Annette Blair

by Holy Scoundrel

  First time in print, fromThe New York Times Bestselling Author Annette Blair:

  HOLY SCOUNDREL, Knave of Hearts, Book Four of Four

  —Gabe, a passionate widower had sworn off passion.

  —Now Lace, his first love, is back...with a tarnished reputation.

  —She's there to help raise her niece/his stepdaughter...

  —But the rich, powerful town gossip won’t have it.

  —Hidden secrets, a forbidden love, and trouble...plenty of it.

  —HOLY SCOUNDREL!

  A Super Sexy Regency Historical Romance

  SEA SCOUNDREL (Lady Patience, the Uncut Version), Knave of Hearts, One

  CATIVE SCOUNDREL (Lady Faith, the Uncut Version), Knave of Hearts, Two

  PROPER SCOUNDREL (Scoundrel in Disguise, Revised), Knave of Hearts, Three

  Review Quotes forNew York Times Bestselling Author Annette Blair’s Historicals:

  “Annette Blair is a master at sweeping you from one emotion to the next with the flip of a page. Her humor mixed with life challenges give you characters with dignity and laced with fun. You can’t help but feel good when you’ve finished one of her books.” Grade: A+ Sandy, The Good, the Bad, and the Unread

  “Annette Blair is one of my all time favorite authors. Her writing skill is in a league by itself. Very Highly Recommend.” Suzie Housley, Myshelf.com, Explicit Content

  “Annette Blair is a master of the Historical Romance genre. I cannot recommend this tale highly enough and I plan to tell everyone I know about it.” Detra Fitch, Vine Voice Reviewer

  “Ms. Blair grounds the story in her time period, gives enough details to be engrossing then weaves a tale that sweeps the reader from page to page. The suspense element is handled with a masterful touch. I eagerly await her next offering.” Karen Larson, Scribes World

  “Annette Blair is a master artist in the world of romantic fiction. A strong plot provides the canvas for her compelling characters. Vivid settings and engaging minor characters beautifully augment the portrait. Fascinating subplots add depth. Spicy sexual encounters supply bold strokes . . . A romantic masterpiece.” Linda Lukow, MyShelf.com

  http://www.annetteblair.com

  http://twitter.com/annetteblair

  Learn when a new book is released. Sign up for Annette’s mailing list: https://www.facebook.com/annetteblairfans

  Copyright:

  First published in e-book format, January 2013

  Copyright 2013 by Annette Blair

  Published by ABA LLC, January 13, 2013

  E-book Cover Copyright 2013 Calista Taylor, www.calistataylor.com

  Photoshop Brushes: Dark Garden Photography

  All rights reserved.

  This is a historical work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events and establishments is entirely coincidental.

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  The scanning, uploading, and distributing of this book via the internet or via any other means, including those not yet invented, without permission of the copyright owner, is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author's rights is appreciated.

  Table of Contents

  Note to Reader

  Dedication

  Prologue

  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 Twentyone

  Chapter Twentytwo

  Chapter Twentythree

  Chapter Twentyfour

  Chapter Twentyfive

  Epilogue

  Excerpt: Unmistakable Rogue by Annette Blair

  Excerpt: Prince of Pleasure by Sandra Marton

  Excerpt: Bluegrass State of Mind by Kathleen Brooks

  Annette Blair Bio

  Contact Annette

  Awards and Accolades

  Annette Blair Booklist

  Note to Reader

  Surprisingly, there seem to be several schools of thought as to the length of the Regency Period. Purists say it lasted from 1811 to 1820, at the time George IV ruled as Regent during the well-known “madness” of his father. Others say that the Prince Regent’s influence lasted beyond 1820, and not until William IV came to the throne in 1830 did the Regency period finally come to an end. And still others place the Regency at 1811 to 1837, when Queen Victoria succeeded William IV.

  For this series, I have chosen the broadest Regency timeframe.

  Dedication:

  To Brother Shawn, SC

  For years of treasured friendship

  And a shared sense of the ridiculous.

  Thanks for believing in me

  From the first sale

  ToThe New York Times.

  Merci, Mon Frère.

  Je croyais toujours en vous, aussi.

  Je t’aime.

  Knave of Hearts, Four

  HOLY SCOUNDREL

  by

  Annette Blair

  PROLOGUE

  The Zebulon Fishkill Academy for Unruly Boys, 1805

  “Blighted knave!” Old Fishface said as he tossed Gabriel Kendrick by the scruff of his neck into the heating stewpot of rotting hay, sweaty animals, and ripe manure. The Academy stable.

  “Muck out a stall,” the heartless schoolmaster told one of the younger dormitory discards, “and find yourself a place to sleep, likethese scoundrels did. Simply keep the animals clean, groomed, and fed, and you might fare half as well.”

  Gabe regarded the blighters who came before him—the unruliest of the unruly—spines straight, proud despite their punishments, and he raised his chin as high as theirs.

  “This one,” Fishface said, pointing his way, “is here at the whim of an aristocrat. A charity case. Lady Bountiful does not want the vicar’s son sniffing aroundher girl.”

  So much for the pretense of respectability, Gabe thought.

  “Lord or pauper matters not to me,” Fishface added, slapping his big belly, “as long as tuition is paid. These are your quarters, the lot of you. Make the best of it.”

  Their jailer-schoolmaster slammed the door and left them to their own devices.

  “He set to kick us out of school?” Gabe asked his new inmates.

  Justin Devereux, a future duke, chuckled. “’Course not. He wants the money we bring in. If he had his way, he’d keep us forever. We grow up and break out is how we leavethis place.”

  “Except for Daventry here,” Gabe said. “TheLadywho . . .sponsors me is springing him. He’s the spare to her heir.”

  Nick Daventry laughed. “Beingnearly an heir is, I vow, the longest prison sentence a man can get.”

  Gabe eyed Justin Devereux. “You do know that your brother Vincent,your father’s spare, got you kicked in here with a vile lie, do you not?”

  Justin gave a half nod. “SinceVincentwas not firstborn, then yes, he usuallyis my problem.”

  Andover, in line to be a marquess, stepped toward him. “Kendrick? Be ye knave or scoundrel?”

  Gabe thought about that. “Bit a’ both, I’d say. Knave of hearts, maybe. But
Fishface is right to worry about me and the girl with the title. I won’t give her up.”As if her mother would let him near Lacey after this.

  “Guess we’re all of a piece,” Andover said. “Each a knave of hearts and scoundrels all.”

  Marcus Fitzalan slapped Gabriel on the back. “We have to make our time here count. Form a bond; be there for each other when needed. Swear a lifetime oath.”

  Andover nodded. “So for now,and after we go our separate ways, we show our scoundrel faces to the world but we send for each other in times of trouble, whatever life hands us?”

  “I like that,” Gabriel said, a vicar’s son determined to match the strength of an aristocrat. “I might not be rich, but I’m strong. I can hold up my end. Whatever you say.”

  “Till the end of our days,” Fitzalan cautioned. “We’ve bonded in our rebellion, and that’s the strongest of friendships forged.”

  Gabriel smiled.

  So knaves and scoundrels, lords and paupers alike, they sealed a lifetime oath, each raising a tin cup of brackish water.

  And a fine pact they made of it.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Arundel, The South Downs, West Sussex

  England, Summer 1830

  Lacey Ashton, unnoticed in the midnight shadows, fixed her hungry gaze upon Gabriel Kendrick, the most formidable of the ghosts she had come home to face.

  Dwarfing his surroundings, Gabriel bent to keep his head from an intimate encounter with a raw-oak barn beam while protecting the newborn lamb in his keeping, a smile in his eyes, if not on his face . . . until he saw her. Gabriel the indomitable—named for the bright angel when he should have been named for the dark—stood frozen in vulnerability.

  A heartbeat, no more, and the scoundrel narrowed his eyes, stepped forward, stretched to his full staggering height, and squared his shoulders to a stunning span. Lucifer, sighting prey, spreading charred wings.

  His chiseled features, graven in shadow, sharpened to unforgiving angles as his dark-fire gaze seared her.

  Lacey stepped back. In that moment, despite her resolve, she wanted nothing more than to turn tail and run . . . except that she could not seem to move.

  Here stood the father of her child, while between them stood the lie she’d told to deny it—saving him and tormenting him in one horrific stroke.

  A horse snuffled and shuffled in its stall, freeing the scent of hay musk into the grip of silence, injecting reality into unreality, replacing the past with the present, and allowing her finally to draw breath.

  As forbidding as her nemesis appeared in lantern light, dressed entirely in black, the tiny white lamb tucked into his frock coat humanized him, the contrast bringing his cleric’s collar into conspicuous and bright relief.

  A vicar’s trappings, a scoundrel’s soul, and no one seemed to know, save her.

  He no longer fit the image of the young man she had carried in her heart. His features, familiar despite the firmness of his jaw, had been lined and bronzed by time and parish responsibilities to a mature and patrician air. His leonine mane, still an overlong tumble of sooty waves, thick and lush, bore strokes of gray at the temples. No phantasm here, but the bane of her existence in the flesh, more daunting, more vitally masculine. More a threat to her sanity than ever.

  As if he could read her, Gabriel shifted his stance, on guard, watchful, yet before her eyes, a hard-won humility replaced his arrogance.

  He did not do humble well, and his attempt jarred her.

  He’d always been proud, even when they were children—he, the indigent son of a vicar who squandered parish funds; she, the daughter of a duke. But now, their roles had been reversed, and the duke’s daughter stood, impoverished, disowned, before the boy who’d adored her, then hated her, with all his heart, face to face for the first time in five years. “Gabriel,” she said, wishing her voice did not tremble and her body did not remember.

  For his part, Gabe foolishly wondered if the sum and substance of all his dreams, good and bad, could hear the sound of his cold stone heart knocking against his ribs, bruising him to his core. “Lace,” he said, her name emerging raw and raspy.

  Mortified at his self-betrayal, he cleared his throat to try again, but a shadow fell between them, cutting the anguish of the moment.

  Gabe focused on the newcomer. Yves “Ivy” St. Cyr stood there beaming, his little red dog at his heels. Ivy, whose puppet wagon they’d once chased giggling down High Street. The happy vagabond grasped Gabe’s hand and pumped it, making him feel the dolt for failing to extend it. “Ivy,” Gabe said, relieved his voice worked again.

  The puppet master beamed. “I see you found the surprise I brought you.”

  Found it? He could not take his eyes from it.

  “Yes, Gabriel,” Lacey said. “I have come home.”

  As was her habit and his curse, she answered his unspoken thought. Whether her words eased or deepened his anxiety, he could not decide, but he hoped fervently that his shock and yearning were not as plainly writ on his brow for her to read.

  “She’s staying with me for now,” Ivy said. “Helping with my puppet shows until she finds a place here in Arundel to live. There’splenty of room in my wagon.”

  Gabe worked to comprehend Ivy’s words and form a coherent response, while the horrible gladness burgeoning inside him begged release to the point it constricted his chest and stole his breath. He found concentration necessary to fill his lungs.

  “You’ll stay at Rectory Cottage,” he said. “Both of you. More room than in that gypsy wagon.” Gabe raised a hand while Ivy prepared a token protest.

  Gabe shook his head. “No argument, now.” He had always suspected that Ivy enjoyed making people as well as puppets dance, though with the best of intentions. He’d probably kept Lace as up to date on his life and failings as Ivy kept him apprised of Lacey’s unholy exile. So of course the puppeteer offered no argument to having a roof over his head and a hearth to warm himself. But Ivy did grin and wink at Lacey. “Took pity on my old bones, he did.”

  And there, Gabe thought, did they not know each other almost too well?

  As Lace had once commanded, Gabe bowed before her. “My lady.” Instantly, Gabe saw that his insolent use of a title was a hurtful reminder of her status before her fall from grace, and for that reason, it pierced him as well. “I apologize,” he said. “That was . . . unforgivable.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  She tried, and failed, to mask her distress.

  Gabe watched, his heart racing as she turned to their friend. “Ivy,” she said, “I can’t stay. I’ll sleep in the wagon while I look for—No, I’ll take the morning coach back to Sussex. Staying won’t do.”

  Panic rushed him. Handing Ivy the lamb, Gabe placed the flat of his hand against Lacey’s back to stop her retreat, turn her, and propel her toward the vicarage before she objected further.

  Her familiar heat warmed his palm and spiraled like smoke from a chimney to surround his icy heart, causing a painful, thumping nudge in the center of his chest.

  He retrieved his hand and fisted it in self-preservation as he looked about him for an answer to his dilemma.

  The vicarage kitchen, friendly, welcoming, pleased him absurdly, seeing it as he was through Lacey’s eyes. But she stepped from his reach. “I won’t stay. I won’t.”

  He could not let her go. Not again. Just thinking about the possibility wounded him. Like a knife had sliced him open, the thought of losing her again near left him bleeding.

  To save himself, he turned and bent on his haunches to stoke the fire in the grate, chase the damp, and warm the undersized lamb.

  Ivy’s pup, a German Dachshund, placed her front paws against his thigh seeking attention, its tail beating an amiable tattoo, yet Gabe could concentrate on nothing save Lacey.

  Lace home, here, in his house, where he’d pictured her a hundred times. A thousand.

  His Lacey. As beautiful as ever. More beautiful. His.

  No, not his. Never again his. That wa
s past.

  He was a proper vicar now, staid, unemotional, his passion a vice overcome. Long-buried. Dead. Except that it was not, he had just tonight discovered.

  Gabe turned to the sound of a throat being cleared, almost surprised to find Ivy standing there, exhausted, a sleepy lamb in his arms.

  “It’s late; I’ll prepare your rooms,” Gabe said, rising from the hearth. “MacKenzie’s asleep.”

  The lamb bleated and Gabe reached to stroke the downy-soft head against Ivy’s arm.

  “She’s hungry, the wee thing,” Lace said.

  “I was planning to fix a bottle.” Gabe felt stupid, overlarge, oafish beside Lace, and remembered a time that hadn’t mattered.

  “Did she lose her mother?” Lace asked.

  Gabe relieved Ivy of his burden, feeling more comfortable with the lamb in his arms like a shield, he thought fleetingly, but against what? “She’s a twin,” he said, “and a runt to boot. Her mother rejected her.” He stroked the fragile neck and the mite closed its eyes in ecstasy.

  Obviously pierced by the memory of a mother’s rejection, Lacey nevertheless watched, transfixed, as if he,and only he, could soothe her as well.

  Hope flared in him. He saw . . . yearning . . . in her blue-green eyes. The kind that had once made him lower her to the grass and—

  The fire snapped, shooting sparks into the air, breaking the taut thread of tension between them.

  They both stepped back, set free by the sound.

  Lace looked anywhere but at him. “I’ll fix her a bottle.”

  “I’ll get you a bottle.” They spoke together, stopped together.

  He gave a half-nod and set the lamb on its wobbly legs. Then he proceeded to take everything from the scullery that Lace would need to feed the mite.