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

I should put on a pair of riding boots—hell and the devil, I should put on my spectacles—but that would entail returning to the manor house, and I wasn’t about to do that.


I barely had time to get my feet into the stirrups before the restive animal gathered herself and leaped forward in a tremendous bound that saw her at an extended gallop that covered the cobblestoned stables yard within two strides.


I heard the cries, but I ignored them. The mare was one of the fastest I’d ever ridden, and wind whipped tears from my eyes.


And then I realised my anger had simply masked my grief; I was weeping—for the loss of someone I had once thought I’d loved, but more for the love I now had to accept that my family would never have for me.


Why had I ever thought anyone could love me?


Geo…oh, he was fond enough of me, but fondness wasn’t love. And I was being a maudlin fool. I brushed impatiently at the tears with my forearm.


Chapter 96