Page 41 of The Forsaken

To Kerr’s credit, he hadn’t made it easy for them. If they were going to dunk him, he wasn’t going down without a fight. The fights hadn’t lasted long. They’d been stronger. They’d hit harder.

Then a new lad arrived. A year older and a whole lot bigger and full of good humor…he’d turned up like a God to Kerr’s puck. All the older lads loved him. The younger ones wanted to be him. They’d laughed at his jests. To be fair, the obnoxiously perfect lad’s jests, be they naughty or not, had been deuced clever.

And Kerr hated him on sight. Cursed his soul. And pulled a face whenever the big-enough-for-Oxford lad of his same age entered a room to cheers and obsequious greetings.

Fortunately for Kerr, the same could not be said for the other lad.

August Archdale, the Earl of Culross, hadn’t tolerated fools or bullies.

When all the other lads went out to carouse about London, Kerr stayed behind to study in the common room and tried to make up for years of neglect and learning rudimentary Latin.

Unfortunately, that particular night, the lads bundled up to take their mindless play outside, but the Neanderthals bored quickly and decided to wreak havoc in the snow.

On their way, Lords Lenchwick and Snarford caught Kerr, turned him upside down, carried him by his legs, and hung him out the open windows. As they’d dangled him over the snow-covered Eton courtyard, he thought about returning home, decided Mad Jack was worse, and took what they doled out in silence. During the days that followed, those same boys marveled that Kerr hadn’t cried. He never corrected them, never said, ‘If bloody fear and the harsh wind hadn’t sucked the air from my lungs, I’d have sobbed the school down.’ In those unending moments where death stared up at Kerr with open arms, the action unfolding inside the common room would change the trajectory of his life: Kerr found himself snatched to safety. Collapsed on the floor and shaking from cold—and terror—he took in the bodies of other boys littering the floor.

Young Culross towered over them.

He demanded they stand and apologize to Kerr. When the brainless bullies finished begging forgiveness, Culross leveled the pair with swift uppercuts. They’d gone down like a ton of bricks. Then, with Lenchwick and Snarford prone between them, Culross stretched a hand out.

“The name is Archdale.”

To which, Kerr placed his small palm in the much bigger boy’s. “Hollis.”

From that, a friendship was born and a brotherhood forged.

Kerr would have, and still would, die for the other man. Kerr’s loyalty went deep, so deep it accounted for actions he’d never condone—the attempted abduction of a lady from a rival shipping family.

After university, they each went their separate ways: Kerr for the Navy to fight Boney’s forces and Culross for his own sea adventure, as a privateer. When Kerr’s service ended, and all soldiers and sailors went home to assume their rightful places as gentlemen, Culross offered Kerr the role of quartermaster: his right-hand man at sea, aboard his shipping line. They’d sailed and plundered as pirates did, but were awarded the prettier title of privateer for their ‘service to the Crown’.

In the greatest irony, Kerr made it through the war with his visage unscathed and his body intact, only to get himself caught in a sea-battle when Culross was trying to steal away Linnie McQuoid-Smith of the McQuoid shipping line.

The crew jested they all finally had a chance against the godlike Kerr. The stares of horror had returned—this time in a boon—from the respectable ladies—which mattered not at all. He intended to let the mad-Kerr line die with him. Conversely, he was the beneficiary of the perverse desires from the widows and wicked ones.

As for the university lads who once bullied him, once he outgrew their bullying—and reached more than six feet tall and came into himself, he’d attracted eyes of ladies, non-ladies, and every woman in between. Everyone wanted to rub elbows with Viscount Kerr, even with the madness attached to his name.

Which was why, as Kerr strode through the double doors of White’s, not one of the gazes swiveled in his direction fazed him. He lifted a silencing hand to the occasional fellow. Held two middle fingers up for the vast majority of patrons.

As for him, his focus was set on one table and one table only. The solid mahogany burnished one in burr-walnut finishes, dead center of the club because the member had always had a thing for being at the center of it all. With a curly crop of golden hair, the gentleman might have Polite Society fooled into believing he was some saint, but there wasn’t a greater sinner among them. Or that had been the case until he’d gotten himself caught in the parson’s mousetrap—and bound to the McQuoid-Smith family, and hence binding Kerr to the damned family.

More specifically to her.

The infuriating, careless, feisty, fearless Andromena Smith who was not only determined, but insistent on getting herself killed.

And what he felt now—the same as when he’d spied her crossing New Bond Street—was most certainly not crippling terror. Kerr wasn’t afraid of a bloody thing. Kerr didn’t give a damn about some blasted chit who treated her own life like a cheap wager.

By the time he identified the emotion pumping hard in his veins as rage, he reached his friends and the one of them who deserved his wrath.

The Earl of Culross and Lord Alec Archdale made to rise.

Catching the scalloped back of the empty chair between the brothers, he pulled out a leather armchair and dropped into it.

Both men shared a look and reclaimed their seats.

“I expected you almost an hour ago.”

Do not kill him. He is your friend. That didn’t mean he couldn’t maim him. Kerr reminded himself of this several times, until his temper cooled.

As if to drive his point home, Culross withdrew and brandished his timepiece, which contained a perfect rendering of the countess, and said: “You’re late.”