WANTON Read Online Free Page B

and condescended to for so long that it was ingrained in his nature to prove himself a sloth and ingrate.
    He’d spent the prior decade in the army, forced to join at age fifteen when he’d stupidly fought a duel and had wounded another student at school. They’d been quarreling over a married woman—a professor’s wife—and it was a scandal that still shocked people and was the reason, all these years later, that no reputable family would hand over a daughter to be Lucas’s wife.
    George had pulled a dozen strings and pushed Lucas into the army rather than his being prosecuted for the duel. His military service was supposed to have calmed his more despicable tendencies but, unfortunately, no character alteration had occurred.
    He was just as lazy, insolent, corrupt, and immoral as ever, his experiences as a soldier simply honing his more shady propensities.
    “What is your plan, Lucas?” his father seethed.
    “I have no plan.”
    “You’ve resigned your commission in the army. You’re back in England. What are you hoping to do?”
    “I’m not hoping to do anything.”
    Actually, he was to have left for India with his best friend, James Talbot, but James had stunned Lucas by suddenly deciding to wed. So the trip to India was cancelled, and with the journey off the table, Lucas was at loose ends and trying to devise a path that didn’t involve employment or penury or matrimony.
    “You have no income,” George nagged. “You have no prospects.”
    “No, not a one,” Lucas blithely concurred.
    “I’m told you can’t show up in London. There are too many creditors chasing you.”
    “It is a nuisance,” he agreed.
    “You’ve slithered home, which means you’re expecting to ingratiate yourself so I’ll pay your bills.”
    “No, I slithered home because you demanded I visit. I came to see what nonsense you’d concocted this time.”
    “Marriage is not nonsense!” George bellowed.
    “It certainly is in my book.”
    “You require a steadying influence, Lucas. A wife will provide you with stability and purpose so you’ll carry on in a normal fashion.”
    “I have no desire to carry on normally. It’s not in my nature—as you’ve pointed out on a thousand previous occasions.”
    “The marriage with Miss Hubbard is contracted. The dowry has been tendered, the contacts signed. You will wed her—or else!”
    “Or else what?”
    “You will be disowned and disavowed.”
    “Disowned?” Lucas laughed. “You’ve never helped me. How could my situation grow any worse?”
    A sly expression crossed George’s face. “However, if you marry her, there will be no need for a breach between us. In fact, I’ll reward you quite handsomely.”
    “You will?”
    “Yes. I’ll square your debts, and I’ll give you the family property in Surrey. The two of you can retire there, so you’ll be away from the temptations of town. You’ll have a fine living from the proceeds of the estate.”
    Lucas snorted with disgust. “I’ll become a gentleman farmer? Is that the future you see for me?”
    “A married gentleman farmer.”
    “Oh, gad,” Lucas sighed. “I don’t know why I ever come to Sidwell.”
    “You come because I am your father, because I am your lord and master. You will do as I say! And you will do it gladly.”
    “That top-lofty tone works with Aaron”—Aaron was Lucas’s perfect and faultless brother—“but it doesn’t work with me. I can’t figure out why you imagine I’ll be swayed by it.”
    “Aaron understands his place. Aaron understands his role.”
    “Yes, yes, Aaron is so bloody wonderful.”
    “You will not denigrate your brother! Not in this house where he has always exhibited the utmost deference to me.”
    Lucas heaved out a heavy breath.
    Aaron was Lucas’s only sibling and George’s heir apparent. At age thirty, Aaron was just five years older than Lucas, but he seemed decades more mature.
    He was courteous and obedient and completely biddable in ways Lucas had