CHAPTER ONE
Declan was a temperate man.
He did not consider that a virtue. It was an act of self-preservation against a father and uncle, a drunkard and a wastrel respectively. Not to mention nine previous generations of vicious arseholes who all carried the Byrning name. Once upon a time, that had been an asset. The Byrnings had helped tame England and had received titles and coin in reward. But now Declan lived in a civilised time where intemperate rages were frowned upon.
His mother had declared—when he was three years old—that he would be a temperate man or she would destroy him. He had done his best to comply. What boy didn't want to please his mother? And so no one knew the fury that seethed beneath his exterior.
Unfortunately, it was very close to the surface now. His mother was banging on his chamber door the morning after his birthday celebration and he was imagining violently ripping the door off its hinges and throwing it out of the window. Unfortunately, he knew even that show of temper would not deter her.
'Good God! Shut her up!' he growled into his pillow.
'Brisley is handling it, Your Grace,' said his valet, his words thankfully very muted.
'He won't last for long,' he retorted, because his mother was nothing if not determined.
So he forced himself upright and grabbed the restorative offered by his valet. Declan doubted that it would help, but it could hardly hurt. He choked it down, then forced himself into the wingback chair next to the shuttered window. A minute later, he opened the newspaper, as if he didn't wish himself at the bottom of the Thames.
Only then did he bid the man open his bedroom door.
'Good morning, Mother. Have you come to wish me a belated happy birthday?'
'I fail to see why one should celebrate the mere fact—'
'Of living another year,' he finished for her.
She said something to that effect every year. Fortunately, his father had been more jovial in that and every way, so there'd been happy birthdays throughout his thirty-one years. The former Duke had also been more violent and hateful, so the memories were a mixed bag. In any event, this had been the first birthday celebrated without his father, and that had made it a commemorative one.
'Don't interrupt me,' his mother snapped.
'Don't burst into my bedchamber or pound on my door.' He'd almost said his father's door, but of course it was his now. 'You don't live here, Mother.'
And she hadn't for several years. At present, she resided with her sister-in-law in a neat townhouse far removed from the London ducal residence.
'But I am still responsible for seeing to the seemly disposition of the family.'
Yes, she had taken on that mantle, hadn't she? She and his aunt had set themselves up as the moral authority over the entire extended family. And, given that they both held inordinate influence over polite society, she did have some power in that regard. But if she planned to chide him for celebrating his birthday, then she was—
'Cedric is in trouble,' she pronounced. 'You must stop him.' She pulled out a pocket watch from her reticule. 'You have until teatime.'
He frowned—a painful act—as he set the paper aside. This unseemly display was about his cousin?
'Where is he?' Last he'd heard, the man had travelled to China with the East India Company.
'You'll find him at the docks, on a boat called The Integrity. As if naming a thing is enough to give—'
'When did he arrive in London?'
And why hadn't the man contacted him? Declan certainly would have invited his cousin to his birthday celebration. The two had been at school together, and though not quite the same age—Declan was older by three years—were close enough to be friends.
