Some lords prefer scandalous affairs over marriage. But can the magic of Christmas and a second chance at romance open an earl’s heart to love?
Julien Caruthers, the Earl of Dartmore, isn’t in the Christmas spirit. The former ‘Naughty Earl’ would prefer to focus on maintaining his family’s holdings rather than be stuck at his mother’s annual Christmas party, with her endless parade of debutantes. When he escapes for a ride, Julien’s horse gets spooked and throws him off his saddle, leaving him wandering in the snow. Until he happens upon a cozy cottage . . .
Evangeline Breckenridge never thought ‘Lord Scrooge’ would show up at her door. She hasn’t seen her childhood sweetheart in years, and Julien’s since turned into a tyrant, taking away Christmas traditions from the townspeople. Eve is now a widow and a mother, no longer the foolish girl who believed a nobleman could love a physician’s daughter. But the weather outside is frightful, and Eve isn’t one to withhold the warmth of her home, even from a cold heart. And as they reconnect, Eve and Julien may even discover there’s still something merry and bright burning between them, a fire destined to be reignited—just in time for Christmas . . .
Also by Renee Ann Miller
Never Kiss a Notorious Marquess
Never Deceive a Viscount
Never Dare a Wicked Earl
The Taming of Lord Scrooge
Renee Ann Miller
ZEBRA BOOKS
Kensington Publishing Corp.
www.kensingtonbooks.com
Contents
Also by Renee Ann Miller
The Taming of Lord Scrooge
Contents
Copyright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Epilogue
Love Renee Ann Miller?
Chapter One
About the Author
Never Dare A Wicked Earl
Never Deceive A Viscount
Never Kiss A Notorious Marquess
Copyright
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Copyright © 2019 by Renee Ann Miller
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First Electronic Edition: November 2019
ISBN-13: 978-1-4201-5066-7 (ebook)
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Chapter One
London, England
Julien Caruthers, the Earl of Dartmore, drummed his fingers on his desk as he read over the ledger for his estate in Hertfordshire. After he scratched his bold signature into the journal’s margins, he handed it to his secretary.
“Wilson, draft a letter to my estate manager informing him I want expenditures cut by another five percent.”
“Y-yes, my lord,” Archibald Wilson stuttered.
His new secretary was as nervous as a cat staring into the eyes of a mastiff who hadn’t eaten in days. Beads of sweat glistened on the man’s pale forehead, and if he trembled any more, his knees would start knocking.
Julien knew his direct gaze and the deep timbre of his voice, along with the fact he was an extremely powerful man, unsettled some of his employees. Yet he doubted that was what disconcerted his new secretary. Most likely, Wilson’s fright had more to do with the rumors that Julien might have had a hand in the untimely deaths of his last two secretaries.
He freely admitted he was a demanding employer, but Mr. Hobbs’s coronary thrombosis was probably due to the man’s penchant for eating an excessive number of French pastries. And Mr. Granger had been hit by a carriage crossing Oxford Street. His secretaries seemed to be an unlucky lot, but that wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t as if he’d poisoned Hobbs and hired someone to run Granger over.
A knock sounded on his office door.
His secretary made an audible squeak as if an assassin would step into the room and put a bullet between the man’s eyes.
Doubtful Wilson would last through the week, but hopefully the fellow would quit before he died from fright. The passing of another secretary would only add to the swirling rumors that when displeased, Julien disposed of his secretaries in a heinous way.
“Julien, darling.” His mother fluttered into the room, smiling like the Cheshire Cat.
Blister it. He’d forgotten Mother had sent word she’d be coming into Town today. He loved the woman, but she could be exhausting—the reason Julien rarely visited his Hertfordshire estate, even though it was a reasonably short distance from London.
“Hello, Mother. Wilson, that will be all.”
Mother blinked at the young man. “Are you my son’s new secretary?”
Wilson bowed as deep as a Shakespearean actor at the end of a performance at Drury Lane Theatre. “Yes, Lady Dartmore.”
She lifted her gold, ruby-incrusted quizzing glass that hung from a chain and peered at Wilson with a critical eye. “You look hearty enough. Hopefully, you won’t turn up your toes like the last two.” Lowering the eyepiece, Mother offered the man a sorrowful look as though passing on her condolences before his impending death.
Julien stifled a groan. Leave it to Mother to say something like that. Wilson probably wouldn’t show up for work tomorrow—though perhaps that might be for the best.
The fellow’s Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat. He bowed again, then dashed out of the room as if escaping the hounds of hell.
“How was your trip into Town?” Julien set his pen down and stood.
“Bumpy. Though I know taking the rail would have been faster, I came by carriage. I want you to witness how uncomfortable the ride is. I require a new vehicle.”
His mother was a spendthrift. Her desire for a new carriage was most likely the result of one of her friends having recently purchased a newfangled equipage.
“Mother, your landau is fine. The vehicle is only two years old. But I will have the springs checked.”
She opened her mouth, apparently set on arguing, then closed it. With a defeated sigh, she reached into the reticule dangling from her wrist. “While en route, I completed the list for the Christmas house party I’m planning.”
Every year Mother held a party at their country home in Hertfordshire, last year being the exception since the family had been in mourning after Father’s death. But Mother had shed her widow’s weeds last month, and today she wore a violet gown. Not a dark violet dress as one might expect, but a brightly co
lored gown with a good deal of ornamentation and frills.
“Do you wish to look it over and see if I’ve missed anyone before I send the invitations out?” She handed him the paper and regally sat in the high-backed chair facing his desk.
As Julien read the list, his anger rose. When Mother had told him she wished to resume the family’s annual Christmas house party, he’d thought it would be for the old fogies she’d invited in previous years, but this list seemed to include every debutante from Cornwall to Northumberland, and a few from Scotland as well. The excessive number of eligible chits was surely part of some scheme.
He pinned her with a hard stare. “Are you planning a party or scheming against my bachelor status?”
“Dearest, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His mother flashed a feigned look of innocence, but the pink that flooded her cheeks indicated she knew exactly what he referred to.
He gave a grunt of disbelief. “Are you sure there isn’t someone you’ve missed? I’m positive there are debutantes in America you’ve omitted.”
Oblivious to his sarcasm, she wrinkled her nose at the mention of Americans, yet she tapped her left index finger against her chin.
“Mother?” Julien released a frustrated breath.
“Don’t rush me, dear, I’m thinking.”
“And why are there no men on this list?”
“I haven’t added them yet.”
“Well, I might need to travel to one of my other estates during the week of your house party.”
She bounced up from the chair as if catapulted by a spring mechanism. “During Christmas? Why? Which one?”
“Any one that doesn’t involve being surrounded by debutantes.” He crumpled the paper and tossed it into the rubbish pail.
“What are you doing?” She retrieved it, placed it on the corner of his desk, and feverishly smoothed out the wrinkles.
“Make another list. That one is unacceptable.”
“Julien, you must marry. Your father has been gone for over a year. You have a responsibility to the earldom. What if something were to happen to you? Your horrid second cousin Herbert would be the new earl.”
“Mother, I’m twenty-eight and in fine health, so any talk of my demise is premature.”
“I thought your father hale and look what happened to him. An apoplexy right in the middle of bedding his mistress. It was only fitting the scoundrel should drop dead, but still, life can be unpredictable.”
He didn’t know what to say to that. He’d always thought his parents’ marriage a good one. A faithful one. Until he’d been called to Lady Markum’s residence and found the woman hysterical and his father dead in the viscountess’s bed.
Julien strode around the desk and embraced her. It was a good thing Mother didn’t know the whole truth. That Father had not been alone with his mistress—that one of Lady Markum’s maids had joined them.
Julien had loved his father. Everyone had. The man had laughed a great deal and wore a perpetual smile, which now seemed understandable. Father had enjoyed life—perhaps a bit too much.
Mother pulled back and stared at him with tear-filled eyes. “What happened to your father could very well happen to you. You run with a fast crowd. You are no saint. Drinking, gambling, cavorting with unsavory members of the demimonde. The gossip sheets are always posting about the Naughty Earl and I know who they mean.”
“How do you know that’s me? I always thought it was the Earl of Granger.”
“Oh, pish. The man is eighty-seven years old.”
Mother was correct. At one time, he’d run with a fast crowd. Though lately, he spent most of his time trying to oversee the earldom’s vast holdings, along with avoiding his mother’s machinations. Plus, being a hellion wasn’t as fun now that three of his closest friends had settled down. Westfield, Adler, and Huntington were now all leg-shackled.
“I have lived at Dartmore House since I was nineteen,” Mother continued, breaking into Julien’s thoughts. “Since I married your father. If you die, I’ll have to leave, as will your three sisters.”
“I do hate how my death would inconvenience you.” He smiled at her.
“I see no humor in this.”
“Frankly, I don’t find the idea of my impending death a laughing matter either.”
“Your father has stripped me of my pride, and now I fear your avoidance in finding a suitable wife will strip your sisters and me of our country home.”
Damnation. He wanted to make his mother happy, but marriage…He’d only thought himself in love once. A long time ago.
“Are you worried about what is whispered about your secretaries’ deaths? You are an earl. Most women don’t give a fig that they are dropping like flies. It would be a different story if you’d lost two wives in the last year.”
Good Lord. Did his own mother think he was disposing of his secretaries? “Mother, I had nothing to do with their deaths.”
“Of course, you didn’t. Though Mr. Hobbs worked for your father for twenty long years without even a cold.” As if bored with the subject, she waved a hand in the air. “I don’t understand why you won’t marry.”
“I didn’t say I never intended on marrying.”
She pounced on that morsel like a starved cat a fishbone. “You’ll attend the house party?”
“Yes, but only if you agree to no matchmaking.”
“Of course.” A smile spread across her face.
If he believed his mother wouldn’t try to push some woman at him, he was a bigger fool than she obviously thought.
* * * *
A month later
Near Dartmore, Hertfordshire
“Insufferable, scoundrel man!” Evangeline Breckenridge sat at her desk in her cottage and removed a crisp sheaf of parchment from the paper tray.
Dear Lord High and Mighty. Too nice. Dear Lord Pea-brain. Still too cordial. Ah, Dear Lord Jack-a-ninny Pea-brain. Redundant, but perfect.
“Mama, what’s a Jack-a…Jack-a-ninny?” Mary asked.
Evangeline felt her cheeks flush as she looked down at her five-year-old daughter sitting on the floor playing with her ragdoll.
“It’s a—”
“Tall man,” her dearest friend, Penny Marlborough, said as she entered the parlor.
Seeming content with Penny’s definition, Mary nodded and continued pretending to feed porridge to her doll.
“I don’t have to ask who you are talking about. What did he do now?”
“Lord Scrooge closed the lake on the edge of his property to skaters. Several of his henchmen made all the children get off the ice. He’s not even in residence yet, and it’s a holiday tradition. The old earl always allowed the denizens of Dartmore to skate on the lake during the first two weeks of December and on Boxing Day. He’d have members of his staff hand out gingerbread and spiced cider to the townspeople. His father might have been a scoundrel, but the current Earl of Dartmore has no heart at all.”
“Perhaps he is worried someone might fall through the ice.”
“Fiddlesticks. It’s as thick as a mattress. Did you forget last spring he didn’t allow the townspeople to fish there either? His father permitted that for one week in April, and then again in June. The man put a stop to that, as well. What was he worried about then? That they might get eaten by a water beast? And Mrs. McGilley told me that another one of the man’s secretaries died. That is the second one in a year, and another only lasted a few days before resigning. I’m not sure what he does to them, but the man is a cold-hearted tyrant.”
“If I remember correctly, at one time you cared deeply for that tyrant.”
Heat traveled up Eve’s neck to warm her cheeks. “Yes, but that was ten years ago. What does a girl of seventeen know?”
Penny leaned close and whispered, “I also know he gave you your first kisses.”
Yes, and they had been very nice kisses. But it had meant nothing to him, whereas she’d thought herself in love. They were of a different class, and his actions ten years ago had shown her that he would not defy the unwritten rule that stated a future earl didn’t marry the daughter of a physician.
Mama had told her not to get her hopes up. Papa had said nothing but smiled and winked. He’d believed Julien truly loved her, and Papa, being a sentimental man, thought love triumphed all. She doubted Julien’s parents had ever known that their son had spent long hours at her parents’ small cottage. Noblemen did not rub elbows with people of her status, but she had hoped that one day he would ask for her hand. How foolish she’d been.
“If I recall, you said your toes curled, and your stomach fluttered madly when he kissed you.”
“I don’t remember saying that. I recall it was wet and sloppy.”
“My dearest friend, that’s because you also admitted he used his tongue,” Penny said in a low voice.
Evangeline was positive if she looked in the mirror her cheeks would be crimson. “I didn’t realize I was such a chatterbox in my youth.”
Penny laughed. “You thought yourself in love. You giggled for weeks straight. And before he went away to university, he picked you several bouquets of wildflowers.”
Yes, but then he’d left and promised to write her and never did. Eve tried to shove away the memory of how silly she’d acted after he’d gone to school. How she’d checked the post for three months straight. Then Papa had caught pneumonia and died, and she and Mama had moved away to live with Aunt Hortense in Kent. Eve had only returned to Hertfordshire a year ago after she’d inherited this cottage from Uncle Harry.
“Kissing with one’s tongue? Yuck,” Mary said.
Goodness gracious. Eve’s attention jerked to her daughter. Had Mary been listening to their whispers the whole time?
Mary peered at her. “Is the earl a lizard, Mama? Does he have a long tongue like Mr. Shingles?”
Penny laughed and covered her mouth.
Mr. Shingles had been Uncle Harry’s pet lizard. Uncle had been a herpetologist. When he’d died, he’d not only left her his home, but Mr. Shingles and his books on amphibians and reptiles. “No, dear. He’s just a man.”
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