The Lure of a Rake Read Online Free Page A

force it rattled the doorjamb. He stalked over and skimmed his stare over the bottles littering the floor. “I don’t give a damn if you drink yourself to death—”
    “How heartwarming,” Cedric murmured, touching a hand to his chest.
    “—but not before you do right by the Falcot line.”
    Ah, yes, because nothing had ever mattered more than that distinguished title that went back to the time of great conquerors. Not even the man’s children, certainly not his bastards, and never the long-dead wife who’d dutifully given him two legitimate issues before conveniently leaving the duke a young widower.
    Cedric took a sip of his drink. “Isn’t it rather early in the day to have this conversation?”
    His father snapped his blond eyebrows into a single line. “It is four o’clock in the goddamn afternoon.”
    Cedric glanced over to the tightly-pulled curtains. “Is it?” God, how he’d delighted in taunting the old bastard. It was one of the true enjoyments he found in life.
    In a not uncommon show of temper, the duke swiped his hand over the long table positioned at the back of the sofa. He sent the bottles and snifters tumbling to the floor in an explosion of glass. “I have been tolerant of your carousing and womanizing. I’ve indulged your excess wagering.” A vein throbbed at the corner of his eye. “But if you think you’ll shirk these responsibilities, I’ll see you cut off without a goddamn pence.”
    He grinned wryly and propped his hip on the arm of the sofa. Ah, the cut-you-off-without-a-pence threat. Cedric made a tsking sound. “Come, Father, I’ve merely sought to live to your esteemed reputation. Everything I learned about being a future duke, I learned from you.” Placing his own desires and interests before all else, living for his own pleasures, drinking, wagering. All of it had been learned at the foot of this bastard. The most important lesson inadvertently handed down, however, was the selfishness in saddling oneself with a wife and children—either legitimate or illegitimate. And in that, Cedric would have the ultimate triumph over the driven duke.
    “And you’ll not have to abandon those pleasures.” His father tightened his mouth and moved on to his pragmatic explanation. “I understand your aversion to saddling yourself with one woman, but you can take a proper bride, do right by the line, and still warm every whore’s bed you so wish.”
    Cedric tightened his fingers on his snifter. “How very practical,” he drawled, earning another frown. Yes, that was what the miserable bugger had done with Cedric’s own mother. He’d wed a flawless English lady, given her two legitimate babes, the requisite heir, and then she’d even done him the service of dying in short order. Why, it was everything a heartless, miserable letch like his father could have hoped for in a ducal union. Unfortunately for the old Duke of Ravenscourt, there was one slight, but very important, difference between them. Cedric didn’t give a bloody jot about the ancient title. It could go to the grave with his father and Cedric would quite gleefully kick dirt upon both as they were lowered into the ground.
    “I expect you at my goddamn ball.” The duke jabbed a finger at him. “The bloody affair is for you.” It had never been about Cedric. None of it. It had only and ever been about the dukedom. “Find a sweet, biddable bride, or—”
    “You’ll cut me off,” Cedric put in with a half-grin. “Of course. How can I forget?”
    His father sputtered and flared his eyes. After all, no one taunted, baited, or denied this man—except Cedric. Then as quick as the flare of emotion had come, it was gone, and the duke smoothed his unwrinkled features into an un-moveable mask. “You’ve gone through a good deal of the funds left you by your mother.”
    He stilled. Yes, with the recklessness of youth, he’d wagered too many of those funds, lavished expensive mistresses with jewels befitting a queen.
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