Hardly a Husband (Free Fellows League 3)

"For God's sake, why not?" Lord Rob demanded.

Pushed to the limit, Jarrod whirled around and faced his uncle. "Because I don't want to end up like my parents!"

Lord Rob's knees gave out and he sat down hard on the top of Lord Garrison's mahogany desk. "Oh, Jarrod," he breathed. "Oh, my dear, dear boy…"

"I was here, Lord Rob," Jarrod reminded him. "I found them. I saw what marriage did to them. And I want no part of that!"

Lord Rob stared at the man before him. Jarrod would be one and thirty on his next natal day. Nearly sixteen years had passed since he'd inherited the title, since he'd taken possession of the Marquess of Shepherdston's signet after it had been removed from his father's lifeless hand. Sixteen years since he had become a man and the master of his own fate.

But when he looked at him, Lord Rob saw the bewildered little boy Jarrod had been. The little boy unwanted, unloved, and ignored by his father and his mother.

The need for an heir had been the only reason the previous marquess had married. He had been a rakehell who lived for the next conquest. He'd chosen his bride for her looks, her dowry, and her family name and had given little or no consideration to her nature.

And that was a mistake in judgment that he had lived to regret. The marriage between the fourth Marquess of Shepherdston and Lady Honora Blackheath was a match made in hell. It was miserable from the start and it became worse with Jarrod's birth.

The marquess had never been faithful. He cheated on his wife, on his mistress, and on whoever happened to be in his bed or in his life when someone else caught his eye. And that never changed.

But the birth of the heir gave Lady Shepherdston license to ignore her wedding vows as well — she had done her duty and provided her husband with an heir. Soon the house became crowded with past lovers, present lovers, and future lovers of both the marquess and the marchioness. And neither one had been particularly choosy about the people who shared their beds.

Jarrod was still haunted by what he'd seen, still haunted by what they had done. By the time he was five years old, he had seen almost everything, including his nursemaid and his father in bed together. At eight, he'd narrowly escaped being buggered by one of his mother's lovers by running away and locking himself in Eleanor's Folly. By the time he was ten, he'd sworn off love and lovemaking altogether, and by the time he was two and ten, Jarrod spent as much of his time as possible at Shepherdston Hall to avoid the attentions of his father's lovers who regularly propositioned him by inviting him to share their beds.

Jarrod had done his best to keep the most sordid details of his life from Griff and Colin, but he couldn't stop the whispers and gossip of the other boys at school. There was nothing the members of the ton liked more than to gossip about other members of the ton, and Lord and Lady Shepherdston provided their peers with deliciously juicy on-dits on a daily basis. The Marquess and Marchioness of Shepherdston despised and resented each other and the marriage that kept them bound together. Bent on destruction, they devised a vicious game where besting each other at scandal was the prize. Neither of his parents spared a thought for Jarrod's well-being. Their sense of their responsibilities extended only as far as seeing that he was fed, clothed, housed, and educated.

As far as Jarrod was concerned, other than giving him life, the greatest favor either of his parents had ever done him was deciding to send him to the Knightsguild School for Gentlemen shortly after his ninth birthday because it was farther from London than Eton.

When they remembered he was alive, it was because one of their lovers reminded them.

His childhood had been one long ongoing orgy of pain and pleasure and deceit, from which the only escape had been his friends at Knightsguild and their secret Free Fellows League.

And despite everything they were and everything they had done, Jarrod had loved his parents. And on the day of their funerals, he had sworn he would never love anyone like that again. He would never allow anyone to hurt him again.

"Oh, but my boy," Lord Rob said softly, "you're wrong. Marriage wasn't responsible for your mother and father's actions. They were."

Jarrod shook his head. "They wouldn't have been the way they were if they hadn't gotten married."

"They would have been exactly the same whether they'd gotten married or not. No one forced them. Your father chose your mother and she accepted. Marriage didn't change who or what they were," Lord Rob replied. "Your father never grew up. He fell into love with someone new every week, but he was incapable of sustaining it. He never look responsibility for anything in his life except his own pleasure." There was a note of bitterness in Lord Rob's voice that Jarrod had never heard before. "And even that, he often left to his bedmates. He was headstrong and childish and wildly i

rresponsible, and at times, terribly cruel."

Jarrod stared at his uncle, surprised by Lord Rob's assessment of the fourth Marquess of Shepherdston's character. "I thought you liked him. I thought you were his friend."

"I did like him," Lord Rob agreed. "That was what was damnably hard to take. He was as selfish as a child most of the time, but he was also incredibly generous at times. So much so that you couldn't help but like him. Even when you despised how he behaved and how he treated the people who loved him."

"Did she ever love him?"

Lord Rob shook his head. "No."

"Then why the jealous rage?"

"It wasn't jealousy," Lord Rob said slowly. "It was fury. Your mother was almost exactly like your father. And your father liked that about her. It's what attracted him to her in the first place. She was as much like one of the fellows as it was possible for a woman to be. She understood who and what he was and didn't expect him to be anything more. And Honora was every bit as selfish and irresponsible and cruel as he was. She was beautiful and she used that beauty to get her way. She used men to get her way. She had affairs and took lovers, but hers was a game of conquest just like your father's. She used men and she despised them. Just as your father used women and dismissed them. Their union was never about love. It was about power and control and the ultimate pursuit of pleasure. Their union was disastrous in most ways, but it was remarkable in another."

"In what way?" Jarrod snorted. He'd never seen anything to admire in either one of his parents and nothing to admire in their marriage.

"It produced you," Lord Rob said simply.

"And provided them with a constant, unwanted reminder of why they were together in the first place."

"That may well have been true," his uncle agreed, "but the result of their first coming together was you and if they did nothing good for the rest of their lives, they had still created an extraordinary human being. One who loved them in spite of the fact that they had never done anything to deserve it."