Rebels, Rakes and Rogues
Sweet to Spicy Romance
Cheryl Bolen
Kimberly Cates
Tanya Anne Crosby
Lauren Royal
Devon Royal
Contents
Copyright
Preface
Alexandra
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Epilogue
Author's Note
About Lauren & Devon
More Sweet Rakes
The Earl’s Bargain
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
About Cheryl
More Sweet & Spicy Rogues
To Catch a Flame
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
About Kimberly
More Sizzling Rebels
Kissed
Part 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Part 2
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Epilogue
About the Author
More Sizzling Rogues
A Heartfelt Thank You!
1st Edition, November 4, 2015
Alexandra Copyright © Lauren Royal & Devon Royal
The Earl’s Bargain Copyright © Cheryl Bolen
To Catch a Flame Copyright © Kimberly Cates
Kissed Copyright © Tanya Anne Crosby
Published by Oliver-Heber Books, LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used or reproduced or transmitted in any manner whatsoever, electronically, in print, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of both Oliver-Heber Books and the authors, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Your reading pleasure is important to us. If you see typos or mistakes, please take a moment and write the authors publisher@oliver-heberbooks.com
Preface
Ranging from Sweet to Spicy, the following novels all have one thing in common: They’re full of rakes, rebels and rogues! Oh my! For this purpose of this set, the following ratings apply:
Spice level: Sweet
Subtly sexy, with sweet undertones and the bedroom door stays closed. Alas, you must wait outside.
Spice level: Spicy
Sexier, bolder, the love scenes pull no punches. You might find yourself needing a fan...
From all of us to all of you—Enjoy!
Alexandra
by Lauren Royal & Devon Royal
Sweet
Prologue
Summer 1812
Cainewood Castle, the South of England
It was almost like touching him.
Lady Alexandra Chase usually sketched a profile in just a few minutes, but she took her time today, lingering over her work in the darkened room. Standing on one side of a large, framed pane of glass while Tristan sat sideways on the other, she traced his shadow cast by the glow of a candle. Her pencil followed his strong chin, his long, straight nose, the wide slope of his forehead, capturing his image on the sheet of paper she’d tacked to her side of the glass. Noticing a stray lock that tumbled down his brow, she hesitated, wanting to make certain she caught it just right.
Someone walked by the open door, causing Tris’s shadow to flicker as the candle wavered. “Are you finished yet?” he asked from behind the glass panel.
“Hold still,” she admonished. “Artistry requires patience.”
“It’s just a profile.”
Alexandra flushed, though she knew better than to take offense. He was simply impatient. He’d always been an admirer of her work.
As well he should be. Alexandra made excellent profile portraits.
”You promised you’d sit still,” she reminded him, injecting authority into her girlish voice. “Just this once before you leave.” She’d been asking Tris to sit for her for months, but he never seemed to have the time. This would be her only chance.
&n
bsp; “I’m sitting,” he said, and although his profile remained immobile, she could hear amusement in his tone.
She loved his good-humored forbearance, just like she loved everything about Tris Nesbitt.
She’d been eight when they first met. Her favorite brother, Griffin, had brought him home between school terms. In the six years since, as he and Griffin completed Eton and then Oxford, Tris had visited often, claiming to prefer his friend’s large family to the quiet home he shared with his father.
Alexandra couldn’t remember when she’d fallen in love, but she felt like she’d loved Tris forever.
Of course, nothing would come of it. Now, at fourteen, she was mature enough to accept that her eminent father, the Marquess of Cainewood, would never allow her to marry plain Mr. Tristan Nesbitt.
But that didn’t stop her from wishing. It didn’t stop her stomach from tingling when she heard his voice, didn’t stop her heart from skipping when he looked at her with his silver-gray eyes.
Not that he looked at her often. After all, as far as he was concerned she was little more than Griffin’s pesky younger sister.
Knowing Tris couldn’t see her now, she skimmed her fingertips over his silhouette, wishing she were touching him instead. She’d never touched him, not in real life. Such intimacy simply didn’t occur between young ladies and gentlemen. Most especially between a marquess’s daughter and a commoner.
The drawing room’s draperies were shut, and the low light seemed to enclose them together—alone!—in the room. She desperately wanted to say something clever or diverting, something he would remember after they parted. But she could think of nothing. ”Where are you going again?” she asked instead, although she knew.
Let him think she’d barely noticed he was leaving.
“Jamaica.” He sounded excited. “My uncle wishes me to look after his interests there. I’m to learn how his plantation is run.”
“Is that what you wish to do with your life?”
“He doesn’t mean for me to stay there permanently. Only to acquaint myself with the operation so I can manage it from afar.”
“But do you wish to become a man of business? To manage property? Or would you rather do something else?”
He shrugged, his profile tilting, then settling back into the lines she’d so carefully drawn. “He paid for my education. Have I any choice?”
“I suppose not.” Her choices were limited, too. “How long will you be gone?”
“A year or two at the least. Perhaps more.”
Everything was changing. Griffin would leave soon as well—their father had bought him a commission in the cavalry. Although Griffin and Tris had spent much of the past few years away at school and university, these new developments seemed different. They’d be oceans away. It wasn’t that Alexandra would be alone—she’d still have her parents, her oldest brother, and her two younger sisters—but she was already feeling the loss.
“Two years,” she echoed, knowing Griffin would likely be gone even longer. “That seems a lifetime.”
Tris’s image shook as he laughed aloud. “I expect it might, to one as young as you.”
He seemed so much older, already twenty years of age. Alexandra could scarcely imagine being two decades old. And young boys experienced more of the world than girls, leaving home as adolescents to pursue their educations. They spent time hunting at country houses and carousing about London while girls stayed at home with their mothers.
She was counting the months until she’d finally turn sixteen and have her first London season. She used to spend hours dressing up in Mama’s old gowns and playing with her younger sisters, imagining the balls, the finery, and the grand young lords who would sweep them off their feet. One of those charming gentlemen would be her entrée to a new life as a society wife. And she would love her husband, she was certain, although right now she could hardly imagine loving anyone but Tris.
“Will you bring me something from Jamaica?” she asked, startling herself with her boldness.
“Like what? A pineapple or some sugarcane?”
It was her turn to laugh. “Anything. Surprise me.”
“All right, then. I will.” He fell silent a moment, as though trying to commit the promise to memory. “Are you finished yet?”
“For now.” She set down her pencil and walked to the windows, drew back the draperies, and blinked. The room’s familiar blue-and-coral color scheme suddenly seemed too bright.
She turned toward him, reconciling his face with the profile she’d just sketched. She wouldn’t describe him as pretty. His jaw was too strong, his mouth too wide, his brows too thick and straight. As she watched, he raked a hand through his hair—tousled, streaky dark blond hair that always seemed just a bit too long.
Her fingers itched to touch it, to sweep the stray lock from his forehead.
“It will take me a while to complete the portrait,” she told him as she walked back to where he sat beside the glass, “but I’ll have it ready for you before you leave.”
“Keep it for me.”
She blew out the candle, leaning close enough to catch a whiff of his scent, smelling soap and starch and something else she couldn’t put her finger on. “Don’t you want it?”
He rose from the chair, smiling down at her from his greater height. “I’ll probably lose it if I take it with me.”
“Very well, then.” She’d been hoping he’d say she should keep it to remember him by. “I wish you a safe journey, Mr. Nesbitt.”
She’d called him Tristan—or Tris—for years now, but suddenly that seemed too informal.
His gray gaze remained steady. “Thank you, Lady Alexandra. I wish you a happy life.”
A happy life. She could be married by the time he returned, she realized with a shock. In fact, if he were gone two whole years, she very likely would be.
Her heart sank at the thought.
But at least she’d have his profile. When it was finished, she’d have a perfect likeness of his face, black-on-white in an elegant oval frame. And she’d been alone with him while making it.
As he walked from the room, she peeled the paper off the glass and hugged it to her chest.
Chapter 1
June 1815
RATAFIA PUFFS
Take halfe a pound of Ground Almonds and a little more than that of Sugar. Make it up in a stiff paste with Whites of five Eggs and a little Essence of Almond whipt to a Froth. Beat it all well in a Mortar, and make it up in little Loaves, then bake them in a very cool oven on Paper and Tin-Plates.
I call these my magical sweets…my husband proposed directly after eating only one!
—Eleanor, Marchioness of Cainewood, 1728
Cainewood Castle, three years later
“Not all of it!” Alexandra Chase made a mad grab for her youngest sister's arm. “We're instructed to add a little more sugar than almonds. ”
Corinna stopped grating and frowned. “I like sugar.”
“You won’t like the ratafia puffs if they’re all sugar,” their middle sister, Juliana, said as she took the cone-shaped sugar loaf and set it on the scarred wooden table in the center of Cainewood Castle’s cavernous kitchen.
“Here, my arm is tired.” Alexandra handed Corinna the bowl of egg whites she’d been beating, then scooped a proper amount of the sugar and poured it into another bowl that held the ground almonds. Stirring them together, she shook her head at Corinna. “You really are quite hopeless with recipes. If you didn’t look so much like Mama, I’d wonder if you’re truly her child.”
A sudden sheen of tears brightened Corinna’s brilliant blue eyes. She quickly blinked them away. “She always made good sweets, didn’t she?”
“Excellent sweets,” Juliana said in a sympathetic tone, shooting a look at her older sister.
Alexandra felt abashed and maybe a little teary herself. She looked away, her gaze wandering the whitewashed stone walls of the kitchen. She’d meant only to tease her sister, not remind her of their
mother. Mama had been gone less than two years, and memories could still be painful.
But the time for sadness was over…after years of loss and mourning, Alexandra and her sisters were finally wearing cheerful colors and ready to face the world again. In Alexandra’s case, she was more than ready to put the sorrow behind her and get on with her life.
During her first London season, she’d received many excellent offers of marriage. But at her father’s sudden death, all thoughts of a wedding had been abandoned, and she’d missed the rest of the season while mourning him. Shortly thereafter her dear mother had passed, followed by her oldest brother, and she’d missed this year’s season in yet another anguished period of mourning.
All of the marriage-minded gentlemen who’d courted her had long since found other brides. But Alexandra wasn’t sure she could endure another season, with all the attending frivolity, competition, and intrigue. She just wanted to be someone’s wife. She wanted to forget past hardships and start over, to feel settled and secure in a new place and a new situation.
As for her younger sisters, they’d yet to be presented at court and were beside themselves at the thought of finally having a season. It seemed all Juliana and Corinna could talk of were parties, balls, breakfasts, dances, and soirees.
“I can hardly wait for next spring,” Corinna said, echoing Alexandra’s musings.
Juliana added a few drops of almond extract to the egg whites. “If Griffin has his way, we’ll all be married long before spring. We’ll never have a season.”
“He cannot get you both matched up so quickly.” Alexandra idly stirred the almonds and sugar. “You two will have your seasons. He’ll have to be content with my marriage for now.”
“If the 'magical’ ratafia puffs do their job.” Corinna handed the bowl of eggs back to Alexandra. “Here, now my arm is tired. This is hard work.” Mopping her forehead with a towel, she looked pointedly through an archway to where a scullery maid stood drying a towering stack of dishes. “I cannot understand why you won’t ask her—”