Free When the Marquess Met His Match by Laura Lee Guhrke - An American Heiress in London 01 - When the Marquess Met His Match Page A

house. Having mended his spendthrift ways, he’d surely be able to spare a few quid for an old friend.
    Nicholas could only hope Denys had gotten over that silly business with the cancan dancer. After all, it had happened three years ago, and they’d been friends far longer than three years. Denys surely wouldn’t hold a grudge.
    “ Y OU SON OF a bitch.” The fist hit him in the face before he had time to duck, sending Nicholas staggering back a step.
    Damn, he thought, touching his cheek with a grimace. He’d forgotten Denys had such a smashing right hook. “Still a bit peeved about Lola, I take it?”
    “Peeved? Not at all.” Denys’s dark eyes narrowed on Nicholas, warning him that another blow was coming.
    He ducked in time. “Then why did you hit me?”
    “Because you’re here, and you’re breathing.” He swung again, but Nicholas had already jumped backward, out of reach. “Stand still, you bastard.”
    “I rather hoped Lola would be water under the bridge by now.” Nicholas glanced around the other man’s drawing room, looking for a barrier to put between them. Deciding the stout mahogany pedestal table nearby would do, he moved to stand on the other side of it. “I hoped we could let bygones be bygones.”
    “Did you?” Denys began circling the table, forcing Nicholas to do the same. “You were wrong.”
    “I can see that.” He edged away as Denys came closer, but when the two men’s positions were reversed, he gave it up.
    “This is absurd,” he said, and as the other man came the rest of the way around the table, Nicholas turned to face him, palms up in a gesture of truce. “Before you beat me to a pulp, can we take a moment to talk?”
    “Talk about what? About you needing a loan?”
    Nicholas sighed, lowering his arms. “I see you’ve read today’s issue of Talk of the Town .”
    “I’ve no need to read it, not when everyone else already has, causing you to be the main subject being discussed at White’s today. So Landsdowne’s cut you off, has he? And now you need a loan, so you’ve come to me. Why me?”
    He told the truth. “You’re the only friend I’ve got who has any money.”
    Denys shook his head with a laugh. “God, you have gall, Nick, I’ll say that for you.”
    “Well, yes,” Nicholas agreed, “but in my defense, I did save your life once.”
    “Oh, please.” Denys derided that notion with a snort. “Pongo would not have shot me.”
    “Only because I jumped between the pair of you and took the bullet on your behalf.”
    “Which was a stupid thing to do. When you came between us, it startled him, and he fired. He wouldn’t have done so otherwise. He was just drunk and stirred up.”
    “Over a woman,” Nicholas was quick to point out. “Pot,” he added with a bow, “my name is Kettle.”
    Denys scowled at this reminder of his own past sins.
    “That was different,” he muttered. “Pongo didn’t care tuppence for that barmaid. I loved Lola.”
    It was Nicholas’s turn to offer a disbelieving snort. “You were in love every week.”
    “That’s not true.”
    “No? Shall I take you back three years? Before Lola, there was Julianne Bardot, the opera singer. Before her, you had a passion for the Contessa Roselli. Before her, I believe it was that Scandinavian courtesan—what was her name? Anika? Angelica?”
    “All right, all right, you’ve made your point.” Denys squared his shoulders and straightened his tie with a little cough. “But I’ve changed since then. You haven’t.”
    “That’s absurd. Everyone changes.”
    “Not you, Nick. You are just the same at thirty as you were at twenty. Do you read what’s said about you in the scandal sheets? I do, and your name crops up at least once a week. I vow, the London gossip columnists spend half their time across the Channel, following you and Jack around Paris, detailing your exploits. Hedonists, the pair of you. Why any woman should want you, I don’t know, but odds at White’s are