The Rake (Boston Belles #4)(30)

Then again, I made a habit of housing them in the best apartments, taking them to the best restaurants, and treating them to the most lavish shopping sprees whenever they came for a visit.

“Mr. Hasting is positively skint. He hasn’t a dime to his name and hasn’t been pulling his weight in this household, which, now that your father’s money is held up in the will, might pose an issue.” Louisa furrowed her delicate eyebrows, grazing a thorn with her stung finger. “Cece is quite miserable with him, but she feels she is too old and not pretty or accomplished enough to divorce him and look for someone else. Your mum and Edwin had a less than ideal marriage, and I suspect she’s been very lonely, especially in the last decade.”

I stood up, ambling over to the glass and propping an elbow against it. A flock of ducks waddled across the lawn. “Does Mum have any support?”

How did I not know the answer to my own question?

“She’s stopped taking social calls in recent years. It seems pointless. With her younger daughter married to a fool, and her older son being the most infamous rake Britain has produced, she never has any good news to share. Though I try to visit her whenever I’m in Kent.”

Even as she said this, Louisa didn’t sound particularly accusing or antagonistic. She was the exact opposite of Emmabelle Penrose. Soft and pliant.

“Cece never had any children,” I mused.

“No.” Louisa came to stand in front of me, her modest cleavage pressing against my chest. I noticed her fingers were full of broken flesh, bruised by thorns. “I doubt Hasting has a taste for more than gambling and hunting. Children are not high on his to-do list.”

Her body pressed harder against mine. The game had changed between us, and Louisa was no longer the timid little girl who’d begged me to throw crumbs of attention her way.

Run away again, her eyes said, if you dare.

No part of me wanted to move. She was attractive, attentive, and interested. But I couldn’t take my mind off Sweven. The woman who snuck into my dreams like a thief, flooding them with desire and need.

“And what about you, Lou?” I curled my fingers around the back of her neck and drew her an inch away from me. Her skin pricked with goose bumps under my touch. “I heard you lost your fiancé. I’m sorry.”

“Yes, well.” Louisa licked her lips, smoothing my suit with a dark chuckle. “I suppose you could say I’ve never had the best of luck when it comes to men.”

“What happened to us had nothing to do with luck. I was a selfish wanker who ran away from responsibility. You were always collateral, never the main objective.”

“I never held a grudge, you know,” she murmured, her voice calm, collected. It surprised me. I imagined heads would roll if I were in her position. “Anger just seems like such a wasteful feeling. Nothing good ever comes of it.”

“That’s a lovely way of looking at things.” I smiled gravely, thinking, If people let go of their anger, us solicitors would be left with no job.

“You’re back now.” Her dark eyes met mine, daring me again.

I took her hand, which was on my chest, near my heart, and pressed her cold knuckles to my warm lips. “Not for good.” I shook my head, my gaze holding hers. “Never for good.”

“Never say never, Devon.”




After stuffing drunken Benedict and Byron into their Range Rovers and instructing their drivers not to stop until they were on the other side of the island, I kissed Louisa farewell. I promised to call her next time I was in England, a promise I had every intention of fulfilling.

When our guests were gone, I snuck into the garden and smoked three rollies in a row, checking if I had any text messages or phone calls from the States. Specifically, from a certain American vixen. I did not.

She is too bloody broken, and you aren’t in any danger of winning any sanity awards anytime soon either. I trudged back into the sprawling, dark mansion through the back kitchen, passing Drew snoring in front of the telly in one of the drawing rooms and Cece sitting at the grand piano, staring at it silently without playing.

Fuck her, impregnate her, and forget about her.

Things were looking dire on all fronts.

I headed to what used to be my father’s office. My mother was there.

She looked to be in her natural habitat behind his Victorian desk, scribbling in the margins of some documents while typing numbers on a calculator next to her. It reminded me what I knew to be the truth for years—that my mother was indeed the operating force behind the Whitehall empire. My father was a rake with a title, while Ursula was her father’s smart and resourceful daughter. Tony Dodkin might’ve been a common earl, but he was a math genius and a real estate mogul who knew his way around a good deal. Mum took after him. She was extremely capable.

Which begged the question, how had she not known that he was abusing me? But opening that old wound wasn’t going to do much help.

“Devvie, my love.” She let out a little sigh, putting her pen down and tilting her head up with a smile, like a flower stretching and opening for the sun. “Do sit down.”

I took a seat in front of her, gazing at the portrait behind her: Papa and myself, when I was a boy of maybe four or five. We both looked so utterly miserable and out of place, the only thing connecting us was DNA. Our sharp Nordic features and glacial eyes.