A Rogue of Her Own Read online

  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.

  Copyright © 2018 by Grace Burrowes

  Excerpt from Book Title copyright © 2018 by Grace Burrowes

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  First Edition: March 2018

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  ISBNs: 978-1-5387-2891-8 (mass market), 978-1-5387-2892-5 (ebook)

  E3-20171018-DANF

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  The Windham Family Tree

  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

  Epilogue

  A Sneak Peek of the Rogues to Riches series!

  About the Author

  Acclaim for Grace Burrowes

  Also by Grace Burrowes

  Fall in Love with Forever Romance

  Newsletters

  To my great, big, wonderful, irksome, impressive, bothersome, and—most of all—loving family.

  Acknowledgments

  When I completed the original Windham Family series, I did so wondering if I’d have a chance to write happily-ever-afters for Uncle Tony and Aunt Gladys’s four daughters. Being unmarried Windhams, they kept me up at night. Thanks to my editor Leah Hultenschmidt and the whole team at Grand Central Forever for being such a pleasure to work with on the Windham Brides series. (Though I do think we should have planned a project team meeting at a Welsh Castle…just sayin’.)

  Chapter One

  “Heed me, Miss Charlotte, for mine is the only offer you’re likely to receive, no matter that your uncle is a duke. I am a viscount, and you shall like being my viscountess very well.”

  Charlotte Windham had no choice but to heed Viscount Neederby, for he’d taken her by the arm and was nearly dragging her along Lady Belchamp’s wilderness walk.

  “My lord, while I am ever receptive to knowledgeable guidance, this is neither the time nor the place to make a declaration.” Never and nowhere suited Charlotte when it came to proposals from such as Neederby.

  He marched onward, simultaneously walking and pontificating being one of his few accomplishments.

  “I must beg to differ, my dear, for receptive to guidance you most assuredly are not. Married to me, your sadly headstrong propensities will be laid to rest. My duty and pleasure as your devoted spouse will be to instruct you in all matters.”

  His lordship sent her a look, one intended to convey tender indulgence or a disturbance of the bowels, Charlotte wasn’t sure which.

  “Might we circle back to the buffet, sir? All this hiking about has given me an appetite.”

  Neederby finally halted, though he chose a spot overlooking the Thames River. What imbecile had decided that scenic views were a mandatory improvement on Nature as the Almighty had designed her?

  “Were you being arch, Miss Charlotte? I believe you were. I have appetites too, dontcha know.”

  Neederby fancied himself a Corinthian, as accomplished at all the manly sports as he was at tying a fancy knot in his cravat. Hostesses added him to guest lists because he had a title and had yet to lose either his hair or his teeth in any quantity.

  In Charlotte’s estimation, his brains had gone missing entirely.

  “I haven’t an arch bone in my body, my lord. I am, however, hungry.” The occasion was a Venetian breakfast, and Charlotte had intended to do justice to the lavish buffet. The roaring water more than ten yards below the iron railing had carried away her appetite.

  “One hears things,” Neederby said, wiggling his eyebrows. “About certain people.”

  Charlotte heard the river thundering past and edged back from the overlook. “I have no interest in gossip, but a plate of Lady Belchamp’s buffet offerings does appeal.”

  His lordship clamped a gloved hand over Charlotte’s fingers. “What about my offerings? I’m tireless in the saddle, as they say, and you’re in want of a fellow to show you the bridle path, as it were.”

  Equestrian analogies never led anywhere decent. Charlotte escaped Neederby’s grasp by twisting her arm, a move her cousins had shown her more than ten years ago.

  “I’m famished, your lordship. We can return to the buffet, or I’ll leave you here to admire the view.”

  Neither option could salvage Charlotte’s morning. The gossips would claim that she had taken too long on this ramble with his lordship, or that she’d returned to the party without his escort, both choices unacceptable for a lady.

  As the only remaining unmarried Windham, Charlotte had earned the enmity of every wallflower, failed debutante, matchmaker, and fortune hunter in Mayfair. The little season brought the wilted and the wounded out in quantity, while Charlotte—who considered herself neither—longed to retire to the country.

  Neederby moved more quickly than he reasoned, and thus Charlotte found herself trapped between him and the railing.

  “When anybody’s looking,” he said, “you’re all haughty airs and tidy bonnet ribbons, but I know what you fast girls really want. Married to me, you’d be more than content.”

  Married to him, Charlotte would be a candidate for Bedlam. “I need breakfast, you buffoon, and I haven’t been a girl for years. Get away from me.”

  Charlotte also needed room to drive her knee into his jewelbox, and she needed to breathe. His lordship took a step closer, and Charlotte backed up until the railing was all that prevented her from falling into the torrent below. Her vision dimmed at the edges and the roaring in her ears merged with the noise of the river.

  Not now. Please, not here, not now. Not with the biggest nincompoop in all of nincompoopdom flinging his marital ambitions at me.

  The thought had barely formed when Neederby was abruptly dragged three feet to the right.

  “Sherbourne,” his lordship squ
awked. “Devilish bad taste to interrupt a man when he’s paying his addresses.”

  Lucas Sherbourne was tall, blond, solidly built, and at that moment, a pathetically welcome sight.

  “If that’s your idea of how a gentleman pays his addresses,” Sherbourne said, “then I’d like to introduce you to my version of target practice at dawn.”

  “His lordship was not paying his addresses,” Charlotte bit out. She clung to the rail in hopes of remaining upright, and yet, she needed to get away from the precipice.

  Sherbourne peeled her fingers free one by one and offered his arm. “Then I misread the situation, and his lordship merely owes you an apology.”

  Sherbourne glanced at the river, then at Neederby, as if measuring angles and distances. Charlotte’s heart was beating too fast and her knees were weak, else she might have managed a dignified exit. Instead, she held fast to Sherbourne’s muscular arm—needs must—and conjured a mental image of her grandmother Holsopple’s fancy tea service.

  “My apologies,” Neederby muttered, yanking on his waistcoat. “I’ll wish you good day, Miss Charlotte.”

  He turned his back on Sherbourne—a lord’s privilege where a commoner was concerned, but rude treatment of a lady—and stalked off in the direction of the next scenic view.

  Sherbourne switched positions, so he stood between Charlotte and the railing. “If you were any more pale, I’d be measuring you for a winding sheet. Come sit.”

  On some other day or in some other place that offered no dratted scenic vista, Charlotte would chide him for his peremptory tone.

  “Your store of flattery is wanting, Mr. Sherbourne.” She could not possibly sit on the bench he’d led her to. “The prospect does not appeal.”

  “The prospect of being seen in my company? Perhaps you’d prefer the pawing and snorting of Lord Nettlebum, or one of his equally blue-blooded—”

  Charlotte waved a hand. “The prospect of the river. So far below.”

  Sherbourne glanced past her shoulder. “A long leap, I’ll grant you, but hardly…Are you about to faint on me, Charlotte Windham?”

  The curiosity in his tone—no outrage or dismay—had Charlotte standing straighter. “And fuel the talk already circulating? What do you take me for?”

  Sherbourne was a social upstart, but he was a wealthy, single upstart who had the good fortune to be neighbors with the Duke of Haverford in Wales. That fine gentleman had recently married Charlotte’s sister Elizabeth, and thus Sherbourne was a well-connected, wealthy, single upstart.

  Also a pest, but not a fool.

  Charlotte watched him adding facts and observations, and coming to the logical conclusion.

  “Have you taken any sustenance?” he asked. “The buffet line was long earlier. Perhaps a spot of tea would appeal?”

  “A spot of tea would be heavenly. Thank you.”

  That Sherbourne would be both kind and discreet was miraculous. Later, Charlotte might find the resolve to resent him for both—why had he been the one to interrupt Neederby, why not some meddling cousin or devoted auntie?—but for now, she was grateful simply to leave the river’s edge.

  * * *

  “Writing to one of your sisters again?” Julian St. David, Duke of Haverford, asked his duchess.

  Elizabeth had taken over the tower room known as the Dovecote for her personal corner of Haverford Castle. She set aside the page she’d been working on and rose to hug him.

  “I’ve missed you, Haverford.”

  He’d been gone less than three hours. “I’ve missed you, too. I promised Sherbourne I’d keep an eye on his acres, and that requires the occasional glance in the direction of his property. His steward isn’t exactly an advertisement for modern agricultural practices.”

  Elizabeth remained in Julian’s arms, and that was fine with him, for he loved to hold her. They’d met when she’d attended his summer house party. From the first day, Elizabeth had begun setting Haverford Castle and its owner to rights.

  Now that she was the chatelaine, the property boasted a lot fewer musty old books, also a lot less dust and mildew. Windows had become spotless, carpets once again had luster, and not a single chimney dared smoke.

  Being a duke had never been such a comfy, pleasant undertaking, while being Elizabeth’s husband…

  “I’m in need of a nap,” Julian said. “Cantering all over the shire tires a fellow out.”

  “You need luncheon first. Napping with your duchess requires stamina.”

  “Point to the lady.”

  A tap sounded on the door, and Julian admitted a footman bearing a tray. As usual, Elizabeth had anticipated her spouse’s appetites, not merely his desires.

  She settled beside him on the sofa and let him fix the tea. Then she let him feed her a piece of shortbread, then she let him kiss her until he was more or less lying atop her, the tea growing cold.

  “We have a perfectly lovely bed,” Julian said. “Why am I compelled to accost you on sofas, benches, and picnic blankets?”

  “I made the overtures on the picnic blanket,” Elizabeth said, stroking a fingertip over his eyebrow. “I’ve grown fond of picnic blankets.”

  Julian was fond of her, and he hadn’t expected that, not so soon, not so…profoundly. He loved Elizabeth, he respected her, and God knew he desired her, but the pure, friendly sense of liking they shared was as precious as their passionate sentiments. She had become his confidante, his sounding board, his advisor, and most of all, his friend.

  And his lover, of course. “We’ll picnic after we nap,” he said, giving his wife room to breathe.

  “We’ll nap after we’ve done justice to the tray,” Elizabeth said, using Julian’s shoulder to pull herself upright. “I’m worried about Charlotte.”

  Hence, the whirlwind of letters flying among the three married Windham sisters. Various cousins participated in the epistolary storm, for the ducal branch of the Windham family had no less than eight healthy offshoots, all happily married.

  And all, doubtless, also worried about Charlotte.

  “Is this a different sort of worry than you had for her before we married?” Julian asked around a mouthful of shortbread.

  “My anxiety is worse, because I am married. We’re all married, except for Charlotte. That can’t be easy. Did you just put butter on your shortbread?”

  “I must fortify myself for this lengthy nap you’re planning.”

  “Fortify me with both butter and jam,” Elizabeth said. “Will you be wroth with me if I’ve done a bit a matchmaking?”

  He would never be wroth with her. “You can make a match for Charlotte by correspondence?”

  “I’m a Windham. Matchmaking is my birthright, according to Uncle Percival and Aunt Esther.”

  These relations of Elizabeth’s, the Duke and Duchess of Moreland, were a deceptively charming older couple who’d likely brought about half the unions in Mayfair.

  “You’re a St. David now,” Julian said, passing her a slice of shortbread slathered with butter and jam. “Thus, I am your accomplice in all things. At whom have you aimed Cupid’s arrow?”

  “I didn’t aim it, exactly. Charlotte is so very contrary that I instead warned my aunt that of all men, Lucas Sherbourne ought not to be shoved at Charlotte. She seemed to notice him at the house party this summer, which for Charlotte, is tantamount to a mad passion.”

  “You have a bit of raspberry jam on your lip.” Julian kissed the relevant feature. “Scrumptious.”

  “If Sherbourne is steered away from Charlotte,” Elizabeth went on, “then she might favor him with the occasional glance.”

  “My thoughts complement your own, for I’ve written to Sherbourne that he is not, under any circumstances, to contemplate a courtship of Charlotte Windham. Hold still.”

  Elizabeth gave him an amused look—she’d hold still only if she jolly well pleased to, of course—and set down her teacup.

  Julian dipped his finger in the jam pot and drew a line of preserves along her décolletage
. “Is this one of your favorite frocks?”

  “Is the door locked?”

  “Yes.” Out of recently acquired habit.

  “This is my least favorite dress in all the world.”

  Julian stood and shrugged out of his jacket, then undid his cravat and sleeve buttons. “We must earn our rest.”

  “We’ll need to hire another seamstress at the rate I go through dresses.”

  Julian ran his tongue over the jam adorning Elizabeth’s right breast. “I’m ever mindful of the necessity to economize. We could simply dispense with clothing when we’re at home, and save both time and money.”

  Elizabeth swiped her finger through the jam on her left breast, then pressed raspberry sweetness to Julian’s mouth. “I vote we dispense with your clothing right now, Your Grace.”

  Julian seconded that worthy motion and had coaxed Elizabeth out of her shoes and stockings when it occurred to him that he was not especially worried about Charlotte Windham. Charlotte had scolded the Duke of Wellington for hiding in the card room at her aunt’s ball, and His Grace had meekly spent the rest of the evening standing up with wallflowers.

  Julian was, despite all common sense to the contrary, concerned for Lucas Sherbourne. Sherbourne was a commoner, overly confident, and out of his depth socially among London’s elites. He was also dunderheaded enough to do something truly unforgivable, like propose to Charlotte without even attempting to court her.

  * * *

  The look in Charlotte Windham’s eyes had inspired Lucas Sherbourne to interrupt Lord Neederby’s forlorn hope of a proposal.

  Sherbourne had had the privilege of studying the lady over the course of a three-week house party earlier in the year, and he’d seen her amused, anxious, disdainful—Charlotte Windham did an exquisitely convincing disdainful—exasperated, mischievous (his favorite, though rare), and in many other moods.

  She’d never once looked frightened, but cornered by Lord Nitwit’s matrimonial presumptions, she’d been approaching panic.

  “You will please endure my company for the length of the buffet and at least thirty minutes thereafter,” Sherbourne said as he escorted Miss Windham to the Belchamp gardens.