The Dangerous Lord

On New Year’s Eve, we do well not to look ahead, but back. The man who cannot learn from past mistakes has faint hope of avoiding future ones.

LORD X, THE EVENING GAZETTE,
DECEMBER 31, 1820

When words will not suffice, deeds alone will.

LORD X, THE EVENING GAZETTE,
DECEMBER 30, 1820

Just when he’d resigned himself to doing his duty no matter the cost, she’d burst into his life like fireworks against a midnight sky.

Now he was addicted to the brightness she showered around her whenever she swept through a room.

his face and body a study of shadows in the flickering candlelight that accentuated his size while playing hide-and-seek with his expression

Thunderclouds formed ugly gray bruises across the dawn sky

Pretty didn’t begin to describe her. The girls who tittered and flirted with him were pretty. She was energy itself, vital, alive, like a scarlet rose among pastel lilies.

caught up in thoughts of nonsensical things like the sudden sunrise of her smile

Beware, my friends, the traps of romantic entanglement: vanity, unchecked urges, the arrogance of believing that the subject of your affections must needs return them. Nothing is so tragic as a woman—or a man—who mistakes a friendly smile for courtship.

LORD X, THE EVENING GAZETTE,
DECEMBER 9, 1820

One need only note the marriages of Miss Hinton to Mr. Bartley and Lady Anne Bowes to Mr. Jessup to realize why runaways throng the road to Gretna Green lately. When haughty papas betroth their daughters to ancient lords and decent young men lack the coin to please greedy mamas, couples must follow their hearts all the way to Scotland.

LORD X, THE EVENING GAZETTE,
DECEMBER 8, 1820

greatcoat and beaver hat Ian had donned to make himself look less like a viscount and more like a workingman. “All right then. Just kno