Impractical

Impractical-Terrell believes very strongly in an ordered, practical lifestyle. Nothing good, after all, ever came from following impractical urges and impulses. Nearly finished with school, it is time to focus on the next step in his life-settling down at his estate, Fivecoats, and marrying a suitable spouse to oversee it while he pursues his academic leanings. When his father sends word that he has found the ideal man for Terrell to marry, Terrell can only be pleased-despite the misgivings of his best friend. Marriage, after all, is perfectly practical, and such things as romance highly impractical. Kirian wants nothing to do with practicality. His parents chose to be happy over being practical, and he refuses to settle for less, no matter what everyone around him says. But then he is forced to marry a man who is colder than ice, settle into a marriage that seems to be in all ways practical, but in no way happy. But beneath the surface of his new spouse, Kirian sees something far from icy, something he realizes he wants-but which seems to belong to another man. -- Seconds-Called to be the second to a young, rash duelest, Alexis seeks out the appointed second of the challenger. But the man he expects is not the man he encounters, and Alexis finds himself thinking of things vastly more interesting than settling challenges put forth by hot-headed young men, things that heat his own blood and which he thought well in his past... -- The Wager-Lazare hates being the center of attention, but as an ambassador he is seldom anything else. The only relief he finds is in the friendship he's found with the man appointed as his guide. Aloof and cool in public, Maitland is the perfect man to serve as buffer between Lazare and those who surround him. In private, he makes Lazare wish they could be so much more than friends. But Lazare has no idea how to close that last space between them, especially when he catches hints of Lazare's past and a troubling wager surrounding it. -- Runaways-Addison hates the city. Dragged there by his Uncle, his hopes of museums and bookshops and historic monuments quickly turned into nightmares involving balls, dinner parties, and constantly dancing attendance upon his brat cousin. When his cousin falls sick, Addison seizes the rare chance for solitude and flees to the park. But he is not there long before he is accosted by a stranger, a man like no one Addison has ever encountered, someone who shows him a world he actually enjoys-but it is also a world to which he will never truly belong.