Lara Temple - The Reluctant Viscount

The rake’s return

A decade ago, wallflower Alyssa Drake’s heart broke when Adam Alistair was banished from Mowbray. Now, he’s back—wealthy, titled and more cynical than before! And Alyssa’s determined not to fall under this notorious rake’s spell ever again...

Reluctant viscount Adam knows only betrayal. But Alyssa proves herself an unexpected ally when he finds his life endangered, and they are forced into a sham engagement. Their betrothal may be fake, but there’s no denying the very real passion that explodes between them!

Alyssa turned around as the door opened and stared at the man who entered.

For one disorientating moment she thought she must have made a mistake—that this was surely not Adam. Even accounting for the ten years that had passed, there seemed nothing but a vague resemblance to connect this tall, hard-looking individual with the young man she remembered.

He was still handsome, but it was almost as if all those layers had been stripped away, exposing a hewn granite core. He was dressed for riding like any country gentleman, in pale buckskins and a dark blue coat, but there was a foreign air about him. Perhaps it was because he was tanned and his dark hair—which had once been carelessly long—was cut unfashionably short. But the greatest difference was in his eyes. She had remembered they were grey, but not that they were so dark and watchful. They expressed no emotion. No recognition. Not even curiosity.

‘Miss Drake?’ he said after a moment. ‘You wished to see me?’

Author Note

I wanted to write a story about betrayal. Not just the cost of romantic betrayal, but the long-lasting emotional impact of the betrayal children experience at the hands of selfish, self-serving or abusive parents. How each subsequent betrayal in life just deepens the wound, driving us to thicken our armor, heighten our battlements, deepen our moats.

Our parents are our first models for learning about trust, self-esteem and unconditional love. If those models are faulty we can still learn from other sources—siblings, other family members, friends and, later in life, lovers—but there will always be scar tissue: a fundamental fault line of wariness and mistrust that any new relationship has to overcome. Trust will have to be earned, built, tested, and only then accepted. But couples who manage to overcome those barriers can often reach much richer emotional levels of intimacy than couples who come to love without question or challenge.

The Reluctant Viscount is just such a story about betrayal and redemption—how two scarred and wary individuals make a difficult and uneasy voyage to overcome the impact of early betrayals, risking their hard-earned emotional safety in order to experience trust and love.

The Reluctant Viscount

Lara Temple

www.millsandboon.co.uk

LARA TEMPLE was three years old when she begged her mother to take the dictation of her first adventure story. Since then she has led a double life—by day she is a high-tech investment professional, who has lived and worked on three continents, but when darkness falls she loses herself in history and romance (at least on the page). Luckily her husband and two beautiful and very energetic children help her weave it all together.

To Andy, husband, friend, lover and fellow voyager through the rocky shoals of life.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Author Note

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

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

Chapter Twenty-Three

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

Alyssa touched her gloved finger to the stone bust of Heraclites that stood precariously on the edge of the wide desk and gave it a push back to safety. The face of the ancient Greek looked worried, which suited someone who saw the world in a state of unrelenting flux and who was known as the ‘weeping philosopher’. Or perhaps she was just reading into the rugged creases of sculpted skin a concern to mirror her own. And nerves. Right now nerves dominated even the concern that had motivated her visit.

She glanced quickly at her reflection in the large mirror on the other side of the study, but then turned away. Even in her best afternoon dress of palmetto green she looked small and insignificant in the imposing but dilapidated study which had once been the late Lord Delacort’s.

It had all seemed easier in her mind once the idea had surfaced. But facing the butler’s obvious surprise and consternation at her request to see Lord Delacort had been enough to make plain it was extremely foolish to come here.

As Stebbins had led her through the large entrance hall which had been transformed into a maze of building materials and piles of threadbare furniture awaiting disposal, he had glanced worriedly back at her, as if debating whether to advise her to flee while she still could. Alyssa had kept her chin up and her demeanour calm, as if there was nothing in the least improper about calling, unchaperoned, on the scandalous new Viscount Delacort within a week of his arrival in Mowbray. She only hoped her reputation was robust enough to survive this very uncharacteristic act. Aunt Adele would be shocked if she knew what she was doing, but there was no way she could approach Adam in the staid presence of a chaperon. As risky as it was, if she meant to ask Adam for help, this was something she had to do alone.

Right now, concerns of propriety were overshadowed by the greater concern that this was a complete waste of time. However important the issue was to her, it was ludicrous to expect Adam to be willing to help her. And he wasn’t Adam any more, but Lord Delacort, she reminded herself. Ten years and many dramatic events stood between this moment and the last time she had seen him.

She wondered if he would even remember her. She had been little more than a child at the time of the scandal. Not quite eighteen and both younger and older than her age. Perhaps he did—after all, he had been surprisingly kind to her and to her siblings in a town where everyone had regarded them as rather unfortunate and wild encumbrances on the brilliant and reclusive poet living in their midst, whom Mowbray society was proud of, though few in the town, if any, had actually read his poetry.

Adam had been young as well, just twenty-one, still up at Oxford, and a very serious student who had already secured a fellowship for the following year. Though he had clearly been the handsomest of Rowena’s beaus, he had also been quite poor. That was why Alyssa had been immediately suspicious when her angelically beautiful cousin Rowena, the belle of Mowbray, had begun flirting with him.

Alyssa knew her cousin well enough to know that looks would count for little with Rowena, since the only beauty that interested her was her own. She’d had her eyes set on the wealthiest landowner in the area, Lord Moresby, who was almost thirty, and though he clearly admired Rowena, he was proving to be slow on the uptake. But Alyssa had never imagined Rowena would be quite as conniving, or daring, or brutal, as to manoeuvre Adam into believing she was about to elope with him while convincing everyone else he was trying to seduce and abduct her. Amazingly, such a melodramatic plan had achieved everything Rowena had desired, at the minor cost of Adam’s reputation and future. His own family had repudiated him and he had been forced to leave Oxford, and the next Alyssa had heard Adam had left England altogether.