The Replacement Husband

by Eliot Grayson

  After they toasted, Arthur set down his cup and slid his hand onto Owen’s knee. Owen turned and looked into his eyes; they were filled to the brim with love and joy, not a trace remaining of the harsh reserve he’d shown nearly a year before.

  “I love you,” Arthur mouthed silently. Owen smiled; he knew he always would.

  The End

  Acknowledgements

  I’m very grateful to Leslie Copeland and Neve Wilder for organizing the New Year, New Author event that kickstarted this book and motived me to finish it on time.

  Great thanks are also due to A.H., for listening patiently to my complaints and helping me work through issues related to the setting. Todd-lovers unite! Also, A.S., for always providing such solid moral support.

  Lastly, thank you to everyone who read and enjoyed Like a Gentleman, my previous book, because without your encouragement it would have been much harder to start on the next.

  Get in Touch

  I love hearing from readers! Find me at eliotgrayson.com, where I’ll periodically post information about upcoming releases, including excerpts. You can also contact me through my website, sign up for my newsletter for occasional updates about what I’m writing or publishing next, or follow me on Goodreads. Thanks for reading!

  Also by Eliot Grayson

  Available on Amazon

  When James Rowley, penniless nobleman and writer of sensational serials, discovers his story has been stolen, he takes himself to London to confront the man he believes to be responsible: Leo Wells, his editor. He means to have the truth, and he poses as a cruel fop to get it. But things aren’t always what they seem.

  Leo Wells has spent years pining for a man he knows only through letters and a portrait, and he’s devastated to learn that the lovely James is nothing but a callous young aristocrat in a hideous pink waistcoat.

  James takes his masquerade too far, behaving nothing at all like a gentleman. By the time he realizes his mistake, his plot for revenge may already have cost both men their one chance for happiness.

  Reviews of Like a Gentleman:

  “…the events that follow are full of snark, humor, humiliation, passion, and repentance…Definitely recommended for fans of historical romance.”

  – Lost in Love Book Blog

  “What an unexpected little gem this was. I do adore a good historical romance…”

  – Jules at The Novel Approach

  “…the chemistry between James and Leo was explosive. And there was some sweetness too. I couldn’t ask for more.”

  – Stella at Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words

  Read on for an excerpt from Like a Gentleman, available for sale and Kindle Unlimited on Amazon.com.

  James flung the penny serial down on the scarred mahogany desk he’d rescued from the mold and mice of the north attic. Despite the chill that pervaded his little library and study, tucked away in the corner of the moldering ancestral mansion his sister-in-law condemned as positively Gothic, James flushed hot with fury. The bastard. The thieving, lying, hypocritical bastard had stolen his story, and here it was in black and white: The Plucky Cartwright’s Son.

  Did the knave think James didn’t subscribe to his own publisher’s competition? Both a thief and a bloody fool, it seemed.

  James yanked out the bottom drawer of the desk, the jolt sending pens flying from the top and clattering onto the flagstone floor. He swore, yanked again, and pulled out heaps of correspondence until he found the letter he’d received when the manuscript was returned.

  His editor’s letters were typically short but biting, and this one, dated three months ago, was no exception. Dear Mr. Rowley, it read. Regarding your last: our readers continue to prefer heroes whose ancestry includes at least a modicum of nobility. Such men may seem commonplace and dull to one accustomed to ornamenting the ton, but to those of us laboring down here in the muck of common trade — and most of our readership, along with your humble correspondent, can claim that dubious honor — an adventure carried out by a gentleman is more appealing. Might I suggest that your tale of the plucky cartwright’s offspring’s bold doings in Cairo could find a better home than Morton & Co., perhaps behind your fireplace grate? I shall hope to see your manuscript of The Indian Duke within the next month, as defined by the Gregorian calendar. As always, sir, I am your most obedient servant, L. Wells.

  What an ass. Even without the postscript, which set James to grinding his teeth to powder even though he’d already fumed over it months before: P.S. I have included an example of said calendar for your reference. Note that next month comprises 31 days, with 24 hours each. A clock cost rather too much to post, so I can only pray you already possess one of those, though you have never given me any indication of such.

  The calendar in question had been burned in July; he could hardly crumple it and throw it in the fire again, much as he longed to do so.

  James read the letter over again, feeding his rage until his heart pounded and his fists clenched, longing for a target. He exploded from his chair and frantically paced the length of the small room, picturing a bleeding and broken nose and wishing it belonged to the presumptuous, larcenous L. Wells. And what an idiotic way to sign his name, anyway. What was L. Wells’s Christian name? Probably something dreadfully historical and pompous-sounding, like Leonidas. Serve the bastard right. James imagined L. Wells bent over a cluttered desk in a smoky office, grinning with malice as he copied out the manuscript, putting the copy in the post to another publisher at the same time he sent the original back to James with that blasted calendar. His graying hair would be standing out from his head in frizzy, messy locks, tobacco-stained fingers running through it as he shouted orders at his terrorized clerks.

  James paused by the table in the corner to slosh a generous portion of whisky into a glass and knock it back. The burn of it steadied him, and he poured another, drinking it more slowly. He had to consider his options calmly. The Earl of Winthrop, also known as James’s brother Rodney, could crush L. Wells like an insect if he chose; the great irony was that a Rowley sinking to penning sensational stories for money would give the earl hysterics, and so that avenue for redress was utterly closed.

  Perhaps that should be his next tale: The Hysterical Earl. L. Wells might like that. He might not like it as much when James stuffed the manuscript down his mocking, plebeian throat…a pleasant fantasy, but that would require going to London, where the potential wealthy wives Rodney loved to throw at him lurked in every drawing room, ready to sink their fangs in a man and drag him down to an underworld of announcements in the Post and morning visits and silk bonnets…James shuddered. L. Wells at least likely didn’t wear bonnets — although James would no longer put it past the fellow.

  Thoughts of London sparked an idea in the back of James’s mind, and he swallowed another mouthful of liquor, mulling it over. He would have to visit Morton & Co. in person if he wanted to get his due, but whether that would involve credit for the story he’d written, the money L. Wells had made from it, or simply the man’s face at the end of James’s fist could be determined later.

  But did his editor know who he was? James had been fool enough to use his real name in his correspondence, naïve as he had been when he first entertained the idea of writing to supplement his dwindling allowance, though he had retained enough presence of mind to provide a nom de plume for publication. If L. Wells had thought to look him up in Debrett’s, and the jab about ornamenting the ton implied he at least suspected James’s station, he might believe James would ignore the theft to avoid a scandal. In that case this smacked unpleasantly of blackmail, even if indirectly. Or perhaps the editor simply thought James would never find out.

  Either way, James had only one card to play: his rank. He would beard the lion in his foul den and overwhelm him with a display of arrogance. These sorts of revolutionary aristocrat-hating hoi polloi were always the ones most susceptible to a fellow coming the great lord, and James, usually just as happy to drink
ale with the local yeoman farmers in their well-scrubbed kitchens as to go visiting with his brother, longed to put L. Wells in his place. Make the fellow grovel a bit. And hope to God L. Wells didn’t call his bluff, because damn him, he was quite right if he thought James couldn’t afford to make his brother the laughingstock of the House of Lords.

  In the meantime, he’d need to manufacture a reason for his visit to the publisher’s office, where he’d never before set foot. James ran his hands over his newest manuscript, of which half was already cleanly copied and ready. That would do.

  Leo waited until the last sounds of departing typesetters and clerks faded away into the foggy November night before throwing himself back in his creaking chair and groaning his frustration aloud. He’d been suppressing a fit ever since the morning post had brought nothing. Again. At least, nothing from James Rowley, which, in Leo’s state of near-obsession, amounted to nothing at all. Rowley’s latest effort had arrived a fortnight since in a bundle of brown paper and string, two days early, but with at least half of it missing. Leo’s reply had been a masterwork of reverse snobbery and insult. He had been certain he would receive an immediate tirade by return post.

  Each time he wrote to Rowley, he waited on tenterhooks for the earliest possible moment that could bring a reply; he’d grown adept at schooling his face into indifference when he received one so as not to cause gossip among the clerks. Now, he wished he had that trouble, rather than this gnawing anxiety over the lack of a letter.

  The first three years of correspondence had been easier. He’d known that James Rowley was too foolish to use a false name when writing to a publisher of sensational serials, and that he had a gift for writing an entertaining tale that sold. His stories made Leo chuckle, and always charmed him, but they exchanged only manuscript packages and brief, businesslike notes. It was just after the third year of working together when Leo had been glancing through the latest Debrett’s and “Rowley” had caught his eye. Of course it couldn’t be…but there, listed as the fourth Earl of Winthrop’s second son, was a James Rowley. Leo’s author had his mail held at the coaching inn of a Gloucestershire village. It took only a moment longer with a map to determine that the village sat just half a mile outside the family estate’s walls.

  Not long after that Leo recalled he’d long promised an old friend a visit — an old friend who happened to live in Canterbury. A coincidence, of course, that Canterbury was a mere nine miles from Winthrop Court. And that Leo’s stay happened to include a Wednesday, on which the house opened for tours given by a housekeeper who looked a little askance at Leo’s overlong and unfashionably unstyled black hair but allowed him in anyway, perhaps thinking that a man in a sedately tailored olive coat couldn’t be entirely disreputable.

  Leo bit back his seething impatience as Mrs. Green took the small group of visitors through endless ballrooms, parlors, libraries, and conservatories. At long last, she led them up yet another set of marble stairs and into the portrait gallery, a long room with a row of windows down one side and what seemed a hundred massive paintings in gilt frames lining the opposite wall. He sidestepped Mrs. Green, who seemed determined to spend the rest of the bloody year droning on about the oak parquetry floor, and went at once to the other end of the hall where the most recent family portraits hung.

  Nothing could have prepared him for what he saw. The late fourth earl had been a tall, commanding man, and the elder son was his image, blocky and dark with blue eyes and an arrogant set to his chin. But that wasn’t what made Leo’s breath catch in his chest.

  On the other side of the fourth earl, caught perfectly in a mischievous half-smile by the genius who had painted the portrait, stood a slender, golden-haired Adonis, whose deep dark eyes gloriously contrasted with his fair coloring. He’d inherited his father’s height, but the rest must have come from the stunning blonde, certainly the fourth countess, whose portrait hung beside the family group.

  And that was that. Leo was lost before he even drew his next ragged breath.

  Furious with the unkindness of fate, with the beautiful James Rowley and his damned little smile that seemed to promise everything Leo had ever desired and could never possess, and most of all with himself, he’d written an uncharacteristically sharp reply to Rowley’s most recent note. The return post brought him a longer letter than he’d ever had from the man. And if every word of that letter dripped with disdain, at least it meant Rowley spared him a thought. Pathetic, he knew. Still, he wrote back in kind, savoring each page he received as a sign of Rowley’s attention and knowing all the while that each exchange left him lower and lower in Rowley’s esteem.

  The next two years were pure torture.

  Every terse, hostile letter from James — Rowley, he must think of him as Rowley — had been written by the white hand that rested so casually on James’s — dammit — slim hip in that blasted painting. The thought of that hand holding a pen, holding anything, left Leo aching, hiding behind his desk until his arousal subsided. Perhaps James had set the pen in its holder, absently toying with it, long delicate fingers sliding up and down its hard length…Leo flopped back in his chair, grateful for his solitude, and pinched the bridge of his nose.

  This had gone far enough. Bad enough to be distracted by, all right, obsessed with, a man he’d never met and likely never would. James was the son of an earl, and Leo, whose father owned a tavern in Portsmouth, really had no business even reading Debrett’s, let alone longing for a nobleman whose name inscribed one of its pages. James was so far above his touch he might as well have come from a distant star.

  The thought of James and touching at once would lead to Leo unbuttoning his trousers and taking his throbbing length in hand, and that way lay madness. He took up his hat and coat and left the office, slamming every door so hard the frame shook. No more work would be done that evening. Damn James Rowley anyway.