Cover

Dedication

To Rosalyn Rosenthal

For her loving kindness and generosity

Prologue

London

1840

The Earl of Elverton scowled at his latest bastard, blotchy and naked, held aloft by a midwife, as though she were offering him a treasure discovered in the ruins of Egypt or Pompeii. He wondered if he should present this one to his wife, tell her to suckle it at her teat, and announce to the world she’d given birth to it.

Why the devil couldn’t he get his countess with babe when he had such success at it elsewhere, with every woman he bedded save her? Perhaps if he were more enthusiastic when it came to the taking of her—

But she was a plain, docile thing, the daughter of a marquess his father had forced him to marry when he was nineteen. Naught about her made a man’s cock stand at attention, although he did manage it. Yet still, after a decade, not once had his seed taken root.

He should probably rid himself of her. A trip down the stairs, a fall from a rowboat in deep waters, a tumble from her horse. He could make an accident happen. He had before with a brother who should have inherited the title ahead of him.

A shooting accident when they’d been out hunting grouse. No one was surprised. The heir apparent had never been comfortable around weapons or truly mastered the use of firearms. “He tripped, his finger on the trigger,” Elverton had told everyone. “The gun discharged quite by accident.” No one doubted his word, no one suspected it had been his finger on the trigger that was responsible for his brother’s demise, not when he blubbered and produced tears. He became the victim, the one everyone comforted, because he would have to live with the horror that he’d witnessed due to his brother’s clumsiness. Fools all.

Now he slid his gaze from the bawling babe to the woman in the bed recovering from her ordeal, watching him, waiting for his decision. If he were to arrange to pass this by-blow off as his legitimate heir, he would have to dispatch her to a watery grave at the bottom of the Thames in order to ensure her silence. He was not one to take risks of discovery when misdeeds were done. While at present—with her bedraggled hair sweaty and her skin clammy—she wasn’t much to gaze upon, when she was at her best, she was the most beautiful, exciting woman he’d ever plowed. She also possessed a luscious mouth that knew its way well around a man’s cock. He grew hard just thinking of placing his once again between her luscious lips.

“Swaddle it,” he ordered the midwife.

“Can I not keep this one?” his favorite mistress asked.