Free Minor Indiscretions by Bárbara Metzger

I couldn't get here yesterday when it happened. Mrs. Reilly, don't you know. For real this time, by Jupiter, great big bruiser of a boy, it was. Already set a bit, your beak, that is. I'll have to break it again, of course, unless you want to be sniffing at your right ear the rest of your days. This might pain you some."
    If Corey didn't flatten the physician right then, it was because he was too busy picturing a slim, graceful neck between his hands.
    So he stayed on in West Fenton for his ribs' sake, not eager for anyone to see him in his present condition anyway. Hostesses would faint, the fellows at the clubs would be merciless in their ribbing, without even knowing about the little girl who'd dealt the last blow, and his town house staff would wrap him in cotton wool. Corey thought for a moment of lying low as soon as he could travel to the little house in Kensington he kept for his convenients. He was not paying his current mistress Yvette for her conversation, however, and not being up to the obvious exercise, he might as well stay put.
    Corey sent for his man Bates, his ex-batman from army days, now a dapper gentleman's gentleman, who took his stature from serving a pink of the ton. Lord Coe also notified his secretary to refuse invitations, forward important mail, and handle everything else. The viscount's affairs were well in hand, as they had to be, with him gone so long fighting old Boney. He trusted his bailiffs and his bankers and Mr. Tyler, who had been secretary to his father before him.
    The first week Corey took laudanum for the pain; the second, Bates was hiding his master's boots to keep the viscount from overdoing. By the third week Coe was visiting Albert, playing cards in the taproom with the worshipful locals, and making a nuisance of himself in the stables, wanting to exercise the horses. Mostly, he went for walks and reflected on his life. Time and boredom will do that to a man.
    The war was over, his part of it anyway, and maybe he
was
taking too many risks with his life. Maybe he should think about leaving more to posterity than a new driving record to Brighton. The viscountcy was secure, at least, in a sober cousin and his large, hopeful brood. Coe's personal wealth, the considerable unentailed property, would go to his beloved sister and her future children. Erica, Lady Wooster, was now a childless widow living in Bath, but she was only twenty-four, and that could change. Now that Corey had time to think about it, his heritage demanded more of him. He would just have to change his way of life—or find Erica a new husband.
    London was a little thin of company when he finally got there, the Season not formally underway. The clubs seemed to have the same gouty gents sitting under a pall of smoke, the same glitter-eyed gamblers feverishly dicing away their patrimonies, and the same hard-edged tulips shredding reputations over cognac. The parks were full of dandies on the strut and hey-go-mad bucks on bonecrushers. Erica's first marriage was a joyless one, Corey thought regretfully, still feeling guilty for his part in arranging it. She deserved better.
    With this thought in mind, or so he told himself, Viscount Coe went to Almack's. The beau monde's Marriage Mart worked both ways, he reasoned, and a gentleman on the lookout to become a tenant for life would more likely be found here than at, say, the Coconut Club or the Cyprian's Ball. If, while he reconnoitered the field of bachelors, the viscount's eye happened to glance to the rows of white lace decked debutantes, that was merely by accident.
    As Lord Coe temporized for a stunned Lady Jersey, he was just popping by in case an old friend was up from the country. The elusive, reckless Lord Coe at Almack's surveying this year's crop of fledglings? What a tale to pass around! Reading her mind, Corey tugged at his neckcloth, an elegant creation it had taken him and Bates an hour to tie. It may be de rigueur to arrive at Almack's before eleven, and in