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life, no matter how proud or disagreeable, could not depend upon her indolent, spoiled progeny to see to her welfare, then

who?

Feeling Lady Abernathy’s scrutiny on him, he knew she was likely worried that he might spread word about her strained finances. He’d learned long ago that it was best to appear less than astute in such circumstances.

It wasn’t a difficult act to perform. He’d been pretending to be an addlepated clod for years. So, in keeping with his usual

performances, he boggled the umbrella that the maid returned to him. Considering his size— big ape and all—it was always easy to look clumsy. He even went so far as to turn the contraption inside out.

When he heard the dowager viscountess sigh as she shook her head, he knew he’d performed well. Setting his hand on the door,

he was just about to close it when—

“Is my nephew bothering you, Beatrice?”

Jasper stiffened. The imperious sound of his uncle’s voice lashed across every nerve along his spine. Apparently, his theatrics

had gained the notice of an unintended party.

And he thought this morning couldn’t get any worse.

Seeing the earl approach, Lady Abernathy’s wizened countenance lifted in a smile. “Redcliffe. Such a lovely surprise. What

brings you out on such a dreary morning?”

“My solicitor is nearby,” he said, bowing over the hand she proffered. Releasing it, he stepped back and posed with his own

hand on the head of his walking stick as his ever-nervous secretary, Mr. Entwistle, held an umbrella over his lordship’s head.

“And fortunate, too, for I witnessed my nephew making a nuisance of himself. Pray, accept my humble apologies in his stead.”

“No need to apologize. St. James was kind enough to”—her lips puckered sourly as if she held a lemon wedge between her teeth—“assist

me across the street.”

“The fact that you survived the episode so well speaks to your unflappability, and all of it without a hair out of place on your beautiful head.”

“You flatter me, sir. Though you must take credit, for I am certain that any display of chivalry he had learned was by your

example.”

Redcliffe’s fingers lifted in a dismissive wave. “One does what one can with such raw material.”

“So true,” she agreed, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Jasper was standing right there. He was literally beside the open

door of her carriage, waiting to close it so she could drive off. “You have done all you could for your sister’s child. Far

more than most, I’m sure. You are to be commended for your efforts.”

Redcliffe humbly inclined his head.

Appearing the saint in front of others was one of the devil’s greatest charades. Few knew what lay beneath the facade of chiseled

aristocratic features, a head full of dark hair barely threaded with silver, a trim physique even for someone approaching

his fiftieth year. And, of course, there was his immense wealth.

Men wanted to be him. Women threw themselves at him. And yet, it was never enough.

Redcliffe always wanted more. He especially wanted whatever someone told him he couldn’t have. And that made him dangerous.

No one knew that better than Jasper.

“Well, only a barbarian would keep such a delicate bloom out in this weather. So, I shall bid you adieu, Beatrice, and promise

to pay a call on you later this week.”

“I will hold you to that.” She tutted fondly as he bowed over her hand once more.

Then the earl closed the carriage door and touched the faceted handle of his walking stick to the brim of his hat. He waited

until the driver set off before starting in on Jasper. His uncle was nothing if not predictable.

Redcliffe regarded the broken umbrella with an imperious sneer. “I see that contraption taxed your intellect.”

“It was an accident. My hand slipped.”

“‘It wath an ac-th-ident,’” Redcliffe mocked in a high-pitched voice, snickering at the lisp that Jasper had developed in

childhood after the death of his father. It had been a constant source of derision and amusement for Uncle Silas.

Of course, after countless elocution lessons in his youth, Jasper had rid himself of the tendency. It then became a choice

to continue the lisp when in society, in addition to speaking in a higher tone. Both were part of a necessary disguise.

If he’d learned anything from his uncle, it was how to expertly conceal one’s true self from others. It was the only way to

play the game.

There must have been some spark of rebellion in his gaze because his uncle abruptly narrowed his eyes. He took a step toward

him, his fist wrapped around the shaft of his walking stick. But Jasper knew Redcliffe would never strike him in public. In

truth, he was ever the saintly put-upon uncle when among his peers.

Instead, the earl sniffed, his lip curling with distaste. “Where’s my port, buffoon?”

“I’m afraid I dropped it.”

As expected, his uncle’s temper flared in a slash of dark eyebrows drawn in corrugated furrows above the bridge of an aquiline

nose, his hard mouth white-edged with contempt.

“You clumsy ox! You cannot even manage a simple errand,” he hissed, ever careful to keep his voice menacingly low so potential passersby would not overhear.

“It pains me to know that you are my heir. For the moment, at least. I plan to take a new wife, so be warned. Once I find a bit of baggage capable of breeding a son, you’ll be left without a farthing from me.

And to give you a taste of that future, you’ll have no pittance from me this month.

” He snapped his fingers to his secretary. “Make note of that.”

“Yes, m-my lord,” Entwistle said, his hands shaking as he tried to hold the umbrella and pat his coat pockets in search of

a writing implement and a scrap of paper.

When Herman Entwistle had begun his post a mere eight years ago, he’d been a robust man in his midthirties, with a head full

of brown hair and an eagerness to impress the venerable earl whose fortune and handsomeness had made him a highly revered

member of the ton .

But now Entwistle was a thin, hunched-shouldered, balding man, who looked about seventy years old.

The earl had broken him, just as he had done to so many others.

But not Jasper. His uncle’s harsh criticisms and the horrors of his childhood had done the opposite. It had formed within

him a will of iron.

“As for you”—Redcliffe jabbed Jasper’s chest with the point of the walking stick—“since you are incapable of performing a

menial task, you’ll not only use your own coin to replace the bottle but you’ll pay a courier to deliver it. Posthaste. I

will have my port after dinner this evening or you’ll find yourself without any allowance for the entire year. Do you understand?

Are my words penetrating that thick simian skull of yours?”

Fighting the compulsion to break that walking stick over his uncle’s head and beat his own chest, Jasper inclined his head.

“You will have your port, Uncle.”

The earl’s mouth relaxed into a self-satisfied smirk as his lacquered landau pulled up to the pavement. Then he cast a baleful

glance over his shoulder. “Entwistle, have you gone blind? Do you not see the carriage? Well don’t just stand there, you sniveling

worm, open the door! I have important matters of business to attend.”

After that delightful encounter, Jasper headed to Marylebone, glad for the exercise to dispel some of his rage.

A half an hour later, he arrived at his flat for a change of clothes.

What he found instead was utter mayhem.

As he opened the door, he was greeted by the detritus of a dismembered chair, broken legs and spindles strewn over the floor.

That would make the fourth chair this month!

Through the anger buzzing in his ears, he heard urgent voices coming from the drawing room. But no, not urgent voices. These were insistent and cajoling. He knew exactly what that meant. And it was the last thing he needed after a morning

like this.

Muttering an oath, he marched around the corner to find two men and a boy trying to coax a red-furred, three-legged beast

into dropping one of his top boots. Bloody hell.

“Garmr, release!” he commanded, his growling voice undisguised.

The massive wolf instantly opened his jaws. Before the boot even hit the floor, a shaggy whip of a tail started wagging as

he hopped awkwardly in a quick circle of complete and utter delight, just before leaping in the air.

Jasper barely had the chance to brace himself before his arms were full of a heavy mass of muscle and fur the size of a small

horse.

Whining with joy, Garmr licked his face adoringly as if he’d just returned from a yearlong sea voyage instead of an hour’s

errand.

“It appears as though you were greatly missed, my lord,” Allistair Ansonby said, his aging, rawboned face crinkling with a

smile. Then the lanky old manservant straightened his livery coat and smoothed back a few wisps of gray hair from his forehead,

seemingly oblivious to the fact that he was standing in a room that resembled a battlefield.

As Jasper lowered the dog, he noted that the square -jawed Joe Pitt wasn’t meeting his gaze. Instead, his brawny driver began to whistle as he looked up toward the ceiling and surreptitiously tried to slide the condemning evidence behind him with the toe of his boot.

“Garmr was in the stables when I left,” Jasper said as he stripped off his useless spectacles and laid them on a scarred console

table by the door. “Care to explain how he ended up here?”

Pitt scrubbed a hand over his shaved head, his black brows drawing together in chagrin. “After you left the mews, he started

to whimper something awful and he looked so forlorn that I just... well, I thought a visit with the boy would lift his

spirits.”

“Of course you did.”

Jasper pinched the bridge of his nose, blocking out the view of a torn cushion, an overturned table, the shredded drapes.

Pitt swept up the boot. “A bit of spit and polish will make it good as new, my lord.”

But when he began to scrub the underside of his sleeve over the toe as if the quick motion would miraculously remove tooth

marks, it was all Jasper could take.

“That was my last decent pair. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to have boots made for feet my size?”

As if in solidarity, Garmr stood at his side and issued a low woof to the others. But when Jasper glared down at the culprit, he lowered his muzzle in contrition.

The boy instantly came to the dog’s defense. “’Tweren’t Thumper’s fault, milord. Just a pup, he is. Don’t know any better.

So if you’ve a mind to wallop someone, then wallop me.”

Roly wiped his nose with the back of his hand and squared his shoulders.

Standing to his full height he barely reached Jasper’s elbow.

But the erstwhile street urchin never met a fight he wasn’t willing to enter.

In fact, the reason he’d taken him in was because the fool child had risked his life to save Garmr’s.

Jasper drew in a breath and ruffled the lad’s carroty curls. “Fear not, Roland the Brave. I don’t intend to wallop anyone.

Yet. And for the last time, his name is Garmr. I named him after a fierce hellhound. I’m not calling him Thumper .”

“But that’s how he walks, all wobbly like. And look at how his foot thumps the floor when he gets scratched behind the ears

just the way he likes.” The last words were practically crooned as the boy proceeded to demonstrate. He never seemed to realize

that the wolf was bigger and could likely eat him in two bites if he were so inclined.

Thankfully, Garmr was too grateful, after being saved from a hunter’s steel trap and nursed back to health, to ever turn on

any of them.

They were an odd lot, to be sure. But they were loyal to each other and had one thing in common—a hatred for the Earl of Redcliffe.

And that was all that mattered.

Well, aside from the fact that Jasper was going to need another pair of boots.

“We’re still not calling him Thumper,” Jasper decreed as he shrugged out of his coat on his way to his bedchamber then tossed

it to Ansonby. The butler wrinkled his nose and held the garment at arm’s length. “See what you are able to do with that,

while I figure out what to sell in order to replace a bottle of port. Pitt, I’m going to need some information about Viscount

Abernathy.” He stopped and cast a look of warning over his shoulder to Roly and Garmr, who were playing tug-of-war with his

boot. “And it’s the mews for the two of you.”