LORD OF ICE

by

Gaelen Foley


PROLOGUE

London, 1814

"Look at you. Drunk again. You are pathetic," Lord Hubert said to his younger brother.

Major Jason Sherbrooke merely let out a low, insolent laugh in response. Staring into the fire, he sank more deeply into his tattered armchair and took another swig from his bottle of blue ruin.

Picking his way through the clutter of the major's seedy bachelor lodgings, Algernon Sherbrooke, Viscount Hubert, pulled out a fastidiously pressed and monogrammed handkerchief, veiling his nostrils from the dirt that hung in the air. "Heav'n preserve us, this room smells of rotted cheese or piss or some foul thing. Don't you ever clean up after yourself?"

"To be sure, I am the soul of industry," Jason slurred.

Algernon pursed his lips. The cause of his brother's malaise was obvious. He flicked a downward glance to the empty sleeve of Jason's disheveled, red uniform coat. The major had lost his right arm during the vicious cavalry charge at the Battle of Albuera. He had been lucky to escape with his life. Pulling a coarse wooden chair over to the fire, Algernon gingerly lowered himself onto it. "Perhaps you should hire a maid rather than sitting around here feeling sorry for yourself."

"The devil I will. The last one stole from me," he grumbled.

"It is no wonder, considering your address." Indeed, Jason's lodging house was so ill-situated that it was not far from the slum tenements that Algernon owned-very secretly-in a treacherous quarter of the East End. Alas, that investment had not yet yielded the returns he had hoped, though he had raised his tenants' rents again last month. He did not care if Christmas was a fortnight away. He'd evict anyone who did not pay in full. "Why do you stay in this rat's hole? We both know you can afford better."

Jason looked at him dully. "What does it matter?"

"Have you no pride?"

"What the hell do you want, Algy? I rather doubt I owe this visit to a sudden rush of fraternal affection in your breast. Have you been infected with the bloody holiday spirit, or is there a reason you're here?"

Warily, Algernon scanned Jason's sun-weathered face with its scraggly copper mustache. He would have to proceed with caution. Even drunk, his sharp-witted younger brother was not a man to be trifled with, hardened as he was by his years of war. "Perhaps I came to stop you from drinking yourself to death."

"Waste of time." Raising his bottle again, Jason cast him a sidelong glance. "But somehow I doubt that was your motive."

Algernon held him in a penetrating stare for a long moment, then sighed, giving it over. "No. It was not."

"In the army, we respect a man that comes straight to the point."

"Very well." Algernon's narrow face tautened as he paused, his hazel eyes turning even colder. "I must have Miranda's dowry."

Jason's bleary eyes cleared with astonishment.

"My situation is grave-"

"Oh, no. No, you don't. Stop right there. Absolutely not."

"Hear me out-"

"There is nothing to discuss."

"Jason!"

"That money is not mine to give, Algy, and it is certainly not yours to spend. Richard left it for his daughter-"

"His by-blow! Damn it, Jason, it's not as though she's one of us."

"Miranda may be illegitimate, but that does not change the fact that she is our brother's child."

Their eldest brother, Richard, had been Viscount Hubert before the title had passed to Algernon, the second-born. An unmarried rake, Richard had died without legal issue, only a beautiful little daughter by his beloved mistress, the famed actress Fanny Blair. But Fanny had died with him on the lake that summer day when their pleasure boat had sunk. Only their then-eight-year-old daughter, Miranda, had survived, rescued by a fisherman.

"She is your niece and mine," Jason finished staunchly.

"Not by law," he said coldly.

"By blood."

"We owe her nothing. Let her find her own way in the world!"

"God, listen to yourself, Algy. You've always been such a coldhearted prick."

"How can you be sentimental about this girl? Her mother was little better than a whore!"

"Well, I happen to like whores," Jason said with a smirk, crossing his booted heels before the fire.

Biting back words he knew he'd regret, Algernon shot up out of his chair and paced across the cramped, filthy room, stepping over a broken footstool, empty bottles, and piles of soiled clothes in his path. He kicked a book out of his way and stopped by the far wall, blinking hard as he struggled to bring his vexation under control. Damn it, how was he to make this drunkard see reason? Within the folds of his lace cuff, his hand curled into a fist. "If I am ruined, the whole family will be disgraced, including you."