The Redemption of a Dissolute Earl (2 page)

Charlotte Milne had ghosts in her head.

Two, to be precise.

One, the ghost of the foolish girl she had
been, blessedly only made a flickering appearance every now and
then. Each time Charlotte took the stage at the Sans Pareil Theatre
to the thundering applause of the simpering lords and ladies of the
ton
, that ghost faded a bit more.

Banishment of the blithering fool she had
been was also helped when, post performance, the
ton
came
clamoring for Charlotte’s attention. She was not above the need to
be admired and wanted. She had earned that small bit of vanity the
day she had picked up the millions of jagged pieces of her broken
heart that Drew had left on his bedroom floor.

Charlotte gritted her teeth and shook the
thought of Drew away. His ghost was much harder to banish from her
thoughts. She dabbed a bit of rouge on her cheeks. A bit more red?
Hmm… Yes. She applied some more and smiled at the way the color
made the hollow of her cheeks more pronounced, more exotic.

The lords wanted to bed exotic Charlotte,
and the ladies wanted to get close enough to her to assure
themselves they were more beautiful than a mere actress, a
commoner, a woman who—horror upon horrors—traced her bloodline to a
scullery maid and a butler, even if he was the stiff and proper
butler of the Duke of Danby.

Charlotte didn’t mind the way those who
thought they were better than she was swarmed around her. It
actually amused her. Thinking on it now, her mouth pulled into a
cynical smile. Each time she turned down a pompous lord’s
invitation to become his mistress or witnessed the flash of
realization in a condescending lady’s eyes that her perfect
pedigree did not make her more beautiful than Charlotte, she felt a
bit of vindication. Vindication for the way she’d been treated as
an inferior all her life, simply because she had not had the
fortune to be highborn.

The problem was the moment fled quickly and
always left a sour taste in her mouth. And Drew’s pesky ghost, who
insisted on roaming rampantly through her head, always appeared
with a whisper—
no matter how far you rise, no matter how much
you attain, you will never be good enough
.

Charlotte snatched the brush off her vanity
and raked it roughly through her long hair. She had assumed she
would never despise anyone more than Drew, but she had been wrong.
She hated his ghost―his mocking memory―more. She could not seem to
banish the fiend from her mind.

But she had a plan—a carefully constructed
cold-blooded plot to wipe Lord Andrew Whitton, Earl of Hardwick,
from her head for good. She wasn’t foolish enough to think she
would ever love any man the way she had loved Drew. After all, she
had given him her whole heart. She frowned at her reflection in the
looking glass.
Damn Drew
. He had taken something from her
she could never get back. He had taken her ability to trust. And
without that, she had decided the next best things to love were
security, status, and revenge.

She would get all three very shortly. A
knock came at her dressing room door, and Charlotte stood on
shaking legs to let the Marquess of Salisbury enter. He was a
wicked reprobate of a man, but he wanted to own her, and he was
willing to pay any price. The price, she had decided, after months
of carefully avoiding his advances, was marriage. He cared naught
for Society and loved nothing more than flaunting his disdain for
his ilk in their faces. He was using her, but she was using him
too―a match made in heaven, or at least the
ton
.

Salisbury wanted to marry her to prove, once
and for all, he could do as he pleased. She would marry him to
prove to Drew and his family that they had been wrong about her.
She was worthy of a lord’s love.

Charlotte opened the door, her stomach
tensing as Salisbury breezed into the room, resplendent in navy
blue formal dress. He was a beautiful man, with his russet locks
and piercing green eyes, and she should be ecstatic he wanted her.
Instead, a mild queasiness filled her.

“Lottie.” He closed the door behind him and
drew her into his arms. She forced herself not to turn her head to
the side when he pressed his lips to hers. A small, irrepressible
shudder ran through her body. “You’re nervous?” he asked, stroking
a hand over her hair.

She nodded.

“But it’s not your first time?”

But it was her first time with a man she
didn’t love. Drew had been her first, her only. Lying with him, his
exquisite, feather-light fingers moving down her chest, over her
stomach, between her—she squeezed her eyes shut.

“Lottie, come sit,” Salisbury said, taking
her hand and leading her to the settee. She followed him and sat
while making an effort to compose herself.

“I’ve something for you, dear heart.”

“Thank you, Salisbury,” she said reaching
for the glittering diamond ring he held between his index finger
and thumb. She fought the tide of disappointment that wailed within
her. She had imagined this moment a thousand times, but it had
always been Drew sitting on the other side, and their future had
been bright with the promise of love.
Foolish, stupid girl
.
That sort of love only existed in the fairy tales her mother had
read to her as a child.

“You’ve kept your part of our bargain
perfectly,” she murmured. She reached for the tie of her dressing
robe, but her shaking hands made undoing the knot impossible. “I’m
sorry,” she whispered, willing herself to go through with her plan.
She wanted to lay with Salisbury. She wanted to replace the memory
of Drew with another man―the man who would be her husband. Why did
her heart beat so hard it echoed through her entire body and set
her teeth to chattering? She clenched down against the noise.

Salisbury’s hands settled over her fumbling
fingers. “Your skin is like ice.”

She smiled faintly. What a ninny she was
being. “The room’s cold.”

He shook his head. “It’s hot, if you ask
me.”

Yes, well, she hadn’t asked. Just like a man
to give an answer a woman didn’t want. Charlotte shrugged. “Nerves,
I suppose.”

Salisbury gently cupped her face. “You will
forget whoever he was.”

Charlotte wasn’t sure if that was a command
or a promise. Either way, she needed to nod. “Perhaps.” She forced
a rehearsed smile. Being an actress had benefits. “We should begin.
There’s not much time before they’ll call me to stage.”

“Hurry up,” Drew snapped at his cousin while
pushing through the crowd of people making their way into the Sans
Peril.

“Drew, wait a bloody minute, man,”
Edgeworth’s muffled growl came from behind Drew.

Drew would have ignored Edgeworth’s annoying
plea and kept going until he found Char, but Edgeworth had hold of
the sleeve of Drew’s coat. And Drew had to admit he was a bit
curious as to why his cousin sounded so winded. Drew turned to face
Edgeworth and pointedly eyed his sleeve. “Do you mind?”

Edgeworth squinted at Drew from his
doubled-over position. His hand dropped from Drew’s arm. “I don’t
understand how a bloke who spent the last year drinking himself
into a drunken haze, and who―I might add―drank the entire time it
took us to cross the Channel from France to England, can have so
much energy as to run all the way from the Bright Star Inn to the
theatre.” Edgeworth stood to face Drew, his face twisted in a
grimace.

“Love.” Drew said simply.

Edgeworth took out his handkerchief, wiped
his damp forehead, stuffed the white linen back into this pocket
and frowned fiercely at Drew. “I never want to be in love.”

Drew could not stop the bark of laughter
that escaped him.
By damned he felt happy
. He had not
experienced the emotion in an entire year, yet the minute he had
overheard the two gentleman at the bar Bright Star Inn discussing
the fact that they were going to the theatre simply to stare at the
beautiful actress Charlotte Milne, Drew had been ecstatic.
No
euphoric
. To find out Char was here in London, only six streets
over from where he was sitting having a mug of ale and dinner had
been like someone had handed him a second chance at life.

“You don’t want to be in love because you
dislike running?”

“Indeed I do,” Edgeworth snapped. “Running
through the street is undignified. Not to mention you forced me to
abandon a perfectly good dinner and a full mug of ale. I’ve a
stitch in my side.”

Drew smiled indulgently at his cousin. The
man was one of the fittest Drew knew. This was not about being
undignified or abandoning a passable meal. Edgeworth was mad
because he had been forced to follow like a puppy. And Edgeworth
had never liked following anything or anyone. “By all means catch
your breath. I’m going to find Char.” Before Edgeworth could agree
or disagree, Drew darted around a group of men shoving by them and
hurried toward the stairs where he suspected the actresses’
dressing rooms would be. As he raced up the stairs he allowed
himself to imagine Char once again in his arms.

Salisbury studied Charlotte for a moment,
his eyes softening. “I’ve been thinking we should wait to
consummate our relationship until we are properly wed.”

“Oh, yes,” Charlotte blurted, feeling as if
the hounds of hell had just been called off her heels. “That’s a
sound idea.”

Salisbury offered a cynical smile. “Your
enthusiasm for the delay wounds my inflated pride.”

Charlotte’s heart dropped to her bare feet.
What to say? She scrambled for the right words, but a loud knocking
and the harsh, clipped shout of, “Curtain’s going up in five,”
saved her from having to respond.

“That’s my cue,” she said, rushing to put on
her slippers and her costume. “We’ll talk later?”

Salisbury stood and opened the door for her.
“No need. Tomorrow we’ll be wed. Whatever there’s to say, we’ve a
lifetime to do it.”

A lifetime?
Charlotte walked toward
her dressing room door. Why did it sound like a death sentence? She
took a deep breath. She was good enough to marry into the
ton
, and to
be
good enough, she needed to shove her
silly girlhood fantasies into the darkest recesses of her mind
where they could damn well stay gathering cobwebs.

“I’m looking forward to forever,” she lied.
Determined to make a grand exit, she lifted her chin and turned
away to walk elegantly, like the duchess she would be, down the
bustling corridor. Her foot caught in the long hem of her gown,
causing her to careen forward with a yelp of dismay.

She had never been good at grand exits. She
threw her arms out to catch herself, but instead of a jarring hit,
a strong pair of hands slipped under her arms then proceeded to
draw her up into a circle of heat and steel.