Never Land the First Fish

Chapter Two

Maddox's older brothers were intent on getting him drunk. Joseph Redepenning, handed a stray barony for services to science when he was a stripling, and thus, Lord Maddox, wasn't usually one for dulling his brain with alcohol. Tonight, he was prepared to admit, the twins might have managed to come up with a good idea.

He'd been relieved to hear the Duke of Wellbridge had wed Sally on Christmas Eve a few weeks ago, not 24 hours after Maddox had said farewell to him and Sally both. At least Maddox hadn't had to raise a glass to them and look happy.

But, of course, Toad and Sally couldn't leave it at that. "Let's hold a celebration in Bristol,' they said. 'We want to share our bliss with the whole family and all our friends." And Maddox's mother had pronounced it a fine idea, and long since overdue, given the Wellbridges' lifelong love. "We can welcome Sally home and show how happy we all are, both at the same time," she said.

"I'll stay home with Father," Maddox offered. But the Earl of Chirbury, who had been on his deathbed just before Christmas, made a lightning recovery and insisted on being driven to the coast in the family's most comfortable carriage and sailed to Bristol.

"We have told the truth," Mama proclaimed. "That betrothal notice in the London Gazette was a malicious joke on the Duchess of Wellbridge. You and she were never betrothed. The whole world knows she has been Wellbridge's intended since she was a child. You are cousins and friends. Our presence at the wedding party will scotch any rumours to the contrary, Joey. You do not wish the world to know she jilted you."

"She did not jilt me, Mama," Maddox said, for the thousandth time. "For her, it was always Wellbridge."

"Quite so. You will attend the party, Joey."

"I have business in New York," he'd patiently explained again. Business he'd ensured mere hours after he'd left Sally with Toad. "I'll sail from Bristol," Maddox suggested. "You can all come and see me off, and then go to the celebration. You can tell anyone who asks I had to meet the tides."

Mama shook her head. "There will be other tides. Come with us, Joey, for Sally's sake, if not for your own."

It was the argument he could not refuse, and so he had attended the wedding reception in the ballroom at Toadstone Hall and smiled and smiled till his face ached. He even shook Wellbridge's hand and kissed Sally's cheek, and there was not enough brandy in the world to take away the pain of that. The idea of spending the next two weeks at a house party with them was impossible.

His brother Stephen, Viscount Longford, was telling him he should get back on the horse. "Plenty of pretty widows ready to find out if the famous explorer is as adventurous in bed," he suggested, signalling wildly but incoherently with his eyebrows.

In the bare month he'd been back in England, Maddox thought he'd been propositioned by most of them; yes, and any number of straying wives. Even when he'd supposedly been betrothed to Sally, they were eager to seduce him, and after the Wellbridges married! Would-be lovers anxious to console him were probably the main source of the rumours that his heart was broken.

Which it was, but no one was supposed to know that.

Stephen's twin, John, Lord Stocke, pointed out the other problem driving him back out to sea as soon as he could decently shake off his family. "Or, if you want to settle down, the ton is full of maidens who'd give an arm and a leg to marry the Hero of the Retreat from the Punjab."

"He don't want to marry a cripple, idiot," Stephen jeered.

"He wants another brandy," John decided, and went off in search of a new bottle.

Another glass, Maddox thought, and he'd be on his ear. He'd learned to hold his liquor in some fairly wild parts of the world, but Stephen and John could still drink him under the table. They were, or so he'd heard, respectable adults. Seeing Stephen with his wife and children, Maddox had believed it, but tonight the pair of them were wild as they'd ever been.