“I’m not,” McCameron replied easily. “You receive plenty of flattery from the droves that follow you hither and yon across London.”
True enough. “Just ten minutes,” Noel said. “Then we’re back at it.”
“Whatever you wish, Your Grace,” McCameron said with a smirk.
“If I could move,” Noel replied, “I’d make a very rude hand gesture right now.”
“Like this?” Curtis demonstrated, throwing up two fingers, proving that when he wasn’t in court, defending his clients, he was still as rowdy as he’d been back at Eton.
“The very one,” Noel said.
He and McCameron climbed out of the ring to join Curtis, who offered them each a wet towel. Noel tugged the wrappings off his wrists, letting them fall to the ground, before taking the towel and running it across his forehead. He then draped it over his neck. Water seeped down Noel’s back, but he barely noticed, with his loose shirt sticking to his sweat-slicked flesh.
“A glutton for punishment today.” McCameron pulled off his wrappings to push his damp hair from his forehead. “You’re usually in and out of the ring in three quarters of an hour, not two.”
“Have to. It’ll be at least a week before I can return here.” Noel glanced around the pugilism academy, which at this hour of the day was full of gentlemen sparring with each other or else using weighted clubs to condition themselves. The air was sour with sweat, proving that even aristocrats stank. “I need to get my exercise in advance of what will be an almost motionless five days at the Bazaar.”
Curtis tilted his head to one side. “What’s this Bazaar?”
“I tell you every year,” Noel said with exasperation.
“And every year I forget.”
“This from the man who represents two dozen clients at a time.” Noel shook his head. “The Bazaar is five days where select people of gentle birth and deep coffers gather at the Marquess of Trask’s home to discuss investment opportunities. Trask brings in a highly curated group of ambitious men—and a few women—of business, who seek capital to fund the growth of their enterprises.”
“Why go?” Curtis asked. “You can’t need the blunt. You’re rich as the sodding Pope.”
“Only a portion of my wealth comes from my land,” Noel answered. “The rest is tied up in investments, stocks, and futures. I like to keep an eye on the fiscal health of my title, and the nation. Don’t snigger, Curtis,” he added when his friend did just that.
“Can’t help it. I doubt there’s a bigger rake in all of London.”
“Of course there isn’t,” Noel answered testily.
“And yet you’re rubbing elbows with the country’s sharpest financial players.”
“I can be both, you know,” Noel snapped. “And I’m not the sort to sit back and just watch my money pile up, regardless of its origin. The Bazaar tells me what I need to know, which enterprises are the most profitable, and which utilize unscrupulous practices. I’m a man of influence—”
“So you keep telling us,” McCameron said drily.
“And other powerful people look to me for direction,” Noel plowed on. “So I take what I learn at the Bazaar and pass it on to trusted colleagues.”
“Here I thought we were your trusted colleagues,” Curtis said. “Now we learn there are others you value more? Shameful.” He appeared to sulk, but he spoiled the effect with a smirk.
“Don’t be an ass,” Noel retorted. “To you lot, I’ll always be that spoilt boy in the Eton library.”
“Not entirely a spoilt boy,” McCameron said. “More like a spoilt nob.”
“You are cordially invited to go fuck yourself,” Noel said cheerfully.
McCameron made a rude noise. “Just the same, you’re going to the Bazaar, aren’t you? Being the virtuous duke—to a point.”
“Only moderately virtuous,” Noel said. “And as Curtis so eloquently put it twenty years ago, everybody’s got their noses up my arse. Might as well do some goddamned good with the power I’ve been given.”
His friends had helped him learn that lesson at the age of fourteen, and he’d carried it with him in the two decades that had followed. When he’d become the Duke of Rotherby at the age of twenty-three, he had two intentions: enjoy the hell out of himself, and don’t abuse his privilege.
He’d been remarkably good at both of those.
And in the midst of his whirlwind life, he had the friendship of four men—blokes who would never see him as a means to an end, never play him false, and, above all, be truthful to him and to each other. They kept him sane and anchored when the rest