LITMIR.BIZ

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It would be less messy, and far more successful.”

      Unperturbed by his observation, she said, “Excellent. Now, be so good as to visit your father before he sends Brewster down to fetch you. He’s already in a rare mood. Try not to quarrel with him.”

      Rising to his feet, Colter regarded his mother for a brief moment. She sat erect as she always did, her bearing innately aristocratic. It was a posture he had come to associate with times of duress, an indication that the earl was behaving toward her with more than just his usual perversity. He bent over the hand she held out to him.

      “I’ll visit the dragon, but I make no promises. He can hire whipping boys. I refuse to be one.”

      “Just—” She paused, then said softly, “Just try to remember his illness.”

      “His illness has little to do with his nature. If you prefer to forget that, I choose to remember.”

      The countess said nothing, but her eyes held a sorrowful recognition of the truth. He felt like a bloody bastard reminding her of it.

      The earl was irascible as always, made even more petulant by his chafing against the infirmity that kept him confined to his chamber most of the time. His valet, Brewster, hovered nearby, tending him solicitously despite the old man’s impatience.

      “It’s about time you had the decency to answer my summons,” Moreland growled, glaring at Colter from beneath a heavy shelf of brow. “You’ve become damned insolent.”

      “Yes. Is there something specific you wished to speak with me about?”

      Moreland’s glare held evidence of his old vigor, but his hand shook as he gripped the coverlet over his legs with a knotted fist. “It may interest you to learn that one of our ships is apparently lost at sea with a valuable cargo. Or perhaps your business acumen isn’t sharp enough to understand what that means to our financial interests.”

      The earl glared up at him, his insult left hanging in the air. Colter shrugged.

      “No, probably not. Will it affect my inheritance?”

      The earl’s jaw clenched; a muscle leaped beneath his pitted skin. “It should have been you who died instead of Anthony. He was a fitting heir, with a true sense of his heritage. Damn you, you’re your mother’s son—a weakling, a profligate without proper appreciation for the Moreland heritage!”

      “Yes, I certainly agree with that. Tony should have been your heir. He aspired to your legacy, after all, while I prefer my amusements to be willing.”

      Colter’s gaze was riveted on his father, but he heard the soft click of the closing door that indicated Brewster had deemed it wise not to be privy to this particular conversation. The valet was noted for his discretion, a wise habit that had kept him in the earl’s employ for the past twenty years.

      “I never know what the bloody hell you’re talking about these days,” Moreland snapped. The bank of windows behind him filtered light that softened the earl’s sagging features but not his harsh tone. “You make these obscure remarks that are completely incomprehensible.”

      “Yes, so it seems. Do you refer to the India, by any chance? It is reported to have gone down off the islands near Lubang. She was carrying a full cargo of spices and specie, according to my sources.”

      Moreland snorted. “Which we can ill afford to lose. As you are a major shareholder in the company, and now the family representative, you must meet with the board. A cursed business. First, the docks have gone beyond budget and now this! We have creditors who’ll want an explanation for the ship’s loss.”

      “No doubt. The obvious explanation will certainly not suffice. I presume Leatherwood has the ship’s manifests and budget reports I’ll need.”

      “Yes. Placate the board, Northington. We must have time to recover from this loss. We can’t risk losing investors. It would cause far too many complications.” The earl squinted up at his son, his mouth set in a bitter slash. “I’ve often wondered if my father somehow knew the trouble it would cause me to have you on the board. If he’d only left me those crucial shares…”

      As the earl’s voice trailed into silence, Colter reflected that his grandfather had certainly known what he was doing. The former earl had done what he could to curtail his heir’s access to the family fortune. As no doubt the present earl would continue to do to his own heir.

      “Do not,” the earl added tersely, “speak of this to my uncle. The less Philip knows at the moment, the better I like it.”

      “I wasn’t aware Philip was involved.”

      “He’s not. Or shouldn’t be. But curse him, he manages to find out about my business affairs far too often, and I don’t trust him.”

      “Such familial devotion,” Colter observed dryly.

      “No more so than he’s exhibited for me. He has always thought the title should belong to him upon the death of my grandfather. ‘The younger son should inherit his father’s estate, not the grandson,’ he said. Rubbish!”

      “So you claim, yet I’ve never heard a word spoken about it from Philip. He seems quite content with his inheritance. He enjoys being an idle gentleman.”

      Moreland snorted. “Don’t be fooled by his pretense of complacence. You consider me ruthless, but I assure you that my uncle has refined the art.”

      Colter didn’t reply. There had always been rivalry between the two men, and though Philip Worth—Lord Easton—may indeed be the epitome of a wastrel, Colter had never known him to act with any malice.

      Unlike his father, who had acted with malice too many times to count.

      The earl flapped a hand at his son, an indication he was being dismissed. Brewster returned to tend him, a silent, efficient valet fussing over the blanket draped over the earl as if there was no one else in the room, as if Colter had already departed.

      He left the house without seeing his mother again, his boots echoing in the wide, empty cavern of the entrance hall, the gleaming black-and-white marble floors spotless and sterile. The quiet peace of the house was deceptive. Beneath the facade of serenity lurked a cesspool of anger and corruption. The earl thrived on it. Until his illness, he had instigated scandal and schemes without a shred of restraint. Only his wealth and title had saved him from ruin.

      It fell to his son and heir—the unwanted heir—to walk a fine line between his father’s tainted reputation and the necessity of maintaining the facade without being tarnished by the same brush. Publicly he would not denounce his father, but privately, he did all he could to show his contempt for the man the earl had become. It had become a game of sorts between them. A serious game in which winner took all.

      Christ, it was just as bitter a regret for him as for his father that Anthony had died from that fever. There were times he felt trapped, imprisoned and raging against the invisible bars of his cell.

      He welcomed strife, welcomed a challenge, welcomed anything that would distract him. Why not? It was better than the reality of his situation, the trap that closed in around him a little more every day.

      It wasn’t the mechanics entailed in the myriad technicalities of a vast shipping business that he found stifling, for that could be energizing if he was left to his own devices and decisions. But it was intolerable to be in the position of having his every decision supervised and examined as if he was still a schoolboy at Eton.

      If not for his mother, he would have damned the title and the money and left long ago, taken the Grand Tour that Napoleon had denied him until His Majesty’s invitation to lead an army against the Corsican. It was not as he had first envisioned touring the Continent, with the smell of gunpowder and stench of death in his nostrils, the screams of dying men drowning out everything but the instinct to survive. He had learned the art of killing, refined it, then been sent home to be civilized once the war ended.

      It was difficult. Acquired savagery still surfaced at

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