Page 65 of The Dueling Duchess

“You know she never opened your letters.”

He was referring to the half dozen letters Guy had sent last year trying to apologize for what he’d done—for the way he’d gone back on his word—as well as several other matters.

“I didn’t know that she never opened them, but it doesn’t surprise me. I expected her to just throw them away.”

“She did.”

Guy frowned. “How do you know that?”

Elliot shrugged.

“Lord, if you’re snooping around and prying into things you shouldn’t, you need to stop now, Elliot. You’re risking life and limb spying now that Cecile owns the Fayre. She keeps a loaded pistol beside her bed, you know.”

Elliot merely smiled.

“I know you don’t need me to tell you this,” Sin said, “but if you do this—”

“If I get up on stage in front of all and sundry, I shall put myself beyond the pale,” Guy said. Far beyond the pale.

Both Sin and Elliot nodded.

“I no longer care. As for my family . . . well, they are all taken care of in every way that matters. They will doubtless experience embarrassment at their association with me, but that cannot be helped at this point.”

Sin hesitated a moment before saying, “Have you asked Elliot about finding you work?”

“Can you imagine me doing what Elliot does?”

Even Sin—ever serious—smiled at that. “Well, not precisely. But he does have numerous connections. There are all sorts of government jobs, Guy.” He turned to Elliot. “Tell him—tell him you can find something suitable that won’t be nearly so . . . drastic.”

“I’ve already made these same suggestions,” Elliot said. “But Guy is adamant.”

Sin gave a frustrated tsk. “To what purpose, Guy?”

“If she won’t have me, I’m leaving Britain,” Guy said.

“What? To go where?” Sin demanded.

“You recall my mother’s brother—my uncle Phillip?”

“The one who had the cranberry bog in America?”

“Yes, cranberries among other crops.”

Sin was already shaking his head. “Surely you’re not—”

“After I work in a circus, nobody here will want anything to do with me, Sin. You know that.”

Sin opened his mouth, closed it, and then made an expressive growling noise. “Why are you doing this? You don’t have to work for her, Guy. You could ask her to marry you—grovel, do whatever is necessary. But why, in the name of God, do you need to get up on stage in front of everyone we know?”

“First off, I want to work with her.” He snorted. “Well, for her if you hear her tell it. Second, I want her to know I’m not ashamed of her and what she does to earn her crust, Sin. Because that was how I treated her last year.”

Sin hadn’t been there that last morning and heard what Guy had said to Cecile. His words came back to haunt him over and over again. They still made him cringe.

“As for going to America. Well, I won’t want to stay in England if she won’t have me. Not to mention there is nothing else for me here. And don’t say my sisters or mother. Soon Claudia will be happily married to her farmer and if Diana wants to join me in Massachusetts, I will gladly take her. Besides, it is not as if I am leaving to live in a tent, Sin. The farmhouse is said to be quite nice and there are six thousand acres. I’ve read the quarterly reports for years and know there is great potential there.”

“If the farm is so successful, then you could sell it and buy something here.”

“I don’t want to sell it and live here. And even if I did, a farm in the wilds of Western Massachusetts would never fetch enough money to buy much more than a cottage and garden plot here and you know that. Trust me, if selling the place would have made any difference, I should have done it to save Darlington. But the property is worth more for what it can produce than what it would fetch in a sale.”