A Nobleman's Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel, page 1
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Books. Change. Lives.
Copyright © 2023 by KJ Charles
Cover and internal design © 2023 by Sourcebooks
Cover art © Jyotirmayee Patra
Internal design by Laura Boren/Sourcebooks
Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
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Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks
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CONTENTS
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Epilogue
Excerpt from The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Back Cover
This one’s for Courtney Miller-Callihan, best of agents.
One
THE ISLE OF OXNEY, ROMNEY MARSH
APRIL 1823
Rufus d’Aumesty, nineteenth Earl of Oxney, twenty-second Baron Stone, and inheritor of the ancient and unbroken d’Aumesty lineage, glared at his uncle Conrad and said, “Balls.”
“Your vulgarity is regrettable.” Conrad wore a little smirk on his smug face. Rufus regretted the twenty-year age difference that prevented him knocking it off.
“We’ve been through this,” he said in lieu of violence. “The Committee for Privileges took seven months to assess my right. You dredged up every calumny and speculation you could think of against my mother and invented God alone knows what nonsense about me in your effort to claim the title, and you still lost. They said so, it’s done with, and you cannot start it all again!”
Conrad’s smirk stayed in place. “Of course I have accepted the decision of the Committee. I can scarcely be blamed for taking pains to ensure the title continues down the true line in lawful fashion—”
“You speculated my mother bore a girl and switched me at birth with an orphan boy, as though she were a Bourbon queen, not a draper’s daughter,” Rufus said with all the patience he could muster, which was scant. “Then you said I was an impostor who’d stolen a dying man’s identity on the battlefield.”
“I merely raised the question.”
“You called my mother a liar and me a fraud, and I’ve had enough of it. The title has been awarded. The matter is closed.”
“Then it must be reopened. Some very serious information has only recently come to light, as a matter of chance. It requires investigation.”
Rufus’s back teeth were grinding together. “It does not, because the title has been awarded. I’m the legitimate son of Raymond d’Aumesty which makes me the sodding earl, and there is no more to be said!”
“Certainly you are Raymond’s son. The question is your legitimacy.”
Rufus clenched his fist to prevent himself saying something his uncle would regret. He was going to stop trying to hold on to his temper very shortly. “The Committee examined the proof thoroughly. My mother was married to my father. That is incontestable.”
“Oh, the marriage is unquestionable,” said the man who’d spent months questioning it. “I do not argue that Raymond went through a ceremony with your mother. The question is whether he was legally able to do so.”
“Legally able to—what, marry?”
“Indeed.”
“He was twenty-seven years old and of sound mind, insofar as any d’Aumestys are of sound mind, which—”
“He was already married.”
“What?”
Conrad plastered on a sympathy-shaped smile. “Or such is the allegation. Raymond was my brother, but he was a rash, irresponsible, foolish man, easily led, with uncontrollable enthusiasms—”
“What do you mean, already married?” Rufus demanded. “Get to the point!”
“Before Raymond became…entangled with your mother, he had a dalliance with a local girl. A housemaid who abandoned her duties to sport with a son of the house.”
“You mean he pestered one of the staff. And? If my father had married all the girls he bothered—”
“He married this one!” His uncle spat the words out, then went on in his usual condescending tone, “Or so it is suggested.”
“By whom? And why wasn’t it ‘suggested’ while you were scrabbling round for a way to make yourself earl?”
“I could not say.” Conrad looked sour. “But I have now received this information, and it must be investigated. Whatever the Committee for Privileges has ruled, this would change everything. If your father was already married at the time he wed your mother, that second marriage is invalid and you are not legitimate.”
“If,” Rufus said. “Where’s the proof? Who is this woman, and if she was married to my father, why hasn’t anyone heard of it till now?”
“Her name is Louisa Brightling. She is or was a local woman, from Fairfield. She no longer lives in the area and her whereabouts are not known.”
“Then who’s making this claim?”
Conrad gave him an exceedingly unpleasant smile. “Her son.”
* * *
They sent the claimant orders to present himself at Stone Manor the next day. Rufus would have preferred to ride down and confront the fellow at once, but he lived in Dymchurch, halfway across Romney Marsh. It would probably be bad tactics anyway: he didn’t want to treat this latest freak of Conrad’s as having any more substance than all his other accusations.
He needed to get out of Stone Manor. It was raining, as it always did in this blasted place and this blasted country, but he ordered his horse anyway, and rode out for Buds Farm. He’d been meaning to go, given the numbers of complaints that had come from that source, and hopefully an unheralded visit on such a dismal day would make him look like a good landlord who took his duty seriously.
Little chance of that, he reflected as he rode along the wooded, dripping lane to Wittersham, what with the pile of unread or half-read letters accumulating on his desk, and the nightmarish labyrinth of accounts to which he had no clue, and the state of his lands, which showed itself to be worse and worse the closer he looked.
This was, or should be, a prosperous area, since the Weald supported an amazing number of sheep per acre. The d’Aumestys ought to be a prosperous family with prosperous tenants. He might easily have inherited the earldom as a well-run concern, with a smooth transition of authority from his grandfather to himself. No such luck.
Rufus had spent seven miserable months in the legal mire as the Committee for Privileges examined his claim to the title. It had been scarifying, but he’d won. He was the Earl of Oxney, immovably in place unless he committed treason, which he didn’t intend, or was proven illegitimate, which he was determined not to worry about. This was a last desperate throw of Conrad’s, and Rufus was tired of putting up with nonsense because his uncle couldn’t let go of his disappointment.
In fairness, Conrad had good reason to be disappointed, and angry too.
The previous Lord Oxney, Waleran by name, had had three sons, of whom Conrad was the youngest. The eldest, Baldwin, Lord Stone, had never married; Raymond, the second son, had eloped with a draper’s daughter, Mary Hammond. The old earl had promptly disowned him, and disavowed any responsibility to Rufus, his grandson. He didn’t respond to pleas for help when Raymond abandoned his young wife and child, or send for the body when Raymond died, and when Rufus was reported killed in action, and his grieving mother wrote to let the Earl know, he had replied that he was glad to hear it. Mary never forgave that cruelty, and Rufus didn’t blame her. But it meant that she didn’t trouble to write to Stone Manor when Rufus turned up thin, ill, scarred, but alive after five months as a prisoner of war. She hadn’t wanted the Earl’s poison tainting h
And then the eldest son, Baldwin, died. Mary saw the notice in a newspaper, and took vengeful pleasure in advising the Earl that his despised commoner grandson was alive and now his heir. The Earl replied with a single line of crabbed acknowledgment. He did not suggest meeting, which was a pity because Rufus would have enjoyed refusing: he had nothing civil to say to the man.
Rufus had gone on with his life as a soldier, since it seemed ghoulish to think of himself as an earl in waiting. Still, he’d known the position would be his one day, and when the old man shuffled off at last, he’d expected to assume it without too much trouble.
He’d expected wrongly. Because, over the three and a half years since Baldwin’s death, the old earl Waleran had not broken the news to his family that Rufus was alive.
For all that time, his third son Conrad had been under the impression that Baldwin, Raymond, and Rufus’s deaths made him heir. For all that time, Conrad had awaited his decrepit, bedbound father’s death in the belief that the coronet was a breath away from his own brows, and the old earl hadn’t troubled to disabuse him.
That absurd, cruel silence had given Conrad years of hope and anticipation and expectation, and then snatched everything from his grasp. Rufus could not imagine what had been in the old fool’s mind unless he’d had a particular dislike of Conrad, which was understandable.
Rufus shared that dislike, but despite that, or perhaps because of it, he intended to be scrupulously fair. So he’d meet this individual who claimed Rufus’s father had married his mother first, and he’d hear him out and examine the evidence fairly. And if it proved to be a pack of lies, he’d kick the swine all the way down the Isle, and into the Marsh he came from.
On that invigorating thought, he arrived at Buds Farm.
Rufus wasn’t a countryman. He’d been brought up in the household of his stepfather, a successful draper; he’d followed the drum from the age of sixteen. He didn’t know anything about farms, or farming. But he knew what makeshift repairs looked like, when you had to keep shoring-up and patching-up because there was no time or money to do a proper job, and he saw it here.
The tenant farmer, Hughes, didn’t seem overjoyed by a visit from his new landlord. He spoke respectfully, but there was a lot of resentment under the polite words.
“Been asking for repairs a long time now, my lord. I wrote to Mr. Smallbone time and again. Didn’t happen when the old master was alive, and as for after he died, with you and Lord Oxney—Mr. Conrad, I should say—fighting over the title for seven months…” He let that hang meaningfully.
“Surely the work of the estate was carried on in that period,” Rufus said.
“No. It weren’t. And I’ve an agreement says what costs I bear, and what the Earl, and that ain’t been done. I’ve got rights—”
“Now, Hughes,” his wife said, warning in her voice, and something more than that. Alarm, perhaps.
Rufus had a temper. He was well aware his face showed his feelings, and he was undeniably angry at this moment, so he made an extra effort to look and sound calm. “Have you given Mr. Smallbone the full list of repairs due?”
“Three time.”
“I’ll talk to him,” Rufus promised, trying not to make it sound like I’ll wring his neck.
Hughes snorted. His wife dug a finger into his side with an urgent expression, and he shot her a glower. “Stop that, woman. I’ve talked to Mr. Smallbone, and written too, and he’s made plenty of promises of this and that. Well, it ain’t happened yet and I don’t see it happening now, and I’m weary of asking for the same thing over and over. I got my rights!”
The battle cry of an Englishman digging in to be an awkward son of a bitch. Rufus knew it well. “Yes, you have rights, Mr. Hughes, and the estate has duties to you. I’m going to get this under control. Can you tell me, this situation, with repairs due—”
“All over,” Hughes said, with a sort of gloomy glee. “There’s nothing been done to speak of anywhere on the estates, not since Lord Stone died, and that’s the truth. Everyone’ll tell you the same. The loss took the heart out of old master, your lordship, and nobody could blame him for that, but it’s been more’n four year now—No, I will not mind my tongue!” he snapped at his wife. “His lordship asked, and we’ve had nothing done in all this time, and if he wants to turn me off my land for saying so—”
“I shall do no such thing,” Rufus said. “I asked you a question because I wanted you to answer it. I’m grateful for your frankness.”
Hughes gave him a short nod. Mrs. Hughes didn’t look convinced.
* * *
Rufus was still turning over that unsatisfactory encounter in his mind the next morning as he sat in the study, swamped by paper.
He was supposed to have the assistance of his cousin Odo, Conrad’s younger son, who had acted as his grandfather’s clerk. Unfortunately, Odo was a vague sort of man, nervous to the point of imbecility, who only seemed happy talking about ancient history and the family heritage, subjects in which Rufus had no interest at all. He reacted as though he might be struck whenever Rufus expressed the slightest sign of annoyance, and since Rufus did that a lot, matters were not going well. Rufus didn’t want to upset the fellow, since Odo was the only one of his family to show any sort of civility, and he was clearly trying. But he was also useless, and Rufus had been obliged to send him away earlier, in case he swore at him.
There was a lot to swear about. Odo’s hand was appalling, a chaotic close-written chicken-scratch that slanted erratically up the page, with endless crossings-out and insertions, so a wooden rule under the lines was no help. It danced in front of Rufus’s eyes, the words tangling themselves into incomprehensible knots, and the most ferocious concentration wasn’t giving him anything more than a headache. There were entire books of this that he needed to make sense of, but he could barely get through a page in an hour, leaving him in a state of shame, rage, and frustration.
And there were sheaves of unanswered letters from the seven-month interregnum, when it seemed nobody had taken any responsibility at all, and new ones coming in every day, and Rufus was beginning to panic. The steward Smallbone seemed entirely useless, affairs were all too visibly deteriorating, and everyone he spoke to was hostile. The family hated him, and the staff were stiff and unwelcoming, siding firmly against the interloper who had stolen Mr. Conrad’s birthright. They eyed Rufus with distrust, and took his orders to Mrs. Conrad for confirmation.
It was enraging, miserable, and exceedingly lonely. Rufus would not have compared his situation as earl of Oxney with his time as a prisoner of war, or at least not out loud, but in the last weeks he had sat through too many meals where the company was even colder than the food, and spent too much time mired in the study, struggling with books he didn’t understand and an inheritance he didn’t know how to manage, and he was beginning to feel something rather like despair.
He didn’t intend to give in to that. Still, he sat in the study alone, achieving nothing, cursing Conrad and the books and this damned pretender fellow, until he was informed that the visitor had arrived.
Odo was in the hall, looking even more like a surprised owl than usual. He gave Rufus one of his twitchy smiles. “Oh—ah—Oxney.”
“Busy,” Rufus said, to head off whatever gibbering he was likely to be subjected to.
“Is it the, uh, the—”
“Fellow who claims he’s the earl. Some ridiculous name.”
“Perkin Warbeck.”
“What? No, nothing like that.”
“No—I mean the claimant—Perkin Warbeck was a pretender to the throne,” Odo explained earnestly, falling into step by him. “He declared himself to be one of the Princes in the Tower, you know, and attempted to take the throne from Henry the Seventh.”
“Good for him. Did it work?”
“Well—er—no? He was captured, and Henry hanged him.”
“Even better,” Rufus said, and kept walking.
Conrad was waiting for him in Stone Manor’s drawing room, along with the pretender, who Rufus was now inevitably going to call Perkin at some point. Conrad was in a flow of oratory; the other man was listening in silence.
He stood when Rufus arrived. “Lord Oxney. Good day. I’m Luke Doomsday.”
