Absolute Pleasure by Cheryl Holt

on reminiscence and, at the oddest times, he thought about that girl, and about the depressing episode that had followed his flippant renunciation of his planned betrothal.
    His repudiation of his father's choice had been the supreme embarrassment to his family, the final straw, causing an irreparable rift that had left him penniless, adrift, and separated from all that was familiar and cherished.
    After being threatened with poverty, then disinherited, he'd cut a swath through society that still had some elder members of the quality clucking their hypocritical, puritanical tongues over his antics: the liaisons he'd instigated, the duels he'd fought, the money he'd won and lost through gambling and vice.
    Eventually, he'd fled to the Continent, chased out of England by creditors, the law, and a few irate husbands. As one of the scores of destitute, expatriated boys of the British aristocracy who traipsed around Europe with nothing to do and no visible means of support, he'd withstood hardship and disaster.
    Yet, if he'd never traveled to Italy, he'd never have met Selena, Gabriel's mother. He'd never have fallen madly in love, would never have risked all to be with her, would never have sired his charismatic, gifted, dynamic son.
    Life was a series of trade-offs. His misfortunes had led him to Selena, so he wasn't sorry for any of what had happened, though he did worry about the lingering effect events had had on Gabriel.
    His son was the product of two noble houses—one in Italy, one in England—yet neither would claim him due to the fact that John could never have wed Selena. She'd already been married to another.
    No relative from either family had ever met Gabriel, which was exactly how John wanted it, a petty revenge he wasn't beyond inflicting. As far as he was aware, none of the patriarchal men of his generation—on either side—had begotten an heir. His three older brothers were in their fifties and sixties, their wives childless. Selena's brothers' wives were proving equally infertile. Gabriel was the only boy birthed to any of them, yet he was a shameful love child, conceived in the worst possible scandal, the appalling circumstances of his procreation ensuring that any genealogical relationship had to be hastily and permanently denied.
    Which meant that they could all go hang. They viewed Gabriel—his marvelous, talented, extraordinary boy—as merely a further example of how John's bad judgment and unrestrained comportment had ruined his life, when he didn't feel that his life had been ruined at all.
    He'd known love and bliss to an extent few ever encountered, he'd endured turbulent, buffeting trauma, he'd survived Selena's heinous death—a depraved murder by her villainous male relatives—and had managed to carry on. Just himself and Gabriel against the world. He had no regrets, though he wouldn't have objected to having more money for the journey. A notable infusion of cash would have smoothed the ups and downs considerably. His affairs would have been easier to arrange, and Gabriel wouldn't be so set on increasing their finances through any disreputable method.
    While Gabriel contended that he persisted in his devious schemes simply because he relished a good swindle, his conduct was more complicated man that His cunning son practiced his treacherous techniques on lonely, gullible women, working to gain what he believed was fiscal reparation owed to John as compensation for what he'd been through.
    Gabriel was well versed in every squalid detail of John's infamous slide to perdition, and he perceived every former slight as a wrong that needed to be righted.
    As a young man, John's foes had painted him with a sordid brush, and their memories were protracted and vicious. Some of the scorn that had been heaped upon him was deserved. Some not He now lived peacefully, out of the public eye, and he did naught to alter those sporadic opinions that surfaced since his unobtrusive return to England two years