Read Online Viscount Vagabond by Loretta Chase - Free Book Online

convention. He had learned there that he could make his own way. He could achieve success without depending upon either his social station or his father’s largess.
    Max returned from his sojourn in the wilderness with a fortune of his own. That was some consolation for having to embark upon a life he’d always detested among people whose narrow-mindedness, rigid rules of behaviour, and arrant hypocrisy made him seethe with frustration. He might have to accept the responsibilities of an heir, but at least he need not beg his managing father for money. He owed the earl nothing.
    So the heir had meant to assert as soon as Lord St. Denys embarked upon the hated topic of marriage and producing heirs—several, preferably. After all, as Percy’s accident had demonstrated, a nobleman could never be certain he wouldn’t require spares.
    Now the viscount felt the wind had been taken out of his sails. He’d looked forward to another blowup with his father. The heir’s townhouse, with its army of servants and its spotless, tasteful furnishings, had seemed so cool and proper and polite that it suffocated him. The prospect of living there as the lone master oppressed his spirits.
    In the past when he’d felt stifled, he’d always run away. Since he couldn’t do that now, he wanted to take out his frustration on the Old Man. Lord Rand wanted, as well, distraction from the odd female whose eyes and voice persistently intruded upon his thoughts. A quarrel about the future viscountess was just the thing—only it seemed he was to be forestalled in that too.
    Refusing to give up hope altogether, the viscount raised the subject again after his mother had left the two men to their port.
    “I confess I’m puzzled, My Lord. Louisa told me today that you had half a dozen suitable brides picked out for me—but just a while ago you claimed you hadn’t any.”
    “Oh, I do,” said the earl. “Five, actually.”
    Max’s blue eyes gleamed, and he felt a rush of exaltation as the old animosity blazed up within him.
    “Only five?”
    “Yes, but I’m not going to tell you who they are.”
    The son put down the glass he’d just raised to his lips. “I beg your pardon?”
    “I said I won’t tell you. What sort of fool do you take me for? As soon as I breathe a young woman’s name you’ll take her in dislike, sight unseen, simply because I suggested it. No, as I see it, the only way my opinions stand a chance is to keep them to myself.”
    “Do you mean to say that you think I’ll approve one of these five?”
    “I’m not saying anything, as I just told you. It’s your affair, and if I come poking in with my opinions, you’re bound to go contrary on me, as you always do, Max. Since the day you were born, I think.”
    Lord St. Denys took an appreciative sip from his refilled glass. “Still, you’re no longer a child, as my son-in-law has pointed out repeatedly,” he went on while absently turning the goblet in his hands. “Edgar claimed you’d be back at the end of your six months, ready to do your duty. So you are, punctual to the minute. I have no doubt you’ll do your duty in the matter of finding a bride. More than that a parent has no right to ask.”
    Had Lord Rand not been staring perplexedly into his own glass, he might have caught the suspicious twinkle that lit his father’s eyes. As it was, the viscount was aware only of a surging frustration—and a resultant need to find some topic on which the two might loudly disagree.
    “Except, I suppose, that I do this duty at the earliest opportunity,” the son suggested.
    “Whenever,” was the provoking answer. “Plenty of time, plenty of fish in the sea. If you never do get around to it before you reach your dotage, there’s always your Cousin Roland. Serena—his wife, you know—just produced their fifth, I hear. No danger of the title dying with you.”
    Max ground his teeth. He detested his sanctimonious Cousin Roland and suspected his father did as well. The