Page 23 of The Dueling Duchess

With his three-day beard growth and too-colorful, tatty clothing, Elliot looked more like a disreputable cockfight fixer than the fourth son of an earl. Guy doubted even his own mother would recognize her son.

“As if we can’t all guess what Ally’s announcement is,” Guy groused.

Lord Alastair Scorton was a friend of theirs from school—not as close a mate as Elliot or Sin, but still a good friend. His betrothal to Lady Lily Melson had been planned by their parents since the two were still in their cradles.

Lily was a good friend of one of Guy’s sisters and had spent many a school holiday at Darlington Park. In fact, Guy had rolled around in a hayloft with Lily one memorable Easter break.

She had been unsentimental and pragmatic even at eighteen, not expecting anything more from Guy than a bit of sensual pleasure, her life with Alastair already mapped out before her. What they’d done was no secret from Ally, either; he’d been engaged in a rather torrid affair with an opera dancer at the time.

There was no doubt in Guy’s mind that Lily and Alastair would marry, reproduce, and then go back to their separate entertainments just as soon as Lily provided her new husband with his heir and spare.

Guy had always envied Ally and Lily’s easy friendship and had often wished that his parents had stitched him into a betrothal when he was still in the cradle.

As it was, he’d need to expend energy to find a suitable heiress. If the woman was not one of his acquaintances, which was highly likely as the downiest debutantes came from the emerging merchant class, then he’d run the risk of marrying somebody whose notion of marriage and fidelity was not so elastic as Lily’s was.

That would lead to disharmony in the household—which was what had happened in his own parents’ marriage, when his bourgeois mother’s expectations of marital fidelity had run headlong into his aristocratic father’s equally firm expectation that his only responsibility to his new wife was to elevate her socially and give her offspring.

It had not made for a happy marriage.

“Guy? ”

“Hmm?” He looked up from his uneasy thoughts.

“You’ll be there tonight, right?” Elliot said, pausing on his way out the door.

“I’ll be there.”

“Good.” Elliot glanced around the pigsty. “Enjoy your cleaning.”

“Go to the devil,” Guy muttered as Elliot’s laughter echoed through the quiet theater.

Farnham’s performers worked late, so most of them would not begin wandering in until midday, which was just as well because Guy could do without a herd of females mucking up the dressing room before he could even get it sorted.

He stared around at the room, his mind reeling at where to start.

Look at you: Lord Carlisle, heir to a dukedom, wondering how to commence cleaning.

Guy scowled. I’m doing this to help Sin—to help save a man’s life, in fact.

What a glorious way to spend your last year of freedom, cleaning up after circus folk. Surely there must have been some better way to have engineered this rescue effort?

Guy banished the disloyal thought from his head—even though it had certainly popped into his mind more than a few times in the weeks since he’d begun insinuating himself into Barnabas Farnham’s Fayre—and gazed around the shambles of a room.

His attention settled on the settee—or, more accurately—the huge pile of garments that covered every inch of the settee.

Had none of these women ever heard of hangers or clothes hooks?

Marianne had said she wanted proof there was a settee in the room.

And that she wanted all the clothing and costumes returned to their proper places.

Then she wanted the room scrubbed until it gleamed.

Yes, she’d used the word gleamed, her eyes doing a bit of gleaming as well as she’d smirked at Guy.

At that moment, Guy had wanted to strangle Sin for getting him into this bloody predicament, but then Marianne had given the duke the job of cleaning up the night-soil closet and Guy had decided to shut his mouth and be grateful.

But looking around the cluttered room, he felt utterly overwhelmed. Where did a person even start with such a mess? He’d never cleaned a thing in his life. Well, except his fowling piece, on occasion—but usually even that had been done by somebody else. Some servant.