Kasey Michaels - Lords of Notoriety

 Praise for Kasey Michaels

“Using wit and romance with a master’s skill,

Kasey Michaels aims for the heart and

never misses.”

— Bestselling author Nora Roberts

The Butler Did It

“Witty dialogue peppers a plot full of delectable

details exposing the foibles and follies of the

age… The heroine is appealingly independent-

minded; the hero is refreshingly free of any

mean-spirited machismo; and supporting

characters have charm to spare…[a] playfully

perfect Regency-era romp.”

— Publishers Weekly

A Reckless Beauty

“With her Beckets of Romney Marshseries, Michaels has created a soap opera with wonderful characters, dark family secrets, exciting historical events and passion.” — Romantic Times BOOKreviews

The Return of the Prodigal

“Only a mistress of the genre could hook you,

and hold you in her net, eagerly anticipating

her next move.”

— Romantic Times BOOKreviews

Kasey Michaelsis a New York Times bestselling author of both historical and contemporary novels. She is also the winner of a number of prestigious awards.

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The Ruthless Lord Rule

The Toplofty Lord Thorpe

To Page –

the Consummate Miss Cuddy –

who let me be me; with deep gratitude

and affection

March 1814

P EACE !

All England is rejoicing. Napoleon, that scourge of the Continent, has at last been put in his cage. Paris has capitulated, with the trusted Marmont leading his unsuspecting men straight into the Austrian camp in surrender. Now an emperor in name only, with but a scant four-hundred-man army and living on the charity of the country he had led in triumph for nearly twenty years, Bonaparte barely escaped France with his life and is living in genteel poverty on the unpretentious island of Elba.

His Royal Highness, the Prince Regent, is delirious with joy; so overcome that he’d had to be bled of twenty-seven ounces of blood. Indeed, for nearly a month, he languished in his bed, hovering between life and death.

The rush to cross the Channel is already in full force, with even the Duke of Wellington, now British ambassador to France, characteristically ignoring the angry glances cast his way as he saunters down the streets of Paris, dines on good, plain English fare at the Café des Anglais, and accepts the grateful thanks of the repatriated French nobility.

London is in a whirl, eagerly anticipating the arrival of Czar Alexander of Russia, King Frederick William of Prussia, and, wonder of wonders, the much loved Field Marshal von Blücher. Indeed, the Grand Duchess Catherine of Oldenburg, the czar’s “platter-faced” sister, has already disembarked and is royally ensconced in Pulteney’s Hotel, busily setting up the Regent’s back with her Whig antics.

That this endears her to the residents of London is no surprise, for the Regent has been out of favor with his subjects for some time. The younger generation has no memory of the glorious Florizel that was once the Prince of Wales and cannot think of him as the genial Big Ben. They see him instead as Swellfoot, an obese, grotesque, thoroughly evil man. They glory in the little ditty penned by Charles Lamb:

By his bulk and by his size,

By his oily qualities,

This (or else my eyesight fails)

This should be the Prince of Whales .

Not that Louix XVIII, who had been cheered through the streets as he headed toward the Channel Ports and a return to his homeland, fared much better once he reached Paris. The King, whom Lord Byron has irreverently dubbed Louis the Gouty, seems to have spent his entire exile in thrall with his host country’s cooking, and is so thoroughly corpulent that the Regent, after investing the King with the Order of the Garter, and buckling the Garter around a leg even thicker than his own, remarked, “When I clasped his knee it was exactly as if I were fastening a sash around a young man’s waist.”

One German account of the King’s appearance commented on both the advanced age and accumulated fat of Napoleon’s replacement. Telling of the King’s entrance into the room, the report centered on the fact that Louis, clad in soft black satin boots and supported on either side, was so disablingly obese that he “would stumble over a straw.”

While Europe laughs at reports of Napoleon’s frugal inventories of mattresses and his drawing up of lists of his personal clothing (“my underlinen is in a lamentable state”), and ridicules his official-sounding Council of State that he has set up to investigate improvements in the iron mines and salt pits of Elba while considering the possibility of importing silkworms, the banished Emperor is reading of the high jinks being perpetrated by his vanquishers.

“They are mad!” he said of the governments that had a hand in putting Louis on the throne. “The Bourbons in France; they would not be able to hold their position for a year! Nine-tenths of the nation cannot endure them; my soldiers will never serve under them.”

But none of the leaders of the world, their minds filled with plans for pomp and ceremony and grand celebrations, hear the words of Napoleon Bonaparte, or, if they do hear them, heed them.

Only a few shake their heads at the merry-making and wonder—wonder, if this glorious peace is really to be believed. Sir Henry Ruffton, one of the War Office’s most intelligent members, wonders.

Then word reaches Sir Henry of one of Bonaparte’s final statements before leaving France. “Between ourselves,” Napoleon has told a trusted aide who had feared his Emperor would commit suicide, “a living drummer is better than a dead emperor.”

So, while London rings with cheers and hangs bunting from the façades, Sir Henry pens two messages. One missive goes to Sussex by private courier. The other is sent by packet to Calais, to his most trusted operative. Both messages are the same: “Come to me, now.”

CHAPTER ONE

May 1814

“HONESTLY, MARY, that new coachman of Sir Henry’s drives as if he’s riding to hounds.” Gratefully subsiding into a chair in the rather spartanly furnished drawing room, Rachel Gladwin removed her straw bonnet and proceeded to use it as a fan to cool her flushed cheeks. “While I applaud your guardian’s hiring of returned soldiers, I do believe he should temper his generosity with a bit of common sense. I doubt if even Wellington would have survived if all of our troop charges into battle were accomplished with the same reckless fervor our driver just demonstrated on Bond Street.”

Pushing at the dark coppery curls that had been slightly crushed by her fetching, if a bit imprudent, choice of headgear, Mary Lawrence smiled into the mirror that reflected Rachel’s frowning face. “Coming it a bit too brown, aren’t you, Aunt?” she asked, using the courtesy title that lady had insisted upon. “Considering it was you who applauded so enthusiastically when that same driver sent that ridiculous dandy scurrying up the lamppost in fear of his life?”