Page 44 of The Earl's Reluctant Artist

Nathaniel had always despised London in the spring.

The streets swelled with noise and soot, the stench of horses, sweat, and fashionable desperation rising like heat from the cobbles.

The parks teemed with peacocks, both feathered and human, strutting for attention.

Every salon, every assembly room, and every drawing room became another stage for matrimonial farce.

There is no way that all these people are as happy and unified as they appear, he thought bitterly as he observed yet another obviously married couple laughing and clinging to one another.

He stood at the window of his godmother’s townhouse on Berkeley Square, watching the carriages parade past. Somewhere below, liveried footmen shouted to one another.

He turned from the glass. The room behind him bore all the marks of the dowager countess’s influence. There were gilt mirrors, Aubusson carpets, and an absurd number of porcelain figurines on every table. Not one thing was out of place. Not one shadow was permitted.

He rubbed his brow, then pressed the heel of his hand against his temple. The headache had started before breakfast and had not since relented. He could still hear her voice, clear as crystal and twice as sharp, issuing orders as she inspected his cravat …

“You are six-and-twenty, Nathaniel,” she had said. “You are an earl. You cannot sulk about in Yorkshire forever. A title must be visible. It must be respected.”

He said nothing, despite his silently protesting thoughts. There had been no point, as she had already made her point quite clear.

“I have written to Lady Pemberton,” she said. “Her salon is this evening. Every eligible girl in London will be there.

He had not asked whether they would be intelligent, kind, or capable of enduring a northern winter with equanimity. He knew the answer already. The truth was not that he opposed marriage. The truth was that he had never witnessed one worth emulating.

He could still remember the slam of the drawing room door on that winter night. His mother’s voice had been shrill and her footfall uneven. She had been drinking. Again …

“Your father spends the family fortune like a child in a sweet shop,” she said to a son who was far too young to hear the words even once, never mind for the tenth time. “And I am the one left to beg our butcher for credit.”

He was fourteen then. He had not moved from the staircase.

Much later that night, he witnessed his father come in from Brooks’s with his waistcoat undone. His breeches were stained with wine, he was two days unshaven, and he reeked of brandy and betrayal.

“You shall not speak to me of restraint,” his father said when confronted by an equally inebriated wife, slurring the words. “I am a peer of the realm. You are merely my wife. My conduct is my own, and you would do well to remember that ...”

Nathaniel had learned then what society meant by nobility. It meant freedom to ruin whomever one pleased and expect deference for the privilege. It meant presenting a facade to one’s peers while living a life of the utmost debauchery and hypocrisy when no one was looking.

And marriage was not an enviable or desirable institution. It was just another means to appear respectable and acceptable, and a way to bear children to help keep up that appearance.

It had taken years to restore even a fraction of the estate’s solvency.

His father’s debts were buried in every corner of the country.

Nathaniel had spent his Cambridge years not at leisure but in the law library, learning precisely how many ways a man might be held responsible for the chaos of his lineage.

In studying law, he had found solace, not in the information he found, but in the factuality of it all. The law was definite and solid. It was not ambiguous in its meanings or its finality. It was straightforward and unyielding. Most of all, it was consistent and unable to lie to him.

He had returned to Loxley Hall after his mother’s funeral.

The place had been gutted of servants and dignity.

He had lived in two rooms while the rest rotted.

The tenants had come, hat in hand, with quiet hope.

He had hired a steward, cut leases, repaired roofs, fired drunkards, and paid the schoolmaster’s arrears.

And still, it had not been enough. The land needed drainage. The tenants needed seeds and tools. The hall needed walls that did not admit every wind from the moor. In short, it needed more than his father’s coffers had left to offer.

He had sent a letter to the Dowager Countess of Halford last November, requesting the release of the remainder of his trust. Her reply had been prompt, and it was the very reason he had travelled to her home.

Marry respectably. Then we shall speak of money.

She had raised him when his parents would not.

She had paid for his education. And she had once more taken him in while his estate remained largely unsuitable for habitation.

He did not doubt she believed herself right with her absurd demand.

And perhaps, she was. He would not pretend to be the foremost expert on earldoms or marriages, and certainly not on societal standards.

Those who observed him out in public did so with raised eyebrows, as he had little use for the expectations of virtual strangers.

Yes, it was possible that his godmother truly was thinking of what was best, not only for him, but for the future of his estate and earldom, as well.

But the price she asked would bind him to a future he had never desired.

He stood and walked to the escritoire. A stack of correspondence awaited reply.

He ignored it and opened the bottom drawer instead.

Beneath the accounts book and unopened invitations lay a battered folio.

He drew it out. The title page contained only one name: The Witty Widow of Wycliffe.

It was a romantic serial in five instalments and written by a man who did not exist. He had sent it anonymously to a publishing agent in Holborn, unsure whether it would be laughed from the office. It had not been.

He had published four more under the same signature. They paid very little. He had never revealed the truth to anyone. But those stories had preserved his sanity in Yorkshire winters.