Page 1 of Rogue of My Heart

Tempting the Scoundrel

TRACY SUMNER

Prologue

An evening when young love is in the air…

Tavistock House, Mayfair

July 1808

* * *

The girl captivated him from first sight, fascination a delightful little shiver along his skin.

As she had every night he’d been in residence, she huddled in the veranda’s dark corner, book in hand, an oil lamp illuminating the page she brought close to the tarnished glass globe. A housemaid, she read in secret. And hungrily.

He could feel her determination, her daring, from his perch one story above.

Determination matching his own.

Christian Bainbridge braced his hands on the ledge of his bedchamber window and leaned into a spill of moonlight, releasing a half-laugh at his foolishness. There was nothing poetic about this night, this house, or his circumstances. The air reeked of coal smoke and charred meat, rotting vegetables and the Thames, familiar even in its wretchedness. Cousin to the Earl of Tavistock, whose home Christian currently occupied, he was stuck in the slender crack between the aristocracy and the middling classes, welcome in neither.

The loneliest place to wedge oneself, he’d come to find.

After the recent death of his beloved brother, Christian was alone in the world except for the earl, a man rumored—and, regrettably, the rumors were true—to have several significant deficits of character.

To Christian’s mind, the worst being that he failed to maintain his timepieces.

Christian glanced back to the pocket watch parts spread across the desk, candlelight dancing over metal coils, serrated wheels, the blunt edge of a screwdriver. You could tell much about a person from the way they tended their treasures.

The earl tended his poorly.

Tavistock had little care for his belongings, his tenants, his staff, or his hapless fifteen-year-old cousin. Leading Christian to make the rash decision to accept an apprenticeship he’d been offered with a prominent watchmaker in Cambridge. He had another term at Harrow to complete, but there were no funds, not one farthing left to sustain further education. And Christian was not willing to accept additional charity from a man he’d come to loathe.

The situation was actually as it should be because Christian had never been interested in anything but the art of repairing timepieces.

And when he was ready, designing his own.

Before this girl, only gears and coils and springs had captured his attention.

He’d asked a groom, a footman, and finally, the housekeeper for her name, because he’d felt he must learn it before leaving the estate at dawn. Raine Mowbray, he’d been told.

A young woman who now held a unique position in his universe.

Love at first sight did that to a boy.

There was something elemental about his reaction to Raine, more extraordinary than mere appreciation for her loveliness. Lust, he supposed, but it felt like more. He had little experience with women, so he couldn’t accurately categorize his response.

He’d only seen her once up close, no words exchanged, no eye contact made, as she rushed through the walled garden and into the kitchens, the aroma of roses overpowering until the subtle scent of lemon and lavender clinging to her skin swept in and knocked all else aside. Blew every thought from his mind and left him stranded, like a withered leaf dangling from a limb.

It sounded melodramatic, but his heart had raced inside with her.

While she hadn’t paused or blinked or seemed to notice him at all.

Which was a good thing. Christian was leaving, he was destitute, lacking in funds, family, or friends. Too young to matter, too old to indulge. His future, which was going to be bloody brilliant he pledged to himself right there in the cloying twilight, lay in Cambridge, not London.

He was going to make his way on his own, his awful cousin be damned.