Page 72 of A Baby to Seal the Duke’s Fate

“Perhaps,” Barnaby said. “It is still true. And I see that you do not deny it.”

“What is there to deny?” he asked, refusing to discuss the subject further. He knew the silence was damning, and perhaps that was for the best. How could he consider feelings he was struggling to understand himself?

By the time they turned back toward the house, the conversation had been abandoned in favor of estate matters again, though Leopold was not fooled by the ease with which Barnaby had let it go. His friend had said enough to make the point, and perhaps that had been the intention all along.

Leopold rode up to the stable yard and got the sense that something in the house had shifted while he was away, though he could not yet tell what.

He found out later that afternoon.

Sabina called at Belgrave with papers relating to a boundary dispute before the tea had fully been set out.

Leopold was in the library with Barnaby when Mrs. Pritchard announced her arrival. Barnaby, hearing the name, gave Leopold a look that suggested he had already decided the afternoon would be more entertaining than the morning. Leopold, who had not, had no particular reason to object.

“Show her in,” he said.

Sabina entered with the confidence of someone who had been invited to disagree. She wore a dark riding habit and carried a folded packet of papers under one arm. Her hat was still on, though slightly tilted from travel, and her expression suggested she had come prepared for both argument and amusement.

“Your Grace,” she said, inclining her head.

“Miss Montrose.”

She smiled. “Are we back to such cruel formalities?”

“I use your proper title when I am being polite, and in front of polite company.”

“That explains the shortage.”

Barnaby, standing near the fire with his hands behind his back, gave a low, approving sound. “She has not lost her edge.”

Sabina glanced at him. “And you are still taller in your own imagination.”

Barnaby’s mouth twitched. “I was hoping you had come with better news.”

“I have come with maps,” Sabina said, holding the packet up. “Not miracles.”

Leopold gestured toward the table. “Let us see them.”

She crossed the room and laid the papers down. They spoke first of the boundary line, then of the survey markers, then of the section near the Montrose property where the line had been disputed since before Leopold inherited the title. The conversation had the usual mixture of practicality and irritation that tended to accompany such matters.

Sabina argued with Barnaby about land tax reform before Leopold had even finished skimming the notes.

Barnaby folded one arm across his chest. “You cannot simply redraw the countryside because it offends you.”

Sabina looked at him as if he had said something quaint. “It offends me because it is inefficient.”

“It is land.”

“Yes,” she said. “Which is precisely why it ought to be handled efficiently.”

Barnaby’s expression remained pleasantly infuriating. “That is not how land works.”

“It is how men should work.”

Leopold, who had expected to be necessary to the discussion, found himself instead watching it with an interest he did not bother to conceal.

Sabina had always spoken as if the world were an argument worth winning. Barnaby, to his credit, gave back as good as he got, though with less force and more amusement than she did. They were evenly matched in exactly the way people who enjoyed making each other angry often were.

Leopold leaned one hip against the table and said, “You are both impossible.”