Happily Bedded Bliss: The Rakes of Cavendish Square by Tracy Anne Warren Read Free Book Online Page A

the right thing by their sister. Since the Byrons were on friendly terms with both the Rothschilds and financial wizard Rafe Pendragon, he could well see how it wouldn’t be difficult for them to turn every bank in the city against him, including the one that held the mortgage on his London town house. Although the farms and tenant housing at Ten Elms brought in an adequate income, it was far from a grand fortune and insufficient to settle his debts should they be called in all at once. Of course, the irony was that as viscount, he was due to receive a large trust fund should he marry. Despite the financial enticement, he had always resisted before, unwilling to shackle himself in an unwanted union.
    But even if the money were not an issue, the Byrons had also informed him that they would see to it he was cast out of Society. Not that he’d ever been warmly welcomed among the
Ton
in spite of his title, but still he was received everywhere, able to set foot in whatever great house he cared to grace. He suspected he would even be admitted to Almack’s, that hallowed bastion of propriety that he’d always avoided like a case of the pox, had he ever seriously decided to look for a bride.
    Laughable now to think that he’d never actually had to change his mind about remaining a lifelong bachelor. Instead, he was apparently caught tight in the parson’s noose and by no less than a girl upon whom he’d never even clapped his eyes.
    As for Lady Esme, he wondered at her game. Was she really just some foolish young woman who’d drawn a naughty picture and gotten caught? Or had she done this deliberately, lying in wait to trap him into a marriage he most definitely did not want? God only knew many eligible misses had tried—and failed—in the past to do exactly that.
    He supposed he would shortly have an opportunity to decide just how duplicitous the future Viscountess Northcote seemed to be.
    He ground his teeth together at the thought.
    Even now, in spite of the ruin he would surely suffer at the hands of the Byrons, he felt it might be worth calling their bluff and walking away. He’d heard Vienna could be quite nice this time of year.
    Then he remembered that the Rothschilds had their fingers in finance there too, assuming he could withdraw sufficient funds from the London banks in time to escape to the Continent in the first place. But did he really want to live as a refugee, denied his home and his friends, all over his refusal to marry some silly, imprudent chit?
    No, it would appear that he was well and truly caught.
    But if he was, then so was she; he’d make sure she remembered that fact after the wedding ring was on her finger.
    At least he could take some grim pleasure in knowing just how furious his uncle would be; the taint of scandal alone would drive him mad. The Byrons might be a wealthy, powerful family, but they were almost as infamous as he was himself. In fact, before being “reformed” by love and several supposedly happy marriages, the Byron men had been known as unrepentant rakehells, raising skirts and eyebrows wherever they went. If there ever was a family of black sheep, it was the Byrons. Fitting, he supposed, that he would soon be joining their ranks.
    But first he had to propose—assuming that pretense was even required under the circumstances. She had to be expecting his arrival. For all he knew, she was in the drawing room at this very instant, preening in front of the mirror to make sure her dress and hair looked just right.
    Lord save him if she was.
    Heaving a sigh at the prospect, he rode on toward Braebourne.
    •   •   •
    Esme plunged her hands into a bucket of clean water, barely aware of the blood and other unmentionablesubstances staining the front of the apron she’d donned for the birth. But it was all over now, mother and babies doing well—all five of them!
    She’d had to help a bit with the last two kittens, who had been slow at coming into the world. But finally