Virginia Heath - His Mistletoe Wager

In previous years, he had always managed to make a hasty exit from the short but frenetic festive season. He had danced and flirted with a few game girls, then disappeared to his club or to a gaming hell or to the bedchamber of whatever willing widow or wayward wife he happened to be enjoying at that particular time. Now he was stuck. Shackled by an ingrained sense of duty to his mother, who was enjoying life to the full now that she finally had her freedom and her period of mourning was over. Although like him, she hadn’t seemed to mourn much. His father had been a mean-spirited, dictatorial curmudgeon who criticised absolutely everything his wayward children did. But he had made Hal’s gentle mother’s life a misery.

Hal had lost count of the number of times he had heard her crying, all alone in her bedchamber, because of yet another cruel or thoughtless thing his sire had done to her. However, if he went to her when she was crying, she would pretend nothing was amiss. ‘Pay it no mind, Hal. Marriage is meant to be filled with trials and tribulations.’ Something which did not make the prospect of it particularly enticing.

If he went to his father and called him on it, after the tirade of abuse which always accompanied such impertinence, his father would shrug it off as the way of things. A wife was a means of getting heirs. Nothing more. That duty discharged, they were merely doomed to tolerate each other. That was the inevitable way of things. And surely it was long past time Hal stopped sowing wild oats, settled down to do his duty to the house of Stuart and begat some heirs of his own to continue the legacy? And whilst he was about it, he needed to start learning about estate management and how to do proper business, which in his father’s world usually meant ruining people and feasting off their carcasses in order to amass an even larger fortune than he already had.

‘The world runs on coin, Henry, nothing else matters. Or do you intend to be a shocking and scandalous disappointment to me for ever?’

A silly question, seeing as Hal had no appetite for either cruelty or proper business. Instead, he had made it his life’s mission to thoroughly disappoint his father at every given opportunity as a point of principal, and the single most thorough way of doing that was to be creating frequent scandals. Hal enjoyed the spectacle of his livid father’s purple face as much as he did bedding a succession of wholly unsuitable, and gloriously unmarriageable, women. Reckless wagers at the card table came a close second. His father abhorred the careless use of good money on anything so frivolous and unpredictable. Money was for making more money to add to the heaps and heaps they had already, because money meant power and his father adored being powerful above all else. Even if that meant making everybody else miserable or his only son hate everything his father stood for. As the years passed, the gulf between the Earl and his scandalous only son had widened so much there might as well have been a whole ocean between them. A state of affairs which suited Hal just fine. Being scandalous had become so ingrained, such an intrinsic part of his own character, now his father was dead he actually missed misbehaving. It was as if a part of him was missing.

It was not the only thing in his life which had changed since he had inherited the title. He also had to run the enormous estate he now owned, something he never expected to relish, and the vast and varied business investments were a constant source of amusement. Because it turned out Hal had a natural talent for making more money by considering investment opportunities his father would never have dared touch, and without having to resort to those abhorrent proper business tactics his dreadful father had used, Hal had been feeling a trifle odd for months now. Yet could not quite put his finger on why.

The sad truth was simply having fun really wasn’t fun any more. Since he had become the Earl of Redbridge he had found the gaming hells had lost their appeal, as had the bawdy widows and wayward wives. Instead, he found himself wanting to dive into his new ledgers rather than a willing woman’s bed. He enjoyed reading the financial news and, to his utter dismay and total disgust, found the debates in the Lords fascinating. All the things his father had wanted him to take an interest in, the very things he had avoided resolutely for all of his twenty-seven years, now called to him and Hal was uncharacteristically inclined to listen. It was beyond disconcerting.

To begin with, he assumed this odd malaise was a temporary condition, brought about by the lack of need to vex his father and the shock of taking on his mantle, but the odd mood had persisted way beyond those unfamiliar, tentative first months. In fact, he hadn’t been between anyone’s sheets but his own in an age, and apparently out of choice rather than lack of opportunity. The last time he had engaged in a bit of bed sport, Hal had had to force himself and then found the whole interlude wholly unsatisfying. Almost as if something was missing although he could not say what. The widow had been passionate and lustful—two things he had always enjoyed in a woman—yet Hal had not been able to get out of her bed quickly enough and certainly had no intentions of ever going back to it. All in all, his lack of libido was becoming quite worrying. As was his lack of risky, devil-may-care behaviour. If he did not find a way to combat it, Hal was in danger of turning into his cold, dour father and that would never do.

‘Are you hoping to find a willing young lady on this terrace to steal a kiss from?’ His brother-in-law, next-door neighbour and best friend in the world, Aaron Wincanton, Viscount Ardleigh, stared pointedly at the green sprig in Hal’s hand. ‘And if you are, should I make myself scarce? I can happily hide somewhere else if I am interrupting a potential tryst.’ His friend held aloft two generously filled brandy glasses and did a poor job of blending into the background.

‘By all means, join me. There is nobody here I want to kiss.’ Too many seasons spent in too many ballrooms had made him quite jaded. Each crop of new debutantes seemed to become sillier than the previous ones, not one of them could converse on any topics other than the banal and he found their blatant, simpering new interest in him since he acquired his title irritating. Especially when they wouldn’t give him the time of day beforehand. He had been far too scandalous. But now, he was an earl and they all wanted to be the one to give him his father’s longed-for heirs.

‘Oh, dear. Have things got that bad?’

‘It’s all right for you. You are no longer an eligible bachelor. You can breeze in and out of any ballroom unencumbered. I can scarcely make it to the refreshment table without some hungry young miss trying to get her matrimonial claws in me. And do not get me started on the mothers!’

‘You are an earl, tolerably handsome, I am told, and a rich one to boot. I doubt you will need the mistletoe, I dare say most of them will happily kiss you quite enthusiastically without it. Even with your womanising reputation.’ Hal groaned and stared mournfully in to his brandy, something which made his brother-in-law laugh. ‘Is there really no one you find even slightly intriguing?’

‘It is hard to be intrigued when they are all so frightfully eager.’

His friend nearly choked on his brandy. ‘A travesty indeed! Poor you. All these eager women and no inclination to indulge.’ Good grief! Had it become that obvious? Things were clearly direr than Hal had imagined if other people were beginning to notice, and that was beyond embarrassing. ‘I think I know what ails you?’

‘You do?’

‘Yes, indeed. Your lack of interest in the opposite sex can easily be explained. You miss the thrill of the chase. We men are born with the inherent desire to hunt for what we need.’