Barbara Metzger Read Online Free PDF

of Her Majesty’s First Hussars, only son of the late fifth Duke of St. Sevrin, and perpetually late with the rent, was not happy in London. Not at all. The gossip mills might lump him with the other idle pleasure-seekers of his class, but the sixth Duke of St. Sevrin was getting deuced little pleasure out of the constant rounds of gambling, drinking, and wenching.
    It wasn’t that he missed the army. Zeus knew he’d hated the bloody war. Sloane still woke in the middle of the night bathed in sweat from the memories of cannons and fallen comrades, screaming horses and the stench of blood. He still ached where the Frenchie’s saber had sliced across his chest and under his left arm, which the sawbones warned would always be weak. If Sloane’s right arm hadn’t been so strong around the surgeon’s neck, the medico would have removed the left one altogether, so Sloane should have considered himself lucky.
    Lucky, hah! He’d come home to find that his man of business had played ducks and drakes with whatever income the swindling bailiff had sent on to London. There was nothing left of his inheritance but bills. The estates had been bled dry and weren’t about to see a profit without a major investment of capital that His Grace simply did not possess. St. Sevrin would have broken the entail in an instant, sold off half the property to maintain the other half, or at least let himself live in comfort. Half the time he was shivering with the return of the fevers just because there wasn’t enough blunt to waste on coal.
    But the new duke couldn’t break the entail. His cousin and presumed heir Humbert Shearingham had made sure of that. Bertie didn’t need the unprofitable Priory acres; he didn’t even need the blunt the sale would bring. He wanted the title. He sat like a spider that had built its web, waiting for the unwary bug. Bertie had agreed to pay off the mortgages, Sloane’s new solicitor reported, and to restore the estate. He’d even make Sloane a handsome annuity. All St. Sevrin had to do was renounce the title in his cousin’s favor.
    Well, Napoleon Bonaparte hadn’t succeeded in giving Humbert the dukedom. Be damned if Sloane would, either.
    So the former officer was living on his wits and luck, and feeling more every day that both had gone begging. He lived in three rooms of St. Sevrin House in Berkeley Square with his retired batman Kelly as his only servant. He paid his expenses, when he managed to pay at all, with his gaming winnings.
    Unfortunately the men he gambled with—not always gentlemen, either—were heavy drinkers. Anyone more sober than themselves was suspected of being a Captain Sharp, as was anyone who won too often or too much. The drink kept St. Sevrin from being distrusted—and from being a successful gamester.
    It was easier to stay drunk than to face the piles of bills, as well as the pity and disdain on his fellow peers’ faces. Soon the doors of polite Society were closing in his face, except for a few that remained open on account of his war record. St. Sevrin didn’t give a rap for the Quality, save that they were easier to pry loose from their blunt.
    A good cardplayer, though no wizard with the pasteboards, St. Sevrin managed to keep his head above water, barely. There was nothing left to sink back into the estates, so there was no hope, therefore, of His Grace’s seeing a shilling from his fine inheritance.
    There was nothing his father hadn’t mortgaged, nothing unentailed that the old rip hadn’t sold. Sloane was desperate, and the vultures knew it. A man on the edge couldn’t wager recklessly because he couldn’t afford to lose. Time and again Sloane had warned his young recruits not to play where they couldn’t pay. Now he was doing the same thing, finding himself deeper in debt every day.
    The war may have been a nightmare, but at least Sloane had felt he was getting a job done. Here in London he was accomplishing nothing, and it was taking all day and night to