The Rake. Mary Jo Putney

because he expected gratitude from his young friend’s father.

      Julian returned to the safer topic of the fight, but Reggie stopped listening. He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, burying his face in his hands as profound depression engulfed him.

      The worst deeds of a disgraceful life had always been done when he was drinking, but at least he had always been aware of his actions. He had deliberately chosen to live in defiance of normal social strictures, and had willingly accepted the consequences. That had been fine, until the year before, when the memory losses had begun. With every month that passed, the lapses came more often and lasted longer.

      Now he could no longer be sure what he had done or why, and that lack of control terrified him. The obvious answer was to drink less, so he had resolved to moderate his habits. But somehow his resolution always dissolved once he swallowed his first drink.

      This way of life is killing you. The words were very clear in his head, spoken in a calm male voice.

      It was not the first time he had heard such a warning. Once the voice had told him to beware moments before two murderous footpads had attacked. He had dodged barely in time to avoid a knife in the back. On another occasion the voice had warned not to board a friend’s yacht. Reggie had made some clumsy excuse, incurring much taunting from his companions. But a squall had blown up, and the boat sank with no survivors.

      This way of life is killing you. His fingers tightened, digging into his skull, trying to erase the sick aching, the memories—and the lack of memories. He had always lived hard, courting danger and skirting the edge of acceptable behavior. In the months since the earldom of Wargrave had vanished from his grasp, he had gone wild, taking insane chances gambling and riding, drinking more than ever.

      Ironically, his luck had been phenomenal. Perhaps because he hadn’t much cared what happened, he had won, and won, and won. He was completely free of debt, had more money in the bank than he’d had in years.

      And what was the bloody point of it?

      This way of life is killing you. The words repeated in a litany, as if expecting some response, but Reggie was too drained to answer. He was weary unto death of his whole life. Of the endless gaming and drinking, of coarse tarts like Stella, of pointless fights and ghastly mornings after like this one.

      At the age of twenty-five, Julian was on the verge of outgrowing his wild oats phase, while Reggie was doing exactly the same things as when he’d first come down from university. He’d been running for sixteen years, yet was still in the same place.

      The depression was black and bitter. He wished with sudden violence that someone like Blakeford or Hanley would become furious enough to put a bullet in him and end the whole exhausting business.

      Why wait for someone else to do the job? He had pistols of his own.

      The idea flickered seductively for a moment before he recoiled mentally. Bloody hell, was he really at such a standstill? His mind hung suspended in horror as Julian’s words sounded at a great distance.

      Then the inner voice spoke once more. Strickland.

      Strickland, the one place in the world that he had ever belonged. He had thought it lost forever, and then his damned honorable cousin had given it back to him. Strickland, where he had been born, and where everyone he loved had died.

      It wouldn’t be home anymore—but by God, now it was his, demons and all.

      There was no conscious decision. He simply opened his eyes and broke into Julian’s dissertation, saying, “I’ve changed my mind about going to Bedford for that race. Have to go to Dorset to look over my estate.”

      “Your what?” Julian blinked in confusion.

      “My estate, Strickland. I’ve become a man of property.” Reggie stood, not bothering to explain away the bafflement on his friend’s face.

      He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror above the mantel. He looked much the same as usual, with the casual, damn-your-eyes elegance that was much imitated by the younger bucks. Yet inside, he felt brittle and old.

      He wandered to the window, and gazed down into Molton Street. He’d had these rooms on the edge of Mayfair for all the years he’d lived in London. The place was comfortable, entirely suitable for a bachelor. But he had never thought of it as home.

      Behind him Julian asked, “When will you come back to town?”

      “I have no idea. Maybe I’ll stay in Dorset and become a country squire, complete with red face and a pack of hounds.”

      Julian laughed, treating the statement as a joke, but Reggie half meant the words. The opinionated Dr. Johnson had said that a man who was tired of London was tired of life. Well, maybe Johnson was right; Reggie was tired of London and life both.

      Perhaps there would be something at Strickland that would make life worth living. But he doubted it.

      The rolling pastures and woodlands of Dorset were hauntingly familiar, though Reggie had not seen them since he was eight years old. He remembered the bleak heath of the high downs, too. In contrast to that starkness, Strickland included some of the richest agricultural land in Britain.

      After deciding to leave London, he had packed and left while Julian Markham was still asking puzzled questions from the sofa. Mac would follow later with the curricle and enough clothing for an indefinite stay. Reggie preferred to ride, and to ride alone. He slept at Winchester. By early the next afternoon, he was approaching Strickland, his once and future home.

      Though he had ridden hard most of the distance, he slowed his horse to a walk on the long drive that led to the house. The road was lined with three hundred sixty-six beech trees, one for every day of the year, including the extra needed for leap year. At one point there was a gap in the row. Next to the blackened fragments of a lightning-struck stump, a brave young sapling grew.

      He studied the sapling, wondering who had cared enough for tradition to plant that tree. The exemplary Mr. Weston, perhaps? More likely one of the local people. The Davenports had come and gone, but the tenants who had worked this land for generations remained.

      The drive curved at the end, and the house came into view all at once, without warning. He pulled up involuntarily, his eyes hungrily scanning the facade. Strickland was a manor house, midway in size between the humble cottage and the great lordly mansions. Built of the mellow Ham Hill stone that was quarried locally, it was similar to a thousand other seats of the English squirearchy.

      When he was a child, the summit of his ambition had been to become master of Strickland. He’d always known that as the eldest son he would someday inherit, and his goal had been to make himself worthy of wearing his father’s mantle. He, too, would care for the land, would know every tenant’s name, and have a sweet for every child he met. He, too, would be a man greeted everywhere with respect, not fear. And, like his father, he would have a wife who glowed when her husband entered the room.

      Then, in a few short, horrifying days, everything had changed. When his uncle’s secretary had come to take the orphan to Wargrave Park, Reggie had gone without question, dazed but obedient to adult authority. He’d yearned for the day when he could finally return to Strickland, until his uncle had told him in harsh, unfeeling words that the estate was not his, nor ever would be.

      After that he had no longer thought of Strickland as his home. He tried not to think of Strickland at all. During the years when he’d believed he would become the next Earl of Wargrave, he had known that his boyhood home would be a minor part of his inheritance, but he never intended to live there again.

      Now, in the end as in the beginning, there was only Strickland. His great expectations had vanished, and he was merely a man of good family and bad reputation, no longer young.

      But for the first time in his life, he was a landowner, and in England land was the source of power and consequence. If he ever hoped to find a meaning for his existence, it must be found here. If only he weren’t so weary. . . .

      His mouth tightened into a hard