Wicked and Wonderful Read Online Free

he had so disobligingly knocked her to the ground.
    “I have only had a bottle,” Laurence finally responded. “Well, not the entire bottle but a great deal of it. I hope you do not mean to complain. For, if you must know, I find I am quite miserable tonight. Wretchedly so. The lowest wretch on earth.” He sighed heavily and sipped his brandy once more.
    Kelthorne patted Rufus on the head and attended once more to the pool table. He bent over slightly, aligned his shot, and scattered the balls. “You do this every summer, you know, despite how attentive I am to you. I had thought we would finally escape your melancholia this year.”
    “But you do not understand. You never did. Fanny was my entire world.”
    “That was fifteen years ago,” Kelthorne stated reasonably. “You cannot possibly still be in love with her. Besides, she has no doubt given birth to a dozen brats, orders her husband about like a slave, and I am convinced she speaks in a shrill voice even when tending her babes.”
    Laurence reclined carefully on the sofa and stared up at the ceiling, balancing the snifter on his chest. “You are probably right and perhaps my love is not so passionate as it once was. I can’t even remember the precise shade of her hair though I believe it was a very light brown, though sometimes blond in the summer months.” His words were still abominably lazy. “But her marriage serves to remind me of my lot, that I am still, and forever shall be, the eldest son of an impoverished vicar—no property, no prospects, no profession, no chance at love. Fanny loved me, but she married the squire’s son. He had prospects.” He frowned. “But the devil of a temper. I have always wondered how my poor Fanny fared.”
    “Undoubtedly very well since I am persuaded she is become a fishwife.”
    “You are horridly cruel to my memories. I refuse to listen to you anymore.”
    “Have you written an ode in her honor yet?”
    “No, not yet.”
    “How many do you have in your possession now? You must have enough for a volume. Perhaps you should see them published.”
    “I do not have sufficient genius to be in print. I have always known it.”
    Kelthorne moved around the table, ordering his shots once more. “But I hope you do not mean to despair of love.”
    “I have never despaired of love,” Laurence responded. “But I have despaired of marrying for love, or marrying at all. You, on the other hand, will probably be wed before the year is out.”
    “So it would seem.”
    Kelthorne had known Laurence since schooldays at Eton. He was the eldest of seven children and wholly lacking in ambition. He was a mixture of romanticism and pragmatism and the best friend a fellow could ever have. His sole interest was in the poetry he wrote and since Kelthorne rarely had the privilege of reading Laurence’s scribblings, he had not the smallest notion whether or not he was a man of talent.
    Together, they had had many adventures; all of which had come to an end in recent months when the death of Kelthorne’s uncle had forced him to take up his new life as heir to an earldom. Laurence had borne the change nobly, but he did seem more inclined of late to empty whichever bottle happened to be at his elbow. Laurence was not happy.
    As Kelthorne slung his cue again and cracked as many billiard balls as he could, he smiled. “You may be easy, you know, since both Radsbury and Newnott are coming with my sister. Radsbury, at the very least, will be content to lose at least a hundred pounds at cards or even hazard. He is equally fond of both.”
    “Don’t know what the deuce your sister was thinking in marrying the old goat. Good God, Radsbury must be twenty years her senior.”
    “You are too severe,” Aubrey stated. “Rad dotes on Mary. He is a good husband to her.”
    Laurence shuddered and his eyelids drooped. “Do you know that his teeth are made of rhinoceros tusk? I can only imagine what it must be like to kiss him. How does Mary bear