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Chapter One
Damnation!Mason Granger blew out an aggravated breath and rubbed at his nape.
He tried to concentrate on the papers resting on his desk, and especially on the long list of warehouse repairs his manager in Birmingham had forwarded that demanded his immediate attention. But focusing proved impossible against the noise and activity coming from the town house next door.
Lord and Lady Whitwell were entertaining.Again. And this time, not just one of those musicales or dinners they threw with such frequency that they were held seemingly for no other reason than to celebrate a day that ended inY.
No, tonight’s party was a grand affair that aimed to be the event of the season. A masquerade ball to which hundreds of people had been invited and who now crowded the grand house’s reception rooms and gardens. So many guests that they’d spilled out the front door into the courtyard and drive. So many that they’d begun to overflow into the adjoining park and most likely onto his own doorstep.
He grimaced. So many that the combination of music, laughter, and shouts pounded inside his head like a hammer and made working on business nearly impossible.
Glass shattered—
No,severalglasses shattered as a footman’s tray of refreshments most likely tumbled to the marble floor.
At Mason’s feet, his dog Brutus whined with distress.
“Well, you know that they say,” he reassured the large shaggy hound by reaching down to scratch behind his floppy ears. “It isn’t a party until something gets broken.”
A loud smash—
Blowing out a hard sigh, he muttered as he dipped his quill into the ink pot, “And judging by the sound of that, there went the flower urn in the Whitwell’s front drive.”
He bit back a curse. Even on a good night, when half its population wasn’t attempting to crowd itself into the house next door, Mason disliked London. Too big and crowded, too noisy, too polluted.
“Too many damn people poking their noses into my business,” he grumbled as he marked a quick note in the margin.
Yet oddly enough, also too lonely even amid all the people.
He didn’t have a large number of friends he could trust with his personal thoughts and concerns. The boys he’d met in school had remained in their home villages, taking apprenticeships or inheriting their fathers’ businesses or positions. The large fortune he’d accumulated in the past decade had put an even greater distance between them and him than simple miles. It was the same with those men he now did business with in London, men who were born into the aristocracy and into upper class fortunes. Avoided asnouveau richeby one group of men and derided as an upstart by the other, he’d never found his place. Certainly not in London. At least in the country he had his tenants, land managers, and merchants in the village to talk to. Here he had no one.
Which was why he’d never committed to buying a leasehold here. Instead, he rented only for as long as business required him to be in the city. Curse his luck that this season’s business was keeping him longer than anticipated when he would have gladly said to hell with London and returned to his estate long before now.
Double curse him that the house his secretary found for him this season was located next to a social epicenter that could have rivaled Vauxhall.
He’d been invited to tonight’s ball—just as he’d been for every other one of the Whitwells’ soirees. And just as before he’d not gone. He’d rather take a stick in the eye than suffer through that madness next door. Politics, parties, and the peerage could all be damned as far as he was concerned, especially if—
BOOM!!!
His hand jerked, scratching a black streak across the page. With a loud cry, Brutus dove beneath the sofa for cover, but the dog was too big. Only his head was covered while the rest of his large body stuck out in plain sight.
Mason clenched his jaw as more whistles sliced through the night sky, followed by explosions and then crackles as the sparks died away.
Fireworks. They’d set off blastedfireworks.
With a curse, he pushed himself away from the desk and strode toward the door. There would be no more work done tonight.
“Brutus,” he ordered, “come.”
But the dog only whined and attempted to dig even further beneath the sofa.
So Mason left the mongrel where he was and walked through the dark house and outside into the rear garden.
The space was large, thick with shadows, and dense with bushes and trees that had been allowed to grow wild and with flowerbeds that hadn’t been properly tended in years. As far as Mason was concerned, it was the perfect escape. His little bit of wilderness in the midst of a crowded city. Tonight, it certainly wasn’t quiet and he doubted that the air in London could ever be called fresh, but at least he could take in the cool air and clear his head.
The overgrown bushes along the side wall rustled, and strongly enough that it wasn’t an animal, especially not one foolish enough to venture into the garden while Brutus lived here. The hound loved to chase anything that moved, although Mason doubted the mutt would know what to do with a critter if he ever caught one.
He folded his arms over his chest and gritted his teeth in irritation. No, this had to be guests from the party who’d strayed through the little wooden gate in the stone wall that separated his property from Lord Whitwell’s, and most likely a couple looking for a private spot for a secret tryst. But Mason was in no mood to allow randy encounters in his rear garden, especially when he himself hadn’t shared the company of a woman in far too long to remember. Just as with the men in his life, the women didn’t know what to make of him either, a man who shunned society and had no patience for its idiocies and idleness.
