Taming the Rake Read online

  Alcohol no longer warmed the emptiness inside him. Had it ever? Lately it only exacerbated the blackness curdling inside him, leaving him feeling even colder and emptier. And angrier.

  Once he’d thought there was something more than the black emptiness that ate at his soul, but now he knew there wasn’t. This was it. Reaching for more only made reality that much worse.

  He’d reached for more once.

  “Drowning yourself in your cups, Coventry?”

  Coventry gazed up through inebriated spectacles to see his smug host. The party must be over. He was trying, but instead he said, “Lady Blakemore lengthen the leash?” he quipped.

  Blakemore only smiled. A self-assured smile that made Coventry feel as if he was the one missing something. Though he was hardly welcomed, Blakemore took a chair opposite him.

  “If my wife had her way, you would be the one on a leash. Or perhaps in chains thrown in some hideous dungeon.”

  Coventry grimaced. “She still has not forgiven me?”

  Blakemore lifted a brow. “Do you expect her to?”

  Coventry considered it for a moment. “I suppose not. But at the time, I didn’t trust her, she was an accomplished flirt, and I was only trying to stop you from making the same mistake I did.”

  His friend’s face darkened, but he didn’t say anything. Blakemore had been furious, but he’d understood why Coventry had done it. He’d witnessed the hell of Coventry’s marriage first-hand.

  Misguided though Coventry’s attempt to seduce his friend’s fiancée might have been, he’d only done it out of loyalty, and to prevent Blakemore from suffering his fate.

  “You’ll admit that you were wrong? My wife is nothing like Lady Serena.”

  Coventry stiffened as he always did at the mention of his dead wife. “It would be hard to deny after watching the two of you parade about in unfashionable marital bliss for the past year.”

  Though his mocking tone suggested otherwise, Coventry could not deny the truth. His friend had found happiness in his marriage. Blakemore’s marriage was everything Coventry had once hoped for.

  Once he’d believed that his parents were an aberration, that with his own family he would find the love and happiness denied him as a child. Foolishly, he’d invested all of his childish hopes and dreams in his wife. He’d imagined himself in love, doting on his young wife, Lady Serena Lyons, daughter of the Earl of Beauchamp. The match had been promoted between both families for years, due to their neighboring estates, but Coventry never would have agreed to it had he not been so completely deceived.

  “Not all marriages need be unhappy,” Blakemore said carefully.

  “No,” he conceded.

  “Lady Georgina, for example. She’s nothing like Lady Serena.”

  Coventry frowned. He’d had much the same thought. But at one time, Serena had seemed perfect. Too good to be true. Much like Lady Georgina. Perhaps that was the problem; no one was perfect. The ugliness inside Lady Serena was well-hidden by the angelic beauty on the outside. She manipulated him with that beauty and with his own pathetic need for love.

  He cringed at the memories. He’d been like a starving dog, lapping up whatever morsel of affection she deigned to part with—no matter how meager. He found her coy glances at his friends charming, not calculating. Her attention to his finances, he thought wifely devotion, not avarice. He thought himself fortunate when she felt no pain the first time they made love, never realizing that she was not a virgin.

  The signs were all there, but he’d chosen to ignore them. The occasional flash of nastiness directed toward the servants, he attributed simply to her spoiled upbringing—a minor inconvenience that she would surely outgrow.

  He’d been a fool, and she’d shown the ton just how much of one.

  Even thinking of her, he felt his blood boil, the tightness squeezing in his chest, the explosion of anger inside him so deep and dark, it terrified him.

  Lady Georgina’s wholesome beauty might seem to reflect the candidness of her character, but he refused to allow himself to be deceived again.

  He focused on his friend. “Is that why you are here?” Coventry asked. “To have me acknowledge the many accomplishments of Lady Georgina Beauclerk?”

  Blakemore chuckled. “Am I that obvious?”

  Coventry sat back in his chair and observed his friend over his drink. “Your wife sent you.”

  Blakemore’s smile deepened. “No, but she was not exactly adverse to my coming.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  The two sat in silence for a while. “It’s no use,” Coventry finally said.

  Blakemore shook his head sadly. “No, I suppose it’s not. But you can’t blame me for trying. It’s a lonely road you’re heading down.”

  “How can I be lonely,” Coventry said with a lift of his cup. “When I have all this.”

  Blakemore left him alone with his drink. And his memories.

  Lady Georgina had shown surprising canniness. She was right, drinking didn’t make him forget.

  No, he remembered only too well.

  He remembered how he’d returned to town unexpectedly from a visit to his estate in Cambridgeshire, pathetically eager to see his wife of less than six months, only to find his “loving” wife with her legs wrapped around one of the most notorious bucks in London, Viscount Petersham. Ironically, a Hellfire Rake. A man he’d considered a friend. He’d stood there stunned, watching, as his wife grunted her pleasure under the white backside of another man.

  Even now, four years later, he was still humiliated by what had happened next. He’d been sick. Right there in a porcelain basin he’d spilled his guts, along with his youthful idealism.

  They hadn’t even bothered to stop when they heard him, his wife’s orgasmic scream was the final blow to his shattered dreams. Petersham had merely rolled off her with a grunt and pulled up his brown trousers hastily bunched around his ankles.

  Petersham had shaken his head at the horror-struck younger man, his face a mixture of bemusement and pity. “I thought you knew,” he’d said. “It’s not as if I’m the first.”

  Horrified, Coventry’s stomach had turned again. Bile rose to the back of his throat, but he forced the sickness back. He refused to humiliate himself any further over a wife who was no better than a two-penny whore.

  She hadn’t even bothered to feign shame. Instead, her pretty features were twisted with her normal petulance that he recognized now for its ugliness. “You’re early,” she’d accused. “You should have notified me of your return.”

  As if it were his fault.

  She’d raked her gaze over him, her mouth pursed with displeasure. “You’re overreacting,” she said coolly. “I hope you won’t be tiresome about this and make a scene.”

  He didn’t remember what had happened next, only that he’d snapped. He’d chased Petersham out of his house, waving the riding whip that he still carried in his hand, so eagerly had he flown up the stairs to reach his wife. And there in the middle of St. James’s Square, like an idiot he’d attempted to flog Petersham. To this day, some still cracked their whips and laughed when he walked by.

  He should have known. How could he have been so blind?

  He realized how his wife had manipulated him into marriage to conceal her illicit liaisons. After his discovery with Petersham, she no longer felt the need to hide them. She flaunted her unfaithfulness and he’d reviled her.

  From that point on he’d bottled up a part of himself, storing away forever the emotions that made him vulnerable. All of the affection he’d once had for his wife turned to hatred. The bitter hatred of disappointed dreams. He’d hated her so much he refused to mourn her when she died a year later bearing another man’s bastard.

  The marriage he’d hoped would bring the happiness that had eluded him as a child had been a disaster. Serena was a weak woman who could not bear the weight of his dreams. Her betrayal had destroyed every remnant of his foolish idealism. He no longer looked for “love,” it simply wa