The Earl I Ruined Read online

  Copyright

  This ebook is licensed to you for your personal enjoyment only.

  This ebook may not be sold, shared, or given away.

  * * *

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the writer’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  The Earl I Ruined

  Copyright © 2018 by Scarlett Peckham

  Ebook ISBN: 9781641970570

  * * *

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  No part of this work may be used, reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  * * *

  NYLA Publishing

  121 W 27th St., Suite 1201, New York, NY 10001

  http://www.nyliterary.com

  Contents

  About this Book

  Author’s Note

  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

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Epilogue

  Thank You!

  Do you want more now?

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Scarlett Peckham

  About Scarlett

  About this Book

  She’s beautiful, rich, and reckless …

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  When Lady Constance Stonewell accidentally ruins the Earl of Apthorp’s entire future with her gossip column, she does what any honorable young lady must: offer her hand in marriage. Or, at the very least, stage a whirlwind fake engagement to repair his reputation. Never mind that it means spending a month with the dullest man in England. Or the fact that he disapproves of everything she holds dear.

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  He’s supposedly the most boring politician in the House of Lords ...

  * * *

  Julian Haywood, the Earl of Apthorp, is on the cusp of finally proving himself to be the man he’s always wanted to be when his future is destroyed in a single afternoon. When the woman he’s secretly in love with confesses she’s at fault, it isn’t just his life that is shattered: it’s his heart.

  * * *

  They have a month to clear his name and convince society they are madly in love …

  * * *

  But when Constance discovers her faux-intended is decidedly more than meets the eye—not to mention adept at shocking forms of wickedness—she finds herself falling for him.

  * * *

  There’s only one problem: he can’t forgive her for breaking his heart.

  Author’s Note

  Dear readers,

  While this is a mostly light-hearted book, it contains flashbacks to a moment of unwanted sexual aggression, and an outing of a character’s erotic tastes. If you are a sensitive reader, please do consult the reviews.

  Dedication

  For Chris, who makes the wildest dreams of wicked women come true in real life.

  Chapter 1

  Mayfair, London

  April 1754

  Lady Constance Stonewell awoke to a crisp spring breeze, birdsong streaming through her windows, and the sense that she was, for reasons she could not quite recall, inordinately vexed.

  She flopped back against her vertiginous mound of feather pillows, annoyed to be wide-awake before her customary hour of high noon. A piece of paper came dislodged from the sleep-tangled mass of her hair and stabbed her in the cheekbone.

  She squinted at the crumpled missive. Potential Husbands for Gillian Bastian.

  All the reasons for her ill mood came rushing back.

  She scanned over the names she’d written down the night before. Lord Avondale. No, too libidinous. Lord Rellfare. Too bilious. Sir Richard Voth. Too poor.

  She balled up the scrap of paper and threw it on the floor, where it joined the pile of other names she’d rejected before she fell asleep. She caught sight of her haggard face in the looking glass and groaned.

  This disaster with the Earl of Apthorp was giving her insomnia and making her look drawn. Which was unsurprising: she could always trust Lord Bore to find new, enterprising ways to drain her of her youth and beauty.

  She sighed, and rose from bed, dabbing at a blotch of ink smeared onto her cheek. At least by now Gillian must have seen the poem and realized Lord Apthorp was not the saintly specimen of manhood that he so vigorously imitated. She could either decide she didn’t mind a husband with a taste for the illicit and a penchant for hypocrisy or marry someone else. And Constance would come armed with a list of suitable alternatives.

  It was the least she could do, having encouraged the match with Apthorp in the first place.

  The door to her room flew open and a small child dashed in, clad in a frilly sleeping dress and a grown man’s powdered wig.

  She bit back a laugh. “Why, good morning, Georgie. What a fetching coiffure you have today. Will you be delivering an oratory at the Inns of Court?”

  “I’m Lord Arsethorp!” he shouted, leaping onto her bed.

  She snorted. Her cousin’s three-year-old son had always lisped, but this was a new, rather amusing mispronunciation of Lord Apthorp’s name.

  She straightened the wig over his mop of blond curls. “It’s Apthorp, darling, but I must admit, I like your version better. You do rather resemble him today. Though he does not approve of gentlemen appearing in mixed company sans their smalls.”

  At least not that he cared to admit publicly.

  “I’m Arsethorp!” Georgie insisted, jumping up and down on her mattress in a way that made her head ache.

  “If you insist. Shall we go find the man himself and show him your ensemble?”

  She draped her silk dressing gown over her shoulders and smirked at her reflection. Apthorp frowned on her habit of meandering through the house in her robe de chambre. Provoking his prim sensibilities had been one of life’s great pleasures even before she knew they were contrived and hypocritical.

  She picked the child up and carried him down the corridor toward Apthorp’s rooms. In truth, she’d been hoping for an excuse to speak to him ever since she learned his secret. But he kept scrupulously early hours, and she was almost never up before the stroke of twelve. They hadn’t crossed paths in a week.

  She paused at his door. “Here we are,” she told Georgie. “Give it a tap.”

  The child smacked the wood with his palm. “Arsethorp!” he bellowed.

  “Apthorp, darling.”

  She waited, wondering if he would seem different now that she knew his sordid secret.

  Or if, somehow, she would. To him.

  She could not fathom why he’d played the Puritan all these years. Especially to her. She was friendly with plenty of dissipated rogues, circulating as she did among the theater set. She collected objects of scandal like other ladies collected hair ribbons and fine art.

  To Apthorp’s supposed never-ending horror.

  Ever since his cousin married hers eight years ago, he’d been aghast at the company she kept, missing no opportunity to deem her continental and unladylike. He cast himself as the solemn future statesman, shoulderi
ng his heavy responsibilities with perfect bearing, in contrast to her, the frivolous, loud orphan who preferred hosting parties to doing charitable works, and collecting gossip rather than accomplishments. He made no secret that he viewed her as a naughty child who required constant supervision lest she be caught dangling from a chandelier in her nightdress. Or worse: inviting shame upon her family with her wanton, reckless ways.

  And all the while he’d been—

  “ARSETHORP!” Georgie shouted, kicking the door with his small foot.

  There was no answer—to her disappointment as much as her relief.

  Georgie giggled at his own antics, squirming in her arms.

  “You’re a very evil child, young Lord Lyle. Just like your wicked cousin Constance before you.” She blew a noisy kiss onto his neck. “Apthorp must be down at breakfast. Let’s present you to your nurse instead. I imagine she is looking for you. Just as the poor footman is no doubt looking for his wig.”

  They located Mrs. Williams in the children’s nursery. The old woman was craning her neck toward some cacophony coming through the open window from the street below.

  “Arsethorp!” Georgie yelled with renewed excitement, gesturing outside.

  Mrs. Williams jumped and snapped the window shut, her face the color of sorbet à la framboise. “Lord Lyle! That’s not language for a child to repeat.” She shook her head apologetically at Constance and took Georgie from her arms. “Oh, heavens. Come, let’s go apologize to whichever poor fellow is missing his hair.”

  Constance took the old woman’s vacated position by the window and slid it open, curious at what she’d been observing on the street.

  A news-rag hawker noticed her and waved. “New Saints & Satyrs, madam,” he said, brandishing a paper with a saucy wink. “Lor’ Arsethorp and the sinful—”

  She slammed the window shut and backed away.

  Arsethorp.

  Oh God. Georgie’d heard that coming from the street? Could that mean—

  No. She pressed her fingers to her temples. Impossible. She hadn’t used his name. She’d sent it only to her usual, discreet audience of ladies, written in a code only they could understand.

  It’s a coincidence. You’re overwrought from lack of sleep.

  Nevertheless she walked briskly down the stairs to the parlor, needing to reassure herself that she was, indeed, imagining things. It was early enough that the man in question would no doubt still be at the breakfast table, tediously droning on about the finer points of irrigation or his favorite blend of tea. He would likely pause his diatribe to remind her in his patient, condescending way that one mustn’t appear at breakfast in half dress.

  He would be as he always was: insufferable.

  But Lord Apthorp’s customary seat in the dining room was empty.

  Constance’s cousin Hilary, and Hilary’s husband, Lord Rosecroft, sat alone in silence.

  They looked like someone had died. Someone they liked.

  “What a glorious morning,” Constance said, striving for brightness despite the fact that her hands had gone damp.

  “Is it?” Rosecroft glanced outside in irritation, as if good weather were an affront to his foul mood.

  Hilary just stared at her eggs. And being five months gone with child, she never just observed her food.

  “You’re up uncommonly early,” Hilary finally said. Her voice was hoarse, like she’d been crying.

  “How dare you malign my wakefulness? I always rise with the horses,” Constance retorted. She waited for one of them to either laugh or reveal whatever was amiss. But they only exchanged a pained glance, in that way that married people had of communicating dire things without speaking.

  She forced herself to acknowledge Apthorp’s empty chair. “Where is young Lord Bore this morning? Apthorp never misses breakfast. He’s so inordinately fond of his routine.”

  Hilary winced and placed a hand to her stomach, as if the sound of Apthorp’s name was so upsetting it roiled her unborn child.

  “Darling,” she said. “I’m afraid something dreadful has happened. You see, there’s been some untoward slander printed about Julian in a gazette.”

  “Lies,” Rosecroft muttered. “Vile lies by those damned high-necked bloody—”

  Hilary lifted a hand to calm his outburst. “Please, James.”

  Constance swallowed. “I see. Is it about … his debts?”

  Please let it be about his debts.

  Apthorp’s increasingly desperate insolvency was the sort of open secret that everyone in London knew but no one with proper manners mentioned. Such a scandal could be weathered. And had nothing to do with what she’d written in her circular.

  Hilary sighed. “The details are not polite. Suffice it to say one of those vulgar gutter verses is going around and it dishonors him.”

  Rosecroft slammed his fist on the table. “No, it dishonors whatever bloody hack would write such chop without the decency to—”

  “James,” Hilary hissed. “You’ll make yourself ill.”

  Perhaps not as ill as Constance felt. For she knew exactly what kind of hack would write such chop.

  Oh God. What had she done?

  How could it have gotten out?

  She tried to fashion her face into a reassuring smile. “I’m sure it will pass quickly, whatever it is. After all, Apthorp’s reputation is as spotless as they come. He’s the most boring man in England.”

  His infamous dullness was precisely what had created her dilemma. Feigning a blandness one did not privately possess was misleading to the point of being treacherous when one was a gentleman presenting himself to a woman as a candidate for the lifelong office of her husband. Female happiness was routinely diminished by secrets male society insisted ladies were too delicate to countenance until after their weddings, when it was too late to object.

  Constance considered it her duty to correct this imbalance using the arts at her disposal.

  Namely, gossip.

  “Perhaps Constance is right,” Hilary said. “Perhaps we needn’t fret, James.”

  “His bill is being read today in the Commons,” Rosecroft thundered. “The evangelicals are handing out the papers to anyone with bloody hands. They spent the whole night singing outside Parliament. And with the election coming …”

  He trailed off, as if the dire nature of this was too obvious and tragic to merit explanation.

  And, with a sinking heart, she saw that he was right.

  After all, she only pretended to grow faint with boredom when Apthorp went on and on about his pending legislation. She knew the details of his precious bill well enough to recite the lines herself. He’d spent half a decade conceiving of these waterways and doubled his debts in the process. His entire future rode on the bill passing into law.

  If it didn’t, he’d be ruined. Totally, utterly ruined.

  And a certain faithless hack who happened to share a roof with him would be responsible for his destruction.

  Exactly as her brother had predicted when, with no small amount of rage, he’d banned her from using rumors to guide the hand of fate in the direction that she favored. That unpleasant disagreement had concerned her decision to expose his affair with his gardener in a national gazette, forcing him to marry her to save her honor.

  Constance maintained she’d saved him from a dreary, loveless marriage to someone he disliked, in favor of the happy life he now enjoyed with the woman of his dreams. He maintained she’d treated his wife’s future like a game of chance in a manner that was reckless to the point of cruelty.

  They had agreed to disagree.

  Or rather, he’d shouted at her vigorously and at length, in such a break from his famously cool demeanor that she’d worried for his heart. You will destroy someone’s life irrevocably with your gossip. Promise me you will not write another word. Or so help me, Constance—

  And, of course, because he was her closest living relative, and the man who had, however detachedly, raised her up from infancy, and the only p
erson whose opinion she’d ever really cared about, she’d promised him.

  She’d even meant it, at the time.

  So he’d forgiven her for what she’d done, and they’d made peace. But not without a certain lingering wariness about her character on his part, nor a certain amount of tenderness on hers for being so villainously cast when she’d only been trying to help.

  And not without his reminding her, whenever someone mentioned news more scintillating than the weather in her presence, that she was not to write it down.

  If he found out that she had not only violated the only rule he’d ever given her, but done so at the cost of the reputation and financial future of a close connection of their family …

  He’d never, ever forgive her.

  Which meant she had to fix it.

  Urgently.

  Before he found out, and she lost the only family she had left.

  Again.

  Chapter 2

  The Strand, London

  April 1754

  There were several advantages to having one’s life completely ruined.

  For one, spirits tasted better. For two, there was no longer any reason not to consume them at four in the afternoon.