A Rival for Rivingdon (The Lords of Bucknall Club Book 3) Read online

  A Rival for Rivingdon

  The Lords of Bucknall Club #3

  J.A. Rock

  Lisa Henry

  A Rival for Rivingdon

  Copyright © 2021 by J.A. Rock and Lisa Henry.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover Art by Mitxeran.

  Acknowledgments

  With thanks Bridget, who is invaluable.

  About A Rival for Rivingdon

  He must marry well, to secure his fortune.

  The Honourable Loftus Rivingdon is poised to make his debut into Society. He’s beautiful, charming, and quite the catch of the Season. If only he could find the right hat. With the zealous assistance of his doting mother, Loftus has one ambition only: to meet and marry a wealthy peer. And Loftus knows just the peer—the dauntingly handsome, infinitely fashionable Viscount Soulden. Good thing there’s nothing standing in his way.

  He must also marry well, to secure his fortune.

  The Honourable Morgan Notley is poised to make his debut into Society. He’s beautiful, charming, and quite the catch of the Season. And he has just found the perfect hat. With the zealous assistance of his doting mother, Morgan has one ambition only: to meet and marry a wealthy peer. And Morgan knows just the peer—the dauntingly handsome, infinitely fashionable Viscount Soulden. Good thing there’s nothing standing in his w—

  Damn it all to hell.

  Their ambitions collide.

  When Loftus and Morgan both set their sights on Soulden, the rivalry of the Season begins. Their mutual hatred escalates into spite, sabotage, and scandal, as all of Society eagerly waits to see which diamond of the first water will prevail. Except the course of true loathing, just like true love, never did run smooth. The harder they try to destroy each other, the closer they come to uncovering each other’s deepest vulnerabilities—and the more difficult it becomes to deny the burning attraction between them.

  A Rival for Rivingdon is the third book in the Lords of Bucknall Club series, where the Regency meets m/m romance. The Lords of Bucknall Club can be read in any order.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Afterword

  An Excerpt from A Sanctuary for Soulden

  About J.A. Rock

  About Lisa Henry

  Also by J.A. Rock and Lisa Henry

  Also by J.A. Rock

  Also by Lisa Henry

  In 1783, the Marriage Act Amendment was introduced in England to allow marriages between same-sex couples. This was done to strengthen the law of primogeniture and to encourage childless unions in younger sons and daughters of the peerage, as an excess of lesser heirs might prove burdensome to a thinly spread inheritance.

  Chapter 1

  March 26, 1818. One week until the Season begins.

  Loftus Rivingdon, third and youngest son of Baron Rivingdon, stood before his tailor’s mirror and slowly lifted an ivory silk hat, trimmed with apple-green ribbon, in both hands. He placed it carefully atop his head and studied himself.

  Behind him in the mirror, his mother, Lady Emmeline Rivingdon, watched, her hands clasped in anticipation. “Oh Loftus—” she began in a breathless whisper.

  “I hate it,” Loftus declared loudly.

  Lady Rivingdon gasped. “Loftus! But you look simply stunning.”

  “This ribbon does not match my eyes!” Loftus whirled to face his mother. “I was promised a ribbon that would match my eyes!”

  M. Verreau—“Clothier to the Nobility – Elegance to the Discerning Gentleman”—placed his hands on his hips. “That is the closest colour I could find.” He spoke with a light French accent, and did not appear at all fazed by this crisis, which angered Loftus further. He wanted the fellow thoroughly fazed.

  Loftus ripped the hat from his head and hurled it to the floor, then turned to the mirror once again. “I look terrible.” He tugged his waistcoat. “I have no waist—look at this! Mother, these stays are not doing their job.”

  “You are thin as a spindle,” M. Verreau said. “I do not know what you are worried about.”

  “Tighten them,” Loftus ordered, hastily unbuttoning his waistcoat and tossing it to join the canary yellow coat he had removed earlier. He yanked the tails of his shirt from his trousers, then raised the shirt to reveal the short stays around his waist.

  “Loftus!” His mother tittered and said, unconvincingly, “Manners.” She glanced at Verreau. “My apologies. He’s been a little highly-strung of late, anticipating the start of the Season.”

  “Yes, I recall from his fitting,” the tailor said flatly. “Mr. Rivingdon, your stays are already tied more tightly than is at all good for the laces.”

  Loftus shot the man a glare as his mother began untying his stays.

  “Here now, my Loftus,” she said, pulling the laces as tight as she could. She grunted with the effort, and Loftus hissed in a breath, bracing himself against the wall as she yanked.

  “Tighter, Mother,” he insisted through gritted teeth.

  “You need a smaller size.” Verreau did not even raise his voice to be heard over the groaning and hissing. “As I have few gentlemen seeking stays, I am not sure I have anything smaller. But I can have something made. It will take roughly two weeks.”

  Loftus opened his mouth to denounce the fellow and his entire business. He knew Verreau prided himself on his innovative establishment, which sought to procure practically any garment or accessory a gentleman might require, from coats, to handkerchiefs, to pins, to hats. Why, there was a time not so many moments ago when Loftus had been quite impressed with the fellow. But two weeks was unacceptable! Two weeks from now was one week after Lord Balfour’s ball—the opening event of the Season. He could hardly attend looking bloated as a cow!

  But all that came out was a whimper as his lower ribs nearly cracked with his mother’s efforts.

  Just then, the bell on the door tinkled, and Loftus watched through the mirror as two figures intruded upon their privacy. A short, impossibly slim man stood by the door. He had thick, glossy chestnut curls and large, dark eyes that—if he’d had any idea how to use them to proper effect, which he clearly didn’t—might have looked doelike and alluringly vulnerable. As it was, his face appeared shrewd, calculating. Loftus felt a surge of furious jealousy all the same, studying the reflection of his own deep-set eyes—no wonder the tailor had not noted their proper colour! They ought to be larger, their lashes darker. His lashes were practically white, and his silver-blond hair suddenly looked lank. Would he look better with thick, dark hair, like this stranger’s? Of course not, he reassured himself. You are a diamond of the first water. The society pages have said so.

  The stranger was accompanied by a woman who looked to be his older sist
er. She wore a dress of palest yellow and a matching shawl beaded in pink, topped off with a satin hat sprouting ostrich feathers. Her hair was as dark as her brother’s, but worn in tight, shiny ringlets. She carried a glittering reticule, and poking out of it was the head of the smallest dog Loftus had ever seen, a little black-and-tan thing with the fur at the top of its head tied in a bow that matched the woman’s dress. All of them—woman, man, and dog—stared at Loftus as his mother knotted the laces. “There!” Lady Rivingdon said in satisfaction, tugging Loftus’s shirt down over the stays. “Is that better?”

  Loftus could make no answer. He could also draw no breath. He turned slowly toward the front of the shop, his ribs grinding as he did. It was humiliating to have been seen by strangers in a state of half dress and with his mother lacing his stays. But he made no move to grab his waistcoat or coat. M. Verreau stepped away and greeted the new customers, and his mother seemed to realise she and Loftus were no longer alone in the shop. “Oh my!” Her voice, normally high-pitched and with a slightly scratchy quality, reached a note that only the dog in the reticule could properly hear on “my.”

  The new fellow wore a waistcoat of the deepest, most brilliant blue Loftus had ever seen. His coat was dark grey, the buttons ivory. His hat was satin and trimmed with a series of small, curled ribbons, his cream coloured cravat starched so aggressively that it looked rather as though it had been cast in plaster of Paris. He gripped a silver-handled cane. His face was small and smooth as a child’s, but he carried himself like a gentleman.

  Loftus loathed him at once.

  “Mama,” the man said, turning his head slightly toward the woman—not his sister, then!—while keeping his enormous eyes on Loftus. “I thought we were to have the shop to ourselves?” His voice was soft, low, and a bit raspy, caution in it as though he were trying not to startle wild animals. “You know I do not want anyone to see the styles I am choosing and copy them.”

  Oh-ho! Did this little weasel truly think himself such a paragon that anyone in the world would wish to copy his style? How pathetic!

  “Apologies,” the tailor said to them. “My previous appointment has gone over the allotted time.”

  Loftus clenched his jaw, yanking his shirt straight. “Mother, do you hear this? Is Monsieur Verreau suggesting that we are less important than—”

  “I am suggesting,” Verreau said firmly, “that your appointment was to finish at noon. And we are well past that.”

  Loftus’s mother, who had been standing as if in a stupor, now swelled up. She spoke to the dark-haired woman, her high-pitched voice struggling for any semblance of dispassion. “Lady Notley.”

  “Lady Rivingdon,” Lady Notley replied, her nostrils flaring.

  “I don’t believe you know my youngest son, Mr. Loftus Rivingdon. Loftus, this is Lady Cornelia Notley.”

  “How lovely to meet you, Mr. Rivingdon.” The woman dipped her head toward Loftus. Her voice was nearly the same low, soft rasp as her son’s. She did not sound as though she found their meeting lovely at all. “This is my younger son, Mr. Morgan Notley.”

  Loftus’s mother offered Mr. Notley a stilted acknowledgement and then assured the Notleys that she and Loftus were just preparing to leave in search of a tailor who knew what he was about. “Get dressed, Loftus dear,” she said, her cold gaze still on Lady Notley. Loftus turned, seething, to locate his waistcoat.

  “Oh, Mama,” Mr. Morgan Notley said. “Look at that hat on the floor, there. I should like that one.”

  “Anything you wish, dear,” his mother replied.

  Loftus burned with rage. He whirled back to face Notley. “You may not have it,” he snapped. “I was just about to purchase it!”

  Notley’s cupid’s bow of a mouth made a tiny O. “That is your hat? Forgive me, sir.” He could not have sounded less sincere, and Loftus wanted very much to pummel him with his own silver-handled cane and then say, “Forgive me, sir,” in that same unctuous tone.

  Notley went on, “It is only that…its colour seems like it would draw out the yellow in your complexion in an unflattering way. Especially when paired with that very bright coat. And its ribbon does not even complement your eyes.”

  Loftus bit down on a furious retort. When in the hell had Mr. Morgan Notley had occasion to note the colour of his eyes?

  “It looked well on me, I’ll have you know.” Loftus was aware that his voice was taking on the pitch of his mother’s. “But this pitiful excuse for a tailor said that was the closest colour he could find for the ribbon. And it is much too light!”

  “Loftus,” his mother urged nervously. To Lady Notley she said, “My son has been rather excitable of late. He is to make his debut this Season, and we expect a great many suitors. What with The Morning Chronicle praising him so extensively.”

  “Ah, my son is debuting as well. And I rather think he has even more cause to be excitable than yours, as the Prince Regent himself has already said he looks forward to seeing Morgan at Lord Balfour’s ball.”

  “Yes, with the amount of attention Loftus has already received, I would not be surprised if he has married a title by the time the Season is even underway.”

  Lady Notley’s dog barked.

  “Let’s go, Mother,” Loftus muttered, buttoning his coat and then yanking it straight.

  “So you do wish to purchase the hat?” M. Verreau asked.

  “No!” Loftus snapped. “I never wish to see such a hideous hat again.” He was going to go elsewhere and buy a hat with trimmings that matched his eyes perfectly, and when Mr. Morgan Notley saw him at Lord Balfour’s ball, Notley would be the one sick with envy.

  “Well, I should say you wouldn’t purchase it.” Morgan Notley strode forward with a confidence that hardly matched his small frame and soft voice. “Let me see.” His face was suddenly inches from Loftus’s, and Loftus froze with the shock of their proximity. Notley’s skin was truly as smooth as a babe’s, so pale that Loftus could see thin blue veins at his temples. And the lashes on those large eyes seemed to brush his cheeks when he blinked. His gaze searched Loftus’s with such intensity and concentration that Loftus was momentarily confused. Until Notley announced, “It is not simply that the shade is too light. It is the wrong hue altogether. You need something deeper, with more blue in it. The green of your eyes is more forest than pear.”

  He stepped back, and Loftus realised he had not breathed the entire time Notley had been studying his eyes. He exhaled, and for a moment he and Notley stared at each other without speaking. A strange sensation twisted Loftus’s stomach. Then he clenched his jaw again. “Worry about your own hats, and please, spare me your misguided opinions,” he said tightly. “You clearly know nothing of fashion. Your buttons are garish.” He brushed past the Notleys, heading for the door.

  Before he could reach it, it opened, and in walked the most beautiful gentleman Loftus had ever seen. He was tall and lovely, with a figure so well-made that Loftus imagined the proportions of a Greek statue underneath his clothing. Well, perhaps not all his proportions, as Loftus’s studies of both himself and, furtively, his brothers and schoolmates, had made him believe that the sculptors of antiquity hadn’t been very generous when it came to certain parts of the anatomy. But he was sure that this gentleman had the chest and shoulders and thighs of a Greek statue. He certainly had the visage: heavily-lidded eyes, a noble nose, a strong jawline, and lips that looked both plush and enticing. His dark curls, when he took off his hat, were brushed forward onto his forehead in quite the epitome of fashion, and his clothes—tall boots made of shiny, supple leather, impeccable eggshell pantaloons, a cravat that bloomed from the collar of his Prussian blue tailcoat, and a visible sliver of a dove-grey waistcoat underneath—fit him perfectly.

  “Viscount Soulden!” M. Verreau exclaimed. “What a delight, my lord!”

  Loftus gasped. A viscount!

  From the other side of the shop, Morgan Notley turned his head to stare at Lord Soulden like an owl that had just spotted a mouse.
r />   “Good day, Monsieur Verreau,” Soulden said. “I apologise for bursting in like this, but I find myself in sudden need of a new coat.”

  “But of course!” M. Verreau said, fluttering around the viscount like a butterfly. “It would be my pleasure, my lord!”

  It would be anyone’s pleasure, Loftus thought breathlessly, to run their hands over Lord Soulden in a state of half undress. Almost unconsciously, he took a step towards the viscount.

  And his mother, perhaps seeing the way his thoughts were leading him, snatched up the hat, caught him firmly by the arm, and tugged him outside into the street. The door swung shut behind them.

  Leaving—Loftus gasped in outrage at the awful realisation—Lord Soulden with Morgan Notley.

  In the afternoon, Morgan Notley attended Warrington House in St. James’s Square. He still felt a little breathless after his encounter in the tailor’s shop. He had never before understood what all that swooning business was in the book he read in secret at night, but after seeing Lord Soulden today, he was beginning to understand that dizzying sensation of being so entirely overwhelmed that one’s body simply collapsed. Morgan was only on Chapter Two of The Maiden Diaries, and from what he’d heard he had a lot more to anticipate than swooning, but if the rest of the sensations were half as thrilling, he very much looked forward to them.

  He was admitted to the house by a footman and left his hat and gloves in the man’s care. Then he hurried along to the small but cosy library.