The Rake, the Rogue and the Roue by Eric Alan Westfall

Author:Eric Alan Westfall [Westfall, Eric Alan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: M/M Romance, Love’s Landscapes, gay romance, historical, alternate history, Regency, ménage, a wee tad kinky, humorous, a whole lot of loving going on, Dock sex, poetry, ned-bangers and neddy boys, a gloriously HEA, A brief description of wartime sex between a woman and several men, which may or may not have been rape; the off-stage beating of a man and use of a banger-stick on him; remembered abuse of a minor
Publisher: Goodreads M/M Romance Group
Published: 2014-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

PEREGRINE

Tuesday, 9 April 1816

10:30 p.m.

Library, Somerville House

London

I am so very tired of all this.

Not tired of what I have with Rory, what I have with Michel, though I am tired of the breach between them, and of the two secrets I must maintain because I so foolishly gave my word.

But what I am tired of most of all is the secret.

And all I have done since my eighteenth birthday to protect that secret.

Michel is away for some urgent problem at one of his estates that his steward cannot deal with on his own. Rory is off hunting foxes and other things with several of our friends, including young Bennington.

So I am alone and maudlin in my library.

I have wondered before, wonder now, how my life would have gone on had Wilfrid Brumley not arrived, unannounced, at Glenhaven Hall, quite late on what Mama later described the next afternoon— after the meeting that changed all— as a “dark and stormy night.” I asked her how a December night, or indeed any other night, could possibly be anything other than dark, considering the absence of the sun from the scene.

She shrugged and said, “Well, my dear, it was snowing at the time, with vigorous winds blowing all about, and it was dark, without a bit of moon, so what I said was quite accurate.”

She paused, and then said with a little gleam, “Do you know, I rather think that phrase of mine would be an excellent first line for a novel.”

She lifted her head, staring into some unknown distance, and sonorously declaimed, “It was a dark… and stormy… night.”

She quite spoiled the effect with a giggle. “I think I shall pen a note to Mrs. Radcliffe, and suggest she use it. It would be quite fitting for one of her romantical novels, don’t you think?”

“Having never had the, ah, pleasure, of reading one, I defer to your expertise.”

“As well you should, as well you should,” she said, and patted my hand, as we sat side by side on a sofa in her sitting room. She became more serious, then. “Do you have any ideas about what you might do with Agatha’s gift?”

I did, oddly enough. But the ideas were most definitely not something a man of eighteen could ever share with his mother.

I met Wilfrid Brumley in the front parlor the morning after his arrival. At my age, he seemed older than God Himself as he informed me of the bequest. While I was gaping, my mother was fanning herself, and my father was glaring, Mr. Brumley explained that she intended to present the gift herself on my birthday, but as she died three days prior to that happy event, the members of the firm took it upon themselves to slightly delay the presentation in order to address the other circumstances created by her passing. He did not elaborate on that latter point.

While I noted the oddity of his tone on “circumstances,” I was naturally focused on the hundred thousand to which I so unexpectedly had unfettered access; money that could not be withheld on a father’s whim.

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