A Tale of Two Lovers Read Free

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.

Chapter 3
     
    White’s Gentlemen’s Club
    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