BRONWYN SCOTT is a communications instructor at Pierce College in the United States, and is the proud mother of three wonderful children (one boy and two girls). When sheâs not teaching or writing she enjoys playing the piano, travellingâespecially to Florence, Italyâand studying history and foreign languages. Readers can stay in touch on Bronwynâs website, www.bronwynnscott.com, or at her blog, www.bronwynswriting.blogspot.com She loves to hear from readers.
ISBN: 978-1-474-08532-8
REBELLIOUS RAKES
Rake Most Likely to Rebel © 2015 Nikki Poppen Rake Most Likely to Thrill © 2015 Nikki Poppen
Published in Great Britain 2018
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
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For Monsieur Rouse, high school French
teacher extraordinaire: Votre ardeur pour la langue insuffle mon fil. Merci. (Je regrette, I have not conjugated âto inspireâ for some time. I hope the form is correct on insuffle!)
And for Ro and Bronyâwe will see the City of
Light (La Ville Lumière) together soon
Chapter One
Dover docksâMarch 1835
There were no pleasures left in London. One could only hope Paris would do better. Haviland North turned up the collar of his greatcoat against the damp of the early March morning and paced the Dover docks, anxious to be away with the tide.
All of his hopes were pinned on France now and its famed salle dâarmes. If springtime in Paris should fail to stimulate his stagnant blood, the rest of Europe awaited to take its turn. He could spend summer among the mighty peaks of the Alps, testing his strength on their crags, autumn among the arts and graces of Florence, winter in Venice feasting on the sensuality of Carnevale and another spring, if he could manage it. This time in Naples, basking in the heat of southern Italy with its endless supply of the ancient. If those destinations did not succeed, there was always Greece and the alluring, mysterious Turkey.
The exotic litany of places rolled through his mind, a mantra of hopefulness and perhaps a mantra of fantasy. His father had promised him six months, not a year or two. It would all have to be managed very carefully. In truth, Haviland preferred it not come to that simply because of what the need for such lengths indicated about his current stateâthat at the age of twenty-eight and with everything to live for: the title, the vast fortune that went with it, the estates, the horses, the luxuries other men spent their lives acquiringâhe was dead inside after all.