The Lure of a Rake (The Heart of a Duke #9)(3)

Chapter 1





London England,

Spring 1818

As Lady Genevieve Farendale stepped through the front doors of the lavish London townhouse, she wondered just exactly how parents decided going about ending an imposed exile on one’s daughter.

Was it a certain number of days or hours? Or was it something more arbitrary? As simple as waking up one day and realizing that there was, indeed, a fabric of the family missing that needed to be restored. Given their remarkable absence from her life all these years, she’d venture it certainly wasn’t the latter.

Whatever precipitated the reinstatement into one’s family, however it had come about, five years had been the amount of time. Five years of remaining in the country while her family spent the Seasons in London. Five years of no letters or words. And five years marked the end of her penance. Penance for an imagined crime.

“My lady?”

Genevieve blinked at the butler, Dunwithy. Time had left wrinkles at the corners of his rheumy eyes and upon his cheeks. And yet the spectacles perched on his slightly crooked nose were the same. Odd, a servant should be more a member of the household than the marquess’ oldest daughter. The man stared expectantly at her, startling her into movement.

Wordlessly, she shrugged out of her modest cloak and turned it over to his waiting hands. Other servants, unfamiliar, young footmen rushed forward to collect the trunks and valise. Of course, they would not have been in her father’s employ all those years ago. As such, they’d not remember the shame of that long ago day.

“May I show you to your chambers, my lady?” the butler offered.

With the servant’s question echoing through the soaring foyer done in Italian marble, she looked about. What had she expected? A warm, familial greeting from an abjectly broken mother and father who pleaded her forgiveness? An exuberant reunion from the younger sister, whom she’d not spoken to in years?

“My lady?” the butler urged again.

How long had she remained silent with no one but her ancient grandfather? He was now given to sleeping his days away and leaving her to her own thoughts for company. And so, she lifted her head and followed behind the butler. As she began the long walk to her once familiar rooms, one of the liveried footmen stole a sideways glance at her and then quickly looked away. A dull flush marred his cheeks.

Her lips twisted in a bitter, humorless smile. So they’d heard the whispers, too. What had they heard exactly? Tales of the shamelessly wanton lady who’d spread her legs for her betrothed and the gentleman’s friends? That had been a popular one bandied about. In fact, it had been the one that had found her standing alone at the altar with a collection of intimate guests looking on. Or mayhap it had been the rumor spread that she’d slept with her betrothed’s younger brother. That had caused quite the stir among the gossips…and even the non-gossips.

The thick carpets muffled the sound of her footfalls. As she walked, Genevieve passed her gaze over the familiar in some ways, altogether different in other aspects of her home. The gilt frames bearing the proud Farendale ancestors remained fixed in the very spots they’d always been. Those pompous bewigged lords stared down their long Roman noses. However, the wallpaper was different. Pale satin, that harkened to the country skies of Kent, and as much as she’d thought she despised her banishment and abhorred the country, she’d been wrong. So wrong. A hungering gripped her to go back to that remote estate where she could paint and write and sing and simply be—without any of the whispers and only the servants for company.

But alas, it was not to be. Because as time had proven once before, the dream of simplicity was all imagined. Proper betrothals; broken and shattered. The allure of anonymity, ended in one six-hour carriage ride.

“Here we are, my lady,” the butler murmured and opened the door.

Genevieve tugged off her gloves. She lingered in the doorway. “Thank you. That will be all,” she said dismissively, her voice hoarse from ill use.

Relief flared in the servant’s eyes. He backed away and rushed down the hall with a speed reserved for a man twenty years his junior. She hovered in the doorway. Passing her soft leather gloves into one hand, she brushed the other over the doorjamb.

Five years. It had been five years since she’d last stepped foot out of these chamber doors. One thousand, eight hundred and twenty-five days to be precise. Her throat worked and she damned the weakness that came rushing back from simply being in this godawful place. But she’d braved isolation from her family and Society. Endured cruel whispers and lewd offers. Given all that, stepping inside her bedchambers really was rather insignificant. Willing her legs into movement, Genevieve forced her feet over the threshold. Her breath caught and she looked around.

From the pale pink of the wallpaper to the floral Aubusson carpet, in this room, time stood still. She wandered over to the canopied bed and trailed her fingertips along the ivory coverlet. Why, even the upholsteries were the same. The only thing that had been missing from this nauseatingly cheerful room—had been the girl who’d slept within these walls. Setting her gloves on the rose-inlaid side table, she perched on the edge of the mattress and passed her gaze about. It collided with the only splash of green in this pink and white space.

Shoving to her feet, her legs carried her unbidden over to that rounded, porcelain perfume bottle. With numb fingers, she picked up the piece, a gift given long ago, and liquid sloshed around inside. She fixed on the bucolic couple painted within the center of the bottle; a loyal love knelt at the feet of his sweetheart—their happiness forever suspended in time. How singularly wrong that any piece of him should remain in this room when she’d been sent away. Genevieve tightened her grip about the fragile piece; her knuckles whitening.