand they are in rather delicate condition.”

“If by delicate you mean in need of money and repairs, then you are correct.”

“Hmm.” Barry sat back in his chair and laid an expensively booted foot over his knee. “Everything entailed, is it?”

“Yes.”

Guy could practically hear the gears turning in the other man’s head. Mainly because he’d had all the same thoughts himself in his quest to find a way to save the dukedom without whoring out the title—and himself—to the highest bidder.

Although he’d worked through the identical process that Barry was now feeling his way through, there was something viscerally repellent in this newcomer doing the same thing.

“You and the old man never considered trying to break entail?”

“No, we never discussed such a thing.”

“But there is a way to do it,” he persisted. “It’s called common recovery, or some such?”

He met Barry’s melting brown eyes—so much like his own, it was like looking in a mirror—and forced a smile. “I believe so,” he said vaguely.

A small, vindictive spark of pleasure warmed him when he thought about how amusing it would be to watch the other man learn that the law of common recovery—the legal fiction aristocrats had used to break entail—would not work for the new duke. At least not until his son was of age.

Barry began talking about the logistics of moving his possessions and child from London, where they’d been lodging, to Fairhurst.

Guy stopped listening and stared sightlessly before him, his thoughts not on the arse sitting across from him, not even in this country.

Instead, he was back in France, lying in a cramped, uncomfortable bed with the first and only woman he’d ever fallen in love with.

He’d just enjoyed the most delicious sex in his life and had decided—in direct contravention of his agreement with Cecile—that he didn’t want what they had to end when they returned to England.

Guy could clearly recall his thoughts that day as he’d looked at her sated face and sleepy eyes. He’d had the maddest urge to not get on the packet the following day. They could stay in war-torn France and keep running, and never, ever go home.