The Unscrupulous Uncle Read Online Free

curricle. He was the Earl of Devlin, sole survivor of two once-vibrant families. It was time to start acting like an earl. He would not think of Peter again. It was the only way to carry on.
     
    “Welcome home, my lord,” said Wendell when Damon appeared at the door.
    “You look well,” he replied, though he was shocked at how much older the butler appeared. Doing a quick calculation, he realized that the man was now in his late sixties. Could he still perform his duties? And what of the rest of the staff? Both the housekeeper and the head groom had been the same age as the butler.
    But he could hardly pension off everyone the moment he returned. And Hermione would have her own ideas about servants. Tucker was right. There would have to be changes.
    “Robbie will bring up hot water. He is new since you were last here.” Wendell gestured to a liveried lad, who looked sixteen.
    “But well trained, I am sure.”
    “Your luggage—”
    “Will be along shortly. Send Tucker up when he arrives. And a bath.”
    Damon headed for his room but halted at the split in the stairs to gaze at his father’s portrait. The eighth earl looked little like his son, a shock of black hair topping a long face. Only his tawny eyes glowed with kinship, even more alike now that Damon had banished all gaiety from his own. That feline stare seemed accusatory today, and Damon’s cheeks burned.
    His father’s teachings had always centered on the duty he owed to his title. Damon had been an only child, the next in line a third cousin who lived in America. Thus Damon must guard against all peril lest the earldom pass to unworthy hands. He had lived with that reality from birth, and it had fueled his father’s opposition to buying colors. Damon’s dereliction of duty had meant a painful parting despite the conciliatory words. If the eighth earl had lived, Damon’s safe return would have brushed all that aside. Instead, pain clouded his memories.
    “Forgive me, Papa,” he mouthed silently. “Your fears were well founded, yet my own point was also valid. If I had stayed, Peter would still have gone and would still have died, and I would have lived forever with the conviction that I could have saved him had I been there.” He laughed mirthlessly. “But how stupid that is! I would not have known. Had I stayed, I would have been on the yacht that day. Perhaps fate protected me by sending me to war. But enough of the past. I am alive so everything will be all right. And I will marry soon, probably at midsummer. You would have liked her, Papa, for she is very like Mama – golden, beautiful, and loving.”
    His sire’s expression remained stony. Nothing had really changed. And why was he talking to a portrait? He was becoming eccentric. Already he spoke with too many ghosts. It was nearly as bad as talking to trees, which absurdity had got the King locked in a padded room.
    Damon quickly mounted the rest of the stairs and was turning left when movement drew his attention to the right. Robbie was entering his father’s room. His room now, Damon admitted as the finality of his position registered. He must step into his sire’s shoes, and taking over the earl’s suite was the opening move. Yet it seemed almost blasphemous.
    Drawing in a deep breath, he marched down the right-hand corridor.
     * * * *
    Damon sat at his father’s desk, listening to the steward’s droning voice. The library looked strange from this perspective. Instead of his usual sight of the fourth and sixth earls – whose frowning countenances had added the disapproval of all his ancestors to his father’s lectures – he now saw books, globes, and a view of the formal gardens and lake. He thrust down the thought that the hill beyond the lake shielded his eyes from the Bristol Channel, wherein lay the bones of his family.
    Hastings was detailing estate problems – and there were plenty. The disasters that had summoned him from London were merely the most pressing. “Devlin