Page 2 of The Seduction of an English Scoundrel

“He’d better show or answer to me,” Grayson said darkly. “I’ve spent half a day already staring at—well, staring at something usually reserved for a husband’s eyes, let us say.” Nigel happened to be their cousin, a Boscastle whom Grayson actually liked, although at the moment he felt like clobbering him for being such a dolt.

A grin broke across Heath’s handsome face. “The last time I saw such a collection of Boscastles in church was at Father’s funeral. Who invited the mistresses?”

“I think I did,” Grayson said, suppressing a yawn. “God knows I’ve been sitting here so long my brain’s gone stiff.”

“You invited them to a wedding?”

“It’s not my wedding, thank God.”

“Well, it is your chapel.”

“Ergo, I invite whom I please.”

“Someone might have thought to invite the groom.”

Grayson folded his arms across the chest of his charcoal gray long-tailed coat. “This thing has gone on so long I’m tempted to marry the woman myself.”

“Say it isn’t so.”

Grayson gave a deep laugh. “It isn’t.”

“By the way,” Heath said, stifling his own laughter, “I had to refuse a supper invitation for the pair of us at Audrey’s last evening. Where the blazes were you when I called?”

Grayson grunted. “Flushing Drake and Devon out of gaming hells so we could put on a pretense of family approval for this wedding.”

“I thought nuptials made you nervous.”

Grayson’s blue eyes glittered with devilish lights. “The avowed bachelor in me is dying by the moment.”

Heath’s grin faded. “And the soldier in me senses the trouble has only begun. How is the hot-blooded Helene?”

“Considerably cooler the last time I saw her, at least toward me. We did not come to an arrangement.”

“Ah. So, anyone new caught your eye?”

“No.”

“No, Gray? Not yet?”

Grayson glanced around. Two of his former mistresses appeared to be engaged in a battle of frosty glares. Open hostilities seemed possible.

His younger brothers, Drake and Devon, and one of Drake’s disreputable gambling friends had been discussing a certain young demirep they had met last night. The discussion had escalated to an argument when the trio discovered she had promised herself to them all. A fight seemed inevitable.

Chloe, the younger of Grayson’s two sisters, leaned from her pew to whisper to the bridesmaids, all of whom looked more upset than the bride.

Seeded like grenades amid these three dangerous camps sat a small but select group of the beau monde. Politicians, aristocrats, debutantes, and marriage-bent matrons who regarded Grayson much like a fortress to be seized.

He placed his fingers inside his neckcloth as if to ward off the marriage noose. It undid him, the air of holy matrimony, the warring mistresses, the militant bridesmaids, the responsibilities he had inherited almost overnight. No one, least of all him, had expected the sudden death of his father last year when the marquess had learned that his youngest son, Brandon, had been killed in Nepal. Grayson still blamed himself for not being there to deliver the news.

The weight of family obligation had fallen upon his broad shoulders like a shroud. There had been so many questions he longed to ask his father, and now it was too late. The selfish pursuits he had so enjoyed suddenly held no appeal. He could find little pleasure in his previous life.

He did not like the man he had become, and lately had begun to wonder if he could ever change.

And now this, his first public test as patriarch of the Boscastle clan. How to handle the abandonment of the bride by his own cabbage head of a cousin.

“What does one do in such a situation?” he muttered to himself.

Heath shook his head, looking mystified. “It’s too bad our Emma is so far away in Scotland. She’d know exactly what to do.”