Kisses and Scandal (A Survivors Series Anthology ) - Shana Galen Page 0,108

and into the dining room. The five round tables in the paneled wood room were empty, their white linen tablecloths bright and clean and anticipating the next diner.

Neil chose a chair near the big hearth and settled back. The silence here didn’t bother him. He could all but hear the echoes of his friends’ voices—those who had survived—raised in song or laughter. He half expected to look to the side and see Ewan Mostyn—the brawny, muscled protector of the group—bent over a meal or spot Rafe Beaumont leaning negligently against one of the walls, under a sconce.

Neil never felt alone here.

Porter returned with the brandy on a silver salver. Neil had told the man a hundred times such gestures were unnecessary, but Porter believed in standards. Neil lifted the brandy then frowned at the folded white paper that had been beneath it.

“I almost forgot, sir. This note came for you a few hours ago.”

Neil lifted it and nodded to the silver-haired Master of the House, who departed quite gracefully, considering he had but one leg. It didn’t surprise Neil that correspondence meant for him had been sent here. He was here more than anywhere else, and anyone who knew him knew that. He broke the seal and opened the paper, recognizing the hand immediately. It was from the Marquess of Kensington. It said simply:

Call on me at the town house at your earliest convenience. I have need of you.

—Kensington

Neil folded the letter and put it in his pocket. It was not unusual for his father to request Neil’s assistance with various tasks from inspecting an investment opportunity to traveling to one of the marquess’s many estates and assisting the steward with a duty or question. As a bastard, Neil had no social commitments and no obligations to the Kensington title as his elder brothers did. In Neil’s opinion, acting in his father’s stead was the least he could do, considering his father had claimed him, seen that he had been educated, and now granted him an allowance of sorts. The marquess would never have called it payment for Neil’s services, but that was what it amounted to.

Neil bore his legitimate brothers no ill will, and they had always been civil to him. Especially Christopher. Neil and Christopher had been friends as well as brothers. The marquess’s wife had always been coolly polite to him, though it must have chafed every time she encountered him. No doubt she wished Neil, not Christopher, had died in Portugal.

Neil was the product of Kensington’s liaison with a beautiful Italian woman he’d been introduced to in London shortly after the birth of his second son. He’d been instantly smitten, and what ensued was a brief and passionate affair. The marchioness had looked the other way, suffering in silence as other women of her class had before her. The relationship might have gone on indefinitely if Neil’s mother had not conceived a child and, after a difficult pregnancy, died of complications.

Neil had never known his mother. Instead, he’d been raised by a farmer and his wife who lived on Kensington’s Lancashire estate. He’d been a small, dark child with startling blue eyes and a fondness for woodcarving, like his foster father, and horses, like his real father. Neil had always known the marquess was his real father. The giant of a man had come to visit him without fail once a month unless he was in Town for the Season.

At eight, Neil had gone to school—not Eton like his brothers—but a good school for middle-class children, and he’d learned reading and writing and arithmetic. He’d left school and his father had bought him a commission in the cavalry. On his own merits, he’d earned a position in the 16th Light Dragoons, also known as the Queen’s Lancers. He’d always been proud of his service as a member of the 16th.

He was not so proud of the service he’d done afterward.

But his father did not want to speak to him about the war or how Neil had sold his soul to Lieutenant Colonel Draven on the same day Christopher had been killed. The marquess didn’t blame Neil for Christopher’s death.

Neil still blamed himself—for that death and those that followed—and he would spend the rest of his days in atonement.

He looked down at the note once again. Cold seeped along his limbs as he reread it. Neil had a feeling he wouldn’t like what his father requested this time and not simply because he’d be expected to be