Chapter 2

IN ANOTHER TIME

Alan Griffith had just come in from his men's club to find that his mother waited up for him. She had that look on her face that made him sigh and resign himself to a long talk. As a duke and the first son, he had a duty to get married and produce an heir but that dream would always be what it was, a dream.

You see, the woman he wanted to marry ended up being a thief and a harlot, but because he did not want to soil her reputation and in connection his, that was why he didn't oust her to society. Oh how incensed he was just remembering it all, it galled him that he once fancied himself in love with the chit. His mother, the good woman felt he broke her heart and he left it at that which he was starting to regret as she wouldn't stop badgering him to marry, worst of all the same woman. On her manipulative part, she played the heartbroken damsel so well he wanted to wring her neck for it.

Mother he greeted; Don't you mother me you hellion of mine since you are determined to send me to my grave without meeting my grandchildren or worse still dying on one of your jaunts passing the title to your younger brother who isn't ready to hold the reins of any dukedom needless to say yours. God knows why your father had to acquire so much wealth making the responsibilities even more than it usually is and now you are following in his footsteps increasing what is already much she wailed. At least he had the good sense to get married and produce children even if he was not always around, but you don't want todo the right thing instead you keep a mistress here and there buying all these expensive clothes and jewelry only for them to be dropped as hot potatoes once rumors of you tending towards marriage hits that rag called gossip column.

'Hmmmm, mother I see you read the rag every morning like you can't get enough of it'. What is an old woman like myself to do? One needs be informed of the happenings around one's self. Now that isn't the issue here and you know it young man, get yourself a wife and produce me some grandchildren, at this point even the servants would appreciate children especially Bess.

Am off to bed mother, I would get married when the right lady comes along but as for Emma, hell would freeze over before I marry her. Laying down in bed Alan set his mind to finding a woman for himself to marry, maybe it was time to look closer at those chits his mother kept having over for tea. He grimaced just thinking about it, they all just looked like simpering ninnies, always flustering like hens over what he knew not. Well he had to take it like a man and get it over with, if he couldn't do so he would get a mistress but by God he would try to make it work, it just seemed so hard to decide among them because none of them caught his eye.

Come morning he was off to meet his good friend Nathan to give him pointers after all he was a married man and he seemed happy with it.