Gyles nodded, a familiar stirring in his loins at the prospect of her in his arms once more. “If I continue to be amused, an offer may well come.”
Lex blurted out an astonished laugh. “I’m shocked. You! A confirmed rake! Do you not have two ladies established in London?”
“I haven’t seen them in months.”
“They bore you?”
“I find I need…something more these days. Serenity, quiet companionship.” Addy’s prescription fit his mood. She’d also fit so well against his loins. Lithe, sinuous, and willing. “The very reason I visit Prinny’s little abode is because my parents want me to do the Season here. They want babies, preferably male, very soon.”Even if they do not wish the bride to be the lovely Miss Adelaide Devereaux.
The next morning after Gyles’s argument with his mother, he had told his father to have the Holbein returned to him in the usual manner. “Buy it.”
“But how, boy? God’s teeth, Barry is dead. Who knows what has happened to the portrait now?”
“Simple. Ask his solicitor, Father.”
“But…but…who in hell knows who that is?” the duke ranted on.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. Ask your man to inquire in the city. Someone knows. Spread the word and say you want to buy it!”
“I will not.” Stonegage stuck out his formidable jaw.
“Why not?”
“It was stolen from me.”
“Mama suspects you sold it for debts.”
The duke waved that explanation away. “No matter! I will not lower myself to buy it back.”
“The Earl of Barry lies six feet under. He will never know you paid for it.”
“I refuse to do it.”
“Then, Father, do without.”
“I cannot! It’s the fulfillment of a lifetime to have it back. My pride’s at stake! I tell you, I will make those girls’ lives a misery if I cannot have it for my own.”
Gyles had burned with fury at the threat. “Do not even think it, Father. I will fight you tooth and nail if you hurt the Devereauxs.”
The duke, in his youth a happy rake, was becoming a vengeful and surly roué.
Gyles directed his attention to Lex, who settled more deeply into the squabs and rambled on about the values of wedded bliss versus their own bachelorhood. “You’re only thirty-three, Gyles. I thought you were waiting to marry in your dotage. Continue to be the Blood of London!”
“Ha. Ha.” He flexed his fingers, considering his gold and ruby signet ring—and how he could make finer use of it as a wedding ring to take Addy to his heart and his bed. “She makes me laugh.”
Lex glanced out the window at the rain, his expression changing from gloom to joy. “A good thing. I found it true myself the other night with her sister, Imogen. Perhaps humor is a family trait.”
“Inherited, too, do you suppose?” Gyles liked that idea. “I could do with that.”
“It’s no small talent to bring a smile to someone’s face. Especially yours and mine,” Lex said with the dismal days of their imprisonment in Verdun darkening Gyles’s visage.
“I’ve spent years reliving them. I know, I know. I escaped long before you, so what have I to complain about, eh? Whereas you endured that hell for nearly four years. Then stayed on to spy for eight more! Meanwhile, your poor father stayed and died there.”
“It was as he wanted. He knew the composition of the rock, the consistency of the earth around the bed of the Meuse. He had studied in his youth the rich loam on the fringe of the Argonne forest. When we were marched there to the dungeons of the Citadel, he never feared. He encouraged each of us to be of good cheer. He told us he knew the means to gain our freedom.”
“I remember him as so confident we could escape,” Gyles said with a wistful sigh. “I arrived in Verdun more than a month later than you. Both of you were weary and cold, bony with hunger, and yet your father bade us all smile and sing each time the guards served us their tasteless gruel.”
Lex’s father, then in his forties, had been a strong, proud blustery fellow. Captured by the Frenchgendarmein Normandy when someone betrayed their attempt to return to England after Napoleon canceled the Amiens Treaty, the then earl of Martindale and his son, sixteen-year-old Felix, were marched across the breadth of France to the frontier fortress of Verdun.
