A Secret Consequence For The Viscount. Sophia James

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СКАЧАТЬ and for the first time he asked his own question.

      ‘You are married?’

      The smiles were broad and genuine, but it was Jacob who answered first.

      ‘You have been gone a long time, Nicholas, and dissoluteness takes some effort in maintaining. There comes a day when you look elsewhere for real happiness and each of us has found that. Oliver may well be wed soon, too.’

      ‘Then I am glad for it.’

      And he was, he thought with relief. He was pleased for their newfound families, pleased that they had managed to move forward even if he had not. ‘Can I meet them? Your women?’

      ‘Tomorrow night.’ Fred said. ‘We have a function at my town house with all the trimmings and a guest list of about eighty. You look as though you could do with a careful introduction, Nick, and such a number would not be too daunting for a first foray back into English society.’

      ‘You will need the services of a barber and a physician before others see you. Fred is about your size so with a tailor to iron out the differences you could get away with wearing his clothes.’ Jacob watched him carefully, his blue eyes sharp on detail. When his glance ran over his face Nick knew he would have to say something, his good hand going up to the ruined cheek as though he might hide it a little.

      ‘If someone still wishes me dead, perhaps it would be better not to involve any of you in this. I should not want...’

      Fred shook his head. ‘We are involved already as your friends. There is no way you could stop any of us helping you.’

      Oliver placed his hand on the table palm up in the way they had since their very first meeting and the others laid theirs on top. It took only a second’s hesitation before he found his own above theirs joined in the flesh and in promise.

      ‘In Vitium et Virtus.’ They all said the words together. In Vice and Virtue. The motto seemed more appropriate at this second than it ever had before.

      ‘We should retire to my town house for a drink. There is more of this cognac there and the occasion calls for further celebration. You can stay with me for as long as you need to, Nick, for I will have a room readied for you.’

      Jacob’s invitation was tempting. ‘The offer is a kind one, but I’m reluctant to place you in danger.’ He needed to say this to allow Jacob the chance of refusal at least.

      ‘I think I can take care of myself and my family. Let’s just worry about getting to the bottom of this mystery, to help you recover the final bits of memory you seem to have lost. If you can start to remember the faces of your assailants in the alley that may lead us to the perpetrator.’

      ‘How does amnesia work, anyway?’ Oliver asked this question and Fred answered.

      ‘In the army many people lost their memories for the short term. A day or two at the most due to trauma, though I knew of a few chaps who never recovered theirs at all.’

      ‘I don’t think Nick wants to hear about those ones, Fred.’ When Jacob said this they all laughed. ‘At least he remembers us and the club.’

      ‘It would be hard to forget.’ Nicholas gestured to the excess and the luxury. ‘But it is the friendships I recall the most.’ His voice cracked on the last words and he swallowed away the emotion. He was not here for pity or sympathy. He knew he looked half the man who had left England, with his filthiness and his wounds but it was the hidden hurts that worried him the most. Could he ever trust anyone again? Was he doomed for ever to hold himself apart from others, all the shadows within him cutting him off from true intimacy?

      He could see in each of his friends’ eyes that they found him altered, more brittle. But the lord who had cared not a whit for social convention was long gone, too, that youth of reckless pleasure seeking debauchery and high-stakes gambling. If he met a younger version of himself now he doubted he would even like him very much.

      The uncertainty in him built. He did not respect his past nor his present and his future looked less rosy than he imagined it might have on returning to England. Each of his friends had a woman now, a family, a place to live and be. His own loneliness felt more acute given the pathway they had taken. He had missed his direction and even the thought of confronting his guardian in the large and dusty halls of Bromworth Manor had become less appealing than it had been on the boat over.

      Did he want it all back, the responsibility and the problems? Did he need to be a viscount? Such a title would confine him once again to society ways and manners, things which now seemed pointless and absurd.

      Even the club had lost its sheen, the dubious morality of vice and pleasure outdated and petty. The overt sexuality disturbed him. From where he sat he could see a dozen or more statues of women in various stages of undress and sensual arousal. The paintings of couplings on the wall were more brazen than he could ever remember, more distasteful.

      In America he had seen the effects of prostitution on boys, girls and women in a way he had never noticed here, the thrill of the fantasy and daring dimmed under the reality. For every coin spent to purchase a dream for someone there was a nightmare hidden beneath for another.

      ‘You seem quiet, Nicholas? Are you well?’ Jacob had leant over to touch his arm and the unexpected contact made him jump and pull away. He knew they had all noticed such a reaction and struggled to hide his fury.

      Everything was wrong. He was wrong to come and expect it all to have been just as it was. The headache he had been afflicted with ever since his recovery of memory chose that moment to develop into a migraine, his sight jumping between the faces of his friends and cutting them into small jagged prisms of distortion.

      He wished he could just lie down here on the floor on an Aubusson rug that was thick and clean and close his eyes. He wished for darkness and silence. He hated himself as he began to shake violently and was thankful when Oliver crossed the room having found a woollen blanket, tucking it in gently around his shoulders.

       Chapter Two

      Lady Eleanor Huntingdon kissed her five-year-old sleeping daughter on the forehead before tiptoeing out of the bedroom.

      Lucy was the very centre of her life, the shining star of a love and happiness that she had never expected to find again after...

      ‘No’. She said the word firmly. She would not think of him. Not tonight when her world was soft and warm and she had a new book on the flowers of England to read from Lackington’s. Tonight she would simply relax and enjoy.

      Her brother Jacob was downstairs chatting to someone in his library and Rose, his wife, had retired a good half an hour ago, pleading exhaustion after a particularly frantic day.

      Her own day had been busy, too, with all the celebrations, guilt and sorrow eating into her reserves as yet another Christmas went by without any sign of Lucy’s father.

      ‘No.’ She said it again this time even more firmly. She would not dwell on the past for the next few hours because the despair and wretchedness of the memory always left her with a headache. Tonight she would dream of him, she knew she would, for his face was reflected in the shape of her daughter’s and this evening the resemblance had been even more apparent than usual.

      She sat on the damask sofa СКАЧАТЬ