Excerpt of Everything I Ever Wanted by Jo Goodman

Prologue

Michelmas Term 1796

It was a trap.

Matthew Forrester, The Right Honorable The Viscount Southerton, had willingly, even eagerly walked into it knowing that. Where would have been the game otherwise? Now, he had assured his friends, all the elements were in place. A challenge. A dare. A wager. And finally, a trap. South refrained from naming it a battle of wits, because the wits were so obviously distributed on his side as to make the entire intrigue a bit of a yawn. Still, it was a jolly good diversion for a Sunday evening.

Only a few months past his eleventh birthday, Matthew could most kindly be described as gangly. His mother said he hadn't come into his hands and feet yet. His father was not pleased to hear it, though it explained his heir's awkwardness well enough. Upon heating the countess's pronouncement, the earl had wryly regarded his son at the breakfast table while a servant hurriedly cleaned the upended platter of eggs and tomatoes in front of the boy. "Thought it was only his head he hadn't found. Demmed dreamy lad, your boy." His mother had merely smiled at each of them in turn, indulgently at her husband, then encouragingly at her son.

Now, in what he hoped was an attitude of casual, even insolent disregard, Matthew stretched his long frame in the chair set before the tribunal, folding his arms on his thin chest and crossing his feet at the ankles. He had someone in mind as he struck this pose. An acquaintance of his father's--and not the usual sort of young man the earl was likely to know well--Matthew's brief glimpse of the stranger in his father's library had captured his imagination. That man had also struck a pose, though Matthew had not consciously realized it was affected until he found himself in the same position. Dashing. Perhaps a bit dissolute. Dating in the raised chin. (Upon this thought Matthew lifted his chin at the appropriate angle.) And finally, the devil-may- care smile.

"He's grinning like a trout," one of the tribunal members pointed out. "I've had a trout grin like that at me before." He leaned slightly forward until his upper body cast a shadow on the table in front of him, then he looked down from his place on the dais. It was an aggressive overture, neither sly nor subtle. "Just before I filleted it."

There was appreciative laughter among the other four tribunal members, not for what was said but for its immediate effect on the young viscount. Matthew visibly gulped, the smile disappeared, and a directive went out to his arms and legs to come to attention. The chair actually slid several inches to the rear as he forcefully sat up straight and braced his shoulders and spine firmly against the ladder-back.

"Ate it then," the tribunal member went on. "Fish never stopped grinning at me."

Matthew didn't blink but stared straight ahead. This had the unfortunate effect of making his light-gray eyes, which had begun to water, seem absent of life and more fishlike than not.

The archbishop raised his hand to halt the laughter. Quiet reigned among the tribunal members as smiles faded along the length of the scarred table. It was time to reflect on the serious business before them.

"Well, Trout?" the head of the Society of Bishops demanded in bored tones.

The dais rumbled as the tribunal laughed as though with a singular voice.

"It's a good name for you," he went on when only a ripple of amusement remained among them, and the fish caught on their line began to wriggle a bit. "Do your friends call you Trout?"

Matthew finally blinked. He wanted to wipe his eyes, but he was certain the gesture would be misinterpreted. No one on the Society's tribunal would credit the abundance of lighted tallow candles in the small room as the cause for his watery eyes. He would certainly be damned for all time if they thought he was on the precipice of weeping. Better to be named a fish than a girl.

"Do they, Trout?" There was impatience now from the archbishop. At fourteen he was not older than every other member of the Society who had elected him, but he was unquestionably what they were seeking in a leader. He was a handsome young man who gave no more thought to his bred- in-the-bone confidence than he did to the color of his hair or the shape of his mouth. He was too clever to be cocky, but not wise enough not to be cruel.

"No," Matthew offered simply.

There was a faint lift to the archbishop's brow and a disapproving murmur across the tribunal. "No?"

"No, your Excellency." Matthew had no liking for the form of address the archbishop demanded. His voice quavered slightly. "That is, no, your Excellency, my friends do not call me Trout."

Albion Geoffrey Godwin, Lord Barlough, permitted himself a slim smile. "A fine response," he said after a contemplative moment. "Yet I cannot help being struck by its falseness."

Matthew stared at him, not understanding.

The archbishop prompted in carefully cajoling accents, "Are we not your friends, Trout?"

"I believe that has yet to be put to the vote, your Excellency."

Young Lord Barlough nodded approvingly. "Right enough." He looked to the pairing of friends on his right and left flank and caught their eyes, communicating a message without altering a single facial muscle. "But surely that is a mere formality. You are here before us now at our invitation. Invitations are never issued lightly; an audience is never granted as a matter of course."

It was the Society's way to couch its activities in comforting language. To say that the Viscount Southerton had been brought before them by invitation was to entirely dismiss the fact that he had been jumped by two of the Society's Praetorian-like brothers in the cobbled courtyard of Ham- brick Hall and carded bound, blindfolded, and gagged to this room deep in the moist, subterranean bowels of the school. To name this an audience when in fact it was a trial was further proof of the Society's penchant for couching the truth in an innocuous phrase.

Archbishop of Canterbanter. Matthew almost smiled as the title came to his mind. Lord Barlough would not like it if he knew about the name or the scornful, irreverent way in which it was often said by those on the outside of the Society. Of course, since there were many on the outside who wanted, even yearned, to be part of the inner sanctum, and Matthew and his closest friends--the ones who did not call him Trout--never referred to Canterbanter where they might be overheard. The spies among them, the ones with their noses out of joint because they'd been pressed for so long to the Society's collective arse, would reveal a classmate's disrespect if they thought it would gain them entry to the exclusive and powerful cabal.

For as long as there had been a Hambrick Hall, there had been a Society of Bishops. The origins of the organization were not known to the uninitiated. Within the Society the history was passed orally from archbishop to archbishop, a tradition that was maintained for almost two hundred years and that deviated neither in the words used nor their inflection. For a communication that was so sacred as the genesis of their order, the first archbishop devised a chant, and in this manner the story flowed uninterrupted from leader to leader for generations of boys.

Southerton had never been particularly curious about the Society's beginnings, or about the Society at all. When he arrived at Hambrick Hall three years earlier for his first term, he had heard about the Bishops before he had finished unpacking his trunk. He had put them out of his mind, being much more interested in when dinner would be served and if there would be custard as his father told him there some- times was. A trifle vague in his own approach to the world around him, neither an avid student nor an indifferent one, friendly but not gregarious, cooperative but not obsequious, Matthew fell outside the notice of the Society until late in the last term, with the arrival of Mr. Marchman.