A Rake's Heart (Count Series) Read online

  A

  RAKE’S

  HEART

  Count Series

  by

  Peyton Meri

  Copyright © 2017 Peyton Meri

  All rights reserved

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and events are fictitious in every regard and are a product of the author’s imagination and used for fiction purposes. Any similarity to actual events and persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The reproduction of this book in whole or part, electronically or mechanically, constitutes a copyright violation.

  ©2017 Peyton Meri

  ©2017 Count Series

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  EPILOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  England, 1815

  Canville Mansion

  Fairly Synclair, the Earl of Canville’s ward sat despondent as her maid took the china teacup from her shaky hands and set it back on the serving tray. Fairly’s gaze followed the swirl of golden tea inside. She’d taken one sip of the warm brew and had almost lost her stomach. A myriad of emotions filled her over the event coming this night. Turning her eyes to the lovely lavender colored dress in the corner, Fairly groaned pitifully and turned back to listen more to what her chattering maid, Minna was saying.

  “Do it for the right reasons. Yes, it happens with no love all the time. Whether it be arranged, a marriage of convenience—a woman should voice her objections as well as her opinions, and so thus, act upon them. If it does not feel right, then call the whole thing off.”

  “I cannot. Oh, how I wish it were that easy, Minna. My guardians would be furious,” Fairly said, thinking of their faces. After the tragic deaths of her parents ten years ago, her only surviving relative, the young and newly wed earl of Canville, Edward Sutton and his bride Joya had taken her in to live with them. “What did you do?” she asked her maid.

  “Oh, miss, I’m but a servant, not bound to the laws or expectations which a woman of your station is held to. We folks on the low end, we can pick and choose more so than you. And glad of it. An easier time of it most times. I had meself a titled man, once. He was willing to forfeit all that was due to him as an heir apparent. If only I’d accepted him,” Minna’s voice dropped, sadness lacing her tone as she clasped her lady’s hand in her own.

  “And what happened?”

  Tears in her eyes, Minna cast her gaze aside and replied, “I freed him and gave myself to another.”

  Fairly gasped. “By god, why? Did you not love him?”

  Minna mopped delicately at the few tears that had slipped from her cheeks. “Aye, miss. It is what made me take such drastic a measure—to save him from doing something foolish he would’ve regretted. In my heart, true as it beats, I knew he would regret his rashness later.”

  “But if he loved you…I don’t…it obviously would not have mattered. He’d been willing to give it all up when he offered for your hand.”

  “Aye. In the beats of a passionate tryst, a man will say anything. Promise you the moon and stars, he will. I would not have been able to live with his regret. I live with enough now of my own. I suppose in the end, I loved him more than he did me. He went on to marry a suitable lady to appease his family less than a fortnight after I refused him.”

  “No…” Fairly sighed, not missing the agony and melancholy that laced her maid’s tone.

  “Yes. And from what I heard—a gaggle of children followed as well,” Minna imparted, sniffling and looked up, eyes wet.

  “Oh, Minna.” Fairly took her maid’s hand and gave it a compassionate squeeze. “You must have been devastated.”

  Minna produced a wry smile, shaking her head. “Aye, my heart was broken, true. Still is.” She perked up and cleared her throat. “But enough about that. Today is about you.”

  Fairly released her hand. “Do you still see this man around today?”

  When her maid’s eyes welled anew with fresh tears, Fairly wished she’d not pressed the matter. After ten years, she realized as close as she and her maid were, she’d not once wondered beyond the basic enquiries into Minna’s life.

  “Aye, now and then,” Minna replied.

  Fairly couldn’t help herself. “Does he recognize you?”

  Minna sniffled. “I’m afraid, sadly, no.”

  “I’m so sorry, Minna to have caused you further pain in remembering.”

  “Oh, hush, now,” Minna cut her off. “You’ve nothing to be sorry for. Now button up. Give me a show of that apple-cheeked smile. Let us put some blush of rose back in your cheeks. It felt good telling you. I only shared it with you because though we come from different worlds, I could’ve been sitting right where you are today. I regret the choice I made. Do not let what others want for you cause you to sacrifice your own happiness. You do not have to appease anyone except yourself. This life is yours. We get only one. Make it as happy as you can, miss. I care too deeply for you to see you wed a bloke you cannot bear to look at.”

  “Thank you,” Fairly forced a strained smile to her lips. “I’ve been that obvious, eh?”

  Arched auburn brows and a warm exhalation from Minna was her answer. Fairly sighed and shook her head. “Well, then, I suppose since my prayers have gone unheeded, we’ve but an hour to come up with alternatives.”

  As Minna readied the room and fluffed out her dress, Fairly’s mind went to work. Her groom-to-be was handsome enough in his own right. Brown hair and vibrant green eyes. Her same height. But it was not enough.

  She wanted him to possess a broader frame, wide and muscular, and be tall enough to touch the door arches. Have a natural hue of bronze to his silky skin. Be black-haired with ash-blue sharp eyes under perfectly shaped fine black brows.

  Like Coltin Thomas Ratherton.

  No. Not like. She had just described Coltin. That’s who she wanted her groom to be.

  Fairly lowered her lashes and allowed her gaze to find the small trinket box next to her engraved wooden jewelry chest atop her bureau. She knew what was inside.

  Her heart ached with longing and warmth thinking of the precious stones inside. She could live off them alone for some time. Maybe even gain passage to the Americas and forget her life in London.

  But, never could she forget the man who had given her such a precious gift. The man whom just moments ago she wished her groom looked like, but could never be.

  The same man who had stolen, then broken her heart three years ago and left her to deal with a horrid scandal.

  Coltin Thomas Ratherton.

  The scoundrel that he was had left her and hied himself away under the ruthless guide of Count Harker Benning. Fairly shivered at the mere thought of the count’s name floating through her mind. The most notorious crowned rakehell of them all.

  She tried not to imagine the things Coltin might be doing while he hung around in that man’s less than desirable circle. Drinking, gambling and women were like a middle name attached to Benning. A man who turned his aristocratic nose up at all of society’s conventions.

  She had never crossed paths with the man before. But his charms and exceptional good looks were bandied about the Town just as much as talk about his incredible wealth, along with the fears and dark whispers. Fairly shivered. No. She didn’t want to think about the many women Coltin might now have in his life.

  She on the other hand, after the scandal and sulking, nursing her heart and licking her wounds for a year, the countess had gotten her out of her seclusion. Dragged her out slowly back
into society at a leisurely pace.

  Joya had her attending house parties and ballroom dances, one after the other. A whirlwind that not only had left Fairly’s head spinning but her stomach as well. But it’d been effective.

  Things had quieted, the rumors not so blistering, yet the sting of what had been said, remained in Fairly’s tender heart.

  How cruel these people that smiled falsely in her face whilst she was in the countess’s company, then turned just as quickly when she was not. She knew and saw the disdain behind their eyes. She was not fooled, but she did what Joya said she should. She simply could not curl up and die as she wished, the countess had said.

  No, but Fairly bet staying a recluse would have been more pleasant than suffering through the crowds at the parties.

  There were a select few who whispered behind a fan or two, or beside a tall vase, despite the countess’s presence. It was the stares, the blatant averted snubs—the direct cuts—that made Fairly want to run and never attend another party until the day Joya had brought Pierce Wainbridge into their lives at the start of the New Year.

  At the earl and countess’s urging, she had succumbed to the handsome young lord’s relentless pursuit. A part of her had felt guilt for the burden she must have been on the young couple’s lives.

  Newly married and bound by blood to her, Edward, the earl had taken her in when her parents had been murdered in their sleep whilst she’d slept on soundly just down the hall, tucked under her many covers in her huge bed.

  She had been coming upon her seventeenth birthday when the murders had happened. The only living relative had been young Edward, barely over twenty then, who had just settled upon his lovely bride, the stunning Joya Haverton.

  A month into their marriage and they’d found themselves saddled with a grieving sixteen year old who hated the world.

  Her father’s properties—her inheritance, the Synclair fortune was being taken care of by the solicitor and others Edward had hired to oversee the vast estate until she had come of age or married. When she had come of age, Fairly hadn’t wanted to return to the family residence, understandably. Memories of that awful night were still too fresh in her mind.

  Edward had sold the main family residence only just two years ago. Two properties, a self-sufficient country manor and a London town home, remained. The Synclair fortune, her father had inherited and expanded upon, continued to grow and Fairly had touched none of it.

  Edward’s solicitor had set up a healthy monthly stipend for her, yet she rarely used it. Her biggest expense came when she toured the shops on Bond Street with the countess to purchase a suitable afternoon or evening gown for attendance at one of those dreadful parties Joya dragged her to.

  Joya had taken a shine to her. The kindness the countess had shown her then, Fairly knew she could not surpass. It was only fair that she lessen their burden and do what she could to settle herself elsewhere.

  Lord knows she’d made many mistakes, painstaking ones as she’d grown. She refused all hands to wed, a rebellious streak and insurmountable grief, she supposed, because Edward refused to allow her to journey off to the Americas for a new beginning.

  He would have her wed and saddled with a wealthy English noble lord about ton so that her life would be secure. ‘An America?’ he had blasted when she mentioned her idea. ‘The very thought of tainting our lineage with one is ludicrous.’

  The cause for the earl’s disdain toward Americans was beyond Fairly. She found them fascinating and the tomes she read by American authors, fiction and some autobiographies, made her yearn for just a taste of such adventures and the enjoyment of life without so many rules, and stuffed etiquettes.

  Here in London, there were some adventurous souls, but she’d yet to meet one. She’d only heard of a few. And Pierce had proved early on that he was not part of that lot.

  No. Pierce led a sedate life, busy while being groomed to take over his inheritance and title when the time came as Viscount. Marry, have children and repeat. Nothing more.

  Fairly had accepted it all because she felt she owed it to her guardians, and because she wasn’t getting any younger. Her twenty-seven years was well past the bloom of youth to some. Frustrated, she was at times, that the earl did not understand her resistance at first, but he never looked her squarely in the eye after the scandal with Coltin Ratherton. He was ashamed of her.

  The sting of truth hurt Fairly and only made what she was feeling only magnify. He had kept her under his roof. His wife seen to her needs and treated her like a sibling. Never made her feel like an outcast. Despite it all, over the years, she could not help but feel as if she had overstayed her welcome.

  That the earl had remained dark and quiet when she’d announced her acceptance of Pierce’s offer confused her. Joya had been jubilant it seemed, and had suggested ignoring her husband. He was in one of his moods. Fairly knew what mood Joya referred to. He had the same expression when the countess dragged her to party after party.

  Fairly shook her head. Men. Would one ever understand them?

  She had given in to the short courtship. Along the way, there had been plenty influence from Pierce’s parents and his circle of friends and their fervent prodding. After numerous rides in Hyde Park and social functions, she’d wound up engaged to the young lord. Fairly couldn’t even recall the moment she had accepted.

  The most they’d touched was a cold press of lips to her cheek, a kiss to the back of her gloved hand once or twice. Pierce was the consummate gentleman, undaring in so many ways.

  Feeling the weight of all of it only seemed to make what Minna had said more crucial than ever to Fairly. It was time to create her own daring adventure.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Crownhaven Manor

  “You will be joining me, won’t you?”

  Coltin Thomas Ratherton, Viscount Brigham smiled at his sister, Britwen Darrington, who was seated across from him on a blue settee. They sat in the incomplete library of her small manor home. His sister was having what used to be her husband’s study, converted into a library to house her cherished tomes.

  “Yes, of course,” he answered the question she had asked him twice already. Then just as quickly, he thought, what the hell had he been thinking when he’d told her yes? Too much time had passed. Fairly Synclair probably had already forgotten him and that scandalous night after three years.

  No, Coltin clenched his teeth. The beautiful chit he remembered would not have forgotten any more than he had been able to. That glorious night—Coltin shut his eyes and exhaled a slow breath. His Fairly’s face swam up as it always did—fresh and lovely as the day he’d last seen her.

  In the three years that had passed, he could only imagine the stunning creature she’d further matured into. He shook his head, as if doing so would free his mind of memories. It did not. Even so, he needed to focus.

  He’d come back here with a purpose. One that still burned like a hot coal inside his chest just as fiercely as it had when he’d stepped off the ship that had brought him back from the Cornish coast.

  He would accompany his sister and face his past. He rose to his feet, flashed his sister a bright smile and was pleased to see the worry creasing on her brow recede. He reached his hand out to her. “Shall we?”

  Coltin gripped his gloves tightly in his fist where he had his hand pressed against his bent knee. His sister’s lovely face leaned forward out of the shadows of the confines of the carriage. Worry and suspicion that had ridden her face all afternoon was back upon her face. Ash-blue eyes that matched his own glittered as she stared at him.

  “Are you all right, Coltin?”

  He gave her a curt nod. Dressed in a blue gown with a square collar to show off her svelte neck and shoulders, her long dark hair fashioned perfectly and stiff, piled atop her head. His sister would be the shining jewel of the dinner tonight. Beside Fairly of Carrsel, of course.

  How his sister had gotten away with not remarrying in the past three years since Robert’s death,
Coltin knew all too well. Scandal clung to their name from all sides.

  Her marriage had been one of convenience as they usually were. She never loved Robert. And as Coltin quickly found out, Robert never loved nor had he respected his sister. After they were wed, the man had spent his time equally atop the whore’s at Madame Pentak’s than the whores did on their backs.

  No child had come out of their short-lived union. Coltin thought that maybe if one had, perhaps his sister wouldn’t be so lonely. And he’d not feel so horribly guilty that he’d all but abandoned her in a cowardly way during her time of need. He’d not been there to protect her from the tales drummed up by the gossip mill or to fend off the untruths that had followed after Robert’s death. Notwithstanding, his own scandal he’d brought to their door.

  Through it all, as she was tonight, a regal queen, Britwen held her head high and had forgiven him. Easily. She’d not one bone of disappointment in her body toward him.

  Their carriage pulled up in front of the Earl of Canville’s grand mansion behind several others. Coltin’s gut clenched, fisted in trepidation, the panic strangling the breath in his throat. He noticed that his hand shook as he reached out for the interior door latch of the carriage. He released a deep breath, curled his fingers into a quick fist and closed his eyes. His sister’s white gloved hand covered his. Their gazes met.

  “We can keep going. Turn this carriage around and go back home.”

  Home. Her soft whisper made him want to agree just as much as disagree. Love so strong flowed between them, as did the unspoken meaning. Coltin inhaled sharply and set his shoulders. “No, we will go in.”

  Britwen gave him a proud smile, her eyes sparkling in the twilight as she opened the carriage latch just as the coachman pulled it open to let down the small steps. “Swell, then,” she said for Coltin’s ears only.

  Coltin returned her smile. “After you, my dear sister,” he said.