Three Schemes and a Scandal (17 page)

“After all, a gentleman must maintain a certain style and standard of living,” the earl said as he reached for a cigar from the engraved wooden box on his desk, next to a letter opener fashioned from pure gold and studded with emeralds.

“I heartily agree,” Roxbury said, wary of where his father’s argument was going. He was fond of his fine things, too, but who wouldn’t be?

The earl offered a cigar to his son, who accepted. Something strange was going on, he could just tell. First, those refused calls this morning. Lady Westleigh
never
refused him. And now this rambling from his father about living in style. Deuced unusual.

“Part of the duty of a father—a duty I take very seriously—is to provide for one’s children. Fortunately, due to my intelligent management of the Carlyle estates, it’s something I am able to do.”

“I agree,” Roxbury said. “Careful management of estates is essential. I am proud to report that Roxbury Park has been making a small profit of late.” It was his own parcel of land that he’d been given at the age of eighteen as a future residence and independent source of income. That was when he’d been the second son, and didn’t stand to inherit the vast lands and wealth of all the Earls of Carlyle.

Now, as was custom, he went by one of his father’s lesser, spare titles—Viscount Roxbury. It had been Edward’s name once, Roxbury thought, but then he shoved aside those memories. Now wasn’t the time.

“Congratulations,” his father said, and Roxbury did acknowledge a surge of pride at the accomplishment and recognition. It was dogged by a nagging sense of dread. This could not be the purpose of the meeting—there must be something else.

The clock on the mantel clicked loudly.

“You are going to need that money, I fear,” his father said. Each word was heavier than the last.

The earl paused to light his cigar from the candelabra on his desk. The flame illuminated the slanting cheeks that puffed and pulled on the cigar until the end was aglow and the old man exhaled.

They had the same high cheekbones. The same black hair, though the elder’s was graying. Edward, too, had shared these traits. And like his younger brother, Edward had also inherited a wild temperament and passionate nature from some long forgotten ancestor. How their staid and proper parents had raised such hellions was still a mystery to Simon.

They were down to one hellion, one heir, now.

The three of them had shared the same love of money, too. Money was freedom, comfort, and pleasure. It was a necessity and a luxury all at once. The scent of banknotes or the clink of coins did not excite him, but there was a way a man moved, lived, existed when he had an income—to say nothing of a fortune. He did not want to lose that.

Roxbury lifted one of the candles to light his own cigar.

Women. Money. Marriage. Something nefarious was underfoot, he could just tell.

“I have been fulfilling my duties as a father—providing for you, raising and educating you, etcetera, etcetera. However, you have not been fulfilling your duty as an heir.”

Roxbury inhaled and exhaled the smoke in perfect rings, in defiance of the earnest and ominous direction of the conversation they’d had a thousand times before.

“I have given the matter much thought, and discussed it with your mother. We both agree that this is the best course of action.”

Obviously, his mother generally agreed with whatever her husband suggested.

His father enjoyed his cigar for a moment, leaving Roxbury sitting and smoking in annoyed suspense.

“You have one month to take a wife of proper birth,” the old man said. Roxbury choked on a rush of smoke. His father merely smiled and carried on. “In that time, if you have failed to marry a suitable woman, I shall cease to pay your bills.”

“Poverty or matrimony?” Roxbury gasped.

“Precisely,” the earl said, with a proud, triumphant smile.

“That can’t be legal.”

“I don’t care. And you can’t afford the solicitors to deal with the matter, so the point is moot.” The smile broadened.

“This is a devious, manipulative, and—” Roxbury would have gone on to say it was repugnant, a violation of the rights of man, and generally an unsporting thing to do, but he was cut off.

“Frankly, I think it smacks of genius.” His father inhaled and exhaled his cigar smoke in a steady stream of gray that promptly faded into the rest of the stale air.

Some animals in the wild ate their young. Apparently, his father would allow his only son to die of starvation or be henpecked to death. Poverty or matrimony indeed!

“It’s sneaky, underhanded, and meddling like the worst society matron.”

“We have a tradition in this family,” the earl continued, his voice now booming once he hit upon one of his favorite subjects. “Roxbury men whore it up with the best of them until the age of thirty when they settle down, marry, and produce heirs. You are two and thirty and show no signs of reforming your behavior.”

He could easily marry if he wanted to. Roxbury loved women and they loved him back. Honestly, he could have his pick of any of the adorable, ditzy debutantes because he had money, a title and was not hideous.

But he did not want to marry. He loved women,
plural.
Promising to love a woman, singular—for ever and ever—was something he could not do. At heart, for all his rakish ways, he was a romantic. But he was also a levelheaded realist.

A wife would get in the way of his numerous affairs. A wife would get in the way of his life.

Instead of gallivanting backstage at the theater for all hours, he would have to escort the missus home at the conclusion of the performance. A wife, like his mistresses, would redecorate his townhouse in strange colors like salmon, periwinkle, and harvest gold. A wife would mean brats. And that would definitely be the end of life as he knew it.

Roxbury was quite fond of life as he knew it.

“To hell with tradition.” Roxbury stamped out the cigar. Tradition hadn’t given a damn about Edward. He was supposed to be the heir who would marry and make brats, and leave the way clear for Roxbury to be a reckless rake until the day he expired, which would ideally happen in the arms of a buxom, comely mistress. But Edward wasn’t around anymore. He existed only in a portrait above the mantel in the drawing room and in a few poignant memories.

“I will not have my life’s work passed along to one of your idiot cousins because you couldn’t be bothered to consort with a proper woman for long enough to put a ring on her finger and a baby in her belly. I will not be failed by both of my sons.”

“To hell with your ultimatum,” Roxbury said in a ferocious voice before he quit the library and Carlyle House.

St. James’s Street, London

A
FTER THAT INCREDIBLY
disturbing interview with his father—to say nothing of all those calls that had been inexplicably refused this morning—Roxbury proceeded to White’s. A drink was certainly in order, either to toast his rebellion and impending poverty or to enjoy a last hurrah before submitting to the bonds and chains of holy matrimony. He was too blindingly mad to know what to do. Neither option appealed to him.

Marriage—never. Poverty—no, thank you.

He arrived at the same time as Lord Brookes, who arched his brow questioningly and sauntered past, declining to say hello. They frequently boxed together at Gentleman Jack’s and had always been on good terms. How strange.

Roxbury sat down at a table with his old friend the Duke of Hamilton and Brandon and some other gents. They were all sipping brandies and reading the newspapers.

All the others left. Promptly.

There was a rush of chairs scraping the hardwood floors as they were pushed back in haste, the sound of glasses thudding on the tabletop and the crinkling of newspapers as all the other gentlemen nearby gathered their things and removed themselves to seats on the far side of the room.

What the devil?

The Duke of Hamilton and Brandon, usually known simply as Brandon and a longtime friend, looked at Roxbury and shook his head.

Ever the attentive servant, Inchbald, who was approximately three hundred years old, brought over a double brandy and intoned, “My Lord, you will need this.”

“For the love of God, what is going on?”

What had he done now? Or not done? Did this have anything to do with the ultimatum? The calls this morning?

Brandon merely handed his friend the newspaper he’d been reading. It was
The London Weekly
, a popular news rag that Roxbury wouldn’t line his trunk with. In his opinion, the gossip columnist owed her entire career to him, for his antics so often appeared in her column.

He wasn’t the only one, of course—she’d taken down Lord Wentworth with a mention of his visits to opium dens, then related the intimate details of Lord Haile’s grand marriage proposal to all of London, and broken the news of Susannah Carrington and George Granby’s midnight elopement—but Roxbury appeared regularly enough that he could refer to it as a reminder of what he had done the previous week, should he forget.

“At least you have a decent excuse for reading this rubbish,” Roxbury muttered. Brandon had married one of
The Weekly
’s notorious Writing Girls—then known as Miss Harlow—of the column “Miss Harlow’s Marriage in High Life.”

Roxbury flipped straight to “Fashionable Intelligence” by A Lady of Distinction on page six.

Roxbury took a sip of his drink, thoughtful. He’d wager that if this Lady of Distinction were forced to print her real name, she wouldn’t write half the things she did. Frankly, he was surprised her identity was still a secret. Speculation was rampant, of course, with most of the ton focusing on Lady something or other. That was the sort of drivel he didn’t follow.

He possessed a sinking feeling that would soon change.

Roxbury began to read.

Has London’s legendary rake, Lord R—, so thoroughly exhausted the women of the ton that he must now move on to the stronger sex?

Roxbury downed his drink in one long gulp, feeling the burn of the brandy and keeping his eyes focused on the page, not daring to look up. Inchbald stood over Roxbury’s shoulder with the bottle and promptly refilled his glass.

Indeed, dear readers, you would not believe what this author has seen! Lord R— might have been embracing the lovely J— K—, fresh from the stage in her breeches role in
She Would and She Would Not.
Yet for a man whose sensual appetites are notoriously insatiable, one knows not what to think.

Inchbald poured a much-needed second brandy.

Indeed, it was clear what everyone did think. In fact, it explained all those uneasy glances from the other gents in the club and all those women who were not at home to him this morning.

He shuddered, actually shuddered, to think of the conversations currently raging in drawing rooms all over town. Roxbury took another long swallow, and damn if that didn’t burn like nothing else.

Having just consumed two or three brandies within the space of five or six minutes, Roxbury could not see straight or focus on the ramifications of this salacious, malicious lie. That ultimatum … marriage or poverty … with a man? Or a woman?

One thing was certain: these things were not compatible, and they were not favorable.

How was he supposed to marry when no one was at home to him? How was he supposed to maintain his livelihood if his funds were cut off?

Even with all that alcohol muddling his mind and burning his gut, Roxbury knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was bad. This was the sort of scandal one never quite recovered from.

The stench of it would stay with him. Years from now—decades, even—whispers of this would follow in his wake, from club to ballroom and everywhere in between. He would not care so much, were it not for that ultimatum and a lifetime of poverty staring him in the face.

Roxbury set down the paper and Inchbald left the bottle beside it.

“I know it was a woman,” Brandon said.

“But you do not doubt that it was me,” Roxbury replied.

“I know you,” his friend said. They’d been friends since Eton, where Roxbury’s elder brother, Edward, had introduced them both to drinking, women, and wagering. At Eton, Roxbury had seduced every eligible female within a ten-mile radius. At university, he was notorious. There was no stopping him when he hit the ton.

Brandon had a point. Simon was well known for his romantic exploits, so it was believable that he would be caught in a compromising position. In fact, Roxbury was a legendary rake who was famously known to carry on affairs and intrigues with half of the women of the ton and they thought he was dallying with a
man
?

It was laughable. So Roxbury laughed.

He laughed long, hard, and doubled over in his seat, attracting even more uncomfortable and irritable looks. Brandon lifted his brow curiously and had a sip of his brandy.

“What, exactly, is so humorous about this situation?” Brandon asked.

“No one can possibly believe that story—not when dozens, hundreds,
thousands
of women could come forward and vouch for me,” Roxbury pointed out. Perhaps not thousands but many, many women had firsthand knowledge of his abiding love and devotion to women and the female form.

“I hate to say it, Roxbury, but most of those women are married, and I daresay not one would risk her reputation to vouch for you.”

Brandon was a stickler for facts, truths, honesty, and all those things. The burning feeling of rage, remorse, and panic in Simon’s gut intensified.

“They weren’t
all
married,” he pointed out.

“Your reputation in the ton is not going to be saved by the word of women of negotiable affection,” Brandon correctly and lamentably stated. Roxbury scowled because his friend was right—the word of an actress, or an opera singer or a demimonde darling was not going to carry much weight with the ton.

“There were some widows,” he added. He did enjoy those women who were determined to enjoy what one of them had termed her “hard-earned freedom.”