A Not So Respectable Gentleman? Read Free

afternoon drizzle.
    And the emptiness that was now his life.

Chapter One
    June, 1828—two years later
    L oud pounding forced Leo from a dead sleep.
    He opened his eyes and was stabbed by a sliver of sunlight, harbinger of a fine spring London day. He clapped his hands to his head.
    Too much brandy. Now he was paying the price.
    More pounding. A caller at his door.
    Why the devil did Walker not send them away?
    Walker was Leo’s valet, but likely not out of bed himself. He and Leo had engaged in a bout of celebratory drinking after Leo returned from the card tables the previous night.
    Walker might act as Leo’s valet, but he looked nothing like a gentleman’s gentleman. He’d been a ruffian from the Rookerie, caught by circumstance in Paris and hungry for a new life. Leo encountered him by accident and they had become more than gentleman and gentleman’s man. They’d become friends...and now business partners.
    The pounding resumed and Leo could just make out the voice of a man demanding to be admitted.
    He groaned and roused himself from the bed, searching around the room for the clothes he’d shed the night before. The sound stopped and he sat back on the bed. Excellent. Walker would deal with it. Send the caller away.
    Once, Leo would have been up and out to his stables at dawn. He’d have done a half day’s work by this hour. He rubbed his face. That had been an age ago. A different lifetime. Being in London brought back the memory, but he’d carved out a new life for himself—from very rough rock, he might add—but it was a life that suited him surprisingly well.
    Walker knocked and entered his bedchamber. ‘Your family calls.’
    His family? ‘Which ones?’
    ‘All of them.’
    All six? His brothers and his sisters? ‘What the devil do they want?’
    ‘They would not tell me,’ Walker replied.
    Leo ran his hand through his hair. ‘Why didn’t you make some excuse? Say I was out?’ It did Leo no credit that he’d avoided them for the fortnight he’d been in town, but he’d been busy. Besides, they’d never understand the direction his life had taken while he’d been away.
    Walker cocked an eyebrow. ‘I thought it unwise to engage in fisticuffs with a duke, an earl and one tiny, growling dog.’
    Good God. His sister Charlotte brought one of her pugs.
    ‘Very well. I will see them.’ He pulled his shirt over his head. Walker brushed off his coat with his hand.
    Leo’s siblings had, no doubt, come with help to offer and would scold him for his behaviour, which had taken a downward path since last he’d been in London, although he trusted they’d never know the half of it. Let them believe the stories about him, that Leo was as much a libertine as his father had once been, but they would not know that Leo had faced situations their father would never have imagined facing.
    He shoved his arms into the sleeves of the coat and pulled on his boots. ‘I have the feeling I will not enjoy this.’
    He left the bedchamber and entered the sitting room.
    His brothers and sisters immediately turned to him. They stood in a circle. In fact, they’d even rearranged his seating into a circle.
    ‘Leo!’ Nicholas spoke first. As duke, he was head of the family. ‘Good morning.’
    Charlotte’s pug yapped from under her arm.
    Justine rushed over to him, clasping both his hands. ‘Leo, how good it is to see you. You look dreadful.’ She touched his cheek and spoke with some surprise.
    ‘Indeed.’ Brenner joined her.
    He must look a sight. Unshaven. Rumpled clothes. Bloodshot eyes.
    Brenner searched his face. ‘Are you unwell?’
    ‘Not at all,’ Leo replied. ‘Late night.’
    Brenner and Justine comprised the most complex of his unusual sibling relations. She was his half-sister by his father, and Brenner, now Lord Linwall, was his half-brother by his mother. They were married to each other. Their love affair happened right after Leo’s parents died.
    Brenner flashed him one more worried look