Chapter 1
London
March 10, 1813
“Marry?”Roman Gilchrist, newly named tenth Earl of Rochdale, stared at his solicitor and godfather, Thaddeus Chalmers, as if the man had just suggested he cut off his own right arm.
They were in Thaddeus’s office. Thaddeus, a mild-mannered man of Roman’s stepfather’s age, sat behind a huge mahogany desk. Roman had not yet taken the chair offered him. Instead, he threw down the pieces of paper with the ninth earl’s hastily scribbled signature upon the desk.
Roman continued. “I come to you with a stack of gambling chits thatI do not believeI should have to pay and your only suggestion is that perhaps it is time for me to marry?”
“What other solution can there be?” Thaddeus asked. He was well respected amongst the loftiest circles of theton. Roman usually valued his opinion. Now, he feared his godfather had gone senile.
“You can tell me that I don’t have to honor them,” Roman answered. “My uncle owed everyone. But he is dead. If they wanted their money, they should have petitioned him before he croaked—not lay in wait on my first day taking my seat in the House of Lords and then delivering these to me. It was a scene. Everyone was there. They all couldn’t help but overhear what Erzy and Malcolm were saying to me, and then they handed me these. I wanted to wipe the smirks off their faces.”
Thaddeus pushed aside the ledger he had been writing in before his godson had stormed into the room. “How much do you owe?” He spread the chits out to read them over the spectacles on his nose.
“Just under ten thousand pounds.”
“Their presenting the debts to you publically is bad form.”
“Damn right it is.”
“You will have to pay it.”
Roman slammed his hand down on the desk, hard. “No.It is not my debt. A man’s debt should die with him.”
“They do if they are to his tobacconist or bootmaker and if there is no money in the estate—”
“There is no money in Rochdale’s estate.You of all people know that.”
“I do, young Roman. I do... but those notes there represent something more than a jacket or a pair of boots, or even the bread that graces a table. No, these are debts ofhonor. As the Earl of Rochdale, you are ‘honor bound’ to pay them.”
“They are not mine—”
“They are Rochdale’s and you are now Rochdale. See? The name Rochdale is on each slip.”
“But that isn’t me.”
“Yes, you are correct and most men would not have given the debts to you to pay. Unfortunately, Erzy and Malcolm are hardened gamesters who have no thought for anyone but themselves.”
“If they are not honorable men, then I see no ‘honor’ in paying gambling debts that aren’t mine.” It all made perfect reason to Roman. “Especially since I don’t even have the money to repair the leak in Bonhomie’s roof let alone buy a pair of boots for myself.” Bonhomie was his recently inherited estate in Somerset and the first home he and his family had ever had.
“Exactly,” Thaddeus said in triumph, stacking the gambling chits. “Which is why I suggested marriage. I mean, you could sell off a portion of the land. The last earl had not seen to the entail—”
“Absolutely not,” Roman interrupted. “The land will not be sold.” He’d been overjoyed to discover that Bonhomie boasted six hundred acres of forests and fields waiting for him to turn them into something meaningful.
“Very well, then.” Thaddeus reached for a decanter from a tray of them on a table behind his desk. He uncorked what Roman knew was a very fine whisky and poured generous portions in two glasses. “Sit,” he told Roman. “Be reasonable and hear me out.”
“I have no desire to take on a wife.”
“Posh, of course you do,” his godfather said. “You will need an heir or what will become of your plans for your estate, eh? Do you want all your fine work to go to a nephew that you didn’t know? Just like what happened to the ninth earl with you? Besides, a man needs something to poke at night. If he doesn’t have it on a regular basis, his balls shrivel.”
“I don’t believe that is true.”
Thaddeus pointed a finger at him. “How do you know? Have you been going without? Are you saying you don’t have anything to pokewithanymore, Roman?”
“I have balls a’plenty.” He was no monk, but he was no lothario either.
