Earl of Every Sin
Sins and Scoundrels
Book Four
Scarlett Scott
© Copyright 2019 by Scarlett Scott
Text by Scarlett Scott
Cover by Wicked Smart Designs
Dragonblade Publishing, Inc. is an imprint of Kathryn Le Veque Novels, Inc.
P.O. Box 7968
La Verne CA 91750
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Produced in the United States of America
First Edition November 2019
Kindle Edition
Reproduction of any kind except where it pertains to short quotes in relation to advertising or promotion is strictly prohibited.
All Rights Reserved.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
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Additional Dragonblade books by Author Scarlett Scott
The Sins and Scoundrels Series
Duke of Depravity
Prince of Persuasion
Marquess of Mayhem
Earl of Every Sin
*** Please visit Dragonblade’s website for a full list of books and authors. Sign up for Dragonblade’s blog for sneak peeks, interviews, and more: ***
www.dragonbladepublishing.com
Amazon
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Publisher’s Note
Additional Dragonblade books by Author Scarlett Scott
About the Book
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
Epilogue
About the Author
When Alessandro, the half-Spanish Earl of Rayne, settles upon a marriage of convenience with Lady Catriona Hamilton, the terms are clear: an heir in exchange for her freedom. Still haunted by his painful past, he has no intention of entertaining a true marriage with his new wife or remaining in England.
A ruined lady brought back from her banishment for a second chance, Catriona is practical and determined. There’s no stronger lure than the prospect of her independence. Except for the earl himself, that is.
Saddled with a scapegrace brother-in-law, a mouse-toting ward, a Spanish-speaking butler, and a wife he cannot stop wanting, Alessandro is about to learn life is best when it does not go according to plan. But if he doesn’t let go of the past, he’ll lose everything.
The darkest hearts fall the hardest…
Chapter One
Alessandro Diego Christopher Forsythe, ninth Earl of Rayne, had only been in England for one month, and already, he had shot a man and acquired a betrothed.
To be fair, he had shot the Duke of Montrose when defending himself from the drunken fool, who had been hell-bent upon shooting him in the head. And the betrothal had yet to become official because Lady Catriona Hamilton, sister to the fool he had wounded, was proving a most recalcitrant future countess.
“I am sorry, my lord,” apologized the dowager Duchess of Montrose for the fourth time. “I cannot imagine Lady Catriona will be much longer.”
They were seated in a formal salon, a full tea service spread before them, awaiting the arrival of the lady he had promised to wed after shooting Montrose. In truth, Montrose had demanded the obligation from him as a debt of honor.
Rayne intended to leave England and return to Spain with as much haste as possible, but he also recognized he had a duty to the title and the entail. Marrying Lady Catriona had seemed, at the time, an efficient solution to two problems. He could satisfy a bleeding—and highly drunken—man’s demand, and he could also obtain a bride without being required to court her.
Provided Lady Catriona could meet his requirements in a bride.
Which was becoming less and less likely by the moment.
“Perhaps she is ill once more, Your Grace,” he said at last, unable to keep the irritation from lacing his voice.
This was his third visit to the Duke of Montrose’s townhome to visit his prospective betrothed. On his first attempt at meeting her, she had been suffering from a severe case of megrims. On his second try, Lady Catriona had fallen ill with a lung infection.
He drummed his fingers against his thigh, the sound falling heavily in the silence that had descended between himself and Lady Catriona’s mother, who wore the look of a woman disappointed with the world beneath her white cap. And he could hardly blame the dowager for such a sentiment.
Her son, the Duke of Montrose, was a scapegrace drunkard who dipped his prick in every willing female in London. And if gossip was to be believed, her daughter had been ruined and summarily sent to Scotland by Montrose to hide from the scandal she had created. She had then been rescued by her brother’s stupidity, but refused to meet the man who would be her savior and pluck her from the maws of said ruination.
The duchess’s eyes fell upon Alessandro’s tapping fingers.
He stilled them.
“Please accept my sincere apologies, Lord Rayne,” she whispered, sounding mortified.
“I believe I shall take my leave now, Your Grace,” he announced.
Alessandro had wasted enough time being made a fool by Lady Catriona. Montrose would have to settle upon some other answer for his debt of honor. He would find a different wife, one who was not the scandalous, minx sister of a drunkard duke.
The dowager made her apologies as he offered her a curt bow and saw himself out. Irritation mingled with fury as he stalked down the hall. He did not appreciat
e his precious time being wasted by a spoiled girl. Time was a luxury he could not afford to waste, for each day he lingered in England was a day that could have been meaningful in Spain, his mother’s homeland. The homeland of his heart.
A flutter of movement caught his eye, giving him pause. It had been, he thought, the swish of a lady’s pale, rose gown disappearing over the threshold of a chamber down the hall. Instinct told him it was her. And whilst he knew he ought to take his leave as he had announced he would do and see himself to the door, he found himself spinning on his heel and pursuing that gown.
Pursuing that maddening creature who had dared to refuse to be introduced to him. He followed her without thought for propriety or even sanity. What did it matter if he eschewed convention and sought out Lady Catriona alone? She was already ruined, and he was already known as the mad Earl of Rayne. As rarely as he returned to England, even Alessandro knew his unflattering sobriquet.
He reached the closed door into which she had disappeared and opened it, striding through without hesitation, closing the portal at his back. The room in question was a library. A rather small affair, lined with two levels of shelves, flanked at each end by a set of overstuffed chairs. But Alessandro did not linger on the books or the chairs.
He had eyes only for the woman, her chestnut hair pulled into a simple chignon that put the graceful column of her throat on display. Her back was to him, and he took a moment to drink in the sight of her at last.
“Lady Catriona.” He spoke her name into the silence, gratified when she spun about, a hand fluttering over her heart, and emitted a most unladylike squeal.
For a moment, she stared at him, and he stared back, confounded. Lady Catriona was not at all as he had imagined she would be. She looked nothing like her immense clod-of-a-brother—thank the Lord for that mercy—her form curvaceous in bosom and hips, just as he preferred. Small ringlets framed her heart-shaped face, and her eyes were the blue of the ocean, her lips a pink Cupid’s bow that begged for kisses.
Fortunately, he was not the kissing sort of man. Nor was he the sort who was easily swayed by beauty, for Lady Catriona undeniably possessed more than her share of it. She was stunning, her loveliness not just ethereal but unusual, so unique he could not deny his initial reaction to her.
At least, not until he tamped it down and reminded himself, she had made an ass of him on no less than three occasions.
“Have you nothing to say for yourself, my lady?” he asked, stalking nearer to her, though he knew he ought to simply leave. “You look remarkably hale for a lady possessed of such a delicate constitution. First megrims, then a lung infection. Your sainted mother did not even bother to offer an excuse for your absence today. Tell me, what was it, my lady? A stomach ailment? A scrape? Perhaps you stubbed your toe.”
Her eyes narrowed upon him, her bearing seizing up, as if the sight of him was loathsome to her. “You were meant to be gone by now. Why are you still here, Lord Rayne? And why have you followed me?”
He almost laughed at her daring. But he was not amused by her impudence. He stopped only when he was close enough in proximity to touch her. To note how thick and long her lashes were, how her eyes held untold depths of gray within them.
“I came here to propose marriage to you, just as I have done on the previous two occasions when you were also too struck with illness to see me,” he said coolly, whisking an assessing gaze over her. “But now I confess, I am grateful for your discretion, Lady Catriona.”
She frowned, and even in her expression of confused distraction, she was lovely. “I am afraid I do not understand, my lord. Precisely what is it you express gratitude for?”
“For saving me from an untenable fate.” He chose his words with care, enjoying himself for the first time since his arrival. A worthy opponent, Lady Catriona. “I can see clearly now we would never suit.”
Her frown deepened. “Why not, Lord Rayne?”
He would have felt a hint of compunction for what he was about to do had not Lady Catriona begun this battle between them. But she had fired the first volley of cannon, and Alessandro was declaring war. Lady Catriona Hamilton was a menace, just as her brother was. Her insolence spurred him on. He had been gone from the battlefields too long, and his endless thirst for vengeance would only be quenched in one fashion.
“I require a wife with mettle,” he said, “not a girl who hides from me like a mouse.”
Her shoulders stiffened as his taunt found its mark with ease. “I was not hiding from you, Rayne. I merely had no wish to take part in whatever madness you hatched with my brother. If you owe him a debt, surely you may find another manner in which to repay it.”
He ought not to toy with her. There was something about Montrose’s defiant sister that would not allow him to go. If she was a mouse, he was the cat, pawing at her for his own amusement, tricking her into believing she could escape before sinking in his claws and making her bleed.
He moved one step closer to her, near enough now to not just touch but to note faint details, such as the flecks of violet in her eyes, the freckles on the bridge of her nose. “You have been hiding from me on three occasions. I can understand a pale, timid English lady such as yourself cowering in fear. I must terrify you, no?”
“No.” She pursed her lips, remaining where she stood rather than retreating. “I do not, nor have I ever, cowered, Lord Rayne. Nor am I a mouse, I assure you. If I were, I would not have returned to England at all.”
Ah, the suggestion of her past. He had not bothered to ask for a full accounting of the scandal, for it had not mattered to him. Her innocence was immaterial. He was not attempting to woo her, after all, but to get her with child and return to his life. She was a duty, nothing more.
He did not even require a wife to be faithful after she produced the necessary heir, for Cristo knew he had no intention of upholding English vows when he was at home in Spain, where he belonged. And when the only vows that would ever bind him had already been spoken and shattered by death.
But now that Lady Catriona was at last standing before him, he found himself curious. He could well understand an English fop losing his head over her. And he wanted to know more about this vexing creature herself.
“If you are not hiding from me, then who is it you are hiding from, Lady Catriona?” he probed. “Your lover?”
Her face drained of color, her sensual lips compressing into a harsh line. “How dare you?”
He should have felt pity, he knew, but he had spent the past few years witnessing horrors greater than the beautiful, spoiled aristocrat before him could possibly comprehend. He had lost everyone he loved except his half-sister Leonora.
His compassion was gone. So, too, his ability to feel. There was a reason for his name, El Corazón Oscuro, the dark heart. His soul was even darker. Death and murder had a way of making their claim upon a man. Though he had not committed a quarter of the atrocities which it had been rumored he had throughout Spain, he had indeed killed and wounded his enemies.
He had needed to in a land where it had become either kill or be killed.
Alessandro flashed her a feral smile. “I dare everything, my lady. You are ruined, are you not?”
“You are a brutish boor to dare utter such a hateful thing to me,” she snapped.
Still cold, still haughty.
He could not resist goading her, for she had made a fool of him, and Alessandro was no one’s fool, maldición. “Do not look so surprised, Lady Catriona. I may have been gone from these putrid English shores the last few years, but I am not stupid. Montrose wanted me to wed you because no other man will have you, and he wishes to free himself of the burden of a spinster sister.”
Cruel of him, perhaps. Honest, too, however. He had endured a lifetime of being treated as if he did not belong, and he would be damned before he would allow a beautiful duke’s sister who had never known a bit of struggle in her life to look down her nose at him. If she was making a fool of him because of who his mother had
been, he would return the favor by reminding her she was no angel.
Her nostrils flared, the only sign his words had affected her at all. “Yes, I am ruined. Is that what you wish to hear, Lord Rayne?”
The bitterness lacing her words was not lost upon him. “What happened?”
“Why are you still here, my lord?” she returned coldly. “I have made my opinion of a betrothal between us apparent, I believe. There is no reason for you to linger.”
Lady Catriona Hamilton nettled him. He wanted to oppose her. To match her in wits and wills. Some unfettered part of him was enjoying this battle between them after all. Enjoying it more than he had enjoyed anything for as long as he could recall. He was not ready for it to come to an end.
“Mayhap I have decided to take pity on you and wed you despite the insults you have paid me, Lady Catriona,” he said.
“And mayhap I neither want nor need your pity, Lord Rayne.” Her manner was regal as any queen’s. “Nor do I wish to become your countess.”
“You are prideful for a ruined woman,” he observed.
In spite of himself, he admired her courage. Her defiance was appealing. The sparks of interest developed into a searing flame within him. If he must wed—and he must, though the notion still displeased him mightily—he wanted to wed a woman who at least possessed a modicum of spirit.
Maria would have appreciated that, for she had been not just spirited but giving and loving. She had been an angel on earth, which was why she had been taken from him so soon. He had not deserved her or her love.
“You are vulgar and cruel, just as I expected you to be,” Lady Catriona said, her cutting words biting through his thoughts. Her chin tipped up. “You may go now, my lord.”
He clenched his jaw at her boldness. He raked her form with a searching stare. Her dress was demure. Her décolletage revealed little beyond the hint of lush breasts. Against his will, Lady Catriona Hamilton stirred him.
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