Reckless Viscount by Amy Sandas Page A

slightly bowed head, implying deference, but the cold loathing in his small black eyes belied the submissive posture.
    The viscount’s animosity for his only son had rubbed off onto his loyal servant ages ago.
    Leif said nothing as he pushed through the closed door.
    The bedroom was well-lit compared to the rest of the house and a blazing inferno roared in the grate. The viscount always ensured his own comfort regardless of means or necessity.
    “Leif? Is that you? Get your ungrateful arse over here, boy.”
    Even on the verge of death, the viscount’s voice held an iron note of contempt. Leif couldn’t yet see his father, concealed as he was behind the privacy curtains that had been drawn around the bed. He strode further into the room. The heat rolling out from the fireplace made his clothing feel sticky and cumbersome and he wondered if he hadn’t just walked into hell itself. He stopped at the side of the large four-poster bed where the curtains were drawn back. A heavy sense of inevitability drowned out the emotions he had expected to experience at this moment. There was no relief, no sadness or regret. Not even a touch of expectancy for what his future would soon hold. There was just the dark weight of impending death. It didn’t matter that it was his father who was nearing his end. Leif felt his own mortality like the slow and steady approach of night.
    Viscount Neville lay propped up on a mound of pillows. Blankets surrounded a body that had become shrunken and frail. His black hair had grown long and hung in limp strands along the sides of his face to his shoulders. His skin held a greenish tinge from a failing liver and open sores were apparent on his face and hands, likely evidence of a disease contracted from one of the back-alley brothels the viscount loved to frequent.
    Leif noted the odd justice in the fact that his father lay dying from the vices that so consumed his life.
    “Closer, dammit. I can’t see you.”
    Leif stepped right up to the edge of the bed. His arms hung heavily at his sides. The fire behind him burned against his back. He looked down at his father with silent antipathy.
    The old man eyed him with a serrated gaze, no less vicious in his weakened state.
    “Eh! You look more like your whore-mother than ever before. A curse on that ungrateful slut for leaving nothing of me in you.”
    Leif stiffened, but it was a familiar diatribe. He only wished it were completely true. There was far too much of his father repeated in the soulless black of his heart.
    “You’ve done well enough, I hear. Pandering to the rapacious sexual demands of your women. You have your mother’s talent for whoring.”
    Leif clenched his jaw and curled his hands into fists at his sides. “Why have you called me here?”
    “Impatient to be done with me? Anxious to get your hands on your inheritance?” The viscount’s voice rose with each word until the last, which broke off on a violent fit of coughing. He lifted a claw-like hand and brought a handkerchief to his mouth. The white scrap of cloth was stained brown and reddish-black with blood both old and new.
    Leif did not attempt to help him. His assistance would have been rejected and would only anger his father further. So he waited until the fit passed and the viscount looked back to him with murder in his eyes.
    “You have been awaiting this day with bated breath, haven’t you?” Leif didn’t deny it. “Soon, all that has come down from the time of the Conqueror will be yours, my son .”
    Leif ignored the way his father spit out the last words. The viscount had forever enjoyed the torment of implying that Leif was not truly his son and so not a rightful heir to the Neville legacy. As much as he would have loved to believe otherwise, it was an indisputable fact that he was the viscount’s son.
    “Is that why you sent Charles to fetch me? Have you finally found a way to keep me from having it?”
    The viscount’s smile was an ugly twist of his lips.