Never Romance a Rake

In which Rothewell meets the Grim Reaper

October was a vile month, Baron Rothewell thought as he peered through the spatter trickling down his carriage window. John Keats had been either a poetic liar or a romantic fool. In dreary Marylebone, autumn was no season of soft mist and mellow fruitfulness. It was the season of gloom and decay. Skeletal branches clattered in the squares, and leaves which should have been skirling colorfully about instead plastered the streets and hitched up against the wrought-iron fences in sodden brown heaps. London -- what little of it had ever lived -- was in the midst of dying.

As his carriage wheels swished relentlessly through the water and worse, Rothewell drew on the stub of a cheroot and stared almost unseeingly at the pavement beyond. At this time of day, it was empty save for the ... read full excerpt from Never Romance a Rake ebook