Riot Most Uncouth Read Online Free PDF Page A

become a serious problem and a public embarrassment for me. But even more immediately, the rumors Sedgewyck had heard about my position at the College were not untrue: I was obliged to appear that afternoon before a panel of the Arts faculty to discuss matters relating to my “recent erratic behavior” and a “disturbing trend in academic performance.” The College had finally had enough of my notoriety, and the Fellows had decided to humble me. I didn’t have time for this nonsense; I had a killer to catch.
    â€œI see you, sitting there, eating my food and judging me,” I said, glaring at the Professor. “If you want to say something, then, by all means, have out with it.”
    He said nothing and continued chewing, quietly and unappreciatively.
    â€œYou are like my mother,” I said to the bear. “You disapprove of my use of credit, and would see me dwell in squalor out of pride and some demented refusal to mark a balance sheet with a bit of red ink. I experienced hardship and poverty as a child, and indebtedness is quite an improvement over those sorry circumstances.”
    I had inherited the title of Lord Byron and its lands and incomes when I was ten years old. At the time, my mother and I were living in shabby apartments in Aberdeen; she could afford nothing better on the pittance that was left to her after my father abandoned us.
    The previous Lord Byron was my great-uncle William, a man known for his violent temper and his unforgiving nature. Some people called him the Wicked Lord, and the rest avoided calling on him at all.
    William had undertaken a systematic endeavor to destroy the accumulated wealth of his title during his lifetime, to spite his estranged son. In furtherance of this end, he let Newstead fall into disrepair. He burned the forests on the estate and slaughtered some two thousand deer. Swarms of insects descended on the property to feast on the rotting timber and carcasses. The Wicked Lord also threw lavish parties and accrued enormous debts, habits that seemed to run in the family.
    But William’s son devised a clever maneuver to escape his father’s vindictive schemes; he died. So, too, did my cousin, William’s grandson, who went to Corsica and tried to catch a cannonball with his face. That’s how I, who had never met any of these people, inherited the peerage upon the old man’s death.
    It seemed to my mother like God’s justice; after Mad Jack had squandered her assets, she was restored to her appropriate social status by his neglected child’s unlikely inheritance of the barony of Byron.
    But the Wicked Lord had left the coffers drained, the properties decrepit, and many of the family’s inalienable, fee tail holdings burdened by liens, leases, and other encumbrances. His own interest had merely been for life, and many of these devices were, thus, illegal. However, untangling his fraudulent dealings and expelling unlawful tenants would require years of litigation.
    Though the title didn’t come with a fortune, I was determined, from a very young age, to live in a manner befitting my exalted station. And I learned that bankers opened their purses when gentlemen of my class came calling. Mad Jack always said that only a man who lacked imagination died without debt. And since I was, after all, England’s greatest living poet, I had no shortage of imagination.
    As I contemplated my history of financial missteps, the Professor’s fist-sized eyes met mine. The uncomfortable silence was my fault. Our camaraderie relied upon my ability to maintain conversational momentum, since the Professor, despite being a canny judge of character and a splendid dancer, lacked the power of speech.
    â€œBefore he disappeared, my father used to speak of immortal creatures who fed on the blood of the innocent,” I said. “My father and I left some business unsettled, and now, just as I have arrived at the full flower of my