Page 61 of The Dueling Duchess

“You will work when Blade needs you and you will fetch and carry and assist the cleaners and do whatever else I can find for you.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, struggling to hide the joy inside him.

Had any man in history ever been this happy selling himself into indentured servitude?

She made an abrupt gesture to the stage door. “Now get out—I still have interviews. You can move your things into the smallest room at the back of the house—the one closest to the outhouse.”

If she’d thought such information would dampen his spirits, she’d mistaken him.

“Right away. Thank you, ma’am.”

“Don’t make me sorry for this decision, Guy.”

“You won’t regret it. I promise, Cecile.”

“You will call me Miss Tremblay,” she retorted.

Oh, they were back to that, were they? He smiled in a way he hoped was humble. “Thank you, Miss Tremblay.”

Cecile snorted and turned back to Richie, who was hovering nervously near the door.

She jabbed a finger at him. “You, I will talk to later about bringing him in here without telling me. For now, show the next applicant in.”

* * *

As Guy strode through the familiar backstage area, he felt hopeful for the first time since the afternoon when Barry had barged into his life and turned it upside down.

While it was true that Cecile had hired him to make money and make him grovel rather than out of any real affection, at least he had a chance with her.

Out on the street he hailed one of the hackneys that always could be found in the environs of the Fayre.

“Thirteen Piccadilly Terrace,” he told the driver, and then settled back onto the worn, cracked leather seat.

Guy glanced at his watch and saw he was running a little ahead of his schedule.

He’d asked both Sin and Elliot to meet him at his lodgings—well, his soon to be ex-lodgings—this afternoon. When he’d made the plans, he’d had no idea whether or not Cecile would hire him. He’d intended to tell the other men what his future held, regardless of which way things fell. If she’d not hired him, it was likely he would have been purchasing his passage to Boston this afternoon, rather than packing his things to move into Cecile’s house.

Guy was so busy with his thoughts that he didn’t notice when the hackney stopped outside the building that had been his home for almost seven years.

The porter opened the front door before he reached it. “Good afternoon Your—er, I mean Mr. Darlington.”

Guy was used to that stuttering and stumbling when it came to his change in status.

“I’m expecting a guest in a few minutes—”

“The Duke of Staunton already arrived and your man, Chamberlain, let him in. Mr. Wingate just got home a few minutes ago.”

Guy nodded his thanks.

Good, they were both already there. He could get it all over with at once.

When he thought about Chamberlain, he grimaced. The man would give him that look when Guy told him what was going to happen over the next six months.

Well, Chamberlain could take his look to visit his brother, a man who still worked as underbutler at Darlington Park. Guy wasn’t so skint that he couldn’t pay his servant, but he hardly needed the man at Cecile’s house. Chamberlain could enjoy a protracted paid holiday and think about whether or not he would follow Guy to America at the end of six months.

Sin and Elliot were already comfortably settled in the book room by the time Guy had divested himself of his coat, hat, gloves, and stick.

“You’re early,” he said to Sin, nodding at Elliot, who was lifting up the brandy decanter.