How to Tame a Beastly Lord (Happy Ever Regency Book 2) Read online

  How to Tame a Beastly Lord

  (#2 Happy Ever Regency Series)

  by

  Bree Wolf

  © Copyright 2019 by Bree Wolf

  Text by Bree Wolf

  Cover by Wicked Smart Designs

  Dragonblade Publishing, Inc. is an imprint of Kathryn Le Veque Novels, Inc.

  P.O. Box 7968

  La Verne CA 91750

  [email protected]

  Produced in the United States of America

  First Edition November 2019

  Kindle Edition

  Reproduction of any kind except where it pertains to short quotes in relation to advertising or promotion is strictly prohibited.

  All Rights Reserved.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  License Notes:

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook, once purchased, may not be re-sold. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it or borrow it, or it was not purchased for you and given as a gift for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. If this book was purchased on an unauthorized platform, then it is a pirated and/or unauthorized copy and violators will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Do not purchase or accept pirated copies. Thank you for respecting the author’s hard work. For subsidiary rights, contact Dragonblade Publishing, Inc.

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  Thank you for your support of a small press. At Dragonblade Publishing, we strive to bring you the highest quality Historical Romance from the some of the best authors in the business. Without your support, there is no ‘us’, so we sincerely hope you adore these stories and find some new favorite authors along the way.

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  CEO, Dragonblade Publishing

  Additional Dragonblade books by Author Bree Wolf

  Happy Every Regency Series

  How to Wake a Sleeping Lady

  How to Tame a Beastly Lord

  How To Climb A Lady’s Tower

  *** Please visit Dragonblade’s website for a full list of books and authors. Sign up for Dragonblade’s blog for sneak peeks, interviews, and more: ***

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Publisher’s Note

  Additional Dragonblade books by Author Bree Wolf

  About the Book

  Prologue

  Chapter One – A Place Called Home

  Chapter Two – A Fallen Woman

  Chapter Three – Eugenie

  Chapter Four – The Beast of Ravengrove

  Chapter Five – In Name Only

  Chapter Six – Ghosts

  Chapter Seven – Envy

  Chapter Eight – The West Wing

  Chapter Nine – A Rare Moment

  Chapter Ten – Over a Cup of Tea

  Chapter Eleven – A Traitorous Heart

  Chapter Twelve – A Simple Request

  Chapter Thirteen – Born to be Alone

  Chapter Fourteen – Disillusionment

  Chapter Fifteen – Matters of the Heart

  Chapter Sixteen – Lost in the Woods

  Chapter Seventeen – Of Family

  Chapter Eighteen – Suspicions

  Chapter Nineteen – Lady Wentford

  Chapter Twenty – Helpless

  Chapter Twenty-One – A Supper Long Awaited

  Chapter Twenty-Two – Heart and Mind

  Chapter Twenty-Three – An Old Friend

  Chapter Twenty-Four – Miss Hawkins

  Chapter Twenty-Five – A Plan Gone Horribly…Right

  Chapter Twenty-Six – Tears

  Chapter Twenty-Seven – Without Thought

  Chapter Twenty-Eight – A Stranger in the Night

  Chapter Twenty-Nine – A Promise

  Chapter Thirty – The Red Ribbon

  Chapter Thirty-One – A Late-Night Arrival

  Chapter Thirty-Two – Guillaume Trouvé

  Chapter Thirty-Three – A Bond Unbroken

  Chapter Thirty-Four – A Perfect Moment

  Chapter Thirty-Five – Mothers

  Chapter Thirty-Six – From Father to Father

  Chapter Thirty-Seven – What If History Repeats Itself

  Chapter Thirty-Eight – In the Snow

  Epilogue

  About Bree

  About the Book

  A fallen lady. A beastly lord.

  And a night out in the woods.

  Unmarried and with child, Lady Eugenie enters into a marriage of convenience to save herself and her unborn child from society’s censure. However, her new husband turns out to be the rumored Beast of Ravengrove, a hideously scarred man who roams his ancestral home at night, sending fear into the hearts of those unfortunate enough to encounter him.

  Battle-scarred and weary of life, Adrian Brooks, Earl of Remsemere, all but flees society and hides out at his country estate. Fearful of an old curse, which has already sent those he loved to an early grave, he spends his days in seclusion. However, one day, an old friend arrives at Ravengrove and begs him for a favor, a favor Adrian is honor-bound to grant.

  Will the Beast of Ravengrove send his new bride fleeing into the woods? Or will Lady Eugenie discover that there is a man underneath his beastly demeanor? Is Adrian forever doomed to merely exist or will he learn to truly live and love again?

  Prologue

  On the Continent, 1810 (or a variation thereof)

  He was alive.

  Despite all the odds, Adrian Brooks, 9th Earl of Remsemere, had not died today. However, he could not say whether that was good or bad.

  It was simply a fact.

  Adrian’s ribs burned as he drew in a deep breath, the scent in the air a familiar mix of mud and rain and blood. His body ached, and his hands trembled with the sudden stillness as he stood at the edge of the battlefield, unable to avert his gaze from the carnage before him. His ears still rang with the screams of injured men, of men dying, of men praying for death. So many had lost their lives that day, and yet, he had survived. Why? Why was Death so unwilling to take him?

  Four years had passed since Adrian had joined the British forces on the Continent, and for four years, he had been waking in hell every morning, his heart and soul battered from the nightmares that had followed him from England. And so for four long years, Adrian had dared Death at every turn, charging into battle with no regard for his own life, hoping, praying that the end was near.

  More than once, Adrian had thought that Death had finally come for him, would finally accept him and take him away from this hell. Every time, though, his wound had not proved fatal, and he had recovered.

  Still, today was the greatest disappointment of all.

  For today, he had walked away with hardly a scratch.

  How was that possible?

  Hanging his head, Adrian closed his eyes, feeling the tightness of his skin around the long scar that ran across his righ
t eye and down his face to the line of his jaw. It had been a substantial wound, and he still could not believe that it had cost him neither his eye nor his life.

  That had been Emery’s doing, and Adrian knew not whether to be angry with his friend or not.

  With a sigh, Adrian forced his eyes back open, forced himself to accept reality. He had survived.

  Again.

  In the dim light of yet another overcast day, Adrian found his gaze brushing over a small red ribbon tied around his right wrist…and he stilled, his jaw tightened with anger. “How dare you?” he ground out as his hands balled into fists, outrage burning through his body and chasing away the exhaustion he had felt only a moment ago.

  Too many times had Adrian seen this ribbon to not know what it was, what it meant…and who had put it there. How could he not have noticed? How could Emery have slipped it around his wrist without him being aware of it?

  A slim and somewhat sickly young man, Emery had joined the British forces in order to tend to the wounded, to ease their sufferings and, if possible, save as many lives as he could. He knew not how to handle a weapon, but his hands knew their way around the human body. They knew how to heal and restore, and the calm that always rested in his dark gray eyes was as soothing as a mother’s touch. He had a way with people, and he had seen the darkness in Adrian’s soul from the first moment they’d met.

  In his own way, Emery was as much a soldier as any of them for he had spent the past four years fighting against Adrian’s willingness to surrender his life. More than once, Emery had tried to convince him that he deserved to live. More than once, his friend had urged him to take better care of himself. More than once, he had encouraged him to consider his future and not only dwell on his past.

  Often, Adrian had seen Emery’s frustration when all his well-intended words had failed to do any good. Still, his friend had never given up, rising each day with the same determination as he had the day before. Emery had proven as stubborn and obstinate as Adrian himself, and despite the hell they lived in—or perhaps because of it—an unlikely friendship had developed between the two men.

  A friendship that had been based on compassion and respect.

  Or so Adrian had thought.

  Gritting his teeth against another wave of anger, Adrian ran the tips of his fingers over the red ribbon, now stained with blood and dirt after all the horrors it had witnessed. For the past four years, it had been securely tied around Emery’s wrist, a gift from his little sister back home. Something to keep him safe. Something to bring him back when all this was over.

  A keepsake.

  A memory.

  A good luck charm.

  More than once when Adrian had returned with a gushing wound had Emery threatened to rip his sister’s token from his arm and fasten it to Adrian in such a way that he would never again be able to remove it. “You need this more than I do,” Emery had said time and time again, hope shining in his gray eyes that Adrian might accept his offering as well as the protection it promised.

  Still, Adrian had always declined and, until today, Emery had respected his friend’s decision.

  Disappointment and betrayal ate at Adrian as he fingered the small ribbon, unable to tear his gaze away. “Is this why?” he whispered before his eyes once more drifted over the dead lying on the blood-soaked field before him. “Is this why nothing could touch me today?”

  Ordinarily, Adrian was not a man to believe in superstitions or good luck charms or bad omens. Years ago, he would have laughed at the thought that a small red ribbon could protect him from the dangers of the battlefield. But all that had changed the day Death had taken his family…and left him behind.

  Straightening, Adrian turned from the field where he should have breathed his last and headed back toward the encampment. No doubt, Emery was eagerly awaiting his return, and Adrian wondered what his friend would say. Would he apologize? Would he try to justify his actions? Or would he pretend that he’d had no choice?

  Blind to the camp’s normal routine after a battle, Adrian strode onward, his ears deaf to the cries around him. Determination coursed through his veins, and his eyes sought the surgeon’s tent as his feet carried him onward across the rain-soaked ground. A faint drizzle had begun falling, and the fine spray of rain cooled the heat that burned in his cheeks. His heart ached, and Adrian gritted his teeth against the tears that shot to his eyes.

  How dare he?

  After everything Adrian had lost, everything he’d stopped believing in, his friendship to Emery had been the sliver of hope on the horizon, a small flame in the dark that kept the demons at bay…at least when he was awake. To have this one measure of comfort turned against him felt worse than the day a bayonet had carved open the side of his face. He had dared to trust, to lower his guard, and now he was paying the price.

  As Adrian approached the surgeon’s tent, a soldier stepped outside, his face taut and his eyes searching. “Where’s Emery?” he asked upon seeing Adrian’s approach. His voice held urgency, and Adrian could see the slight tremble that shook him: the aftershock of battle.

  Adrian’s steps slowed when his goal suddenly vanished from within his grasp. “I don’t know,” he replied, disappointment now weighing heavily on his shoulders. “He ought to be here.”

  The soldier merely nodded and then continued on his search, unable to stand still and do nothing. Adrian knew only too well how that felt.

  Drawing in a deep breath, he stepped into the tent nonetheless, knowing that Emery couldn’t be far, that he wouldn’t be gone for long. After a battle, he sometimes did not leave the surgeon’s tent for days on end, sleeping an hour or two on the little cot in the corner.

  As the flaps of the tent fluttered closed behind him, Adrian paused. At first, he did not know why, but then he felt the little hairs on the back of his neck rise and a cold chill run down his limbs. Something was wrong, and his right hand involuntarily went to the saber at his side.

  His eyes narrowed as they swept over the rows of cots awaiting the next group of wounded soldiers. A surgeon’s table, sturdy and with a large lamp fastened above it, stood off to the side next to a narrow table where Emery kept his surgeon’s tools. In the back, a sheet hung from the ceiling to the ground, separating a small space from the rest of the tent. Behind it stood another cot—for Emery’s use alone—as well as a small trunk with all his possessions.

  From his spot by the entrance, Adrian could not see behind the sheet, and yet, he knew that the source of his unease was to be found there. Dread spread through his body, and he swallowed hard, trying to dislodge the lump that had settled in his throat as he drew his saber from its sheath. He forced his feet onward as an icy chill claimed his limbs. “Emery?” he called, willing his friend to step from the small space, a relieved smile on his lips to see Adrian alive.

  “Please,” he whispered as he stepped around the sheet, his pulse beating frantically in his neck.

  At first the small space seemed empty and, for the length of a heartbeat, Adrian felt the dread in his bones wane…until his gaze fell upon the tip of a boot, poking out from underneath the cot.

  A strangled groan rose from his throat, and Adrian sank to his knees as his saber dropped to the ground. His gaze traced the length of his friend’s body, following it upward until it met Emery’s unseeing eyes.

  Blood pooled beneath his friend’s head from the long cut across his throat.

  “No!” The agony in that one word resonated in every fiber of his body, and Adrian felt the wound of his losses reopen. Raw pain gripped him until he could barely hold himself upright and tears flowed freely from his eyes, blurring his vision.

  Still, he knew that he would see his friend’s lifeless stare until the end of his days…however long that might be.

  Almost numb, his fingers reached for the small red ribbon still tied around his wrist. “You shouldn’t have done this,” he wept as Emery’s words echoed in his mind, You need this more than I do. “It was my life to be taken,
not yours. Never yours.”

  Sitting beside his friend’s lifeless body, Adrian was once more drawn back to a carefree summer day when he had been only a boy. A small fair had come to the village near Ravengrove, his father’s estate, and he and his brothers had gone to see the fortune teller. Never would Adrian forget the old woman’s widened eyes as she had placed the cards in front of him, her hands trembling when his fate was revealed to her. Death walks with you, she’d mumbled, quickly gathering up the cards as though looking at them for too long would give them power.

  Her words had frightened Adrian nearly witless. However, his brothers’ laughter had soon chased away his unease and, as children often did, he had moved on from that day with hardly a memory of it.

  Until his fate had come to pass and taken his family from him.

  And now Emery.

  Was there a curse upon him? Adrian wondered, for no matter what he did, Death didn’t seem to want him, instead taking those he held dear.

  Would it ever stop?

  Chapter One

  A Place Called Home

  Wentford Park, Spring 1812

  Two Years Later

  “Beautiful!” Eugenie exclaimed as she gazed down at the image of a small bird slowly taking shape in her stepdaughter’s hands. At only six years old, Amelia—or Milly as everyone except the girl’s grandmother called her—possessed a rare patience as she guided the needle through the cloth, her stitches fine and accurate. “You truly have a gift.”

  The girl’s hazel eyes shone brightly at such praise, and a rosy warmth came to her cheeks. “Thank you for teaching me,” Milly replied before her attention once more returned to the small creature her nimble fingers were bringing to life. “I love birds.” A longing sigh left her lips as she looked up at Eugenie. “They can fly.”

  Eugenie smiled, brushing a gentle hand over her stepdaughter’s light brown curls. “Indeed, they are magnificent creatures, free to go wherever they please.”