Julia Justiss by Wicked Wager Page A

to stare at the man he’d once so admired and feared, whose rare praise he’d previously tried so hard to earn. A man whom, perhaps subconsciously, he’d spent most of his life seeking to emulate. But this aging roué was no longer the man Tony Nelthorpe wanted to see when he gazed into his own mirror twenty-five years hence.
    He might have little idea how to avoid that fate, but he could stand firm against his father today. I fled my responsibilities once at your command, he thought, setting his jaw. I’ll not do so again.
    “I shall leave once I know the status of our funds.”
    “If you’re so concerned about blunt, then by all means do something!” his father retorted. “Since you managed to survive the war—though the devil knows how, as you’ve never been successful at anything before—make yourself useful. Indeed, I had intended to discuss this with you directly upon your return, but I couldn’t abide that revolting limp. Which, I’m relieved to note, has improved.”
    “Thank you, Papa, for your concern about my health.”
    The earl threw him a dagger glance but, to Tony’s surprise, did not deliver the hide-blistering reprimand he’d expected. Clearing his throat instead, his father continued, “Snabble yourself an heiress to restore the family coffers, like I did. Preferably a landed chit. You can sendher back to one of her properties when she gets tiresome, while her lovely blunt stays here in London.”
    As you did. For the first time, he began to understand his mother’s penchant for young footmen.
    “Before I begin ‘snabbling,’ I must know just how empty the family coffers are.”
    Giving him a petulant look, his father shrugged. “Talking pounds and pence like some damned clerk! That’s what comes of your overlong association with army riffraff. Hardly a true gentleman to be found among ’em.”
    True men, if not gentlemen, Tony thought. But it was useless to attempt conveying such an idea to his father. “I’ll act the clerk if I must.”
    “Can’t expect me to keep something as vulgar as figures in my head. Now, if you’ll excuse me—” he waved Tony toward the door “—I must finish dressing.”
    “I shall be happy to withdraw, as soon as you sign this document—” Tony drew out a paper from his pocket “—authorizing me to act on your behalf.” Striding to the desk, Tony seized the quill and presented it to his father.
    “Accosting me in my own chamber, preaching like some damned Methodist,” the earl grumbled. But under Tony’s unwavering gaze, he reluctantly took the pen and scrawled his signature. “Don’t come here again until you can tell me you’ve bedded an heiress.”
    Pocketing the note, Tony made the earl an exaggerated leg that sent an immediate shaft of pain through his knee. “You may be assured of that, sir,” he said, and limped out.
    Snabble an heiress, he thought as he traversed the hall. A directive, he supposed, given to sons from time immemorial by profligate fathers who’d run their estates into ruin. Was he supposed to prowl the City, searching for a Cit seeking a title for his daughter and with little discrimination about who provided it? Or travel to India to sweep some Nabob’s widow off her ill-bred feet?
    He had to smile wryly. Only one heiress had ever interested him—a nabob’s daughter, who was now a widow.
    Unfortunately, being the widow of that exemplary soldier and hero, Colonel Garrett Fairchild, she would never seriously consider the hand of a reprobate-turned-who-knew-what like Anthony Nelthorpe.
    No matter how many sparks struck between them.
    Melancholy settling over him, Tony wandered to the library. Though he’d not awakened until midafternoon, he felt unaccountably weary. For three long years of boredom and battle, through fear, privation and pain, he’d cherished the notion that once he finally returned to England, life would resume some normal, satisfying pattern.
    Well, Tony old man, it appears homecoming