AllFreeNovel
Share Us
PROLOGUE
London, 1836
Predictability,Leo Murphy surmised, was what made Elysium so incredibly successful.
As the owner of a gambling hell, knowing the odds of every game played on the floor and predicting the outcome was of crucial importance. He’d built an empire around the expectation that at any given time, the titled of London would enter through the front door of Elysium and proceed to lose every coin in their purse. Hazard. Piquet. Whist. Faro. There were numerous opportunities to gamble away the night, drowning your troubles in expensive scotch and brandy.
When one tired of cards, there were always the pleasures to be found on the second floor of Elysium. Each room was stocked with various items one might use to invoke pleasure or pain. The rooms and their accessories were the only things Leo supplied his guests. One must secure their own companion for the evening. He wasn’t running a bloody brothel.
He did have some morals.
Leo was the son of a duke, after all, albeit one born on the wrong side of the blanket. His father, the Duke of Averell, had been the biggest rake to strut into London in decades. Known for having the arrogance to keep his mistress and duchess under the same roof at his country estate. But that was before the tragic events at Cherry Hill which had resulted in the late duchess’s death.
Leo placed his hand against his heart, conscious of the slight twist he always felt at thinking of the late duchess. Many emotions ebbed over time. Regret and guilt often did not. Finding out your husband was tupping your lady’s maid beneath your nose had been bad enough, but the shock that her husband’s bastard existed, a year younger than her own son, Anthony, had distressed her so much, the duchess had tripped and fallen.
Leo could still see the blood coating the base of the stairs, the smell caught forever in his nostrils. Until then, Leo hadn’t known he was different. Had no idea his best friend Tony, the duke’s son, was also his half-brother. Didn’t know the world outside Cherry Hill would shun him for his birth or that in claiming him publicly, the duke would subject him to a life of notoriety.
“Mr. Murphy.” Peckham, his man who managed the gaming floor, approached the second-floor landing where Leo often stood. A vantage point of sorts, so he could view all of Elysium.
“What is it, Peckham?” he said, relieved to have Peckham’s appearance push away the horror of that day. The memory often struck him at the oddest times.
“Lord Welles has arrived. He asks you to join him below when you’re done fussing over your waistcoat.” Peckham immediately put up a hand. “His words, sir, not mine.”
Leo looked down at his waistcoat, a very fine concoction of purple and green swirled into what looked like sunbursts and outlined in gold thread. His brother rarely wore anything but expertly tailored suits of indigo. Society expected Leo to be a bit...garish due to his beginnings. He found no reason to disappoint them. He liked a bit of color. People often mistook him and Tony for one another from a distance, but not if they caught sight of his waistcoat.
“Lord Welles has terrible taste.” He nodded to the gentleman below who’d just come into view, a stunning redhead clinging to his arm. “As evidenced by the fact that he’s allowing Lady Dunley to assume she might one day become Lady Welles.”
Peckham nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Leo waved a hand. “I’ll be down shortly, Peckham.”
Lady Dunley, a recent widow, had once been a brief indiscretion of Leo’s. Proper ladies, trapped in marriages not of their liking, were often bored with their lives. They enjoyed bedding London’s most notorious bastard. Leo was always happy to comply. Lady Dunley had been very upset when Leo broke things off, as he often did after a specific length of time. No need to become too attached, after all.
She’d responded by telling Leo she’d done him a favor by lowering herself to fuck him.
The lady had an overinflated opinion of her abilities in the bedroom.
Below him, Lady Dunley let out a shrill laugh, turning her head in Leo’s direction.
He chuckled to himself. Leo wasn’t prone to jealousy; there were far too many desirable women in London to care overmuch about just one.
Pushing back from the railing, Leo jogged down the stairs to greet his brother. Despite the myriad of reasons why he and Tony should detest each other, the main one being that Leo’s existence had caused the death of Tony’s mother, the two were closer than they’d been as children. Uniting in dislike over a man who had caused them both so much grief, one deserving of their loathing, had forged the bond between them.
Elysium belonged to both of them, but it was Leo who most enjoyed watching London’s nobility swirl around a duke’s bastard to curry his favor. He liked declining the requests for credit from men who, when they’d been lads, had spat on him at that fancy boarding school the duke had forced him to attend. Enjoyed fucking their wives behind their backs while they looked down their thin noses at him.
Highly amusing.
Tony’s interest in Elysium, however, was purely to piss off the duke.
“Lord Welles.” A gloved hand appeared on Leo’s arm, along with a burst of pomade to his nostrils and the smell of brandy.
“Oh, it’s you.” The speaker stuttered. “Murphy.” Lord Castlewaite’s cheeks turned red, mustache quivering as he caught sight of Leo’s waistcoat. “Pardon. I mistook you for Lord Welles.”
“Did you?” Tony wouldn’t be caught dead in this waistcoat. His brother had no appreciation for color, as evidenced by the constant wearing of indigo. “I can understand your confusion. The lighting is somewhat dim.” Besides the waistcoat, Leo hadn’t an ounce of ducal arrogance about him. That was Tony, who always looked like he’d walked out of a bloody painting in some lord’s portrait gallery.
“I’ve never mistaken you, my lord, for anyone other than who you are,” Leo said, knowing the older man would completely miss the thinly veiled insult. Snobs like Castlewaite often did. He was a marquess with nothing to recommend him but his title and his ability to make outlandish wagers which were then recorded in Elysium’s Red Book. “You’re very distinctive, my lord.”
Castlewaite nodded. “I’ve often thought so.”
