Table of Contents
Title Page
Quote
Copyright
Get Your FREE Digital Starter Library!
Other Collette Cameron Books
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Epilogue
About the Author
From the Desk of Collette Cameron
Enjoy the first chapter of EARL OF SUNDERLAND
EARL OF WAINTHORPE
Wicked Earls’ Club
By
COLLETTE CAMERON
Blue Rose Romance TM
Portland, Oregon
Sweet-to-Spicy Timeless Romance TM
“In fact, I’ll up the stakes, my sweet.
You’ll plead for much more than my kisses.”
EARL OF WAINTHORPE
Wicked Earls’ Club
Copyright © 2018 Collette Cameron
Cover Design by: Teresa Spreckelmeyer
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
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A Waltz with a Rogue Series
A Kiss for Miss Kingsley
Bride of Falcon
Her Scandalous Wish
To Tame a Scoundrel’s Heart
The Wallflower’s Wicked Wager
Castle Brides Series
The Viscount’s Vow
Highlander’s Hope
The Earl’s Enticement
Conundrums of the Misses Culpepper Series
Brooke: Wagers Gone Awry
Blythe: Schemes Gone Amiss
Brette: Intentions Gone Astray
Seductive Scoundrels Series
A Diamond for a Duke
Heart of a Scot Series
To Love a Highland Rogue
Highland Heather Romancing a Scot Series
Triumph and Treasure
Virtue and Valor
Heartbreak and Honor
Scandal’s Splendor
Passion and Plunder
Seductive Surrender*
A Scottish Short Story
Heart of a Highlander
Wicked Earls’ Club Series
Earl of Wainthorpe
Boxed Sets
Embraced by a Rogue
To Love a Reckless Lord
When a Lord Loves a Lady
Coming soon*
While I wrote the final chapters of EARL OF WAINTHORPE
my mother’s health took a turn for the worse, and she entered Hospice care.
The compassionate physicians, nurses, certified nurse assistants, social workers—even the hospital cleaning staff—who tended her, brought me great peace of mind.
My mother passed away while I was editing the final draft of this book. So, I dedicate my twenty-first book to often overworked and under-appreciated healthcare workers.
Thank you for your dedication, commitment, sacrifice, and sympathy.
To all my Wicked Earls’ Club fellow authors! Thanks for the invitation to join you in this venture. It’s been a blast. A special shout-out to Teresa Spreckelmeyer of Midnight Muse Designs for Pierce’s gorgeous cover, and to Kathryn Lynn Davis for her editing expertise! Also, a shout out to my VIP Reader Group, Collette’s Chéris for helping me name Miss Millie. I can always count on you!
xoxo
18 May 1817
London, England
By God. At long last, Pierce had the poltroon.
Idly grazing his thumb along the lower edges of his playing cards, he raised his gaze to meet Bertram Normand, the twelfth Baron Fairfax’s triumphant stare. Mindful to keep his expression bored, Pierce brushed an indifferent glance over the former soldier. His regard lingered for a fraction on the crescent-shaped scar marring Fairfax’s right hand before he directed his attention once more to his opponent’s flushed face.
“Well, Wainthorpe?” Fairfax wheezed. “Ready to concede defeat?”
The other players, James, the amiable Earl of Pembroke and Alistair, Earl of Benton exchanged a swift glance. Did they sense this was more than a simple game of Loo?
The perspiration beading the baron’s forehead, as well as the repeated darting of his tongue to moisten the corners of his mouth, exposed the older man’s excitement. From the cunning glint in his bloodshot blue eyes, he thought sure he had won this hand.
Newly titled, in debt up to his sly brows, his estates mortgaged to their cornices and corbels, and possessed of an insatiable thirst for spirits, Fairfax needed to win. Was bloody desperate to, actually.
Pierce, on the other hand, was not.
Already an earl and the successor to a duchy, he had also inherited a substantial sum from his East Indian Munda mother. Which made him rich, and more importantly, powerful. And hell-bent on retribution because of the actions of the man sitting opposite him.
Three pairs of gazes—two congenial, if somewhat glassy from indulging in the expensive cognac Lady Lockhart provided—peered at Pierce expectantly across the table. Teeming with cocky self-confidence, Fairfax believed he had Pierce by the ballocks.
Exactly what Pierce had manipulated him into thinking.
So easy to do, too.
A frustrated frown here. A hefty sigh there. Nervously playing his fingertips atop the table. Even an occasional grimace or biting the corner of his mouth.
Each a sham. All with one purpose. To lure Fairfax into a snare he couldn’t escape from.
Pierce’s blood hummed through his vei
ns in anticipation, a satisfying mantra of long-awaited vindication. He expected to feel more elation, more exhilaration. After all, he’d waited two decades for this moment.
True, for a man accustomed to doing what he wanted, who enjoyed thumbing his nose at the haut ton’s strictures, and whose position and influence made most things possible with an idle flick of his finger, excitement was a rare commodity.
That must be it. He had been bored, restless, discontent for so long, nothing much stirred him anymore. He needed a challenge. Something invigorating. Outrageous. Scandalous even. Anything to shake him from this unfeeling stupor.
An urgent whisper, the voice melodic, yet heavy with censure and distress interrupted the tense silence. A tall, lithe woman had maneuvered her way to stand beside the baron. “Halt this idiocy at once. I insist you come away now—”
Awareness prickled across Pierce’s shoulders and down his backbone.
Who the devil was she?
“Cease your endless harping, gel,” Fairfax snapped, his florid face flaming darker. His vehement head shake sent his mutton-chop adorned jowls to jiggling. Harrumphing his annoyance again, he yanked on his ear while cutting her a rancorous look. “Or I shall send you packing back to Elmswood Parke tonight?”
“Horse feathers and hen’s teeth, Cousin.” Her cute nose scrunching the tiniest bit, she shook her fan at him much the same as a cat twitches its tail when piqued. “We both know you’ll do no such thing.”
An overtone of proud defiance tempered her response.
Cutting his hand toward her, Fairfax grumbled into his brandy glass. “Don’ know why I let you talk me into draggin’ you to London.”
“Because, Cousin, doors are open to me that you cannot place your shoes-in-desperate- need-of-a-good-polish anywhere near.” She sounded more matter-of-fact than boastful or sarcastic, and Pierce found himself rather admiring her pluck.
“You’re jus’ an extra ‘spense I can ill afford.” The baron eyed the cache atop the table, a distinct lustful glint crinkling the corners of his eyes. Obviously peeved, he scratched his jaw. “And with a tongue sharp enough to curl the bark off a Scotch pine, a constant, aggravating pain in my arse.”
Slapping his knee, he dissolved into a fit of short-lived laughter.
“That would be your gout paining you from too much meat and drink.” Twin spots of color accenting her high cheekbones, she squared her shoulders, slanted her chin to a regal angle, and with an agile twist of her long fingers, unfurled her fan. “And I might add, your eloquent speech continues to stagger.”
Fairfax’s ready glower checked the titters and chuckles accompanying her retort, but not Pierce’s reluctant smile.
By Jove, she was bloody entertaining.
Another time, Pierce might’ve appreciated the woman’s barbed rejoinders much more. Instead, he only spared her a cursory glance.
Nonetheless, he quite liked what he saw.
He appreciated willowy, feminine forms. Particularly when they were naked and lying across his cherry-red sheets. Milky white, svelte limbs entwined with his olive skin—
With single-minded determination, he slammed the door on his lurid imagination.
For now.
From beneath his hooded gaze, he cut her another covert glance. Not a woman easily forgotten or disregarded.
She noticed his perusal, and arched a winged brow. The tiniest hint of chagrin shadowed the edges of her oval face.
Pierce forced his focus back to the game.
He’d anticipated this opportunity, planned and schemed for this moment for far too many years to entertain pity for Fairfax’s treatment of the chit. Besides, except for his sisters and nieces, Pierce never—truly never—harbored any sentiment stronger than warm regard toward females.
The rustle of fine silks and satins and the rhythmic swishing of ladies’ fans increased. More privileged and jaded guests took note of the high stakes and maneuvered nearer the table to witness the outcome. Their anticipation tangible, they approached, much like hounds closing in on a prey’s fresh scent.
“We are waiting, Wainthorpe. Are you in or out?”
Fairfax played his fingers along the table’s edge. Then, as if realizing his actions exposed his uneasiness, he bent his other hand and casually touched two knuckles to his mouth.
Patience was not the baron’s strong suit, and Pierce intended to use that flaw against him.
“Let’s dispense with tokens, shall we?” Brow and mouth quirked, Pierce shoved the entire stack of notes before him to the table’s center.
Fans swished faster as muffled gasps and one low whistle accompanied his brazen move. Many peers’ fortunes had been reversed with the careless flip of a card or a toss of dice. Doubtless the onlookers thought him a hapless fool or an idiot who’d taken leave of his senses. Those were two of the more polite things London’s upper crust called him.
Their opinions meant naught, however.
Never had. Never would.
Years ago, when he’d first arrived in England, these same people had elevated their noses or pulled their skirts aside when he came near. His half-Munda heritage was a black mark upon him. As if ancestry and lineage molded a person’s character for good or bad. Many of the blue-bloods standing nearby kept secrets well-hidden that were far more objectionable than his mixed blood.
So at every opportunity, Pierce tossed their conventions and rules to the wind. More like kicked them to next winter. Only of late, even that ceased producing the usual wry twist of his lips.
Tonight, however, he was intent on one thing.
He trained his full attention on the man across the table from him.
A man he despised with every deceptively calm breath he drew. Since as a small, terrified lad of seven, he bit the then Captain Normand’s hand until the coppery taste of blood filled Pierce’s mouth. Before the cull cudgeled him with the butt of his pistol.
Hours later he awoke, blood blurring his vision, and saw his AamA, his mother…
Not now!
Pierce bore a scar an inch above his right temple from the blow. A reminder of why he despised Fairfax each time he glanced into a mirror or touched the triangular mark. Jaw clamped until his teeth threatened to crack, Pierce dropped his gaze to the ante. A quick calculation sent his pulse stampeding.
Just under five and seventy thousand pounds.
Since Fairfax had inherited the barony and skulked back to England a year ago, Pierce had systematically bought the baron’s debts. Those, along with tonight’s losses would pitch the unconscionable devil’s spawn, bulbous nose over fat arse into bankruptcy.
Destitution. Ruination.
No. This was justice; blast Fairfax’s black soul to perdition.
Pierce’s pulse surged, and his stomach clenched into a gnarled tangle of anticipation, revenge, satisfaction, and yes—a trifling stab of remembered pain. Yet, as was his habit, he arranged his features into passiveness. Something he mastered as a child to buffer the scorn and ridicule often directed toward him by the upper ten thousand.
So close now, AamA.
Would Fairfax take the bait? Would his greed and arrogance plummet him into the gutters where he belonged?
“I’m no fool.” Chuckling and shaking his head, Pembroke laid his cards neatly upon the table, then pushed them away. Relaxing into his chair, he tossed back the last of his cognac while eyeing Pierce and their cohort, Benton over the glass’s rim.
A small pin—the letter W—on their tailored jacket lapels revealed their membership in the exclusive Wicked Earls’ Club. A secret society for unrepentant and wholly irredeemable rakes and rapscallions. No one but the members knew the pins’ significance. If an earl lost all sense of reason and took that fateful step into matrimony, he must still protect the identity of the remaining unshackled peers.
“Aye, neither am I.” Benton too, surrendered his cards. Though the Scot simply tossed his hand, face upward, onto the rosewood card table. He lifted his glass toward Pierce, mischief c
avorting in his acute blue eyes. “Who would you lay odds on, Pembroke?” he asked in the King’s clipped English, only the subtlest hint of a brogue flavoring his precise speech.
A grin tugged Pembroke’s mouth upward, and he scratched his eyebrow. “Well, truth be told, Loo has never really been Wainthorpe’s game. Too civilized.”
“True, he’s more of a hazard or racing sort.” Benton gave Pierce a measured nod and picked a piece of lint from his cuff. He sliced Pierce a considering glance. “So hard to read that emotionless expression. Sometimes his eyes reveal a wee bit of something if you look carefully.”
“Always been like that.” Pembroke grasped the etched decanter and raised it, silently asking who wanted another tot. Receiving affirmative nods, he poured a finger’s worth for everyone.
Fairfax immediately quaffed a mouthful.
“Remember at Eton when he broke his arm?” Pembroke jerked his chin toward Pierce. “No tears or caterwauling. Just blinked those obsidian eyes.”
“If you’re going to discuss me, can you at least do it when I’m not present?” For decades those two had tried their utmost to get a reaction from Pierce. All in good-natured ribbing that close chums who’d experienced hard times together are permitted.
The baron stared at Pierce, his lined face crumpling in puzzlement. He narrowed his eyes to discerning slits.
“Are you positive we haven’t played together before, Wainthorpe? I cannot help but think we have met prior to this. You seem slightly familiar.”
He still did not recognize Pierce. But why should he?
The last time Fairfax saw him, Pierce had been a scrawny, shaggy-haired lad.
“I’m certain I have never sat at a card table with you.” Truth there. “Are you in or not?” Pierce knew full well the sot didn’t possess a shilling more. He made a point to learn all he could about Fairfax. Probably knew more about his finances and state of affairs than the man himself.
Earl of Wainthorpe Page 1
