Chapter One
OliverBeaumont,youngestsonof the Earl of Shrewsbury, stared at his infuriatingly perfect older brother. Henry, as always, was immaculately presented, encapsulating everything a viscount ought to be. In contrast, Oliver slouched in his chair, his cravat rumpled and his coat stained after a long night. Exhaustion tugged at him, not helped by the pounding in his head. He had hoped to retire straight to bed, but Henry had summoned him to his study, no doubt ready to launch into a lecture.
Henry laced his fingers together. A poor start. When he did that, he was invariably planning some sort of horrific punishment, usually at Oliver’s expense.
“You,” Henry said, the words deliberate, “cannot continue in this way.”
“In what way?”
“Drunken. Foolish. Frittering away your allowance.”
Oliver scowled. This again. Ever since he had graduated from Oxford—just—two years ago, Henry had been on his case tofind an occupation. Never mind that most young gentlemen who entered the law or took a living had certain attributes that Oliver would never have.
“Are you threatening to cut me off?” he demanded.
Henry held his gaze. The Beaumont blue eyes had never looked as severe on his brother as they did now. “I ought to. Louisa says you are still learning how to be a man, but when I was your age—”
“You needn’t remind me. When you were my age, you were serving in the army, commanding men and seeing horrors that my privileged mind cannot comprehend.” Oliver rolled his eyes. “I am perfectly aware that I am a disappointment in every regard. But I simply do not see the need for you to force me into an occupation I am wholly unsuited for. All for the crime of being born the younger son.”
Henry gestured at the letters on his desk. “Did you think an older son has no obligations? Every man has, though those responsibilities differ according to one’s position in the world. Your misfortune, as you put it, has allowed you to live out of my pocket for two full years now. It’s time for that to change.”
“Ah, so youarecutting me off.” Oliver folded his arms, knowing he sounded like a petulant child but unable to see a way around it. If he addressed the real reason he disliked the prospect of finding an occupation, he would have to admit to a secret Henry would find shameful and that would make him even more of a disappointment.
At least when he acted the idiot, that was a choice. He would always rather be perceived as a wastrel than incapable.
“And,” Oliver added, “when I marry, I will have a property of my own, so what is the pressing need for an occupation?”
Henry’s brows slashed down over his eyes. He always appeared sostern. If Oliver had not known his true father was a drunken buffoon of a man who lurched through the clubs ofLondon with an embarrassing lack of dignity, he might have presumed it to be the man before him. Only a decade separated them, but it felt like far more.
“You are three-and-twenty,” Henry said. “And in order for you to support a wife adequately, you ought to have some concept of responsibility—which you currently lack. Louisa promised you a property out of her own fortune when you come to marry, but she made such a promise in the understanding that you would not be marrying immediately.”
Oliver’s head ached. He had indulged rather too freely the night before, ignorant of what conversation would follow. “And if I marry now, I would be ineligible to receive the estate?”
A muscle ticked in Henry’s jaw. “No,” he said at last. “Louisa merely trusted that you would have more sense.”
“More sense than not to claim my inheritance at the earliest available possibility?” Oliver spread his hands. “Why this insistence on an occupation under these conditions? After all, an older son may do as he chooses, safe in the knowledge that he will inherit. Thanks to Louisa”—although he spoke mockingly, he had a great soft spot for his sister-in-law—“I will be granted an inheritance. Thus, I may behave as an older son might.”
“That was not the purpose of the inheritance.”
“Surely it was to provide security?” Oliver tilted his head. “The same security our father cannot provide for either of us.”
Their father was a man so consumed by vice that he had almost forgotten he had a family; he had gambled away his fortune, his daughters’ dowries, and would have gambled away the house had Henry and Nathanial, Oliver’s brother-in-law, not secured his properties between them.
Henry heaved a sigh. “What is the purpose of an inheritance when one does not have the responsibility to deal with it?”
Oliver dragged a hand through his hair, slouching further in his chair in an attempt to irritate Henry further. All he wantedwas to retire to bed and wake up in a new world where nothing of this nature was expected of him. Oxford had been bad enough, staying up all night to parse the contents of a document he was obliged to study—only to emerge with an indifferent understanding of the text itself. He had tried his hardest to write essays and dissertations, only for his tutors to rip apart his lack of understanding of spelling and grammar.
Everyone in the world thought he didn’t try, but all he had learnt was that trying got one nowhere; his inheritance, thanks to Louisa, was the only hope for his future. Otherwise, a man like himhadno future. And he refused to play a game rigged against him.
“If you do not choose a path for yourself, I will have no choice but to cut you off from my financial support,” Henry said, an inflexible note entering his voice. “You may appeal to our father, of course, but he will have little enough to spare you.”
“You might have spared me the lecture and reached this point sooner. Am I to live on the streets, then?”
“I offered you my living,” Henry said, exasperated. A living that Oliver both did not want and could not take. What parson could not read or write with any degree of fluency? “And failing that, I know a solicitor you could clerk for. There could be a career in the law for you.”
“And then you would be proud of me?” Oliver sat up straighter, finally, spurred into anger by the rejection he had always known was coming. Every man’s worth was dictated by his position in life—without position, and without ability, he had nothing. “Or is such a thing an impossibility I should not wish for?”
Henry pinched his nose. Another bad sign—it meant he had reached the end of his limited patience. Oliver had seen that expression more than once over the course of his years. “I want you to do as every man must. Why is that so difficult?”
