Prologue

“Wherein we discover our flawed hero.”

September 1805.

They were looking at him. Not an unusual state of affairs for fifteen-year-old Justin Langley, Viscount Carrington. His father, the Earl of Rutherford was notorious among the nobility. Charming, charismatic, and wicked, he was everything Justin aspired to be, and he had always emulated him, hoping the man would notice his son was the kind of fellow he could be proud of. Extraordinarily, that had finally happened this past summer, and Justin was still living in the glory of those weeks with his extravagant sire. Yet at this moment, the shine seemed to have worn off, for the normal combination of admiration and fear that surrounded Justin as he moved among his fellow pupils was lacking. A chill of foreboding skittered over his skin like rodent feet. When he walked into the school hall, everyone’s attention always turned his way, the little rats keeping their eyes down and his friends—and those desperate to attain that heady position—jostling for his attention. He looked back at the rats. The quality of their gaze had changed. This was different. This was new, and he didn’t like it.

“What the devil are you staring at?” he demanded of a spotty youth in the year below him. Instead of spluttering an apology and fleeing, the boy glanced at his friends and smothered a laugh.

Justin lunged, grasping the lad by his neckcloth, intent on discovering what the bloody hell was going on.

“Carrington!”

Justin froze as the headmaster’s voice boomed through the hall. He heard the collective sharp intake of breath as the boys stilled, waiting for what happened next.

In ordinary circumstances, Justin would not have been worried. Bullying was rife in the school and the teachers encouraged it, believing it bred leadership, that the strongest would rise to the top. There was some truth to the reasoning, but having once been one of the rats he knew it was a vile and bloody path to gain those heights.

“Sir?” he said, releasing his hold on the rat.

“My office.”

The headmaster turned and strode out before Justin could reply. The creeping sensation of doom intensified as the boys whispered, turning their backs on Justin. Fury rose inside him. How dare they? How dare they ignore him? Well, they had better be prepared to get their heads stuck down the privy before the day was out. Except then he saw Babbage and Frith, his best friends. They avoided his gaze, their cheeks hot as they left the room, pretending they hadn’t seen him. A leaden weight settled in his guts.

With his palms sweating and the feeling of doom intensifying, Justin made his way to the headmaster's office. The door was open, so he walked in and closed it behind him.

“No need to sit down. I’ll keep this brief, Rutherford,” the headmaster said.

Justin jolted. “Sir, I’m Carrington, my father is—”

“Your father is dead.”

The room abruptly tilted sideways, and Justin reached out, grasping the back of the chair. “D-Dead? But… But he can’t be, I—”

“Are you calling me a liar?”

The headmaster’s gaze was implacable, cold, no trace of sympathy or understanding. Justin was supposed to act like a man, and men did not show their feelings.

“No, sir,” he managed, though his guts were churning, his skin clammy.

“Your things are being packed for you and the carriage will arrive within the hour,” the headmaster went on.

“I… I must go home for the funeral,” Justin said, still reeling, trying to make sense of it all. “How long—”

“You misunderstand, Rutherford. You will not be returning. Your father was bankrupt and put a period to his life, leaving debts he could not pay. It is all very distasteful and not the kind of thing with which we wish our school to be associated. There is also the little matter of the last three terms which have not been paid.”

He was going to be sick. Justin clung to the chair tighter, his knuckles white on the polished wood. It was a nightmare, that was all. Not real. It couldn’t be real. Pa couldn’t be dead. He’d only just got to know him. They were pals. Pa had said so.

For the first fourteen years of Justin’s life, he’d been uncertain his father was more than vaguely aware he had a son. He got presents for birthdays and Christmas, which he suspected his father’s secretary bought for him. A hastily scrawled note, only a couple of brief lines congratulating him on being alive for another year, usually accompanied them. Though he had done everything he could think of to gain his father’s attention, it had never come. At school he had run a gambling racket, smuggled in booze for secret parties, and generally been considered the king of his own little empire. Yet his father’s exploits were far more scandalous, and he was rarely out of the newspapers, so no matter how wild Justin was, he could never quite live up to his sire’s wicked reputation.

Then this summer he’d come home from school for the holidays as he always did, expecting to find the usual staff but be otherwise alone. His mother had died before he’d had time to gain any memories of her, so usually it was just him and the staff. But on his first morning home, Justin had come down to breakfast, and there was his father, larger than life and far more fascinating.

Close your mouth boy, you look like a carp, were the first words Justin ever remembered hearing his father speak. Yet, for that glorious summer, he and his pa had talked and had spent near every minute together. He’d discovered his father was funny and irreverent, witty, and everything a boy wished his pa to be. The Earl of Rutherford was handsome, with laughing blue eyes, a shock of wheat-coloured hair, and a wicked smile that invited one to share in his devilry. He was a fine shot, could ride better than anyone Justin had ever seen, drank deep without ever seeming to be drunk, and could play every game of chance and win, every time. He’d also taught Justin to cheat, how to fight dirty when losing wasn’t an option, and all the foulest swearwords in the English language. Hero worship hardly covered what Justin had felt during those magical weeks. Admiring his father from afar had been one thing, having basked in his attention for the whole summer had changed his life. He’d hated to go back to school, and he’d known his father felt the same.

All good things come to an end , Pa had said with a shrug, but there was no sparkle in his eyes, no wicked smile. Good luck, son. I pray you do better than I did.

Justin had assumed he’d meant ‘do better at school,’ for his father had admitted to never having been much of a one for books and learning. Now, just two weeks later, the words had an altogether different meaning.

“Well, Rutherford, don’t stand their gawping. Run along now, you’ll have things to attend to,” the headmaster said.

Justin stared at him dumbly. His world, the one that had seemed so full of hope for the first time in his entire, lonely life, had just imploded.

The headmaster gazed down at him and sighed. “Buck up, boy. You are now the Earl of Rutherford and you’ve a choice. You can follow in your father’s dishonourable footsteps, or you can be a better man than he and put the shame he’s brought down on you in the ground with him. It will take time and a good deal of effort, but you might do it if you try hard enough.”

Fury burned in Justin’s heart as he stared at the headmaster, a dull, bull-headed man without an iota of wit or charm.

“There is no better man,” Justin said, his hands clenched into fists. “There never could be.”

With that, he fled, before he disgraced himself by weeping. No one would see that. No one would ever see that he cared, that it hurt more than anything had ever hurt in all his life. And, if his father was a disgrace, the man he’d come to know and love so well, then they could think him a disgrace too. He didn’t care.

He would never care what they thought ever again.