Read Online Reckless Viscount by Amy Sandas - Free Book Online

wearing on the structure of his soul.
    He knew it and had been ignoring it.
    But now, as exhaustion weighted his body and the thunder of too much alcohol clouded his brain and he couldn’t dredge up a single memory from the night before that made it all worth it, Leif wondered if mortality itself limited how much revelry and wickedness a man could take. Did there arrive a day when a man simply had to stop?
    He growled in frustration and threw a fist into the lush bedding at his side. Did such an option even exist for him?
    In a rush of angry energy, Leif rose from the bed in one solid fluid motion, accepting the punishing rush of pain through his skull at the motion. Fully naked, he left the plush boudoir and stalked down the hallway. He had no fear of encountering servants along the way. He could only afford to employ Langley, a decrepit old butler who rarely strayed far from his room on the ground floor near the front door, and a part-time maid/cook/housekeeper who only came around in the evenings.
    He entered the bedroom at the far end of the hall and noted the light filtering through the heavy curtains in front of the single window. It was full day.
    This room was Leif’s personal bedroom. It was barely larger than a closet and had likely been intended for a senior servant, certainly not for the master of the house. Leif had furnished it with only the necessities. A narrow bed was set against the wall and was dressed in plain white sheets and a pearl gray coverlet completely void of extra adornment. A chair, a wardrobe and a dresser with a wash bowl stood stoic against another wall. Aside from an oval mirror, the only other wall dressing was an old painting of Leif’s childhood home. The frame was battered and scarred and the surface of the image was covered by layers of dust and grime, but the painting held the honor as the focal point of the entire room.
    His mood darkened and he crossed to the dresser to splash his face with cold water from the wash bowl. It didn’t help to clear the fog of malaise from his brain. With a growing sense of surrender, he turned and went to sit on the edge of his bed, thinking of how easy it would be to slip back into the welcome oblivion of numbing sleep.
    That was when he caught sight of something odd.
    Right in the center of the chair next to his bed was a small green apothecary bottle spouting a collection of spindly wildflowers from its top. Leif tilted his head and eyed the unexpected addition to his room through a bleary gaze.
    He hadn’t had a housekeeper who lasted more than six months since he’d moved to London just over ten years ago. Each of them had their own reasons for moving on. But his current housekeeper, Mrs. Helmstead, had been with him for nearly a year now. Leif suspected it had to do with the fact that the spry old woman was more than a touch batty. She was forgetful and odd, and at times truly believed herself to be in charge of a grand country estate rather than a part-time servant at a bachelor’s residence in town. But she didn’t seem to mind Leif’s personal activities, or maybe she never noticed. She always had a bright smile when he happened to cross her path, and occasionally, she left him little surprises like these.
    Leif reached for the fragile glass bottle with a rueful smile.
    Where on earth had the woman found the flowers? They were nearly half dead and were certainly not the kind that could be found at one of the street vendors. Leif waved them beneath his nose and instantly thought of a slight wisp of a woman with fair reddish hair, large sea-green eyes surrounded by a fringe of sooty lashes, delicate elfin features and a lush pink mouth that tasted like strawberries and held the warmth of the sunrise.
    There he went, waxing poetic again.
    The girl had him twisted around and the shock of that single stolen kiss still lingered in his blood.
    His guileless Irish lass had been decadence and innocence together in a potion more potent than any