A Perfect Gentleman Read Free Page A

to marry the cursed female!” Stony slammed his glass down on the desk.
    The captain did not meet Stony’s gaze. Silence fell like a shroud. Finally Brisbane said, “The earl is calling on you here in the morning. Or his seconds are.”
    “Oh, Lord. You’ll have to meet him, you know.”
    “No.”
    “Gads, man, you cannot keep saying no! Everything that makes us gentlemen demands giving the earl a son-in-law or satisfaction. He is entitled to one or the other, by Harry.”
    Brisbane stood. He wobbled a bit on his bad leg, but held himself erect with a soldier’s discipline. “War taught me how little the gentlemen’s code of conduct matters. It taught me the value of life, my own included, and the horror of taking another’s. Besides, I do not think the lady was taken ill at all. No, I will not meet Patten on the dueling field. Or the church steps. I am leaving London tonight. I merely came by to warn you, and to offer my regrets.”
    Regrets? Stony already had enough regrets to last a lifetime—or the few days he had left before Earl Patten put a pistol ball through his heart.

Chapter Two
    The earl was apoplectic, understandably. Not only was his daughter ruined by a poor soldier, but Earl Patten had been paying the crippled bastard to keep her safe from fortune-hunters and libertines! To add insult to injury, the penniless, landless, untitled ex-officer refused to marry the girl!
    “I don’t care if the blackguard is betrothed or back at the front lines. I’ll have a husband for my daughter or I’ll have my pound of flesh.”
    The earl’s face was turning redder with each pound of his fist on Viscount Wellstone’s desk. Luckily the brandy decanter had been emptied long ago, so it could not splash wine on Stony’s suddenly empty appointment book. The earl, it seemed, had been at his clubs shouting his displeasure all night. Canceled invitations had been arriving at Wellstone House all morning. Who would trust his womenfolk to such a reprobate? What woman wanted to be seen with a man whose services and smiles were strictly for hire?
    Earl Patten had been quite thorough in his castigations. And in his violation of confidentiality. Along with the cancellations, Lord Wellstone had received two of his bouquets tossed on his doorstep, and one slap in the face. Then there were Gwen’s tears. A duel was sounding more appealing.
    Pistols at dawn were not harsh enough penalty for Stony’s sins, it appeared. Patten shook his fist inches from the viscount’s nose this time. “You! Why, you are not much better than that lily-livered soldier.”
    His own honor notwithstanding, Stony had to stand up for his friend. “If you are speaking of Captain Brisbane, he is one of the bravest men I know, following a higher code of honor than either of us will understand. He nearly lost his leg, almost his life, fighting for our country. How can you call him a coward?”
    “He ain’t here, is he?”
    Stony sat down again, farther from Patten’s fist and the shower that accompanied the earl’s diatribe.
    “Pshaw,” Patten spit out. Stony reached for his handkerchief, but he’d handed his last one to Gwen. “Be damned if you are any more what I had in mind for a son-in-law than that craven was. A paid paramour, a Fancy Fred, by Jove.”
    Stony would have protested the epithets—hell, he would have called out any other man using those terms—except he was too relieved to be offended. “You mean I don’t have to—”
    Too soon.
    “Good grief, my daughter will never be able to hold her head up in society. I suppose I can ship the two of you off to India. Or the East Indies. It will break her mother’s heart, but better than seeing the gal a laughingstock for the rest of her life. Damn you to hell, Wellstone.”
    Which marriage to Lady Valentina Pattendale would certainly be. Stony took a deep breath. In contrast to the earl’s furious blustering, he spoke in low, even tones. “My, ah, wife and I shall reside at