Ashton Laytham was a happy little boy until, at the age of seven, he lost his parents. Sent to Fayerweather to be brought up by his uncle and his uncle’s wife, he was perceived to be an unhappy, unlovable child. Shunned by family and servants and permitted no friends to visit, he grows to adulthood alone and aloof, with only an occasional illicit rendezvous to lighten his days. When his uncle dies, leaving the estate virtually bankrupt, it’s left to Ashton to make good on his uncle’s gaming debts and save Fayerweather. But how? The family talisman, worth thousands of pounds, has been stolen and the suspects vanished in the night, leaving Ashton to face the loss of the home he’s come to love. Geo Stephenson, who works in His Majesty’s civil service, has ghosts of his own. The product of a marriage of convenience, Geo has known all his life his father never loved his mother, and he vows that will never happen to him. Marked by a physical scar earned in battle, none of his previous lovers could bear looking at it without shuddering; his mental scars are due to the many friends lost in useless battles. Geo arrives with a fistful of Sir Eustace Laytham’s IOUs and a solution: Ashton accommodating him in bed, thereby paying off the debt. Attracted to Geo in spite of himself and desperate for any human kindness, Ashton agrees ... never expecting to lose his heart to a man who has sworn he’ll never give his. Can these two men find a measure of happiness together?

Bless Us With Content

Geo would chat with Aunt Cecily, who had quickly forgiven him for dashing her hopes of getting Arabella wed; he’d bring her news of his father and the latest on ditsfrom Town.


Afterward, Arabella would pester him to teach her the latest dances. I’d protested at first, shamelessly using the excuse of his leg, although truthfully not liking the idea of my lover twirling about with the chit in his arms, but Geo had laughed and done as he’d wanted.


Subsequently he had taken me aside and pinched my chin, saying, “Since nothing will persuade me to marry her, the least I can do is see to it she has enough of the social graces that someone else will take her off your hands,” and I’d been mollified.


I’d been even more mollified when he took my right hand in his left, placed his right palm on my hip, and began to waltz me around the room, his movements smooth in spite of his injured leg.


Chapter 64