The Lure of a Rake (The Heart of a Duke #9)(6)

Why, he thought her incapable of proper behavior? Despite his ill-opinion and her own flirtatious ways years earlier, Genevieve, in five years, had buried that spirited part of her soul. She had carefully crafted a reserved, proper figure in her stead. Then, her father would have had to speak to her through the years to know as much. “Am I permitted to take meals with the family? Or am I to be confined to my room, then?” There was, however, still the matter of her loose tongue.

The marquess pounded his fist hard the desk, rattling the crystal inkwells and she jumped. “By God, this is not a matter of jest,” he thundered. “You have forever marked this family. The least of what you can do is make this right, as much as you are able, for your sister.” And the fight was sucked out of her. “Is that understood?”

She sat there trembling; not unlike the same girl she’d been five years earlier. Do not be that girl. Not anymore. Except, for the pleasure Genevieve found in exerting herself over her father, she loved her sister more. “Abundantly, my lord,” she bit out. Her father would order her return to London, with neat plans to order her life and bind her forever to a gentleman. Given the oppressiveness she’d known at her own father’s hands, did he truly believe she’d marry one of his aged friends?

“You are dismissed.”

Genevieve came to her feet. The click-clack of her father’s pen indicated he’d returned his attentions to matters which were of import to him.

And just like that, she was dismissed once more.





Chapter 2





“By God, where is he?”

Lying on the leather button sofa of the library in his bachelor’s residence, Cedric Falcot, the Marquess of St. Albans, turned his head and looked to the entrance. A small grin hovered on his lips as he rescued the bottle of brandy from the foot of his seat. Turning on his side, he filled his empty snifter and then set the crystal decanter back on the floor.

“Y-Your Grace, His Lordship is otherwise busy.” The thick walls muffled the stammering of his inexplicably loyal butler. He really deserved an increase in wages.

“…busy.” The Duke of Ravenscourt’s snort penetrated the wood.

The door flew open, with such force it bounced off the back wall. His father stuck his leg out to keep it from slamming in his face. The Duke of Ravenscourt took in the jacket hung haphazardly over the back of the sofa, the nearly empty bottle, the full glass, and then he settled his icy blue stare on Cedric. “Get out.”

It spoke volumes to Avis’ foolish devotion that the hard, unyielding command of the duke did not send him immediately fleeing. Instead, he gulped, looking hopelessly to Cedric.

Taking mercy on the young servant, he swung his legs and settled them on the floor. “That will be all,” he assured the man.

Avis dropped a respectful bow and then backed quickly from the room but not before Cedric detected the flash of relief in his eyes. Yes, that was long the effect the ruthless Duke of Ravenscourt had on all. Reviled, feared, and hated by even his own children, there was not a sliver of warmth in the bastard’s hardened heart. Only, over the years, Cedric found that his father was just a man…a man with the same weaknesses and vices as him. That realization had broken down the myth of invincibility around the old duke.

“Father,” Cedric drawled. Taking a sip of his brandy, he shoved lazily to his feet. “To what do I owe the honor of—?”

“Shut your goddamn mouth, Cedric.” The duke shoved the door hard and it slammed closed with such force it rattled the doorjamb. He stalked over and skimmed his stare over the bottles littering the floor. “I don’t give a damn if you drink yourself to death—”

“How heartwarming,” Cedric murmured, touching a hand to his chest.

“—but not before you do right by the Falcot line.”

Ah, yes, because nothing had ever mattered more than that distinguished title that went back to the time of great conquerors. Not even the man’s children, certainly not his bastards, and never the long-dead wife who’d dutifully given him two legitimate issues before conveniently leaving the duke a young widower.

Cedric took a sip of his drink. “Isn’t it rather early in the day to have this conversation?”

His father snapped his blond eyebrows into a single line. “It is four o’clock in the goddamn afternoon.”

Cedric glanced over to the tightly-pulled curtains. “Is it?” God, how he’d delighted in taunting the old bastard. It was one of the true enjoyments he found in life.

In a not uncommon show of temper, the duke swiped his hand over the long table positioned at the back of the sofa. He sent the bottles and snifters tumbling to the floor in an explosion of glass. “I have been tolerant of your carousing and womanizing. I’ve indulged your excess wagering.” A vein throbbed at the corner of his eye. “But if you think you’ll shirk these responsibilities, I’ll see you cut off without a goddamn pence.”

He grinned wryly and propped his hip on the arm of the sofa. Ah, the cut-you-off-without-a-pence threat. Cedric made a tsking sound. “Come, Father, I’ve merely sought to live to your esteemed reputation. Everything I learned about being a future duke, I learned from you.” Placing his own desires and interests before all else, living for his own pleasures, drinking, wagering. All of it had been learned at the foot of this bastard. The most important lesson inadvertently handed down, however, was the selfishness in saddling oneself with a wife and children—either legitimate or illegitimate. And in that, Cedric would have the ultimate triumph over the driven duke.