Fortune Knocks Once
Read Fortune Knocks Once Online
Authors: Elizabeth Delavan
Elizabeth Delavan
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Text copyright © 2012 Jane Cosby
All rights reserved.
Cover image “The Kiss” by Francesco Hayez 1859, copyright free image
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
Forward photo from Library of Congress; images of clothes used with permission of Dover Publishing; others property of the author
Write for You Publishing
v2.0
Although the locations mentioned in this story are real, all characters and events are fictitious and completely the creation of the author’s romantic imagination.
Fortune Knocks Once is a regency romance novelette available in e-book form only.
~~~
To all the many people who encouraged me
Chapter
Twenty
Sprawled in a comfortable overstuffed settee and surrounded by eight other men, all in various stages of drunken stupor and dissolute ennui, Colin Butler felt completely and utterly alone…alone in this room…alone in his wretched life…alone in all of God’s great and glorious creation.
Colin ruminated that he couldn’t remember the last time he had been sober as he raised his glass in a solitary salute determined to spend another evening wallowing in a blessed stupor.
His dark eyes were at half-mast, staring into oblivion. His arms were draped over the arms of his chair, one hand holding his half-empty glass, the other holding up his head. Feet flat on the floor, his long, muscular legs were tensed and restless and that, along with the tight clench of his jaw belied his seemingly relaxed condition.
His dark gaze swept the room, ostensibly a library, yet he would bet his butler the current owner had never read any of the books lining the bookshelves that ran floor to ceiling on three walls. The room was deep in shadow with pools of light surrounding a few candles flickering and sputtering as they burned low.
The occupants of the sofa and three arm chairs were barely sentient. The remaining four men were engaged in a card game, with more than the usual growled grievances and petty disruptions. Every outburst threatened to escalate into outright fisticuffs but eventually died down so play could resume.
He should be numb by now, his shoulders slumped in grateful oblivion. But his nerves were strained, refusing to succumb to the usually effective treatment of too much brandy and too little food and sleep. Panic, held at bay for so long in the caged pit of his stomach, was growing and gaining on his ever-worsening ability to control it. Embers glowed, sparks flared in his gut. The hourglass was almost empty.
He slowly gazed at the men who passed for friends in his life and realized with repugnance that not one of them was someone he could ask for help or confide in. And he needed help badly. He had spent the better part of a year drinking and carousing to avoid having to return to his estate and face the servants and tenants who would be turned out shortly.
He wouldn’t be able to avoid it much longer. Another bad year on his estate had wiped him out and time was past for meeting his obligations.
“Ormonde!” barked a slurred voice, breaking into Colin’s deepening reverie. “Come ‘ere … pla’ cards with us,” the voice demanded drunkenly.
It was his gracious host, Charles Treadwell. A more debauched and worthless individual could not be found in all of London, Colin brooded. Which, as he thought about it, was quite an accomplishment considering the competition for that honor among the finer specimens of British Society, he insolently brooded.
Treadwell tipped over his chair as he rose and lurched in Colin’s direction.
Twelve years ago when Colin was eighteen, his father had died, leaving him the title of Marquess of Ormonde and Kilkenny Castle, the largest and oldest castle in Ireland. His family legacy stretched back to the time of the Norman invasion, but along with that proud and lofty birthright came so much debt that getting clear of it would be a Sisyphean endeavor unlikely to be accomplished short of a bloody miracle.
Every year since, despite heroic efforts to control expenses and develop revenue, the estate had only sunk deeper and deeper into debt pushing him deeper and deeper into drinking and dissipation, and destroying all his ability to care about anything or anyone.
Treadwell stopped in front of Colin and leaned over, his whiskey breath assaulting and vile, his looming bulk intentionally menacing.
Colin bristled, his mouth flattened and his eyebrows slanted down over his eyes. He ached to swing his fist and flatten the obnoxious man with one well-placed punch.
Desire for the release he knew would come with a good brawl almost overtook him before he ground it down, back below the surface, back under control. Don’t let the bastards know they can get to you. Keep them away and stay under control.
“Not interested,” Colin muttered softly, but in a get-away-from-me tone that Treadwell instantly understood.
Treadwell angrily turned away looking around the room for another, more easily intimidated victim.
“I’m on a winning streak here, ya’ bastards. Someone pla’ with me.”
“Thought you’d get him to bleed freely, did you Treadwell?” laughed another guest. “I could ha’ told you not to waste your time.”
“Ormonde don’t risk wha’ little he has gaming it away to wastrels like you, Treadwell,” slurred a third reveler.
“He doesn’t have the blunt for whoring either, so if it’s not drinking, he’s not interested.”
“Yah, Ormonde ain’t got no rich niece to live off,” said George Stanton, Treadwell’s most constant accessory and the only one of the steady stream of ner’-do-wells who stalked the house who had taken notice of the young girl mentioned.
“All right, all right,” Treadwell bellowed, “Everyone knows he’s good fer nothing…drinking…thass all. Won’t join a simple game of chance with friends,” he continued caustically.
Rich niece! Colin thought as he snorted contemptuously and threw his head back against the seat in patent disgust. People like Treadwell get rich nieces and I get what? Nothing.
Bloody hell! I am definitely not drunk enough, he told himself, and he raised his glass to quickly empty it, determined that at least he could improve on that.