Page 22 of The Dueling Duchess

“I told you not to go to the Hershaw ball last night,” Elliot said in a prim way that made Guy want to punch him.

Guy prudently refrained from taking a swing at the other man for two reasons. First, Elliot was one of his best friends.

And second, Guy might get one punch in, but it would likely be the only one.

Although Elliot was four inches shorter and a least a stone lighter than Guy, he was a damned fine pugilist who’d won the championship every year at Eton.

“For your information, my dear Smithy,” Guy pointed out, “I had to go to Hershaw’s bleeding ball last night because my mother and Lady Hershaw were bosom beaus when they were girls.”

“Ah.” Elliot, the son of an earl, immediately comprehended the meaning beneath Guy’s words: When one’s mother’s closest girlhood friend invited you to a ball, you went and you danced. A lot. There were no two ways about it.

Guy saw no reason to admit that he’d only stayed an hour at the insipid event. Nor did he feel any reason to mention that he’d gone to Mrs. Adele Murphy’s house upon departing the ball.

He had been delighted to receive a message from his erstwhile lover just as he’d been leaving home for the Hershaw party. It had seemed serendipitous and he decided he’d pay her a visit before he left London.

He’d not seen Addy in ages. She was the widow of a wealthy window maker—try saying that three times quickly—and perhaps a decade older than Guy.

Addy was not the sort of woman to be invited to a haut ton function like the Hershaw ball, nor did she aspire to attend such events, which was one of several reasons Guy enjoyed their time together.

Another reason was her free and easy attitude toward sexual pleasure.

Guy wasn’t Addy’s only lover and she didn’t expect him to remain constant, either. An arrangement which suited him down to the ground.

“Well, I’d best be off.” Elliot pulled worn workmanlike gloves from the pocket of his equally worn coat.

“How is it that you’re escaping demeaning physical labor today?” Guy demanded, unashamed of the fact that he sounded like a sniveling twelve-year-old boy chafing beneath his chores.

“I’m not. I have to take the laundry over.”

They both groaned.

The washer woman—Mrs. Bascom—hated all men with a vengeance and let them know it often with loud verbal harangues whenever they had the misfortune to enter her domain.

“After I leave the delightful Mrs. Bascom, I have to pay a visit to the man who is supposed to be providing us with caravans but is apparently a month and a half behind schedule.”

Guy didn’t envy his friend that particular errand, either. He’d met the obstreperous Prussian wheelwright, who was given to throwing tools and chunks of wood when he became irritable.

Perhaps cleaning the dressing room wasn’t so bad, after all?

Guy knocked on said room’s door. “Anyone in there?” he called out. Receiving no answer, he opened the door and winced at the mess inside.

“Suddenly enduring one of Mrs. Bascom’s harangues doesn’t seem so bad,” he muttered, turning to Elliot, who’d followed him. “I don’t suppose you want to change jobs with me?” he asked without much hope.

Elliot just laughed as he pushed past him into the room and took his battered overcoat off a coatrack that was so overloaded with garments, Guy wasn’t sure how it managed to stay upright.

“Are you going to Alastair’s dinner party tonight?” Elliot asked as he pulled his flat cap from the coat’s pocket and clapped it onto his closely shorn head.

Guy grimaced. “Lord. Is that tonight?”

“If you miss it, he will kill you,” Elliot said.

Guy glanced around the shambles that was the dressing room. “I’ll be lucky to finish in here before midnight. And she also wants me to clean the orchestra pit.”

Elliot whistled softly. “She must dislike you almost as much as she does poor Sin.”

It was true that Marianne seemed to save a special antipathy for the duke. Guy supposed that was because it was Sin who’d forced her to hire the three of them—and to go along with his plans to rescue his brother.

“In any case,” Elliot went on, “you’d better be there tonight because Ally has an important announcement to make.” He wrapped a mottled scarf around his throat.