Lords of Notoriety: The Ruthless Lord Rule / The Toplofty Lord Thorpe

Lords of Notoriety: The Ruthless Lord Rule / The Toplofty Lord Thorpe
Kasey Michaels

Two scandalous menTwo beautiful women to tame them The Ruthless Lord Rule His reputation is notorious. Lord Tristan Rule can have any young lady of the ton, though Miss Mary Lawrence has specifically caught his attention…But the ruthless Rule soon finds Mary has the power to forge his hard-as-steel heart into something very malleable! The Toplofty Lord Thorpe Julian Rutherford’s greatest admirer is outrageous imp Miss Lucy Gladwin. Amidst a scandal, she finally has Julian all to herself – and Lucy will stop at nothing to show him they can overcome any trial through a true meeting of souls…and bodies!A Kasey Michaels Double Bill

Praise for Kasey Michaels

“Using wit and romance with a master’s skill,

Kasey Michaels aims for the heart and

never misses.”

— Bestselling author Nora Roberts

The Butler Did It

“Witty dialogue peppers a plot full of delectable

details exposing the foibles and follies of the

age… The heroine is appealingly independent-

minded; the hero is refreshingly free of any

mean-spirited machismo; and supporting

characters have charm to spare…[a] playfully

perfect Regency-era romp.”

— Publishers Weekly

A Reckless Beauty

“With her Beckets of Romney Marsh series, Michaels has created a soap opera with wonderful characters, dark family secrets, exciting historical events and passion.” — Romantic Times BOOKreviews

The Return of the Prodigal

“Only a mistress of the genre could hook you,

and hold you in her net, eagerly anticipating

her next move.”

— Romantic Times BOOKreviews

Kasey Michaels is a New York Times bestselling author of both historical and contemporary novels. She is also the winner of a number of prestigious awards.

Lords of Notoriety

Kasey Michaels

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

CONTENTS

The Ruthless Lord Rule

The Toplofty Lord Thorpe

The Ruthless Lord Rule

To Page –

the Consummate Miss Cuddy –

who let me be me; with deep gratitude

and affection

PROLOGUE

March 1814

PEACE!

All England is rejoicing. Napoleon, that scourge of the Continent, has at last been put in his cage. Paris has capitulated, with the trusted Marmont leading his unsuspecting men straight into the Austrian camp in surrender. Now an emperor in name only, with but a scant four-hundred-man army and living on the charity of the country he had led in triumph for nearly twenty years, Bonaparte barely escaped France with his life and is living in genteel poverty on the unpretentious island of Elba.

His Royal Highness, the Prince Regent, is delirious with joy; so overcome that he’d had to be bled of twenty-seven ounces of blood. Indeed, for nearly a month, he languished in his bed, hovering between life and death.

The rush to cross the Channel is already in full force, with even the Duke of Wellington, now British ambassador to France, characteristically ignoring the angry glances cast his way as he saunters down the streets of Paris, dines on good, plain English fare at the Café des Anglais, and accepts the grateful thanks of the repatriated French nobility.

London is in a whirl, eagerly anticipating the arrival of Czar Alexander of Russia, King Frederick William of Prussia, and, wonder of wonders, the much loved Field Marshal von Blücher. Indeed, the Grand Duchess Catherine of Oldenburg, the czar’s “platter-faced” sister, has already disembarked and is royally ensconced in Pulteney’s Hotel, busily setting up the Regent’s back with her Whig antics.

That this endears her to the residents of London is no surprise, for the Regent has been out of favor with his subjects for some time. The younger generation has no memory of the glorious Florizel that was once the Prince of Wales and cannot think of him as the genial Big Ben. They see him instead as Swellfoot, an obese, grotesque, thoroughly evil man. They glory in the little ditty penned by Charles Lamb:

By his bulk and by his size,

By his oily qualities,

This (or else my eyesight fails)

This should be the Prince of Whales.

Not that Louix XVIII, who had been cheered through the streets as he headed toward the Channel Ports and a return to his homeland, fared much better once he reached Paris. The King, whom Lord Byron has irreverently dubbed Louis the Gouty, seems to have spent his entire exile in thrall with his host country’s cooking, and is so thoroughly corpulent that the Regent, after investing the King with the Order of the Garter, and buckling the Garter around a leg even thicker than his own, remarked, “When I clasped his knee it was exactly as if I were fastening a sash around a young man’s waist.”

One German account of the King’s appearance commented on both the advanced age and accumulated fat of Napoleon’s replacement. Telling of the King’s entrance into the room, the report centered on the fact that Louis, clad in soft black satin boots and supported on either side, was so disablingly obese that he “would stumble over a straw.”

While Europe laughs at reports of Napoleon’s frugal inventories of mattresses and his drawing up of lists of his personal clothing (“my underlinen is in a lamentable state”), and ridicules his official-sounding Council of State that he has set up to investigate improvements in the iron mines and salt pits of Elba while considering the possibility of importing silkworms, the banished Emperor is reading of the high jinks being perpetrated by his vanquishers.