The Art of Taming a Rake (Legendary Lovers 4)

Having been born with a scientific bent and an aptitude for solving puzzles, he’d channeled his energies into a revolutionary endeavor: perfecting the sort of innovation that might have saved the lives of his parents and his uncle and aunt. For the past two years, that one goal had driven him.

Quinn rolled over again, his memories of Venetia further impeding his attempt to sleep. Tasting her delectable mouth had only confirmed his intuition: She was as elegant and graceful as ever—but also pure, luscious woman.

He’d enjoyed himself tonight more than he cared to admit, not least because of the sparks flaring between them in the conflict over her sister. She was much different from Ophelia, who was unfailingly polite, even meek-mannered.

The contrast reminded him of his cousin Kate’s theory about legendary lovers and sent his thoughts winging back to a long-ago summer afternoon by the lake at the Beaufort country estate before their close-knit family had broken up so the cousins could attend various universities and boarding schools.

Still grieving their parents’ loss, twelve-year-old Kate first began her campaign to find a bride for her brother Ash—Ashton Wilde, Marquis of Beaufort.

“You need to marry and bring us home a mama,” Kate insisted.

Ash had practically choked. “Marry? Just what put that maggoty notion into your head, minx?”

“If you wed, we would have a mother to raise us, and then we would not have to go away to school in a fortnight.”

But her rationale was not so cold-blooded, they shortly learned. “Mama always said someone special is waiting out there in the world for me—indeed, an ideal match is waiting for each of us.”

In the intervening years, Kate had never abandoned her longing for true love, for herself or her family. Then, at the beginning of last Season, she’d developed her mad theory about legendary lovers and redoubled her efforts to find them all perfect mates.

“It is up to us to shape our own destinies,” she had argued. “We each must be responsible for meeting our match and making our own particular tale come true.”

Quinn profoundly agreed with the need to shape his own destiny. And so he refused to act the milksop, letting his female relatives dictate his future.

He had good reason for being so cynical about love. When he was eighteen, shortly after succeeding to his late father’s title, he’d become the victim of a grasping social climber. It was a particularly vulnerable time for him, having lost his parents and left his remaining family to attend Cambridge. Young and impressionable, he’d fallen head over heels for a conniving husband-hunter several years his senior.

Being played for a fool by a woman was one of his least proud moments. Since then he had kept his affairs strictly superficial.

Kate’s theory could not survive logical, scientific scrutiny, either. Quinn put faith in physical proof, not romantic fantasies.

And yet…over the past year, she had orchestrated a romance for Ash and then her adopted brother and first cousin, Lord Jack Wilde. Skye had pursued her own legendary tale with Hawk last autumn, and as a bonus, had found Uncle Cornelius’s long-lost love.

As soon as Skye’s vows were said, both women had ardently set their sights on Quinn. He’d fooled them with his overtures toward Ophelia, so they no longer regularly hounded him. But once they discovered his intention to cultivate other suitors for the girl, Kate would be after him again, even if she had to revise her hypothesis.

Venetia would never fit the Greek myth of Pygmalion. Although reportedly she had taken up sculpting during her exile in France, she bore no resemblance to the cold statue of Galetea. To his mind, they were closer to Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew.

Venetia was far more appealing than her sister, and would make him a better match. She had a lively spirit that intrigued him, unlike the calculating, insipid debutantes who had pursued him for years. And her character was far stronger. She had faced adversity and endured censure and banishment with remarkable fortitude. And even if it made him her foe, he had to admire her devotion to her sister.

In truth, he’d felt a deep attraction toward Venetia from the very first, as much for her warmth and wit as for her beauty.

While he might have desired her then, however, lust did not justify matrimony and he had positively not been in the market for a wife. Instead, his friend and fellow peer Viscount Ackland had courted and proposed to her.

Quinn had thought then that she was too good for Ackland, and he’d always been envious of his friend—not of their betrothal, but of the chance to possess a woman like that. It was the only time he had ever coveted another man’s choice.

Tonight he had sampled Venetia’s passion, both physical and emotional, and he couldn’t deny that he was entranced. The additional irony was not lost on him, either: He was thought to be courting one sister but badly wanted the other.

An utterly inappropriate reaction, given his aversion to matrimony.

When Quinn finally dozed off, he dreamed of Venetia, of taming her and gaining her surrender. He woke hard and aching to the sound of rapping on his bedchamber door.

His valet’s entrance abruptly dissolved the pleasurable remnants of his dream.

“You asked to be awakened at eight, my lord.”

Rousing himself out of bed, Quinn made an effort to discipline his rash thoughts. Taming Venetia would prove an enormous challenge and lead to paths he didn’t wish to go down. The very thought was laughable.

Still, as he dressed and made ready to call on her, he couldn’t quell his keen sense of anticipation. It was unwise, no doubt, but he was eager for their next encounter.

—