Never Romance a Rake Read Free

with heavy velvet drapes and a creamy marble floor. A massive, well-polished desk occupied one end of the room, and in the center sat a tall table with a padded leather top. Dr. Redding’s patients, it would seem, lived long enough to pay their bills. That was something, he supposed.
    Beside the table was a pewter tray with a row of medical instruments laid across it. Rothewell stepped closer and felt an unpleasant sensation run down his spine. A scalpel and a set of steel lancets glittered wickedly up at him. There were scissors and forceps and needles—along with other tools he did not recognize. The chill deepened.
    Good God, he should never have come here. Medicine was just one step removed from witchcraft. He should go home, and either get well of his own accord or die like a man.
    But this morning…this morning had been the worst. He could still feel the burn of iron and acid in the back of his throat as the spasms wracked his ribs…
    Oh, bloody hell! He might as well stay and hear what the grim-faced Dr. Redding had to say. To push away the thought of this morning, the baron picked up one of the more horrific-looking devices to examine it further. A medieval torture device, perhaps?
    â€œA trephination brace,” said a voice behind him.
    Jumping, Rothewell let it clatter back onto the tray. He turned to see the doctor standing just inside the curtain.
    â€œBut if it is any consolation, my lord,” the doctor continued, “I rather doubt we will find it necessary to drill a hole in your head.”

    The day’s drizzle had at last ended when the glossy black barouche made its third and final circle through Hyde Park. The Serpentine had risen up from its shroud of mist like something from an Arthurian legend, enticing the beau monde ’s heartier souls to venture out to ride or to drive. And though the height of the season was many weeks past, the gentleman who so elegantly wielded the barouche’s whip easily caught their eye, for he was both handsome and well-known—if not especially well liked. Alas, despite his beauty, society often saddled him with that coldest of English euphemisms, the vague stain of being thought not quite nice.
    Though past his prime and ever on the verge of insolvency, the Comte de Valigny was nonetheless dressed with an unmistakable Continental flair, and his unimpeachable wardrobe was further accented by the sort of hauteur which only the French can carry off with aplomb. The stunning beauty who sat stiffly beside him was generally assumed by the passersby to be his latest mistress, since Valigny ran through beautiful women with rapacious efficiency.
    The afternoon, however, had grown late, and it being both October and dampish, the crowd was thin. No one save a pair of dashing young bucks on horseback and a landau full of disapproving dowagers spared the woman much more than a passing glance. And that, to Valigny’s way of thinking, was a bloody damned shame. He looked back over his shoulder almost longingly at the young gentlemen.
    â€œ Mon dieu, Camille!” he complained, returning a bitter gaze to her face. “Lift your chin! Cast your eyes more boldly! Who will look twice at a woman who will not look once, eh? You are not going to the guillotine!”
    â€œAm I not?” purred his companion, looking haughtily down her nose at him. “I begin to wonder. How long have I been here? Six weeks, n’est-ce pas ? Six weeks of this incessant damp and overweening snobbery. Perhaps I might soon welcome the executioner’s blade?”
    Valigny’s expression tightened. “Ça alors!” he snapped, reining his grays to one side. “You are an asp clasped to my bosom! Perhaps, my fine lady, you should prefer to climb down and walk home?”
    The woman turned and pressed her elegantly gloved fingers to her chest. “ Quoi? And taint my precious virtue by strolling unaccompanied through Mayfair like some common