Page 73 of The Duke Who Loved Me (The Duke's Estates 1)

“A fine gentleman. He looked in the kitchen window and saw Mam and me.”

“Why didn’t you hide?” asked her brother, Ned.

“We didn’t know he was there! He just…turned up. All of a sudden like. And he ain’t going away. He went and knocked on the door!”

“I said as how we should fix that lock on the stables,” said Ned.

Since James suspected that the boy had broken it in the first place, he said only, “I’d best go and see.”

Effie looked relieved to have passed off responsibility.

Peering out into the cobbled yard behind the house, James saw Henry Deeping pacing there. He did indeed show no signs of leaving. With a sigh, James went to let him in the back door. “Did Ce…someone tell you I was here?” he asked when he opened it.

“I worked it out for myself” was the reply. “Who knows that you’re here?”

“Never mind.”

Henry craned his neck to see over James’s shoulder. “Looks like a rum sort of place.”

“You have no idea.”

“Did you know there’s a pile of furniture in your back garden?” Henry pointed to the wall at the side of the yard, and James saw that his discards had begun to show over the top. He merely nodded.

“And that Hobbs has gone to work for Bingham? Bingham’s boasting all over town about luring your valet away from you.”

“I suspected as much,” James replied.

“Don’t you care?”

James shrugged.

“What’s happened to you?” asked Henry.

“I have more important things to think about.”

His friend gaped at him. “More important than your valet? You always said…”

“A great many irrelevant things,” James interrupted. “I’m touched by your concern, Henry, but I must get back to work.”

“Work?” He said it as if he could not connect the word with James.

“My great-uncle left a monumental mess.” James gestured at the pile over the wall. “It has to be gone through.”

Henry gazed at him, at the discarded furnishings, and then back at him.

“And I’d appreciate it if you did not share my current address,” James added. He indicated that his friend should go out the way he’d come.

Henry shifted from one foot to the other. “Something to tell you,” he said. “My sister said I had to find you. And after a bit I thought of this place.”

“Your sister?” James couldn’t imagine what that spiky girl had to say to him.

Henry nodded. And then said nothing.

“Well, what is it?”

“Not quite sure how to put it.” Henry looked around as if he feared eavesdroppers. “It’s a bit sticky.”

Seeing that his friend appeared genuinely concerned, James stepped back and led him inside. He took him through the house and up toward his bedchamber, the only livable private space.

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