A Nobleman's Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel (The Doomsday Books, #2)

by K.J. Charles

Rufus d’Aumesty,

Conrad

Rufus regretted the twenty-year age difference that prevented him knocking it off.

Raymond

Louisa Brightling.

Dymchurch,

when you had to keep shoring-up and patching-up because there was no time or money to do a proper job, and he saw it here.

It danced in front of Rufus’s eyes,

but in the last weeks he had sat through too many meals where the company was even colder than the food, and spent too much time mired in the study, struggling with books he didn’t understand and an inheritance he didn’t know how to manage, and he was beginning to feel something rather like despair.

“Lord Oxney. Good day. I’m Luke Doomsday.”

He was respectably dressed, even rather smartly, with a well-fitted coat that showed off a pair of decent shoulders for his height. He had a bright head of guinea-gold hair that gleamed in the little sunlight allowed by Stone Manor’s miserable windows, and a clean, clear look to him, with nothing sinister or piratical about it.

and the face it bracketed was otherwise rather pleasing.

I’m a secretary. I have letters of reference from Mr. Acheson Wood, Viscount Corvin, and Sir Gareth Inglis.”

though he was already getting used to those thick black brows, and their pleasing contrast to his bright hair.

Doomsday’s eyes flew to his, sparking with sudden amusement. Rufus would have called him a good-looking man anyway, but that expression, with his eyes gleaming and his full lips pressed together against an unwary laugh

The courts don’t just take a fellow’s word for it. Raymond d’Aumesty was alive and well when you were conceived, Doomsday. If you’re the oldest son of his lawful wife? You’re the earl.”

“It’s the same name,” Doomsday said. “Or, at least, Mr. Pagan d’Aumesty says so. He said, specifically, that ‘Doomsday’ is a corruption of ‘d’Aumesty’, bestowed on our bastard offshoot of your noble family by unlettered rustics. He said that to my cousins’ faces.”

going to besiege a harmless castle in the air.

He’d taken rather a shine to this excessively confident young man.

Rufus did not propose to stand by when his help was sought, or needed.

Rufus damned well cared.

The sneers would hurt. Rufus didn’t know whether Matilda and Conrad didn’t care if they inflicted hurt or didn’t understand that the lower orders felt it, but neither was tolerable.

This man likes trouble.

Doomsday grinned at him. He had a very, very appealing grin.

Lord Oxney was about five feet ten, and thus notably taller than Luke,

Thank you mrs charles

and powerful thighs made for riding. Luke certainly wouldn’t mind riding them, a thought he put firmly aside.

In fact, he liked a lot about Oxney.

and what he’d heard was a hostile family, an unsettled household unsure where its interests lay, a catastrophically managed estate, and a resented and incapable new master. He’d heard Oxney called uneducated, do-nothing, fool.

but that appeared to be the whole question.

Odo is immediately my favorite

the difference between the d’Aumestys and the Doomsdays is, what, one lot wrote the names down?”

It transformed his appearance from a surprised owl to a tall surprised owl.

It would be so much better if he was more like us.”

wiping out the last humiliation.

The Earl had a brusque, burly appeal, and a touch of humour under the temper, and when Luke had asked for his protection, he’d responded instantly. That was something Luke found very appealing indeed, especially since he didn’t need it.

Luke a back view he could only admire. He did so for a couple of seconds, then lengthened his stride to catch up.

Luke lagged slightly, because the Earl’s back view was really very impressive.

“I’d recommend golds and greens.” “I’m sure I just said red. My mouth moved, and I distinctly heard sounds emerge.”

HA

but when he laughed, the effect was transforming. It made him look like a man you’d laugh with, shoulders shaking, eyes meeting, joining in pleasure.

It was a joke that had given Luke some very vivid ideas.

In Oxney’s position, Joss would probably have won his new family’s hearts already. Luke might have tried to do the same himself, as the smoothest route. He rather liked that Oxney wasn’t trying.

Lord Oxney was so obviously a man who gave people chances: there was a very kind heart under the thick muscle and temper. It made him staggeringly easy to manipulate. Luke made a silent vow that nobody else would be doing that while he was here.

because Oxney’s eyes widened. Just a little flicker, just there, that sudden crackle of awareness at a second meaning.

Must be a thing, sitting about waiting for your father to die.”

He wasn’t young, but even so, nobody expected it.”

Anyway, they found Lord Stone lying on the ground in the morning, not thirty yards from the Chamber Block.” She dropped her voice to a low, thrilling tone. “He’d beaten his hands bloody to be let back into the house.”

But there he was dead, with his hands all battered. I suppose he panicked. Silly old fool.”

He looked at you like beetles.”

and the grooms love him, just ask Perce in the stables.

He’d sent Rufus away with a humble request—Rufus knew an order when he heard one—

and that meant Rufus was not even going to think about the wicked smile, a touch lopsided because of the scar’s pull, the way his eyes laughed even when his face was sober, those thick brows that begged for the stroke of a finger, the bright, glowing hair.