Page 1 of The Rogue's Christmas Gift

CHAPTER 1

LONDON, DECEMBER 1821

After a taxing evening of trying to convince the woman he loved to marry him—again—the last thing Harrison Montlake, the Earl of Hendershot, wanted to do was to speak with his mother. However, he still strode toward his mother’s sitting room in the old townhouse filled with century-old heirlooms. The place had always been more like a prison than a home to Harrison.

He could’ve ignored the demand that his butler had timidly delivered, but one thing he knew about the Countess of Hendershot was that she would not take kindly to being ignored. Especially by her son.

Two days...

He repeated to himself, counting down the days until he would finally be free of his own mother. Soon, she would go to his sister Josephine’s country estate in Essex to spend time with her and her children. Harrison loved his mother, but she’d become increasingly difficult in her old age. Especially with her spending habits.

Walking through his home, he tried not to categorize what he could sell for funds. The family coffers were low. The money from the tenants and crops from the ancestral home in Somerset was not yielding enough for its general upkeep. Nor could they survive his mother and sister’s spending habits. His older sister had abandoned her husband, a mere country doctor, for a more exciting life in London Society. All of her expenses and those of her children fell to Harrison.

Harrison’s father had been nothing but a second cousin to an earl with no hope of ever inheriting, or so he’d thought. With an entire family in the line of succession, one would have never imagined that Harrison’s family would have gained the earldom. But sickness and war have a way of elevating forgotten family members.

When his father had inherited, Harrison had barely been a man of eighteen. Suddenly, his life had changed forever. Not only had he become heir, but he’d had to leave the only girl he would ever love.

Reaching the large, faded door of his mother’s favorite room, he blew out a harsh breath, preparing himself for battle. Before Harrison could raise his hand, his mother’s deep voice penetrated the thick wood.

“I know you’re out there. I heard your footsteps, Harrison,” she called from beyond the door.

Wrapping his hand around the knob, Harrison let himself in, walking deeper into the dark blue sitting room where his mother, Fiona Montlake, the Countess of Hendershot, sat. Dressed in a green dinner gown, his mother relaxed by the fire on a satin chaise lounge, her fiery red hair the exact shade as his own.

“Mother, I am weary. Is there a reason you wanted to see me so urgently?” He flung himself down in the matching armchair like he’d done as a boy.

His weary body immediately relaxed, desperately in need of sleep—an impossible feat in a moving carriage. The ride from Pleasure House to Grosvenor Square was a short one, but it did not stop his mind from wandering back to that fateful day eight years earlier.

It had been the middle of the night when his father had whisked him away from Nottingham and Kat. The memory was as fresh as fallen snow, even after ten long years.

His father, Montgomery Montlake, had forbidden him to ever see the girl he had loved again. It didn’t matter to him she was possibly carrying Harrison’s child. The only thing his father had cared about was the earldom and preserving the family’s new status.

After years of hard work to keep his family out of poverty by starting a textile business with his friend and partner, Daniel Smith, Harrison’s father had chosen to turn his back on all that he had built. As soon as he became the next Earl of Hendershot, Montgomery Montlake had abandoned every part of his old life and had expected his son to do the same.

But Harrison could not. He never would.

“I don’t care that you are weary. We desperately need funds,” his mother snapped, sitting up to prove the gravity of their situation.

“I’m aware, and I will rectify the problem.” He ran his hands through his disheveled red hair.

He had done everything he could. But his late father’s, mother’s, and sister’s spending habits and expensive taste had tested the depleted coffers. His sister’s children’s educations had taken another chunk. Josephine had abandoned her husband, depending solely on Harrison to provide for her and her children. Finally, the upkeep of their homes pushed the scales of the struggling Earldom past the point of financial viability.

“How do you plan to rectify the problem?” She tapped one silk-encased foot. “Surely not by spending all your time at that abominable gentlemen’s club.”

His mother came from a noble Scottish family and was used to the privileges of a certain lifestyle. A lifestyle that had never altered because of her marriage to a wealthy businessman. Once the family had elevated in station, that had given his mother the title and connections in society she’d always craved.

He ignored her comment. As a grown man, he did not have to answer to his mother on where he spent his time or with whom. “Don’t worry, mother. You will not have to sell your precious jewels.” He stood, walking over to the sideboard, desperately in need of a drink if she insisted on questioning him like a Bow Street Runner.

“That is exactly what I am worried about.” She flung her hands up in the air. “It is time you end your boyish dreams of being with that girl and marry a respectable woman?—”

“Kat is respectable.” He slammed down the glass he was holding.

Kat had always been respectable, until that swine seduced her when she was most vulnerable, or so Harrison believed. Why else would she have fallen into the arms of another mere months after Harrison had departed Nottingham?

They had never spoken of the past. His conversations with the ever-enchanting Kat—Madame Kitty Delcour — had Harrison confessing his undying love and begging her to marry him. A sentiment in which her response had always been ‘If I were to marry again, it would be to you.’

A statement that he’d never had an answer for. Harrison had spent the last two years of his life pining over the girl he’d lost all those years ago. There was no sign of Katherine Smith in Madame Delcour.

Perhaps it was time to forget the past.