The Last Rogue. Deborah Simmons

viscount was definitely a tulip of fashion, Charlotte silently agreed, but she was not sure whether he could bring Jane around to his viewpoint. Still, Jane could hardly go about in society without more—and better—clothing. “Surely you do not think Jane will refuse to dress appropriately?” she asked with some concern.

      “No,” Max said wryly. “I mean that our Raleigh is never very flush in the pocket.”

      Charlotte felt a chill despite the warm breeze. “But he always has fine garments and horses, that town house…” Her words trailed off as her uneasiness grew.

      “The town house belongs to his father, who has always kept Raleigh on very tight purse strings. Of course, the family seat is entailed, so it will someday be Raleigh’s, but I have no idea how much money is tied up with the estate itself.”

      Charlotte straightened, disliking the turn of the conversation. “What are you saying?” she asked.

      Max frowned as he gazed off into the distance. “As far as I know, Raleigh hasn’t a feather to fly with.”

      Charlotte groaned. “Oh, Max! How could you let them marry?”

      “His situation is not that uncommon, Charlotte. And he’s not in a bad way…yet.”

      Charlotte was afraid to look at him, fearful of the serious tone of his voice, and the nagging feeling she had known all day blossomed into full-blown alarm. “Yet?” she whispered.

      Max drew her close, and Charlotte braced herself for what could only be ill news. “The earl is a bit of a stickler, as is his wife.” Max paused. “Although I pray it won’t come to that, if Raleigh’s parents are displeased with Jane, there is always the possibility that he may be cut off without a cent.”

      With a low gasp, Charlotte leaned against her husband’s chest, heedless of the eyes of any guests who lingered on the grounds. Although she had grown up in a loving household, she had learned the vagaries of the London elite, and in her experience most of the ton were vultures waiting to feed off their next victim. And poor Jane, fresh from the country, would be ripe for the pecking. Turning wide eyes on her husband, Charlotte cried aloud in guilt and panic. “Oh, Max, what have we done?”

      

      Raleigh leaned back against the soft cushions and closed his eyes, relishing the return of something akin to reasonable health. Ever since casting up his accounts this morning, he had begun to feel better. Charlotte had filled him with some odious tea to get him through the ceremony, and he had hoped to recover fully after a nap in the coach. But now that his head and stomach were improved, Raleigh found himself more keenly aware of his situation, so much so that sleep eluded him.

      This time he had really done it.

      He had been in scrapes before—running up debts, gambling and even overturning a mail coach that he had driven on a dare in his youth. Yet all other incidents paled in comparison to his current predicament. How the devil had he got himself into it? Raleigh groaned.

      One too many bottles, he suspected. Odd that the more one consumed, the more one had to drink to reach the same level of blissful ignorance. And the longer it took to recover from a bad bout. His head had been pounding so hard this morning that he would have agreed to anything just to stop Wycliffe from shouting. And Wycliffe never raised his voice. Feeling wretched and vaguely guilty, Raleigh had gone along with it all, but now that he was not so ill, he felt something else entirely.

      Resentment, a rather alien emotion, simmered in Raleigh’s breast. It was hard to blame Wycliffe and Charlotte, whom he knew and liked, for his present circumstances—far easier to blame Jane, whom he barely knew and didn’t like. Lifting his head, Raleigh dared a glance at the female across from him. She was sitting rigidly straight upon the seat, her hands clasped tightly in her lap and her face resolutely turned toward the window in a deliberate effort to avoid him even within the close confines of the vehicle. Raleigh was not surprised. She had not looked at him with any equanimity all day, or indeed, for as long as he could remember.

      He had seen her before, of course, having been to Casterleigh many times since Wycliffe’s marriage. He had always been vastly entertained by Charlotte’s numerous siblings, but Jane tended to fade into the background among the more lively brothers and sisters. A grubby urchin, she was always digging in the garden or buried in a book. Quiet, serious and bespectacled, she was the type who either bored him to tears with her lack of animation or irritated him by scolding the little ones.

      Lud, he had known her since she was but a child herself! Indeed, he hadn’t even realized that she had grown up—to the advanced age of eighteen, no less. Lifting his quizzing glass, Raleigh studied her more closely. She was wearing a hideous bonnet sadly out of fashion and a drab little traveling dress with matching spencer. Although her skin was clear, her nondescript hair was pulled so tightly from her face that he wondered it did not pain her. Maybe it did, for her lips appeared to be locked into a perpetual frown.

      Dropping his gaze, Raleigh decided that she possessed some curves, though certainly nothing like her sister’s voluptuous form. The exact details were difficult to determine beneath the loose jacket. Intent upon his visual assessment of his bride’s endowments, Raleigh did not even realize she had moved until he was startled by a sudden, loud sniff that drew his attention to her face. In the wake of the withering glance that settled upon him with alarming contempt, his quizzing glance almost fell from his fingers.

      “Will you please cease ogling my person?” Her voice was soft, low and pleasantly pitched, but so full of venom that Raleigh could not immediately think of an appropriate retort. He simply watched in amazement as she drew herself up even more stiffly and turned toward the window, as if giving him the cut direct in his own equipage. Well, truth to tell, this was not exactly his own carriage, but still…

      Raleigh frowned, certain he had never met a more disagreeable female. He had expected the creature to be plain and dull, but certainly not so annoying! Were not the plain and dull women also more likely to be mild and obedient? Lud, but it was his great misfortune to be saddled with the one wretched creature who was not! Seized by a wholly unnatural temper, Raleigh silently railed at his bride, his situation, his parents and fate in general.

      The paroxysm, though cathartic, was not like him, for normally he was the most amiable of men—fun-loving Raleigh, everyone’s boon companion, always ready to laugh. Yet his so-called good nature was becoming sorely tried of late. What had seemed so entertaining ten years ago was more of a dead bore as he approached his thirtieth birthday. London’s endless round of parties and gambling and drinking, racing curricles, preening in the latest fashions and flirting with the ladies had begun to pall. But what other life was available to him?

      His best friends had all married and rarely came to town, and although he very much enjoyed his visits to their country homes, Raleigh felt the interloper when viewing their close familiarity. Conversely, he detested his own family seat, where his parents ruled humorlessly and a passel of female relatives picked at him to provide an heir for the future.

      He longed for his own home, be it no bigger than Casterleigh. Even something much smaller but more personal might very well suit his needs, but he hadn’t the blunt. Indeed, he had little more than his monthly allowance, and it seemed he was always struggling to make it last.

      Regretfully, Raleigh wished he had followed Wycliffe’s advice years ago and invested some of it. The earl was always increasing his huge fortune with some clever venture and urging his friends to join him, but Raleigh’s allowance never stretched that far. He had his tailor to pay and his gambling debts, his horses and their upkeep. It all seemed a waste now, he thought, his mind more focused than it had been in years. Perhaps this recent debacle had awakened him to the truth—or the massive dose of liquor had cleared his brain.

      Whatever the cause, Raleigh rued the free-spending habits that kept him dependent upon his tightfisted father, but he had effectively burned his bridges behind him. His parents had been urging him to marry an heiress for years, and he had feared the recent summons was an order to wed some hatchet-faced female. The notion, so unpalatable only a day ago, now seemed a sensible solution to his monetary