Can they find forever in the wreckage of their lives?
The Lawrence Browne Affair
Cat Sebastian
Releasing Feb 7th, 2017
Avon Impulse
Lawrence Browne, the Earl of Radnor, is mad. At least, that’s what he and most of the village believes. A brilliant scientist, he hides himself away in his family’s crumbling estate, unwilling to venture into the outside world. When an annoyingly handsome man arrives at Penkellis, claiming to be Lawrence’s new secretary, his carefully planned world is turned upside down.
A swindler haunted by his past . . .
Georgie Turner has made his life pretending to be anyone but himself. A swindler and con man, he can slip into an identity faster than he can change clothes. But when his long-dead conscience resurrects and a dangerous associate is out for blood, Georgie escapes to the wilds of Cornwall. Pretending to be a secretary should be easy, but he doesn’t expect that the only madness he finds is the one he has for the gorgeous earl.
Can they find forever in the wreckage of their lives?
Challenging each other at every turn, the two men soon give into the desire that threatens to overwhelm them. But with one man convinced he is at the very brink of madness and the other hiding his real identity, only true love can make this an affair to remember.
Cornwall, 1816
CHAPTER ONE
All this fuss about a
couple of small explosions. As far as Lawrence cared, the explosions were
entirely beside the point. He had finished experimenting with fuses weeks ago.
More importantly, this was his house to burn to the ground if that’s what he
wanted to do with it. Hell, if he blew the godforsaken place up, and himself
right along with it, the only person who would even be surprised was the man
sitting before him.
“Five servants quit,”
Halliday said, tapping Lawrence’s desk in emphasis. Dust puffed up in tiny
clouds around the vicar’s fingertips. “Five. And you were woefully understaffed
even before then.”
Five fewer servants? So
that was why the house had been so pleasantly quiet, why his work had been so
blissfully undisturbed.
“There was no danger to
the servants. You know I keep them away from my work.” That was something
Lawrence insisted on even when he wasn’t exploding things. The very idea of
chattering maids underfoot was enough to discompose his mind even further. “And
I conducted most of the actual explosions out of doors.” Now was probably not
the time to mention that he had blown the roof off the conservatory.
“All I’m suggesting is a
sort of secretary.” Halliday was dangerously unaware of how close he was to
witnessing an explosion of the metaphorical variety. “Somebody to keep records
of what you’ve mixed together and whether it’s likely to”—he puffed his cheeks
out and made a strange noise and an expansive gesture that Lawrence took to
represent explosion—“ignite.”
The Reverend Arthur
Halliday did not know what was good for him. If he did, he would have fled the
room as soon as he saw Lawrence reach for the inkwell. Lawrence’s fingers
closed around the object, preparing to hurl it at the wall behind the vicar’s
head. Sod the man for even suggesting Lawrence didn’t know how to cause an
explosion. He hadn’t invented Browne’s Improved Black Powder or even that
bloody safety fuse through blind luck, for God’s sake.
“Besides,” Halliday went
on, “you said you need an extra set of hands for this new device you’re working
on.”
Oh, damn and blast.
Lawrence knew he shouldn’t have told the vicar. But he had hoped Halliday might
volunteer to help with the device himself, not badger Lawrence into hiring some
stranger. The vicar was convenient enough, and when he wasn’t dead set on
sticking his nose where it didn’t belong, he wasn’t entirely unpleasant company.
“I’ve had secretaries,”
Lawrence said from between gritted teeth. “It ends badly.”
“Well, obviously, but
that’s because you go out of your way to terrify them.” Halliday glanced
pointedly at the inkwell Lawrence still held.
And there again was
Halliday missing the point entirely. Lawrence didn’t need to go out of his way
to frighten anyone. All he had to do was simply exist. Everyone with any sense
kept a safe distance from the Mad Earl of Radnor, as surely as they stayed away
from rabid dogs and coiled asps. And explosive devices, for that matter.
Except for the vicar, who
came to Penkellis Castle three times a week. He likely also called on bedridden
old ladies and visited the workhouse. Maybe his other charity cases were
grateful, but the notion that he was the vicar’s good deed made Lawrence’s
fingers curl grimly around the inkwell as he plotted its trajectory through the
air.
“I’ll take care of the
details,” Halliday was saying. “I’ll write the advertisement and handle the
inquiries. A good secretary might even be able to manage the household a bit,”
the vicar said with the air of a man warming to his topic, “get it into a fit
condition for the child—”
“No.” Lawrence didn’t
raise his voice, but he slammed his fist onto the desk, causing ink to splatter
all over the blotter and the cuff of his already-inky shirt. A stack of papers
slid from the desk onto the floor, leaving a single dustless patch of wood
where they had been piled. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a spider scurry
out from under the papers.
“True,” Halliday
continued, undaunted. “A housekeeper would be more appropriate, but—”
“No.” Lawrence felt the
already fraying edges of his composure unraveling fast. “Simon is not coming
here.”
“You can’t keep him off
forever, you know, now that he’s back in England. It’s his home, and he’ll own
it one day.”
When Lawrence was safely
dead and buried, Simon was welcome to come here and do what he pleased. “I
don’t want him here.” Penkellis was no place for a child, madmen were not fit
guardians, and nobody knew those facts better than Lawrence himself, who had
been raised under precisely those conditions.
Halliday sighed. “Even so,
Radnor, you have to do something about this.” He gestured around the room,
which Lawrence thought looked much the same as ever. One hardly even noticed
the scorch marks unless one knew where to look. “It can’t be safe to live in
such a way.”
Safety was not a priority,
but even Lawrence wasn’t mad enough to try to explain that to the vicar.
“Villagers won’t even walk
past the garden wall anymore. And the stories they invent...” The vicar wrung
his hands. “A secretary. Please. It would ease my mind to know you had someone
up here with you.”
A keeper, then. Even
worse.
But Lawrence did need
another set of hands to work on the communication device. If Halliday wouldn’t
help, then Lawrence had no other options. God knew Halliday had been right
about the local people not wanting anything to do with him.
“Fine,” he conceded. “You
write the advertisement and tell me when to expect the man.” He’d say what he
needed to in order to end this tiresome conversation and send the vicar on his
way.
It wasn’t as if this
secretary would last more than a week or two anyway. Lawrence would see to
that.
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