AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Nevertheless, it was rather convenient, what with all the anonymity in his approach. It was his cross to bear, as well as the fact that he couldn’t abide the sound of happy children because—
“Joshua.”
Joshua jumped in his skin what felt like a good foot off the ground. His dogs, snoozing in the sun, leaped to their feet when they heard the male voice and began to bark, and Joshua, midswing, very nearly chopped off a toe. He whirled around.
Miles Smythe, the tall, fit, and very blond Earl of Clarendon, strolled down the path toward him. It was a wonder to Joshua that he looked exactly as he had when they were young lads, but he did. Miles had been his closest friend all his life. Closer than his own brother had been.
Joshua tossed down his axe. “Bethan! Merlin! Heel!” he shouted at the two hounds. Bethan immediately slid down onto his belly, apparently relieved he didn’t have to exert himself in the heat of the day. But Merlin trotted forward, tail wagging, to greet a man he knew well. Miles was a friend to all dogs and smiled with delight as he went down on one knee to scratch Merlin behind the ears. That, of course, prompted Bethan to get up and trot forward, too.
Miles was generally agreeable in all things, and happily accepted the lap of their tongues and their exploring noses before rising to his full height. With hands on hips, he surveyed the scene. “Expecting an exceptionally hard winter? Building an ark?”
Joshua glanced around, too. There was indeed quite a lot of wood stacked and scattered about—he hadn’t realized how much he’d chopped. “I honestly don’t know.”
“I never knew you to be inclined to hard labor.”
Miles knew him as someone who’d always been inclined to drinking and women and cards with a few horse races thrown in. “The country air has inspired me. I like the work.”
Miles smiled. “Far be it from me to fault a man in pursuing his passions.”
Joshua wouldn’t call it a passion. More like...a need. “Ale?” Joshua gestured to the pitcher that Butler had brought earlier.
“I would prefer a whisky.”
Joshua hesitated. Whisky was in the house. And the house was not...ready for visitors.
“I came through it,” Miles said. He’d always had a knack of knowing what Joshua was thinking.
Joshua had been back at Hollyfield for a month, but he hadn’t exactly opened his house to habitation. “It’s just me, and the place is so large,” he muttered.
“I understand,” Miles said cheerfully. “But I do think you could do with a few more staff. And perhaps a chimney sweep. I think something might have died in one.”
Joshua winced. The house looked as if it had been abandoned to the elements. Rooms unopened, furniture still draped in dust covers. Cold hearths, a layer of grime everywhere, and yes, he, too, suspected an animal had died in one of the chimneys. There was only so much a housekeeper with a lone chambermaid could do in a house as large as his.
Joshua looked up at the house. “I intend to sell it.”
“Sell what?”
“Hollyfield.”
Miles’s mouth gaped with surprise. “But...what of the entail?”
He was speaking, of course, of the provisions contained in the duke’s will, the same provision handed down for generations, that in the event an heir is born, the estate must be maintained for the heir’s heir. There were a lot of ins and outs to it, but it restricted the current duke’s access to draining the estate of funds. “I have no heirs.”
Miles squinted at his old friend. “And where will you go? To your mother?”
Joshua snorted. “No.” But to where? He hadn’t thought that far ahead. “London. Paris. New York. I don’t know.”
“Mmm. That doesn’t sound like the Joshua Parker I’ve known all my life.”
It didn’t to Joshua, either. He and Miles used to run together. They were young bucks, attending every assembly, every country house party. They pursued drink and women alike. But then Joshua had married, and Miles had become a responsible earl, and the men they were now were not the men they’d been then. Miles had gotten better. Joshua had...not.
“Let’s go in,” Miles said. “Butler will have made a room presentable by now.”
“Why? What are you doing here?”
Miles smiled. “What is anyone doing in Devonshire? The ball, lad.”
“What ball?”
