How To Rescue A Rake (Book Club Belles Society 3) Read Online Free

bluntly, and saw no cause to limit his own happiness to please others.
    Ah, he thought suddenly, perhaps Caroline Sayles was more right than he cared for her to be when she pointed out their similarities.
    His sister used to laugh at him. “I’ve never seen you work so hard, Nate! You put more determination and dedication into chasing Diana than you put into anything.”
    He knew his sister thought it was merely a teasing game of sorts, a challenge to his vanity. Nathaniel had thought the same. In the beginning.
    The first sign of something different being afoot came when old habits and the familiar parade of petticoats and pretty faces no longer made him content. But Nathaniel could not reconcile himself to the idea of giving up all other women for the sake of one. He believed in “gather ye rosebuds while ye may,” his favorite poem—the only one he’d ever memorized—being “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time.”
    And Diana certainly never encouraged his attentions.
    But when he heard news of her engagement to another man, Nathaniel was cast utterly adrift. Sinking deeper and deeper into a violent depression, he’d come up with a list of three possible plans over several jugs of ale at the local tavern.
    One. Kill W. Shaw.
    Two. Kidnap D. Makepiece (until she concedes her mistake).
    Three. Kill W. Shaw.
    He was never a very great schemer.
    In the end, having sobered up only slightly, he proposed marriage to her instead. It was ill-planned, badly timed, and desperate. He had no experience with humility.
    Not that she considered any of this to be a mitigating circumstance.
    In his mind now, he heard Diana’s voice as clearly as it had been when she berated him on the last day he saw her. Even then she had spoken coldly, condescendingly, using emphasis without raising her voice.
    “Nathaniel Sherringham, you’re a boy ! You don’t know what you want from life. You greet every day as if it’s your first and yet your last. You have no direction, no discipline, and no appreciation for the consequences of your actions. As my mama says, everything for you is about the pleasure of the moment, and your fancies are too fleeting.
    “How can you look after a wife when you cannot look after yourself? This ridiculous proposal is nothing more than another impulsive, addlebrained idea upon which you would merrily wager—like betting on an outside chance in a horse race just because you feel sorry for the beast or like the color of his tail. Well, I, sir, do not gamble.”
    A sharp pain stabbed deeply through his chest as he thought again of those green eyes shimmering with light and shade. The gently arched brows seeming bemused, pitying him for that maladroit proposal.
    Then had come the severing cut to his pride when she left him waiting on that old stone bridge until he could no longer imagine she might come. Apparently even laying open his heart to her in that foolish note, fired by sling through her window, had not thawed her feelings for him.
    Still watching the slow, awkward progress of the bird rescuer across the hall, he saw her stumble. Whether she was pushed accidentally by the surging crowd, or whether it was the fault of her own unsteady footing, he couldn’t be sure. Seeing that she was quite unnoticed by anyone else, Nathaniel put down his empty cups and moved swiftly toward her.
    A large gentleman had unknowingly caught the hem of her gown under his chair leg, and as he talked and laughed loudly with his drunken companions, the woman’s distress was ignored by all. Nathaniel thought he must be the only one who could hear her agitated, “ Excuse me .”
    He moved forward quickly, demanding that folk stand aside. The woman swiveled around, her hands tugging on her skirt. Apparently she’d decided to sacrifice the gown rather than try further polite methods to get her captor’s attention.
    Nathaniel arrived behind the loud group, ready to help. “Madam, can I—?”
    She looked up, startled and