Chapter Two

L uke Lynwood groaned even before prying his eyelids open. Taking stock, he felt confident that he was in a bed, although he did not recall getting there. There was a pillow under his face, linens rather than upholstery under his hand, and his boots were off.

Squinting one eye open, he verified he was in his own bed. During his father’s unexpected summer visit, his friend William had taken him to the home of the woman William had been wooing. The next morning, hungover, Luke had been rude to his hostess and her guest, who had berated him the entire time she’d ridden him home in her carriage.

Now it was autumn again. Luke had not visited his childhood home in North England in over a year, and William was in love and determined to marry the widow who had once opened her home to Luke.

Luke’s newer friends from the gaming hells were never the ones to help him home. They usually ended nights in similar situations as he, with grooms dragging them to their carriages and to bed. For that reason, Luke kept the London house sparsely staffed so his father wouldn’t get wind of his antics.

The Earl, as he liked to think of his father, would not approve. Nor did Luke, but he hadn’t convinced himself that sobriety would be an improvement.

The Earl had set high standards very early in Luke’s life. When he lost his mother to a fever at age twelve, he lost the only buffer between his failings and those high standards. The gruff patriarch had withdrawn even further from emotions, sending him to boarding school to prepare him for Oxford, where The Earl had also attended.

Not once had Luke been asked what he wanted, and his pleas to stay home where everything and everyone were familiar after such a loss were ignored. Still reeling from his mother’s death, he struggled at school, but managed to make two close friends. One was William Stanton, another earl-in-training who had already befriended the housemaster’s son, Nathaniel Follett. After hearing Luke’s story, they dubbed him “South” in honor of the distance he felt from his home and his father. The three of them all needed relief from the rigid boarding school rules and designed night and weekend escapades whenever they could, forming a lifelong bond.

Until Luke had dropped out of Oxford last October, William had spent as much time helping him with his studies as the better student did on his own. Why, Luke could not say. He was quite sure he did not deserve the support, but he was nonetheless grateful for it. More recently, William followed him around on his quest for oblivion or came to find him and get him to his family’s home in Mayfair most nights.

Luke wondered if Nate would take over looking after him once William married. Nate was a blacksmith, an incredibly skilled one. He’d opened his own forge after only a year of apprenticeship due to intricate side work with a member of the Ton who made leather accessories for bedroom intimacies. Smiling against the bed, Luke remembered discovering Nate’s personal projects and unique interest. He was glad Nate had found others who shared it, enabling the partners to profit nicely from a niche business.

Luke wished to avoid interfering with Nate’s success, and forcing his friend to come find his drunken carcass would not allow the smith the sleep he needed to work with red-hot metal and fire all day.

Sitting up, he groaned. His father had made it very clear he would be forcibly brought home for Christmas if needed, as he was not to miss a second family holiday. As much as he disliked being others’ mess to clean up, the mere thought of facing his father made him crave a drink.

Twisting his lips, he refrained from a sarcastic laugh only for the sake of his pounding head. Family holiday, his arse. He doubted his father would recognize a family at fifty paces.

By mid-afternoon, Luke was bathed and dressed with toast and tea sloshing uneasily in his belly. He wandered the house, fighting the pull of the decanter in the rear parlor and counting the minutes until he could go to his club.

On his third pass, the knocker banged. He cringed at the abrupt sound then lingered in the hall to see who it was. When a footman opened the door, William stepped inside.

Luke breathed a sigh of relief at the friendly face. “Will, ’tis good to see you. How fares the ‘shadow earldom’?”

William’s father was in his cups more than he was sober, and William and his mother had managed the earldom around him since before William had attained his majority. Now at two-and-twenty, they were almost complete opposites but still the closest of friends. The irony that his friend had to deal with his shortcomings in addition to his father’s was not lost on Luke. It just wasn’t enough to stop him from pouring whisky down his throat.

“Well enough that I had time for a stroll and thought to come see you for a few minutes.” They passed the pile of unopened letters from The Earl, and William stilled, gesturing. “What gives?”

The Earl had visited last summer to celebrate Luke’s nonexistent degree. Luke had sidestepped confessing his lack thereof. During their last dinner together, his father had issued a command: return home for Christmas or his funds and lodgings would cease to be available. After the visit and decree, he’d stopped reading or responding to his father’s letters. Why, then, did his father continue to write? What else was there to say? He did not think The Earl had discovered his lack of a degree. Of course, he’d know that if he read any of those missives.

Leading William into the back parlor, he poured them each a whisky. Passing William his, Luke threw his own back and poured himself a second before sitting.

The Earl would be proud of William. Despite helping his mother work around his drunken father for a year, his friend had finished his studies. They really should have each other’s paters. The Earl could enjoy William’s maturity, while Luke deserved William’s drunken father who had no expectations. If only life were that fair. Instead, at least three of them had to suffer—he couldn’t speak for William’s father.

“What is there to say to him? I have to find my way north for Christmas. I’ll deal with him then.”

“Does he know about Oxford yet?” William asked.

Already frustrated by his father’s criticism of his hard-won marks at university, Luke had given up on studying or trying to please The Earl and found solace in drink the summer before his final year. He’d lasted a mere month of the Michaelmas term before packing it in and returning to London. When he left, William had asked him to find Nate and inform him of his presence in Town; Luke was sure it was to keep sober eyes on him. “I doubt it. If he were going to get wind of it, I should think it would have been before his last visit.”

“South, I’m concerned about you.”

Luke rolled his eyes. This was not the first time William had raised this, and Luke was tired of the subject. “There is nothing to worry about. I am fine. Simply enjoying my freedom whilst I have it. Yours was cut too short, Will.”

However, like it or not, he was The Earl’s only heir. One of these days, he ought to learn the responsibilities he’d inherit. A chill ran through him at the image of himself working alongside his father, trying to learn how to manage the earldom. He gulped the remaining whisky in his glass and debated pouring another.

William tried again. “Don’t you grow bored with doing the same thing every night?”

“Ha!” His laugh was bitter. “I could say the same to you or to any of our friends. Do we not all repeat the same activities day after day? To what end?”

“That is up to each of us to define, I’d think. Nate follows his passion in his work. I find purpose in ensuring the people who rely on the earldom are hale and hearty. And I have Charlotte for passion. What is your passion, South?” William was wooing the Dowager Countess of Peterborough despite her being a widow almost a decade his senior. Although he’d only met her that one hungover morning months ago, Luke had found her lovely, unlike her sharp-tongued friend.

“Finding the warmest dice in the city.”

“No, that is simply a bad habit. I know you. You don’t love that. You are doing it out of boredom. Perhaps ’tis time to try a different activity.”

Luke gusted out a sigh. “Will, I appreciate your effort. I value your friendship. But please. I have no purpose until The Earl is gone. Even then, I’ll likely muck it up.”

His father’s ire was to be avoided. He recalled leaving the gate to the garden open at age ten. Wild hares had feasted on a month of the household’s vegetables. The Earl had paced round and round, lecturing him on the importance of responsibility for staff’s meals and family funds. A quarter hour later, his mother had found them thus and had tugged him out of the room with an admonishment to his father that boys made mistakes. After she was gone, there was no one to remind his father of that.

William brought him out of the memory. “That is your father talking. And he’s wrong. I wish you could see that. I wish you’d told Nate you were back and spent more time with him.”

“I know.” Instead, he’d tried every gaming hell in the city, linking up with a new crowd of aristocrats with generous allowances like his. Young men with too much time and too little maturity on their hands who filled the hours with drinking, gaming, and wenching. Unlike William and Nate, they did not make him feel guilty about his lack of purpose. “I didn’t want to drag him into my mess. He works too hard for me to burden him. As do you. I am not your responsibility.”

“Nor do I see you as such. You are my friend.” The clock struck six in the evening, and William rose. “I must go. I came to tell you we’ve unearthed yet another tangle of papers and I may not be able to get away for a few days. I’ll ask Nate if he can check on you, but—”

“Don’t. The poor chap starts work around the time I usually get home. Leave him to his passion, his ‘folly.’ I shall be fine.”

“I’ll send a note round when I free up, and we’ll go to Nate’s neighborhood pub to meet him, shall we?”

Luke waved a desultory hand. “Sure.”

William let himself out.

For once, Luke did not pour another drink. Instead, he sat rolling his glass between his palms. Perhaps his friend was right and he needed a passion. Or to be someone’s passion. The friend of William’s widow... Mrs. Ross? Rosso? had been annoyingly bossy, and he’d been painfully hungover, but her sensual allure had kept him riveted. Months later, he still remembered her rose scent, midnight wavy hair, and luscious lips. His cock stirred half-heartedly, sluggish from whisky. He didn’t recall the last time he’d been interested enough in a wench to act on it. Spirits and dice were his lovers now.

Luke glanced at the clock again and heaved a sigh of relief. It was time to head to his club and forage for dinner and mates to drink with until they had gathered enough steam to sow their oats at the tables again.