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  Redeeming a Rake

  Copyright 2008 Cari Hislop

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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  Books by Cari Hislop can be read online at the author’s official website:

  regencyromancenovels.com

  or can be downloaded for reading on your choice of eBook reader from

  smashwords.com

  Other books in the Regency World of Cari Hislop include:

  Lucky in Love

  A Companion for Life

  The Hired Wife

  The Invisible Husband

  Taming the Shrew

  Redeeming a Rake

  An Unlikely Hero

  Introducing Smirke

  Redeeming a Rake

  Chapter 1

  August 1815

  Vacant pale blue eyes shrouded by long strands of greasy black hair stared out of flesh the colour of soured milk at the flickering flames in the grate. Geoffrey Lindsey Grayson, the thirteenth Duke of Lyndhurst, sat enthroned in a shabby wingback chair in a small room at the front of a narrow medieval house in a forgotten corner of London where a few timbered buildings had survived the Great Fire of 1666. The parlour, a dark dingy room, stank of its single occupant who’d become so accustomed to the stench of his unwashed linen he could no longer smell it. At the age of thirty-seven, after seventeen years of debauchery, Geoffrey had become one of the living dead. The ruthless seething rage that had propelled him from one physical pleasure to the next had been snuffed out. Nothing aroused him. Nothing brought him pleasure. His favourite dishes were like infants’ pap, tasteless. Out of sheer indifference he would have deprived his body of all sustenance until his heart stopped beating, but twice a day his servants would put a tray of food in front of him and sing sickly love ballads off-key until he finished eating. They were retaining their positions by keeping the Devil’s Corpse alive. Being alive, however, was no consolation for the man who finally felt as dead as he looked.

  Resting a gaunt cheek against one propped up hand, Geoffrey ignored his aching back and nether regions as his thoughts drifted like mental storm clouds over a sea of glass. How long had he been sitting there? It seemed pointless to count the months. Nobody cared if he was alive or dead as long as their bills were paid. No one had written. No one had called. His lips curled into a faint sneer as he consoled himself with the fact there was no frigid thirteenth Duchess or miserable offspring to ruin his life, but then the odds of having legitimate offspring weren’t in his favour. A man who had difficulty convincing hungry prostitutes to share his bed was unlikely to find a worthy lady willing to take on the frequent conjugal duties of a wife. He’d committed the ton’s one unpardonable sin, he’d become visually unpalatable marriage material.

  He’d be buried a friendless corpse. No one would miss him. Not a single tear would be shed. The thought almost pierced the nothingness. His secret longing to be loved had been ravished along the road to depravity. The possibility of happiness was little more than a haunting memory of large trusting eyes and the smile of an angel. How old would she be he wondered… twenty-three? He’d lost count of the years. The half starved girl was probably dead. The thought of her living sunlight entombed in the earth tore through the nothingness making his heart sink as he shifted in his chair trying to prolong the sensation. He could have learnt her parent’s names. He could have purchased her freedom. Child brides had gone out of fashion, but weren’t unheard of. He would have sent her to live with his mother and wooed the girl from a distance with letters and gifts until he owned her heart. She would have married him over an anvil at sixteen and filled his darkness with innocent sunlight. Seeing that smile every day would have given him a reason to be kind, a reason to live.

  One more dream swept up with the dust and thrown away with the ashes. It was too late, lost dreams didn’t matter when one couldn’t feel disappointed. He could see no escape from the darkness wrapped around him like an endless winter. It would choke the dregs of goodness from his heart until the beating organ turned to stone. His unhappy thoughts were disturbed as the parlour door creaked open.

  “Post, Your Grace.” Geoffrey listened to his aging butler shuffle across to his chair. Geoffrey’s pale blue eyes flickered towards the silver tray held in wrinkled hands, but the gleam of interest died as he noted the solitary ‘Lyndhurst’ scrawled across the folded piece of paper. His first impulse was to fling it unread into the fire, but the possibility of feeling angry was too tempting. Reaching out a pale hand, he picked it up and broke the wax seal with his overgrown thumbnail. The thick expensive paper crackled open, smooth and cold to the touch.

  “Oh what unspeakable joy…” His voice was flat, the nothingness suffocating his sarcasm. “The Duchess is holding another infernal ball this evening at my expense and demands that I come do my duty and find a wife before I die of some unmentionable disease.” Normally being summoned to attend one of his mother’s social events made him foam at the mouth in rage, but with the nothing pressing down he couldn’t care. Half crumpling the paper, Geoffrey tossed it towards the fire, but it fell short on the hearth.

  “It might be diverting Your Grace.”

  “Diverting from what Howard, death?”

  “Death is highly overrated my Lord. You may be fated to meet a diverting female.”

  Pale blue eyes that almost looked exasperated rolled towards the butler’s face. “Are you trying to make me laugh? My reflection gives me nightmares. Who would I meet?”

  “A blind woman who longs to marry a wealthy rake-hell?”

  “I might also meet an angel who thinks I’m beautiful. What are the odds?”

  “A trifle long Your Grace, but you might enjoy the music. Your mother always hires the best musicians…”

  “And then sends me the bill.”

  “If you were to attend you would at least get something for your money.”

  “Yes, indigestion.”

  “Your appearance would irritate a certain member of your family.”

  “True, my sister hates it when I blight her fantasy that she only has one brother.”

  “You might find it diverting to insist she introduce you to all her friends.”

  “I could loudly ask Sophia for a dance. My beautiful sister would be forced to dance with the hideous Devil’s Corpse. Geoffrey’s lips curled back from his teeth. “I could ask her for three dances. People would think I was in love with my own sister. She’d have nightmares for months…”

  “And the Duchess would be livid.”

  “The hateful cow might even have to look at me for ten seconds and remember she gave birth to me. That would increase her misery. What the hell, I might as well go as sit here and die.”

  The Butler exhaled a loud sigh of relief. At last the maid could clean the small parlour and remove the chair which smelled as bad as its occupant. “I shall order a hip bath Your Grace.”

  “Soap and water aren’t going to make me less hideous Howard.”

  “No Your Grace, but they will make you smell more pleasant.” Geoffrey gave his Butler a long vacant stare. With the nothing pressing down on his brain Geoffrey couldn’t care that his servants had become impertinent.

  “If I must.”

  Chapter 2

  Twenty-four pink marble pillars were spaced around the perimeter of the
ballroom, supporting a ceiling carved into geometrical patterns painted pink, black and white. The Palladian splendour was a neoclassical relic of the eleventh Duke of Lyndhurst and his obsession with spending his wife’s money on refurbishing his townhouse into a palace. With the musicians returning from a break, the eight hundred guests were gathered into small groups that organically trailed out the two side doors into other rooms, leaving the main entrance and the center of the room nearly empty.

  Near the front of the room, the Widow Spencer was surrounded by laughing people feeling dizzy with freedom and the pleasure of being a part of such a large crowd. The formal year of mourning her husband, to preserve the proprieties, was over. Charles Spencer, an aging rake-hell, had nearly suffocated her with his possessive jealousy and cruel intimacy. With a baby son and full control of a healthy estate there was no imminent need to become another man’s property, but even as she dismissed the thought of remarriage she scanned the room wondering if one of the men could be her childhood hero. It was a silly habit that always brought her pleasure. She knew she’d never find him; there was no way she’d know him. Her hero had been a kind faceless shadow in a wingback chair turned away from the direct heat of a large winter fire. She shouldn’t have gone into the private parlour, but she thought it was empty until she’d turned away from the fire to see an elegant hand adorned with a large ruby protruding from a pale blue velvet sleeve resting on the arm of the chair.

  Her Knight in pale blue velvet was most likely married with children or dead. The thought made her eyes water. Just because she’d prayed every day since that fateful evening that she’d one day find the mystery man to thank him for his kindness, didn’t mean she’d ever learn his identity or that he’d desire her friendship. She gently coaxed the dream back into its special corner of her heart and smiled at the rainbow of silk dresses weaving through the maze of prominently black and white clothed gentlemen many who bowed on catching her eye. Every smiling man made her want to twirl in joyous circles; she was no longer chained to a miserable husband who’d beat her for accidentally smiling in the direction of another man. She let out a deep sigh of relief; Charles Spencer’s one kind act had been to fall off his horse while hunting and break his neck.

  She was looking for her next partner when the tuning orchestra screeched off-key into silence and a hush rolled over the ballroom. Following the gaze of the other guests, Mrs Spencer turned towards the open double doors, her skin tingling with inexplicable excitement. A tall thin man dressed in pale blue silk stared back at the silent crowd through a ruby encrusted monocle hanging from a pale blue ribbon around his neck. There was only one reason the servants would have allowed the terrifying man into the house, he could only be the never mentioned Duke of Lyndhurst. Dark purple bruises encircled hollow eyes in a face like sun bleached parchment that accentuated blood red lips. His slender frame wasted away to skeletal proportions, his clothes hung loose as if they belonged to another man. Even pale blue silk stockings draped from his knee caps. Long black hair pulled tight off his face was plaited and wrapped in an old fashioned pale blue queue. He looked like a parody, a living character from one of Rowlandson’s prints mocking the over bred aristocracy.

  ***

  Sneering at the dumbstruck crowd with serene contempt, Geoffrey’s roving gaze settled on a skirt of pale blue that could have been cut from the same bolt of cloth as his own coat and breeches. His cynical thoughts swept up over generous curves, flawless porcelain skin, and… He didn’t have time to note the woman’s plain features. Meeting benevolent excited eyes, he blinked and in that eternal moment he was pleasantly stunned until a sharp stab of pain hammered through his forehead into the back of his skull. Wincing, he missed a corresponding look of astonishment on the woman’s face. As the sensation faded he held his head high and stepped into the room. The shroud of nothingness ripped open, he could feel blood pumping through his veins as he impulsively moved toward the young woman, but the crowd closed around her forcing him to retreat to the other side of the room. Frustration squeezed into his heart like sweet drops of rain ending a drought. For the first time in six months he could feel something.

  Leaning against one of the pink marble pillars, he studied the plain debutante through his eyeglass. White blonde hair, coiled on top of her head was plaited with pale blue ribbons and held in place with ruby encrusted combs. His heart pumped heated blood through his body; who was this woman wearing his colours? Had no one thought to tell her they declared her attached to a devil? She seemed strangely familiar, but with his cursed excellent memory he would have remembered her. Irritation joined frustration as the milling crowd screened her from view every few seconds. Clenching tongue between his teeth he resisted the mad impulse to order people to get out of the way. Misery pressed down on his lungs making it hard to breathe until she glanced in his direction. Once again able to breathe, his heart pumped boiling blood through his cold limbs urging him to push his way to her side and rudely introduce himself. Dropping his eyeglass, he folded his arms and forcibly leant back against the pillar. He knew what would happen; she’d be horrified by his presumption and his person and he’d hate himself for revealing a weakness. She was probably a silly short-sighted debutante excited to see the infamous Duke and hadn’t yet been advised not to wear his colours. She probably couldn’t see he was hideous. It seemed wise to leave it that way.

  ***

  Mrs Spencer felt dazed as her eyes continuously swivelled to find a large patch of pale blue. Every time she locked eyes with the cadaverous rake-hell a thousand butterflies took flight in her stomach. Her feet threatened to carry her against her will to his side, but she couldn’t speak to the man. The only person who might be persuaded to perform the obligatory introduction was the man’s mother, but she was lost in the crowd. With depravity etched into his face, the man looked as if hell had signed a purchase order for his soul. If only half the rumours being whispered past her ears were true, the Duke of Lyndhurst was a devil. Her racing heart insisted he wasn’t beyond redemption, but she’d been wrong before.

  Seeing him start towards her made the room spin. She held her breath feeling faint with inexplicable delight, but he was forced to turn aside and swagger to the other side of the room. A crushing disappointment helped her retain a semblance of calm. When her eyes weren’t searching for his gaze, the man remained a constant pale blue spot in the corner of her eyes leaning against a pillar, shunned by his own guests. It took every ounce of strength to keep her feet from dancing across the room to join the solitary figure. She smiled at her companions, but most of their titillating gossip on their ugly host were garbled noise. Clenching her fan she gently rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet as she mentally scolded herself. There was no point wishing she could speak to the man, even if she could find the Duchess the good lady would be horrified by a request to meet her son. Only a social climber desperate to be a duchess would want to meet the man, but her feet were oblivious to either polite niceties or the promise of the tons’ contempt. If she could last the ball without making a fool of herself she’d never see the man again. He’d become a safe pleasurable memory; the thought turned the butterflies to stone. Rubbing her aching stomach, she resisted the compulsion to look at the pale blue spot until she was taking up her position for the next dance. Allowing her eyes their freedom, they turned in his direction to find herself ensnared by the man’s impertinent stare. Her face burned as she smiled like silly school girl meeting her first handsome soldier.

  Geoffrey snarled at nearby men wondering which lucky man had won the enchanting smile from the blushing virgin. Returning his eyes to the smiling woman he groaned in pleasure as he found her returning his stare; he was the lucky man. His lips twisted into a self-indulgent leer as a potent dose of desire sluiced through his veins. His leer faded as he wondered how he was going to meet her. What was her name? Where did she live? Would her father allow her to be pursued by a man society called The Devil’s Corpse if offered enough money? If he
could purchase an interview with the woman would he find he was wrong, that she’d been looking at someone behind him? He sighed in excruciating despair as he remembered who he was and what he looked like.

  Each time Mrs Spencer whirled past the man in pale blue she glanced in his direction to make sure he hadn’t left only to find him watching her. As the dance ended, she smiled at her dancing partner and allowed him to lead her off the floor, but refused his offer to fetch a glass of lemonade and pacified him with the information that she was going to the ladies withdrawing room. Like a marionette whose strings were controlled by an invisible puppet master, her feet carried her towards the lonely patch of pale blue. Whatever the cost, she had to speak with the ugly man or she’d cry herself to death and her son would end up an orphan.