in Nicolas’s study, casually thumbing through the pages of a book he’d plucked from the bookshelf.
“I have taken my son and removed him from your reach. He will be living abroad for the next few years.”
The anger icing through Nicolas’s veins felt so visceral, he had to take a few deep breaths and steady himself against the feeling. He had never been the kind of person to feel or display an excessive use of emotions, and he would not start now.
“After reading about Farringdon in the papers early this morning, I had to act with all haste.”
“Did you?” Nicolas murmured, leaning back in his chair.
“As we speak, my son is boarding a ship down by the docks.”
At Nicolas’s silence, the earl slipped the book into its place on the shelf and walked over. The earl peered down at him, and Nicolas kept his expression inscrutable. A silence lingered, throbbing with undertones of tension. He did not rush to speak, patiently waiting, unruffled that the earl loomed above him.
“You are very different from what you present to the world,” the earl said thoughtfully. “As I suspected you are not a coxcomb at all, but a man very driven and intense.”
Nicolas stood and made his way to the windows overlooking the small garden of his town house. There he leaned against the wall, keeping his back to the earl. “You went to the Asylum asking about me.”
“That I did.”
“There is a rumor you and your son have not spoken in seventeen months.”
“More than a rumor, I’m afraid. In fact, I believe it was you whispering in his ears which gave him the courage to defy me. Instead of sending that actress and his two bastards away, he instead provided them with a fortune. You were the devil on his shoulder, and he was simply too naive to see it.”
Nicolas shifted so he could regard the earl fully. “And as he was about to be hooked, you ran to the rescue,” he murmured with dangerous restraint.
Lord Tremelle’s lips flattened. “My son might not be the brightest of them, but his spate of bad luck I could no longer ignore. He is my heir, and one day I will leave him a considerable inheritance. I would have neglected my duty if I had ignored that everything he damn well touched turned to a rotten fruit. No man is that dim-witted or has that much ill-luck. Every misfortune was from your machinations.”
The earl’s intervention was a situation Nicolas had not anticipated. The viscount himself had often lamented about the distance between himself and his father, forced even wider after his mismanagement of his sizeable allowance and the loss of a few unentailed estates his father had left in his care. Estates Nicolas had won from him while gambling, but to gain Weychell’s trust, he had refused the deeds or the monies he had won.
“And of course, you did everything to save him from the devil,” he said mockingly.
“My investigation took several months, and it was clear to me you were a damn snake in the garden, and they did not know about it! You have been silently stalking him for more than a year, destroying everything he tried to invest in. When the ruination of the duke began, I suspected my son would be next in your wicked scheme.”
“Ah, so you are not at all curious about what he did to earn my displeasure.”
The earl took a step to him. “I cannot imagine what could have happened that you would betray a fellow gentleman in such a manner.”
“The manners of your son are not of someone of quality. He is in truth little more than a soft piece of turd.”
The earl flushed angrily, and his gaze narrowed. “My son has some untidy habits, but nothing that requires this scheme against him.”
Nicolas’s brows rose in polite surprise. “Untidy habits? Never heard rape so stated before.”
The earl froze. “I beg your pardon. My son would not partake in an act so vile. What need he have to force anyone? He is a future earl!”
“Yet he did. Ten years ago, he and a few of his friends did. He escaped justice then; he will not escape it now.”
They stared at each other for several moments. The earl retrieved a pocket watch and peered at the time. “His ship has set sail. You will have to suffice with the many discomforts you have already caused him. Because of you, he will be living on a plantation in America, in