THE RUIN OF A RAKE
Cat Sebastian
Releasing July 4, 2017
Avon Impulse
Julian Medlock has spent years becoming the epitome of correct behavior. As far as he cares, if Courtenay finds himself in hot water, it’s his own fault for behaving so badly—and being so blasted irresistible. But when Julian’s sister asks him to rehabilitate Courtenay’s image, Julian is forced to spend time with the man he loathes—and lusts after—most.
As Courtenay begins to yearn for a love he fears he doesn’t deserve, Julian starts to understand how desire can drive a man to abandon all sense of propriety. But he has secrets he’s determined to keep, because if the truth came out, it would ruin everyone he loves. Together, they must decide what they’re willing to risk for love.
London,
1817
Julian pursed his lips as he gazed at the symmetrical
brick façade of his sister’s house. It was every bit as bad as he had feared.
He could hear the racket from the street, for God’s sake. He pulled the brim of
his hat lower on his forehead, as if concealing his face would go any distance
toward mitigating the damage done by his sister having turned her house into a
veritable brothel. Right in the middle of Mayfair, and at eleven in the
morning, when the entire ton was on
hand to bear witness to her degradation, no less. Say what one wanted about
Eleanor—and at this moment Julian could only imagine what was being said—but
she did not do things by halves.
As he climbed the steps to her door, the low rumble of
masculine voices drifted from an open second story window. Somebody was playing
a pianoforte—badly—and a lady was singing out of key.
No, not a lady.
Julian suppressed a sigh. Whoever these women were in his sister’s house, they
were not ladies. No lady in her right mind would consort with the sort of men
Eleanor had been entertaining lately. Every young buck with a taste for vice
had made his way to her house over these last weeks, along with their
mistresses or courtesans or whatever one was meant to call them. And the worst
of them, the blackguard who had started Eleanor on her path to becoming a
byword for scandal, was Lord Courtenay.
A shiver trickled down Julian’s spine at the thought of
encountering the man, and he could not decide whether it was from simple,
honest loathing or something much, much worse.
The door swung open before Julian had raised his hand
to the knocker.
“Mr. Medlock, thank goodness.” The look of abject
relief on the face of Eleanor’s butler might have struck Julian as vaguely
inappropriate under any other circumstance. But considering the tableau that
presented itself in Eleanor’s vestibule, the butler’s informality hardly
registered.
Propped against the elegantly papered wall, a man in
full evening dress snored peacefully, a bottle of brandy cradled in his arms
and a swath of bright crimson silk draped across his leg. A lady’s gown, Julian
gathered. The original wearer of the garment was, mercifully, not present.
“I came as soon as I received your message.” Julian had
not been best pleased to receive a letter from his sister’s butler, of all
people, begging that he return to London ahead of schedule. Having secured a
coveted invitation to a very promising house party, he was loath to leave early
in order to evict a set of bohemians and reprobates from his sister’s house.
“The cook is threatening to quit, sir,” said the
butler. Tilbury, a man of over fifty who had been with Eleanor since she and
Julian had arrived in England, had gray circles under his eyes. No doubt the
revels had interrupted his sleep. “And I’ve already sent all but
the—ah—hardiest of the housemaids to the country. It wouldn’t do for them to be
imposed upon. I’d never forgive myself.”
Julian nodded. “You were quite right to send for me.
Where is my sister?” Several unmatched slippers were scattered along the stairs
that led toward the drawing room and bedchambers. He gritted his teeth.
“Lady Standish is in her study, sir.”
Julian’s eyebrows shot up. “Her study,” he repeated.
Eleanor was hosting an orgy—really, there was no use in pretending it was
anything else—but ducked out to conduct an experiment. Truly, the experiments
were bad enough, but Julian had always managed to conceal their existence. But
to combine scientific pursuits with actual orgies struck Julian as excessive in
all directions.
“You,” he said, nudging the sleeping man with the toe
of his boot. He was not climbing over drunken bodies, not today, not any day.
“Wake up.” The man opened his eyes with what seemed a great deal of effort.
“Who are you? No, never mind, I can’t be bothered to care.” The man wasn’t any
older than Julian himself, certainly not yet five and twenty, but Julian felt
as old as time and as irritable as a school mistress compared to this specimen
of self-indulgence. “Get up, restore that gown to its owner, and be gone before
I decide to let your father know what you’ve been up to.” As so often happened
when Julian ordered people about, this fellow complied.
Julian made his way to Eleanor’s study, and found her
furiously scribbling at her writing table, a mass of wires and tubes arranged
before her. She didn’t look up at the sound of the door opening, nor when he
pointedly closed it behind him. Eleanor, once she was busy working, was utterly
unreachable. She had been like this since they were children. He felt a rush of
affection for her despite how much trouble she was causing him.
“Eleanor?” Nothing. He stooped to gather an empty wine
bottle and a few abandoned goblets, letting them clink noisily together as he
deposited them onto a table. Still no response. “Nora?” It almost physically
hurt to say his childhood name for her when
things felt so awkward and strained between them.
“It won’t work,” came a low drawl. “I’ve been sitting
here these past two hours and I haven’t gotten a response.”
Banishing any evidence of surprise from his
countenance, Julian turned to see Lord Courtenay himself sprawled in a low
chair in a shadowy corner. There oughtn’t to have been any shadows in the
middle of the day in a bright room, but trust Lord Courtenay to find one to
lurk in.
Julian quickly schooled his face into some semblance of
indifference. No, that was a reach; his face was simply not going to let him
pretend indifference to Courtenay. He doubted whether anyone had ever shared
space with Lord Courtenay without being very much aware of that fact. And it
wasn’t only his preposterous good looks that made him so . . . noticeable. The
man served as a sort of magnet for other people’s attention, and Julian hated
himself for being one of those people. As far as he could tell, the man’s entire
problem was that people paid a good deal too much attention to him. But one
could hardly help it, not when he looked like that.
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