“Emeline Wilson?”
“Yes. Why is she in my house?”
“She walked in—bold as brass.”
“Well, get her the hell out! It’s bad enough that I have to put up with her nonsense through the mail. I shouldn’t have to tolerate it in my own home. Is this my castle or isn’t it?”
“May I say something?” Emeline interrupted.
“No, you may not,” Lord Stafford barked.
He gave a curt nod to his brother. Lt. Price spun on his heel and marched down the hall, Emeline’s arm tight in his fist.
She struggled with him, but she was too small and too easily manhandled to have any effect.
“But . . . but . . .” Emeline mumbled, “I haven’t said what I came to say.”
“Believe me,” Lt. Price replied, “you’ve said plenty.”
He stomped down the stairs, as Emeline staggered after him. In a trice, they were across the vestibule, and she was tossed out onto the stoop.
With a firm slam, the door was shut and locked behind her.
“What were you thinking?” Nicholas demanded of his brother, Stephen.
“I thought she was the whore Mrs. Bainbridge sent over from the brothel.”
“Did you see what she was wearing?” Nicholas asked.
“I couldn’t miss it, could I?”
“Then why would you presume she was a prostitute? She was dressed like a scullery maid.”
“I assumed she was naked under her cloak. Or that she’d stripped down to corset and drawers.”
“You didn’t check?”
Stephen rolled his eyes. “I’m not about to fumble around under the cloaks of the doxies who service you. If you don’t like the caliber of girls I let in the door, you can answer it yourself when they knock.”
They were in the earl’s library, with Nicholas seated behind the massive oak desk and Stephen in the chair across. They were both drinking, and to emphasize his testy remark, Stephen slammed his glass down on the desktop. The loud thud made Nicholas’s head throb. He flinched and massaged his temples.
After two weeks of parties that had included too much debauchery and intoxication but very little rest, he was hung over, tired, hungry, and grouchy. He wanted breakfast and a hot bath and a shave. He wanted the mess from the prior evening’s festivities removed. He wanted clean sheets on his bed so he could crawl back under them and sleep until the next morning.
Generally, he wasn’t so slothful. At age thirty, he’d spent the past sixteen years in the army, so he was used to discipline and restraint. But it was the first time he’d been in England since he’d been installed as Earl of Stafford. To his surprise, the visit was extremely stressful, and tension had him acting in unusual ways.
He was no longer an ordinary citizen. People sought boons from him that he wasn’t inclined to give. He was fawned over and lied to. Strangers were anxious to be chums.
When the lofty title had been dumped on him, he’d been stunned—he hadn’t even realized he was the heir—and the elevated status was like a dream. Or maybe a nightmare. He hated Stafford and had no interest in the riches it had bestowed, so he’d never even traveled there. He didn’t care about it, and no one could make him care.
His lawyers had nagged him to return to London, to handle pressing business, and it had taken a pleading letter from them to his commanding officer before he’d been ordered home on a two-month furlough.
He’d never previously had a holiday. As a lowly soldier, he couldn’t have afforded a vacation, but as an aristocrat, he actually had money to waste on frivolities. He was doing his utmost to enjoy himself, but he was exhausted by the constant revelry.
He owned one of the grandest houses in the city, but there were no servants to attend him. They hadn’t been paid in an eternity, so they’d quit and left. He’d considered hiring a staff for the short eight weeks he was scheduled to be in town, but it seemed silly to go to so much trouble.
There were dreadful stories circulating—that he was an uncivilized barbarian—but they weren’t true. He knew how to behave; he just didn’t want to.
His father had been a cousin of the Earl of Stafford, but he’d fallen in love with an actress and had had the audacity to run off and marry her. It was a transgression for which he’d been promptly disowned and disinherited.
Until the very sad afternoon he and his wife had died in a carriage accident—Nicholas had been six and Stephen four—the poor man had never been forgiven by his judgmental kin or their arrogant friends. In a misguided tribute to his deceased father, Nicholas relished the chance to rudely insinuate himself among his new peers. They loathed him, and the feeling was mutual.
Despite his title of earl, he didn’t and never would belong in the ton. The snooty members anticipated base conduct from him, and he was happy to live down to their expectations.
Wondering what time it was, he made the mistake of gazing over at the window, and he winced in agony.
“Would you pull the drapes?” he asked. “I have a terminal hangover. I can’t bear all that merry sunshine.”
“You really should clean yourself up.”
“If I decide I’d like you to be my butler or valet, I’ll let you know.”
“This place is disgusting.”
“Your opinion has been noted.”
“What if Lady Veronica stops by?”
Lady Veronica Stewart was a duke’s daughter, the quintessential debutante, a flawless example of groomed womanhood. And Nicholas was engaged to her.
As with so much of his life, it didn’t seem possible that he was betrothed, especially to such a beautiful, conceited, very rich eighteen-year-old girl. She was young and immature, and they had nothing in common, but he had purposely picked her.
In another misguided effort, this one an attempt to avenge his father, he was determined to wed as high as he was able, to throw his low birth status in the faces of those who had been awful to his parents. His marriage to Veronica, scheduled for the end of August, was the perfect solution.
The snobs of
