PROLOGUE
And O there are days in this life, worth life and worth death. And O what a bright song it is, that O ‘tis love, ‘tis love, ‘tis love that makes the world go round.
~Charles Dickensfrom Our Mutual Friend
Haddington House
Carlton Terrace
Edinburgh, Scotland
April 1893
If love made the world go round, it was circling the ballroom with dizzying regularity.
James MacKintosh settled his hips back against the stone balustrade edging the terrace outside the open ballroom doors. Studying the scene over the rim of his tumbler, he took a healthy swallow rather than the appreciative sip the fine Scotch deserved.
It was a real shame to treat such a prime, single malt Scotch so badly. The liquid swirled in the glass but settled into a placid calm that he absurdly envied. If only he could force his thoughts to do the same.
Love was unavoidable these days. Rampant as a bloody plague. Rumor had it that even the new Prince of Wales would soon wed his deceased older brother’s former fiancée. There shouldn’t have been a speck of romance attached to the event, but his sister and sisters-in-law were all agog for the spectacle.
The confounded emotion was at its most fecund just inside.
A couple swept by as if to demonstrate all the reasons why James preferred the chilly night air to the festive warmth inside. The blasted besotted affection between his brother Richard and his divine wife, Abby, was clear as they waltzed by, eyes glued to one another. Oblivious to his scrutiny.
A fine enough example to prove his point, and they’d been wed more than five years already. But the previous year had brought an epidemic of marriage into the MacKintosh clan widespread enough to demonstrate the fact further. Like a disease, it had taken his younger brothers Sean and Colin as well as their eldest brother, Francis, the current Earl of Glenrothes, the previous spring. A man James would have sworn would never fall to Cupid’s bow, felled by a single glance from his elegant Eve.
His brother Vincent had also fallen to the marital plague a few months before. Even Haddington, a long-time friend of the family, had caught the virus, bringing a hasty demise to his womanizing ways when he had wed Francis’s sister-in-law, Kitty, the previous fall.
Domesticity took them one by one, leaving them fawning over their women like lovelorn subjects.
James could hardly fathom the change among them. As he had told Vin—before he, too, fell stricken by Cupid’s arrow, naturally—“Never seen so many men brought low by a woman, but that’s what marriage will serve you when it’s not dishing out other troubles.”
For years he watched his eldest brother’s lovely but viperous first wife, Vanessa, play Francis for a fool. She’d offered her favors to all and sundry, including Francis’s own brothers Vin, Richard, and even James, who had been barely a man at the time. James took another drink forcing the memory aside with a shudder.
That catastrophe had molded his early opinions of the institution. He’d looked upon it with nothing more than revulsion, hardly remembering a time when he’d seen a better example.
Love could fell a man just as handily. He’d seen it happen. Knew it could drag a man into his grave.
Deep down, James feared for his brothers, expecting heartbreak for them all. For himself, he’d never wanted any part of it.
But of late…
With a shake of his head, James upended the glass once more. The liquid burned down his throat, hitting his gut like a fireball, radiating hot tendrils through his limbs that chased at the heels of those that had just begun to fade away. His flesh warmed then dulled to the tingle of intoxication.
Of late, his opinion of marriage had taken a rather unexpected turn. The thought of panting after a woman like a cock-led foolshouldhave been as sickening as ever. As nauseating as the churn of dancers just inside the terrace doors.
At least that’s what he kept telling himself.
Trying to convince himself, more like.
The simple fact was, Fate hadn’t dealt Francis or any of his brothers the calamitous hand James had been expecting. Indeed, to the last, they were all confoundedly happy. Of late, he’d begun to recall more and more the relationship his parents had shared before they died. Disgust ceased its slow burn of his gut, but something else took its place. Something just as unpleasant.
One of his younger brothers, Colin, spun past the terrace doors, continuing the unremitting performance of bliss with his wife, Ilona, gazing up at him as if he were some legendary god set upon the earth just for her. Colin appeared neither smug nor self-satisfied by her worship. Nay, he gave the impression that he was—and had vocally proclaimed himself, repeatedly, to be—the luckiest man in the whole of Britain. As Ilona was truly one of the sweetest, merriest, and kindest women James had ever met, perhaps, he was.
They all were. The five MacKintosh brothers who had thus far found their perfect match.
The thought roused a persistent pinch of envy. A pinch that was a tad late in coming as James presently lacked even a woman of his own to waltz around the room.
