The Redemption of a Dissolute Earl
Julie Johnstone
Smashwords Edition
Cover Design by Heather Boyd
Copyright © 2013 Julie Johnstone
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without written permission.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
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Table of Contents
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
About the Author
Coming Soon
World of Johnstone Teaser
For my dear friend Ava Stone without whom I would have never imagined the possibilities. Thank you.
~ Julie
Andrew Whitton, Earl of Hardwick, had to escape.
But he was finding it bloody hard to escape himself.
He’d given it his best, mind you. He had the recurrent hangover to prove it. Yet no matter how much he drank, or how far away from his family he hid, his blasted memories stayed with him.
As if haunting memories weren’t enough to make a gent depressed, Drew had, over the course of his year in France, come to understand some choices he had made were irreversible. He bloody well wished someone would have told him that little fact before he’d made such colossally bad choices. Enlightenment, after the fact, was not nearly as great as the Frenchies tried to make him believe.
It had taken Drew awhile, but he had finally stumbled upon something he was a smashing success at. He was a master at ignoring the past, so the fact that he was now being asked to face it infuriated him.
He’d assumed he had imagined every ploy his family might try to bring him back into the fold, and he had felt secure in the knowledge that he had come up with a sound counterattack for each of the tricks they might resort to. When countless letters had arrived from his sisters, he had summarily thrown them into the fire. Who knew what sort of erstwhile entreaties lay inside them? He certainly didn’t, since he’d never opened a single one.
If he had, he held no doubt he would have felt badly when he read how his disappearance had hurt both his sisters and mother. A worse thought than feminine disappointment, though, was the idea of having to read news of his father, a man Drew hated almost as much as he hated himself. Almost. But not quite. The Marquess of Norland had been the catalyst that propelled Drew towards a bleak future—but if he was going to pretend for a moment to be a man, he had to admit his own cowardice had sealed his fate. A sorry fate, indeed.
He had everything he had thought he could not live without—money, a title, the promise of a greater title when Norland finally croaked—but Drew couldn’t care less. He wasn’t happy. He was less than happy. In fact, he was bloody well unhappy, but he couldn’t for the life of him figure out how to change the picture he had painted with his own brush of stupidity.
To make matters worse, he was now being forced back home to Danby Castle in order to secure the inheritance he had given up everything for. An inheritance he was sure he no longer gave a flying leap about.
He glared at the shabby boat before him and then at Nicholas Beckford, Lord Edgeworth, his one-time favorite cousin now turned traitorous errand boy. Edgeworth couldn’t really expect him to risk his life by crossing the Channel back to England in that contraption, could he?
“That crotchety old goat,” Drew muttered. He couldn’t believe his grandfather had sent this sorry excuse for a boat to carry him back to England. Drew eyed the tiny vessel with peeling paint and cracked boards. “As much money as the old man has, and he expects me to risk life and limb in this?”
Edgeworth shot Drew a disapproving look. “You shouldn’t speak of Grandfather that way.”
Drew motioned to the boat. “You do see that floating coffin, don’t you?”
“I see it,” Edgeworth said. “Might I remind you, I’ve already ridden in it once.”
“Entirely your problem,” Drew snapped, wishing he had thought to put a flask of whiskey in his pocket. Char’s raven-haired image was flickering in his head―a sure warning he was entirely too sober. “I’m not getting in that death trap.”
The captain of the boat, a wiry old man with weathered, sun-beaten skin that reminded Drew of his favorite broken-in saddle, snorted. “Simpering dandy,” the man hissed under his breath then spit into the water.
“I heard that, you miserable, craggy-faced lout,” Drew returned.
“That’s the spirit,” the captain said with a chortle. “I’ll be waiting aboard for the two of you. Five minutes. No more.” The captain climbed aboard the ship and disappeared below.
“Let’s go,” Edgeworth said, putting one booted foot onto the edge of the rocking boat.
Drew’s stomach turned over with each dip and creak of the vessel. “I don’t think I can,” he said, unwilling to admit that the thought of riding in the boat made him feel ill.
Edgeworth took their grandfather’s summons from his pocket and waved it in the air. “Need I remind you?”
“What do you think?” Drew grumbled. “I’m standing here freezing my bollocks off, aren’t I?”
“Just being here will not help you keep your inheritance, Hardwick. You’ve actually got to go home to Danby Castle as Grandfather demands, unless you want to be penniless.”
Drew wasn’t sure he cared if he was penniless or not. That was the problem. He pulled his overcoat tighter about him to ward off the frigid December air as he listened to the water lapping against the boat. Each splash reminded him his time to make a decision was running out.
“Did I mention that if you don’t return by December twenty-fourth, you will be impoverished?” Edgeworth shoved the crumpled summons under Drew’s nose. “As in cut off without a bucket to piss your whiskey-soaked urine into.”
That last part got Drew’s attention and made him shudder. How was he to buy whiskey to forget who he was and what he had done if he didn’t have two coins to rub together?
“Let’s go,” he said, jumping aboard and going below to the dark, damp cabin. He strode towards one of the narrow cots bolted to the wall, laid down, and closed his eyes. He had a few hours before he would be back on English soil, then a two-day ride at best before he would be standing on the hallowed grounds of Danby Castle. After that, it might take five to ten minutes, depending on who he ran into, before he would be in his bedroom where he had taken Char’s innocence.
Char.
Charlotte.
He clenched his teeth on the desire to call out her name.
It was probably good she had disappeared from Danby Castle and into thin air. He might have done something stupid if she had stayed, and he’d been forced to see her degraded by his fat
her. Drew had no doubt his father would have taken every opportunity to remind Charlotte and Drew she was nothing more than a servant’s poor daughter.
Fresh anger, as if his father’s order for Drew to break his impetuous offer of marriage to Char had happened minutes ago, rolled though him. He curled his fingers into the cot, gripping and releasing the sheet. The boat rolled, and he broke out into a profuse sweat.
Yes, it was a damn good thing she’d gone. He might have done something chivalrous. He might have actually become a decent man and not the rotter he was. But he would never know for sure, and Char, no doubt, had left Danby Castle and never thought of him again.
Charlotte Milne had ghosts in her head.
Two, to be precise.
One, the ghost of the foolish girl she had been, blessedly only made a flickering appearance every now and then. Each time Charlotte took the stage at the Sans Pareil Theatre to the thundering applause of the simpering lords and ladies of the ton, that ghost faded a bit more.
Banishment of the blithering fool she had been was also helped when, post performance, the ton came clamoring for Charlotte’s attention. She was not above the need to be admired and wanted. She had earned that small bit of vanity the day she had picked up the millions of jagged pieces of her broken heart that Drew had left on his bedroom floor.
Charlotte gritted her teeth and shook the thought of Drew away. His ghost was much harder to banish from her thoughts. She dabbed a bit of rouge on her cheeks. A bit more red? Hmm… Yes. She applied some more and smiled at the way the color made the hollow of her cheeks more pronounced, more exotic.
The lords wanted to bed exotic Charlotte, and the ladies wanted to get close enough to her to assure themselves they were more beautiful than a mere actress, a commoner, a woman who—horror upon horrors—traced her bloodline to a scullery maid and a butler, even if he was the stiff and proper butler of the Duke of Danby.
Charlotte didn’t mind the way those who thought they were better than she was swarmed around her. It actually amused her. Thinking on it now, her mouth pulled into a cynical smile. Each time she turned down a pompous lord’s invitation to become his mistress or witnessed the flash of realization in a condescending lady’s eyes that her perfect pedigree did not make her more beautiful than Charlotte, she felt a bit of vindication. Vindication for the way she’d been treated as an inferior all her life, simply because she had not had the fortune to be highborn.
The problem was the moment fled quickly and always left a sour taste in her mouth. And Drew’s pesky ghost, who insisted on roaming rampantly through her head, always appeared with a whisper—no matter how far you rise, no matter how much you attain, you will never be good enough.
Charlotte snatched the brush off her vanity and raked it roughly through her long hair. She had assumed she would never despise anyone more than Drew, but she had been wrong. She hated his ghost―his mocking memory―more. She could not seem to banish the fiend from her mind.
But she had a plan—a carefully constructed cold-blooded plot to wipe Lord Andrew Whitton, Earl of Hardwick, from her head for good. She wasn’t foolish enough to think she would ever love any man the way she had loved Drew. After all, she had given him her whole heart. She frowned at her reflection in the looking glass. Damn Drew. He had taken something from her she could never get back. He had taken her ability to trust. And without that, she had decided the next best things to love were security, status, and revenge.
She would get all three very shortly. A knock came at her dressing room door, and Charlotte stood on shaking legs to let the Marquess of Salisbury enter. He was a wicked reprobate of a man, but he wanted to own her, and he was willing to pay any price. The price, she had decided, after months of carefully avoiding his advances, was marriage. He cared naught for Society and loved nothing more than flaunting his disdain for his ilk in their faces. He was using her, but she was using him too―a match made in heaven, or at least the ton.
Salisbury wanted to marry her to prove, once and for all, he could do as he pleased. She would marry him to prove to Drew and his family that they had been wrong about her. She was worthy of a lord’s love.
Charlotte opened the door, her stomach tensing as Salisbury breezed into the room, resplendent in navy blue formal dress. He was a beautiful man, with his russet locks and piercing green eyes, and she should be ecstatic he wanted her. Instead, a mild queasiness filled her.
“Lottie.” He closed the door behind him and drew her into his arms. She forced herself not to turn her head to the side when he pressed his lips to hers. A small, irrepressible shudder ran through her body. “You’re nervous?” he asked, stroking a hand over her hair.
She nodded.
“But it’s not your first time?”
But it was her first time with a man she didn’t love. Drew had been her first, her only. Lying with him, his exquisite, feather-light fingers moving down her chest, over her stomach, between her—she squeezed her eyes shut.
“Lottie, come sit,” Salisbury said, taking her hand and leading her to the settee. She followed him and sat while making an effort to compose herself.
“I’ve something for you, dear heart.”
“Thank you, Salisbury,” she said reaching for the glittering diamond ring he held between his index finger and thumb. She fought the tide of disappointment that wailed within her. She had imagined this moment a thousand times, but it had always been Drew sitting on the other side, and their future had been bright with the promise of love. Foolish, stupid girl. That sort of love only existed in the fairy tales her mother had read to her as a child.
“You’ve kept your part of our bargain perfectly,” she murmured. She reached for the tie of her dressing robe, but her shaking hands made undoing the knot impossible. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, willing herself to go through with her plan. She wanted to lay with Salisbury. She wanted to replace the memory of Drew with another man―the man who would be her husband. Why did her heart beat so hard it echoed through her entire body and set her teeth to chattering? She clenched down against the noise.
Salisbury’s hands settled over her fumbling fingers. “Your skin is like ice.”
She smiled faintly. What a ninny she was being. “The room’s cold.”
He shook his head. “It’s hot, if you ask me.”
Yes, well, she hadn’t asked. Just like a man to give an answer a woman didn’t want. Charlotte shrugged. “Nerves, I suppose.”
Salisbury gently cupped her face. “You will forget whoever he was.”
Charlotte wasn’t sure if that was a command or a promise. Either way, she needed to nod. “Perhaps.” She forced a rehearsed smile. Being an actress had benefits. “We should begin. There’s not much time before they’ll call me to stage.”
“Hurry up,” Drew snapped at his cousin while pushing through the crowd of people making their way into the Sans Peril.
“Drew, wait a bloody minute, man,” Edgeworth’s muffled growl came from behind Drew.
Drew would have ignored Edgeworth’s annoying plea and kept going until he found Char, but Edgeworth had hold of the sleeve of Drew’s coat. And Drew had to admit he was a bit curious as to why his cousin sounded so winded. Drew turned to face Edgeworth and pointedly eyed his sleeve. “Do you mind?”
Edgeworth squinted at Drew from his doubled-over position. His hand dropped from Drew’s arm. “I don’t understand how a bloke who spent the last year drinking himself into a drunken haze, and who―I might add―drank the entire time it took us to cross the Channel from France to England, can have so much energy as to run all the way from the Bright Star Inn to the theatre.” Edgeworth stood to face Drew, his face twisted in a grimace.
“Love.” Drew said simply.
Edgeworth took out his handkerchief, wiped his damp forehead, stuffed the white linen back into this pocket and frowned fiercely at Drew. “I never want to be in love.”
Drew could not stop the bark of laughter that escaped him. By damned he felt happy
. He had not experienced the emotion in an entire year, yet the minute he had overheard the two gentleman at the bar Bright Star Inn discussing the fact that they were going to the theatre simply to stare at the beautiful actress Charlotte Milne, Drew had been ecstatic. No euphoric. To find out Char was here in London, only six streets over from where he was sitting having a mug of ale and dinner had been like someone had handed him a second chance at life.
“You don’t want to be in love because you dislike running?”
“Indeed I do,” Edgeworth snapped. “Running through the street is undignified. Not to mention you forced me to abandon a perfectly good dinner and a full mug of ale. I’ve a stitch in my side.”
Drew smiled indulgently at his cousin. The man was one of the fittest Drew knew. This was not about being undignified or abandoning a passable meal. Edgeworth was mad because he had been forced to follow like a puppy. And Edgeworth had never liked following anything or anyone. “By all means catch your breath. I’m going to find Char.” Before Edgeworth could agree or disagree, Drew darted around a group of men shoving by them and hurried toward the stairs where he suspected the actresses’ dressing rooms would be. As he raced up the stairs he allowed himself to imagine Char once again in his arms.
Salisbury studied Charlotte for a moment, his eyes softening. “I’ve been thinking we should wait to consummate our relationship until we are properly wed.”
“Oh, yes,” Charlotte blurted, feeling as if the hounds of hell had just been called off her heels. “That’s a sound idea.”
Salisbury offered a cynical smile. “Your enthusiasm for the delay wounds my inflated pride.”
Charlotte’s heart dropped to her bare feet. What to say? She scrambled for the right words, but a loud knocking and the harsh, clipped shout of, “Curtain’s going up in five,” saved her from having to respond.
“That’s my cue,” she said, rushing to put on her slippers and her costume. “We’ll talk later?”
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