Barely a Bride (Free Fellows League 1)

The heat from the kitchen ovens on

the other side of the brick wall kept the storeroom warm enough for the boys to shed their blankets. They folded the blankets into neat, woolen squares to use as floor cushions before pulling a battered wooden crate they had hidden in the storeroom into place to use as a table. When the crate was situated to everyone’s satisfaction, the three companions placed their collective offerings of pen and ink, paper, candles, knife, and sealing wax on it and set down to work.

By the time they emerged from the storeroom, an hour or so before the breakfast bells rang, the three boys had formed a pact that bound them together and made them brothers. They had formed a secret society guaranteed to protect them from further pain wrought in the name of love and family and had fashioned a charter to govern it. And their composition was worthy of Thomas Jefferson’s best efforts.

They called it the “Official Charter of the Free Fellows League,” and as they pricked their thumbs with the paring knife and eagerly signed their names to each of the three copies of the charter in blood, Griffin, Colin, and Jarrod swore to honor the agreement as long as they lived.

Chapter One

“Massena has been appointed to command the French in Portugal. The purchase of my commission in the Eleventh Blues is complete. My regiment leaves for the Peninsula in eighteen days. Tomorrow I’ve an appointment at White’s to inform the earl. My future has begun.”

—Griffin, Lord Abernathy, journal entry, 18 April 1810

Weymouth Hall, London

April 1810

“You sent for me, sir.”

Griffin, seventeenth Viscount Abernathy, stood facing his father, the sixteenth Earl of Weymouth, in the study of his father’s London town house. He was separated from his father by a wide expanse of dark, polished mahogany and a much darker, wider gulf of doubt brought about by age, familial differences, and the inherent conflict between a man and his heir.

“I sent for my heir,” the earl snapped.

Griff inhaled, counted to twenty, then slowly expelled the breath. “I am your heir, Father.”

“Not for much longer.”

So that’s how it was to be. As an only son and an only child, Griff was quite accustomed to his father’s repeated attempts to use guilt as a means of manipulating him. His father’s methods were tried and true, but Griff had long ago grown weary of the tactics. It would be nice to think that his father had sent for him because he wanted Griff’s company. Just once.

“And why is that? Are congratulations in order?” Griff asked. “Have I an older brother I’ve never met?”

“Don’t be ridiculous! If I had another son, you’d be the first to know about it.”

“I would rather think that Mother would be the first to know about it.” Griff gave his father a slight smile. “Or your mistress.”

Lord Weymouth failed to find the humor in his son’s remark. “However much we might like it, your mother is not increasing.”

“I am disappointed to hear it.”

“It isn’t for lack of trying,” the earl continued. “I can assure you of that. And of the fact that I have no need of a mistress. Your mother keeps me quite busy and quite satisfied in that regard. But no matter how often we try or how creative we become, we fail to accomplish our goal. Ours has never been a prolific family, and it seems that Lady Weymouth and I were quite fortunate to produce you.”

“I am delighted you feel that way.” Griff struggled to maintain a neutral countenance. His father had many admirable traits, but a sense of humor wasn’t counted among them.

The Earl of Weymouth was a brilliant man, but careful and methodical. He was quiet and observant, paid enormous attention to detail, and rarely deviated from his planned course of action.

Griff had never heard his father mention the possibility of having intimate relations with his mother or with any other woman. Oh, he knew that his parents had had intimate relations at least once. The consummation of their union had, after all, resulted in his birth, but like most offspring, Griff didn’t want to hear the details, nor could he begin to imagine his father as a lover, creative or otherwise. He blocked the mental image that threatened to ruin his perception of his parents and turned his attention back to what his father was saying.

“We are delighted”—Lord Weymouth used the same word Griff had used, proving to his son that he did have a fully developed sense of irony, if not a fully developed sense of humor—“enough with your presence on earth and in our lives that we’ve no wish to see it extinguished prematurely.”

“You heard?”

“Of course, I heard. Did you expect that I wouldn’t?” Lord Weymouth picked up a heavy ledger and slammed it upon the desktop.

The loud crack of leather against wood echoed through the quiet room. Lord Weymouth frowned, then pushed away from his desk and stood up.

His size was intimidating. Standing head and shoulders above almost every man he knew, Weymouth used his size to his advantage, but that tactic no longer worked with Griffin. The boy hadn’t so much as flinched at the sound of the ledger hitting the desk or displayed any hint of childish emotion when his father stood up from behind his desk. Weymouth recognized the fact that his son was a grown man. Griff had sprouted up and filled out while away at university and was now able to look him in the eye. In truth, his son looked down in order to look him in the eye, a fact of which Lord Weymouth was inordinately proud. It was quite clear to Lord Weymouth that even in his stocking feet, Griffin easily bested his height by a good inch or so.

Except for age and the difference in height, the two of them were very much alike physically. Griff had his mother’s brilliant blue eyes and hair a lighter shade of brown, but there was no denying that he was his father’s son. His shoulders and chest were equally broad, and the earl found, much to his chagrin, that Griff was more fit. His waist was trimmer, and his hips and thighs were well muscled from hours spent in the saddle instead of behind a desk.