Elizabeth Powell

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SIGNET REGENCY ROMANCE

The Reluctant Rogue

Elizabeth Powell

InterMix Books, New York

To Jean,
my everlasting thanks
for the red-wine-and-French-bread therapy,
the sanity-saving pep talks,
and for being the best friend
I could ever have.

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Epilogue

Special Excerpt

About the Author

London

Late May 1814

Over the past five years, Sebastian Carr, Viscount Langley, had come to the conclusion that there was no catastrophe so great that its impact could not be blunted with an excessive amount of brandy, and he was not about to let this morning’s disaster negate that theory. His lack of available libations, however, might prove to be a problem.

The viscount tried to focus on the meager amount of amber liquid remaining in the decanter on the sideboard. Devil take that Corsican upstart. If not for this damned inconvenient war, Sebastian would have had enough of the exquisite French nectar to keep himself happily oblivious for days. As it stood now, yes, he might be drunk, but not nearly drunk enough. He’d have to start in on the blue ruin after this; if he’d had any foresight at all, he would never have polished off the last of the claret two nights ago. Ah, well. Foxed was foxed, no matter how one got there. He reached for the bottle.

Light glinted mockingly off the cut crystal, flinging
rainbows of pain into his tortured eyes. He winced, shielded his gaze, and squinted toward the window. Bloody hell! Had nature itself decided to conspire against him as well? What had begun as a fittingly gloomy day had somehow metamorphosed into a veritable ode to spring. A very bad ode, from the look of things, complete with brilliant sunshine, trilling birdsong, and flowers popping up everywhere. Egad, the only thing it lacked was a few frolicking nymphs. Come to think of it, nymphs would be a definite improvement. Sebastian grinned at the thought.

The gesture, however, quickly wilted beneath the sun’s dazzling onslaught. His eyes began to water. This would never do. He thought about ringing for Grafton, his long-suffering valet (come to think of it, he had never known a valet who
wasn’t
long-suffering, especially in his service), then remembered he’d sent the man out on a mission of vital importance. No matter. He could do this small task himself.

The viscount turned, and the room turned with him. Turned—and tilted at a rather alarming angle. He halted, swaying, palm pressed to his suddenly clammy forehead. Hmm. Perhaps he was more disguised than he thought; he seemed to move with all the grace of a pregnant rhinoceros. True, he did not have far to stumble in order to yank the draperies shut, but he did not trust the perfidious floor not to spin and deposit him on his backside. It certainly wouldn’t do to greet his guests from that rather inelegant position. Not that they hadn’t seen him that way many times before, of course, but according to the strict rules that governed Society, one could collapse in a sodden heap
after
they were gone, but not before. A pity, that, especially since he would be obliged to pay closer attention to those rules from now on. Sebastian swerved
back to the sideboard, then with unsteady hands managed to drain the contents of the decanter into his glass.

He stared into the depths of his drink for a moment, brought the glass to his lips … and hesitated. No, the voice was still there. He had not managed to drown it out, though not for lack of trying.

If only you were more like your brother…

The words ricocheted through his muzzy mind with all the subtlety of cannon fire. Very
loud
cannon fire. The deliverer of those words had never possessed anything resembling diplomacy or tact, much less sensitivity, and this latest utterance was true to form. As far back as the viscount could recall, the only time his father had deigned to speak to him at all was to deliver some form of scathing criticism—with the exception of the last five years, when the man seemed to have forgotten about his heir’s very existence. Not that Sebastian had minded, of course. For the first time in his life he had been free to live as he pleased, and he had made the most of it, if he dared say so himself. But that had all come to a crashing halt this morning when the earl had appeared, unannounced, on his doorstep.

If only you were more like your brother…

The words persisted, delivered in his father’s clipped, disdainful tones. More like his brother… Sebastian made a rude noise. He would never be anything like Alexander—or should that be Saint Alexander? Given the reverent manner in which his father pronounced the name, divinity was a distinct possibility.

He knew full well he would never attain Alex’s level of perfection. Not that he hadn’t tried, mind you. Tried and failed time and time again, until he had grown weary of making the effort. Alex had been and always would be the handsomer, the more intelligent, the more accomplished,
the more athletic, the more anything-you-could-possibly-name of the two. His father never missed an opportunity to remind Sebastian that he would stand forever in the shadow of his older brother, even when that brother was five years dead.

The corners of the viscount’s mouth twitched. Actually, he had come to this conclusion on his own years ago; it had been painfully obvious to his then ten-year-old self. The revelation had been liberating, for only then did he discover how much easier it was for him to be a scoundrel than a paragon. Why make the attempt when he could never be something he wasn’t? After all, one could not expect a leopard to change its spots, a fact that seemed to annoy his father to no end.

But Sebastian could not bring himself to say it. He had tried, wanting to fling the words at his father’s expressionless face, to provoke some response—any response—but one glance from the earl’s cold blue eyes and his tongue stuck fast to the roof of his mouth. He had stood in silence, face flaming, body tense, jaw clenched until he thought his teeth would shatter, while the earl pronounced sentence over him.

If only you were more like your brother…

Blast and damnation! Determined to silence the hateful voice, or at least muffle it into unintelligibility, the viscount tossed back a heady gulp, then coughed as the liquor blazed a fiery path down his throat.

A sudden burst of noise intruded on his maudlin musings, a combination of the violent creaking of unoiled hinges and a torrent of invective delivered in a patrician accent. Sebastian cocked an ear.

“I am not traveling one more step, you beastly little toad, until you tell me what the bloody hell is going on!”

The viscount chuckled. Nigel sounded rather out of sorts this morning.

“Calm yourself, my lord,” Grafton cajoled in a soft, soothing tone. “As I told you, Lord Langley will explain everything. This way, please.”

“Well, all I can say is that he had better have a deuced good explanation for rousing me out of bed at this ungodly hour,” groused Nigel.

“My dear fellow,” said a third man in amused tones, “to you, anything earlier than noon is an ungodly hour.”

“And it is now half past eleven,” Nigel huffed. “Barbaric, I tell you!”

Help had arrived. Good. If anyone could steer him in the right direction, they could. After all, what were friends for? With a lopsided grin, Sebastian propped himself against the sideboard and watched as two gentlemen made their way into his shabby, Lilliputian drawing room.

Lord Nigel Barrington shuffled in, appearing more like a figure from the commedia dell’arte than the younger brother of a duke. His straight, guinea-gold locks drooped over his forehead, and dark smudges shadowed the skin around his bloodshot blue eyes. His cravat, an intricate waterfall of pristine linen under normal circumstances, appeared as through he’d tied it in the dark. Wearing mittens. Sebastian tried to hide his widening smile; he knew the signs well. His friend was paying the price for the four—or was it five?—bottles of the questionable vintage he’d consumed at the gaming hell they had patronized last night. It was hoping too much, though, that an excess of spirits would improve the young man’s taste in dress; this morning’s combination of a mulberry jacket over a blue-and-lime-striped waistcoat
made Sebastian want to draw the shades over Nigel as well.