The Logical Men’s Society
The Logical Men’s Society started as a jest, as many things do.
Over a pint or two in The Garland, where men gathered in Maidenshop, it was noted that a sane man wouldn’t choose to marry. It went against all logic . . . and so the “Society” was formed.
Oh, men had to marry. It was expected and life was full of expectations. A man gave up his membership in the Logical Men’s Society when that happened and he could only return once he was widowed. But in the years before he tied the parson’s knot, the Society offered good fellowship that was highly valued and never forgotten.
So it went for several generations. The irony of the name of their village, Maidens-hop, was not lost on any of its members. The Logical Men’s Society provided a place of masculine goodwill and contentment . . . until the women began to win. First, they took over The Garland, turning it into a tea garden, and the men shuddered to think what could happen next.
Could this be the end of the Logical Men’s Society? Had they met their match?
Chapter One
A mistress who has fallen in love with you is a tiresome creature.
—Book of Mars
London
July 1815
The shouting woke him.
Lawrence Grant Talmadge Eddington, the Right Honorable Earl of Marsden who would never go by any other name except Mars, raised his head from his pillow. It took effort.
He’d done it again. Over-imbibed.
And he had really made an effort of late to be more circumspect. He’d actually agreed with his close friends Balfour and Thurlowe when they had taken it upon themselves to express their concerns. He had been drinking too much. And when he was in London, well, he did like the dreamy state of the pipe. His solution to that was to stay away from Town and the lack hadn’t bothered him.
However, drinking . . . ?
His friends had taken themselves and their wives off to London for business and he’d been alone. In a bout of self-pity—he was honest enough to know exactly what it was—he’d uncorked a claret, followed by some Port, and finished off with whisky.
His forehead ached as if it had been used as an anvil.
He pulled the pillow over his ears, trying to shut out all noise. Besides, the sun wasn’t that high in the sky. It probably wasn’t even noon and too early for him to wake—
Struck by a new concern, Mars pushed the pillow off his head and squinted around his bedroom. Why hadn’t his valet, Nelson, drawn his curtains last night?
Then he remembered. He’d opened them. Whisky and anger had fueled anguished memories of his father’s death, and Mars’s paltry attempts at vengeance.
For well over a decade now, the murderer, Lord Dervil, had never been held accountable. It had a been a duel, they said. An affair of honor. Death happened. They claimed his father had understood the consequences. After all, he had been the one to challenge Dervil.
Except, Mars had witnessed the shooting. There had been no honor on that field.
And when the drink hit him like it did last night, he was haunted by visions of his father crumpling to the ground, gasping for his last breath. He recalled the smell of blood mingling with black powder and how helpless it had made him feel as he’d watched the light fade from his father’s eyes. These memories always set Mars off.
He had been particularly full of himself last night. He groaned as he remembered throwing open the window and howling at the moon like a madman. In fact, he’d even stood on the window ledge, he now remembered, wearing nothing more than what his Maker had given him. He’d braced himself against the frame, high above the pavers in front of the house, and had let go with a sound that would have made any lone wolf proud. He could have sworn he’d heard howls back.
It had probably been the hunting pack. They were easy to rouse. Especially in the middle of the night. He’d done it more than once.
Of course, the gesture was futile, derisible even. Dervil still thrived and Mars was powerless beyond stopping his nemesis from buying up Maidenshop or blocking a lucrative investment here and there in London. He had not as yet made Dervil pay for what he’d done.
But someday . . .
In the meantime, he was truly and completely convinced his friends were correct and he should mend his ways. He’d forgotten how truly debilitating the day after a drunken rampage was.
Mars collapsed on the bed. God. He had definitely given the servants something good to gossip over, even though they were loyal. They kept his secrets. He hoped.
And no, the howling had not been one of his wisest ideas. He could have fallen out the window, especially in the state he’d been in.
But now he was awake, driven by a new need, one to relieve himself. All that whisky had created a powerful urge and his teeth felt woolly. Mars hated having a sour mouth.
He rolled out of bed with a groan. It hurt everything in his body to move. He seemed to have pulled a muscle in his hip when he’d done all that scrambling around the windows.
Windows?
Yes, windows. From the hazy recesses of his memory, he realized he’d howled from more than one window.
Such was the danger of being left to his own devices. If his friends had not been out of town, he would have been over at their houses being outwardly bored by their married lives, and inwardly jealous at how content they were. Who knew a wife could make a man happy . . . ?
With a groan, he reached for his breeches, which were lying on the floor. Keeping his head as still and steady as possible, he pulled them up his long legs, not bothering with the buttons, and stiffly made his way to the privacy screen. There had been a time when he’d bounded out of bed with energy in anticipation for the day even after an evening of drinking. That seemed decades ago. At seven and twenty, he shouldn’t be feeling so low. Even his back was sore, and he was too aware that his complaints were those of a creaky old man whose only enjoyment was the blessed relief of emptying his bladder and a nap.
Yes, a nap. Just the thought of it made him almost giddy. Later today he’d have a nap—that was, if the commotion in the house ceased. The shouting was still going on. It always amazed him that as massive as Belvoir was, sound carried as if he lived in a cottage.
He set to cleaning his teeth, the tooth powder thick in his mouth until he rinsed it out. He popped in a mint lozenge that Gemma, Thurlowe’s talented wife, had concocted. Mars was beginning to believe himself as obsessed with her pastilles as he could be to opium, if given the chance . . . and the latter was the true reason he had dodged the happy couples’ entreaties to join them. Being around so much marital bliss would have broken his resolve not to indulge in the pipe.
And standing there in front of the mirror over his washstand, looking at his face sporting a growth of whiskers he wouldn’t let Nelson shave because his head had hurt too much, his wheat-colored hair in sleep-tossed disarray, and his eyes red-rimmed and tired, he knew he must change.
Mars just didn’t understand how matters had come to this. Life was passing him by. And the men he most respected and admired, his closest confidants, now focused on their wives.
They claimed they were in love with them.
Love.
Mars was a pragmatic man. Love turned one into a fool. If his father had not been so “in love” with his wife, Eleanor, he wouldn’t have challenged Dervil—who also claimed he’d loved her.