Читать книгу The Rake To Ruin Her - Julia Justiss - Страница 5

The 2012 London summer games are unfolding as I write this note, and as the athletes tell their stories I’m repeatedly reminded of how many years of hard work and single-minded dedication are necessary to earn them a place among the best of the best. Yet sometimes, after devoting all one’s energies to achieving an aim, some totally unexpected catastrophe destroys in an instant the possibility of reaching that goal. Standing shocked and disbelieving amid the wreckage of that dream, the survivor is forced to find a different path.

Such is the case with ‘Magnificent Max’ Ransleigh, the earl’s son and charismatic leader of a group of cousins known as The Ransleigh Rogues. With his father a force in the House of Lords, Max has prepared all his life for a high diplomatic position, and seems well on his way when he’s chosen as one of the Duke of Wellington’s aides at the Congress of Vienna. But when an assassination attempt on the Duke is perpetrated by relatives of a Frenchwoman Max has befriended, even his valour at Waterloo can’t resurrect the tatters of his career.

Returning after the battle, with none of his former associates—including his father—willing to see him, he turns to the Rogues. He stops at Alastair’s country home, unaware that his aunt, Alastair’s mother, is hostessing a house party to acquaint her youngest daughter, soon to make her London debut, with other young ladies of the Ton.

While Max mourns the loss of a conventional future, Caroline Denby schemes to destroy her own. Sole heiress of a wealthy baron, she has good reasons for avoiding wedlock, and is actively resisting her stepmother’s attempts to marry her off—what future is there for a woman but marriage? Lady Denby argues—so she may return to Kent and run the horse-breeding farm she established with her father.

When Caro discovers the infamous Max Ransleigh has dropped in on her hostess’s house party, she decides he is just the rogue to ruin her. With her reputation in tatters, her suitors will depart, her stepmother will refocus her matrimonial schemes on her own daughter, and Caro will be left in peace to tend her horses.

But sometimes the goal we yearn for turns out not to be the path for which we’re destined. And a love we never expected to find becomes the most precious blessing of our life.

I hope you’ll enjoy Max and Caro’s journey.

Soon to follow in 2013 and 2014 will be the stories of the other Rogues: ‘Wagering Will’, illegitimate son of the earl’s brother, who never met a game of chance he couldn’t win, ‘Ingenious Alastair’, philosopher and poet who thinks to best Byron until a humiliating betrayal turns him into the worst rake in England, and ‘Dandy Dominic’, handsomest man in the Regiment, who returns from Waterloo maimed, scarred, and searching for meaning in the ruins of his life.

I love to hear from readers! Find me at my website, www.juliajustiss.com, for excepts, updates and background bits about my books, on Facebook at www.facebook.com/juliajustiss and on Twitter @juliajustiss.