Chapter One
Oxfordshire, 1813
“Ifeel likea damned Michaelmas goose,” Cameron Blythe, the Earl of Hertford, muttered,sotto voce.
At his side, Rand, Viscount Aylesford, chuckled. “Perhaps you can convince one of the chits that marrying you will be good luck, much like eating the goose.”
Cam surveyed the ballroom before them. Lit with at least a dozen chandeliers, it was a study in festive gaiety. Lady Emilia Winter and her husband Mr. Devereaux Winter were celebrating the pending Christmas season in a fashion befitting their tremendous wealth.
And also befitting a man who had five unmarried sisters he needed to settle with husbands. Title hunters, all of them, Cam was sure.
“Succumbing to the parson’s mousetrap is only one breed of luck, Aylesford, and it is decidedly not good,” he ventured, unable to keep the bitterness from his tone.
“Truth, which is why I have no intention of doing it myself.” Aylesford brushed at the sleeve of his coat, affectingennuias few others could. “Ingenious of you to suggest a false engagement. It should be just the thing to convince the dowager I have reformed my rakish ways.”
Cam tried to envision the august dowager Duchess of Revelstoke uttering the wordrakishand failed. “The dowager would refuse to lower herself by saying such a word on principle.”
Aylesford sighed. “You are right, of course. Your indefatigable sense of propriety is why she loves you. Pity you could not have been born her grandson instead of I.”
Though a longtime friend of Cam’s, Aylesford was undeniably a rakehell possessed of a reputation to compete with Beelzebub himself. “The notion of what is proper was beaten into me from an early age by my wastrel sire.”
His tone was mild, but the sentiment behind it was decidedly not. His father had been a ruthless tyrant who enjoyed inflicting pain on his family almost as much as he enjoyed gambling. As it stood now, Cam would have preferred additional beatings to the financial wreckage he had inherited from the former earl.
Creditors hounding him everywhere. Estates on the brink of ruin. A darling mother he could not bear to see tossed into the streets after all she had endured. There was only one solution to the endless list of his worries, and it was finding himself an heiress and making her his countess.
With all haste.
“Pity the old earl is dead,” Aylesford drawled. “Had I an inkling of what he was about, I would have delivered him the drubbing he deserved before he stuck his spoon in the wall. If anyone ought to have his resting place ransacked by grave robbers, it is your father.”
Cam flinched, although it was true. “There was nothing to be done. The money was his to spend, the estates his to fleece as he liked. Just as my mother was his to beat until I was big enough to defend her.”
“Any man who would beat a woman ought to be horsewhipped himself,” his friend said somberly. “One can only hope he is receiving his true reward for a life of inflicting misery on everyone he knew and is roasting in the fieriest coals of hell as we speak.”
Talk of graves and the pits of hell were creating a decidedly dampening effect upon Cam’s desire to dance with a lady.
“You are a grim one tonight, Aylesford,” he observed.
The viscount grinned back at him, unrepentant. “I am all manner of things I ought not to be. But hopefully one of them is a man who is not being harangued by his dowager grandmother to wed. That she is withholding Tyre Abbey from me until I am betrothed is out of bounds.”
Tyre Abbey was a wealthy estate in Scotland, belonging to the dowager in her own right. And though an understanding had always existed that Aylesford would one day take possession of the property, the dowager was wisely dangling it over her grandson’s head in an effort to get him to do what she wanted.
“Nothing like familial bribery to warm the heart,” he quipped, for in truth, he did rather enjoy the dowager, if not her attempts to wreak havoc upon his friend’s bachelor ways.
“You like the old bird better than anyone,” Aylesford said. “Do you think my sham betrothal strategy will work?”
“As long as you can find the proper pretend-betrothed to agree to the farce, you ought to be able to buy yourself at least a year of freedom,” he reassured his friend. “Her Grace will be so pleased at the prospect of a reformed Aylesford, it will take her some time to realize the betrothal is becoming a lengthy one. I, on the other hand, will not be nearly as fortunate since my betrothal will necessarily be followed by the actual deed.”
He suppressed a shiver at the thought of the manner in which he was being forced to sell himself.For Mother, he reminded himself. He would do anything for her, just as she had once protected him from the fists of his father.
Aylesford sipped his punch, casting his eye about the lively gathering—presumably for his quarry. “Who shall I choose, I wonder? One of the Winters ought to do. Rumor has it Devereaux Winter is quite desperate to see them wed and off his hands, but the ladies are not as eager.”
Cam’s gaze followed his friend’s to where the five Winter sisters had gathered, rather reminiscent of a battle formation. They were lovely, which somewhat aided in removing the stench of trade surrounding them.
Their father had been a wealthy merchant, but their brother had turned their family fortune into an empire. Though they had been doing their utmost to buyentréeinto society, it had only been Winter’s marriage to Lady Emilia King—coupled with the immense dowries each sister reportedly possessed—that made the thought of marrying them palatable for Cam.
All of them except for the one with the bad reputation, that was.
“Not the one in the red gown,” he said. “She possesses the worst reputation of the lot. Baron Cunningham claims she allowed him to anticipate the wedding night. When he discovered he was not her first conquest, he cried off immediately. The dowager will never accept her.”
