Debut author Annabelle Greene brings us the brilliant first book in her Society of Beasts series, in which a quiet country vicar is unwillingly reunited with the duke who left him long ago…
As a young man, Sir Gabriel Winters left behind his status as a gentleman, turning his back on his secret desires and taking a self-imposed vow of celibacy. Now he’s a chaste, hardworking vicar, and his reputation is beyond reproach. But, try as he might, he’s never forgotten the man he once desired or the pain of being abandoned by his first love.
Edward Stanhope, the Duke of Caddonfell, is a notorious rake, delighting in scandal no matter the consequence. With a price on his head, he flees to the countryside, forced to keep his presence a secret or risk assassination. When Edward finds Gabriel on his estate, burning with fever, he cannot leave him to die, but taking him in puts them both in jeopardy.
With the help of a notorious blackmailer, a society of rich and famous gentlemen who prefer gentlemen, and a kitten named Buttons, they might just manage to save Edward’s life—but the greatest threat may be to their hearts.
Also available from Annabelle Greene
and Carina Press
The next book in the Society of Beasts series,
The Soldier and the Spy, is coming soon!
Content Warning
The Vicar and the Rake deals with topics some readers may find difficult, including childhood physical abuse and the death of a mentor.
The Vicar and the Rake
Annabelle Greene
For Edward, Gabriel and Buttons
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Excerpt from The Soldier and the Spy by Annabelle Greene
Chapter One
Surrey, 1818
Gabriel hadn’t planned on dying young, especially on such a fine April evening. He also hadn’t planned on dying outdoors—but as he lifted his hand to his forehead, finding it slick with sweat, a violent dizziness overcame him.
Death was coming, apparently on a very fast horse, to the opulent grounds of Hardcote House. Right to this particular flowerbed swimming in front of his eyes.
“Damn.” Not a word for a respectable country vicar, but excusable in cases of impending death. He fell heavily into the flowerbed, his vision swirling into a cloud of colour and scent.
All right. More than excusable. “Damn, damn, damn.”
It was all his own fault. No one had forced him to wake with the sun, throat raw and muscles trembling, to walk countless, muddy miles to the group of smallholdings that clung to the edge of his parish. No one had forced him to declare that today was the best day to fix the roofs, which were in a distressing condition, and no one had forced him to spend hours there, labouring in the morning sun, surrounded by men suspicious of a gentleman who worked like a...well, like a working man.
No, no one had forced him—but damn them, he was the vicar, not the inexperienced youth he had been, and he would sleep better knowing the poorest in his parish were dry. He would help them, whether they liked it or not.
He made a spirited attempt to rise and was rewarded with a wave of nausea. Drat, blast, and double damn.
No one had forced him to help old Marlston groom the horses at the inn either, instead of having lunch. Only the afternoon baptism had been an unavoidable commitment, and he’d narrowly avoided dropping the infant in the font.
Really, up until about half an hour ago, his conduct had been foolish but not inexcusable...but half an hour ago he had received a letter. A letter in his sister Caroline’s handwriting, full of excited blots.
Found the gates to Hardcote House open on my morning walk! Do you think Scandal is finally coming back?
“Caddonfell.” He said the man’s name with all the force of an expletive, as if the words conjured up something that needed exorcising.
Edward Stanhope, Duke of Caddonfell. A man so visibly, arrogantly, dangerously libertine that his nickname, whispered from one end of England to the other, was simply Scandal. A man so thoroughly, happily debauched that a list of ruined soldiers, sailors, actors, earls and marriages only seemed to spur him on instead of shame him. The head of a society—or so it was whispered—where only men who shared his predilections were to be admitted.
Edward Stanhope, Duke of Caddonfell. The terror of every mother in the ton, not for their daughters, but for their sons. The most infamous sodomite in London. Certainly the most untouchable one, with an enormous fortune and a brother so well-connected he could blackmail a saint.
The Duke of Caddonfell, for all his depravity, enjoyed a level of protection that Gabriel found incomprehensible. Incomprehensible, and deeply irritating.
“Caddonfell.” An unexpected spear of pain shivered through his body; he shook, burning inside. “Edward.”
Edward, his closest boyhood friend, only a year younger than Gabriel. They’d played together on the Hardcote estate before Edward had inherited his dukedom, his Caddonfell lands, all that the title entailed—and promptly run away to London, dropping his responsibilities like a glove.
Before Edward had abandoned him.
So many innocent letters sent in those first years, when Gabriel had still believed in their friendship. Their...kinship. All unanswered.
No. Best not to think of that. He was dying, after all; best not to submit his weakened body to all the strange, unwelcome feelings Edward still aroused in him. Best to die in something approaching a state of grace.
Still. How utterly unfair—Edward, living a shameless life. Upon discovering desires like his, a man was meant to banish them—by marriage, if at all possible.
Or by, say, living the harsh life of a country vic
ar in a parish teetering on the edge of complete chaos.
Gabriel panted out a feverish, desperate laugh. This was his state of grace? It hurt to think about Edward. Hurt almost as much as his body did now, racked with fever on a damp flowerbed.
He’d done his damnedest to forget it. Forget Edward, even as he read all the sly allusions to his exploits that ran through the London gossip rags Caroline brought him. But memories of the tall, blond, sarcastic youth still clung to his bones. Haunted him, even.
Those memories made him do things like walk up the handsome drive of Hardcote House, the magnificent, empty home of the Stanhope family, checking if there were any small jobs the seasonal workers had missed. He’d never needed keys; he knew the loose stones in the wall that ringed the property. He’d never told Morton, the groundsman, about them...a small sin, kept to himself.
Sometimes he even made his way to the old gamekeeper’s cottage, deep in the heart of Hardcote woods, where he and Edward had been allowed to watch rare birds with the vicar. Gabriel spent more time than he should in that tiny, cramped cottage, looking out of the dirty windows at the distant shape of Hardcote House. Waiting to see if maybe, just maybe, the Duke of Caddonfell had returned to the most beautiful of his properties after ten long years.
Fizzing, wheeling stars exploded behind his eyes; all thoughts, even crazed ones, were slipping away. Gabriel let his head rest against the damp soil, panting.
How ridiculously fitting this was. He’d always known that Edward—how he felt about Edward—would be the death of him.
He closed his eyes, waiting for the end. As he lay helpless, he was half sure he could hear the distant wheels of a carriage on the drive.
Chapter Two
“Bloody hellfire.” Edward normally said those words with a curled lip, delighted at their effect on respectable people. Now, as he gazed in horror out of the carriage window, the expletive had the hushed quality of a prayer.
This was what his land looked like after ten years? This...swamp.
This drab, soggy piece of Surrey countryside was where he was expected to rusticate? Flat, mud-drenched fields full of deceptively deep puddles, nasty little breezes designed to ruin the line of one’s coat? Insects? No. The devil could take the countryside, and everything in it.
He’d hated the countryside at eighteen too, the age he had finally escaped. Escaped Hardcote House, and all the horror both within and without.
“Do not even think of bolting.” Bryce, his valet, sat tensely in the opposite corner. In his right hand lay a folded letter, in his left a fresh steak that he held to his swollen jaw. “I may be injured, but I’ll drag you through the front door if I have to. Don’t believe I won’t.”
Edward restrained a gulp. It had seemed like such an amusing peccadillo, taking an ex-prizefighter as his valet. Bryce had been deep in debt at the time—and deep in his cups, due to sorrows he still never shared. An amusing experiment, taking him on.
Alas, it was an experiment that had worked all too well. Edward had not only gained an extremely competent valet, but one who could also sling him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. In seven years of service Bryce had fended off duchesses, convicts, an irate dragoon with a fire iron—and, in the case of last night, two burly earls and a raging Duke of Sussex. Not to mention the duke’s soon-to-be-married son, who upon discovery had decided to paint his...encounter...with Edward as some sort of predatory Caddonfell attack.
Bryce was the only reason Edward wasn’t currently clapped in irons. He was, however, also the reason that Edward wasn’t bolting.
Shipped off to the countryside in an anonymous coach, like some common criminal! Which he supposed, technically, he was—but only very technically. He’d gone over the exact letter of the law enough times, back when he was younger and more nervous, to know exactly what constituted a hangable offence in the bedroom.
Bryce had left those two earls unsure of their own names, much less of what they’d seen in a darkened stable. But Arthur Harbury, Duke of Sussex... Edward couldn’t get the elderly man’s red, incensed face out of his mind.
He eyed the folded letter in Bryce’s hand, restraining the urge to bite his nails. He almost wanted the man to read his brother’s letter to him again, to strengthen his resolve against the humming green unpleasantness of all the rurality that lay around him. But the slanting, hurriedly written words were already scrawled across his brain.
Am telling all you fled to France. Get to Hardcote; have sent Morton to open gate and leave supplies. No servants. Hide.
Maurice sounded worried. Edward hadn’t seen his younger brother worried since childhood. There had never been a problem, or a person, that Maurice couldn’t frighten into submission with a few well-chosen words.
Except, apparently, Sussex. The most morally upright, ostentatiously prudish man in England, who paraded around London and Bath with his pompous wife and carrot-headed sons. The one person who needed buying off, or shutting up, who managed to be completely without sin.
No servants. That excluded Bryce, of course. Edward looked askance at his wounded valet, wondering how on earth the man could be so damn loyal. Perhaps, thanks to his own mercurial charm, he was simply impossible to treat badly—whatever terrible things he managed to do.
From the way Bryce was glaring at him, that seemed a little like wishful thinking.
Hide. That was the part of his brother’s letter that worried Edward. That was the part that had him sleepless, and shaky, and ready to cast up his crumpets whenever the carriage wheel hit a stone.
Hide. That was the part that had him seeing nooses in every shadow.
He had never, no matter how large the indiscretion, been advised to hide by anyone. Hiding was simply not in his nature. Until now.
A man could hang for what he’d done. For what he was. And looking back at the faceless, nameless, essentially pleasureless encounter with Sussex’s son, Edward realised that his neck could snap for something...worthless.
Worthless. Yes, that described it. Described him. He couldn’t remember what worthy felt like.
“We’re approaching the house.” Bryce knocked on the roof of the carriage, bringing the driver to a halt. “Best not to drive right up to the front door. You never know who’s watching.”
“Good God, Bryce.” Edward eyed the muddy track with great foreboding as the coach slowed to a halt. “Who on earth will be watching? A group of sheep? A passing duck?”
“Now, now.” Bryce clicked his tongue as he disembarked, reaching for Edward’s hastily packed bags. “You’ve said fine things about this house. This village. Admittedly when you’re three sheets to the wind, but still.”
Edward jumped out of the carriage as lightly as possible, wincing with pure disgust as foul-smelling mud spattered over his boots. As Bryce gave the driver a serious bribe, followed by an even more serious warning, Edward took in the sight of his ancestral estate.
Hardcote House. The place he hadn’t set foot inside for ten years, even when his parents had died. The place he hated more than anywhere else in the world.
What a pity. It was such a fine-looking place.
He couldn’t help admiring the house, even as he remembered what had happened inside it. Long, gracefully curved lines of honey-coloured stone formed an imposingly beautiful front, decked with every flower spring cared to throw at it.
Everything looked clean, and kept in good order. Who had his brother hired to manage the estates, apart from that old drunk Morton?
Dashed if he could remember, even though he paid their bills. But they’d certainly done a damned good job on the house. Everything looked as new as the day he’d left it—or rather, the night.
Taking a few steps forward, hands behind his back, he noted each familiar feature with something akin to pain. Each old sight was like picking the scab from an old wound. Mullioned windows, crystal chandelie
rs, honeysuckle trailing around the door, the only flower his father could stand...
And a body, in the flowerbed.
That seemed a rather new addition.
Chapter Three
Edward took a hasty step back. “Bryce?” Why did his voice get so clipped, so gruff, when he was nervous? “Someone has left us a corpse.”
The corpse groaned. Edward jumped, cursing savagely, almost losing his footing in the slippery mud. He slowly approached, fighting the urge to hold his cane aloft, as Bryce dropped the bags and came running up beside him.
“What do you think? A country custom? Give the dead a good dose of fertiliser and they’re back on their feet in a week? Crops have to grow damned well here, if mere proximity to the soil brings the dead back to life.”
“Probably some drunken sot.” Bryce was rolling up his sleeves. “I’d throw him in the carriage and send him packing, if I hadn’t just paid the man off. Should I drag him down to the gate and throw him over?”
Edward stared at the dark-haired, prostrate man below him in horrified recognition.
Sir Gabriel Winters.
Sir Gabriel Winters. Gabriel—his Gabriel. Large as life, in the flesh...the last piece of his past.
Even though Edward had been hopelessly inclined to sin, his best friend had been an honourable boy. An honourable boy, who became an honourable man. Sir Gabriel Winters, who had always had more moral fibre in his little finger than Edward had in his entire spine.
A man who had gone into the church—at least, from what Edward had gleaned from his long-ago letters. Letters he had never replied to, unable as he’d been to put the swirling morass of his feelings on paper.
A man who, in short, made Edward feel more worthless that his own dark thoughts ever could. A man who made him remember the boy he’d abandoned, leaving without looking back.
A man who was also, inexplicably, unconscious in his garden at seven o’clock in the evening. Clearly sick, from the look of him. Maybe dying.
“Well?” Bryce raised an eyebrow. “What should I do?”
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