The Redemption of a Dissolute Earl

The Redemption of a Dissolute Earl

Julie Johnstone

Smashwords Edition

Cover Design by Heather Boyd

Copyright © 2013 Julie Johnstone

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The characters and events portrayed in this
book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or
dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

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Table of
Contents

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

About the Author

Coming Soon

World of Johnstone Teaser

For my dear friend Ava
Stone without whom I would have never imagined the possibilities.
Thank you.

~ Julie

Andrew Whitton, Earl of Hardwick, had to
escape.

But he was finding it bloody hard to escape
himself.

He’d given it his best, mind you. He had the
recurrent hangover to prove it. Yet no matter how much he drank, or
how far away from his family he hid, his blasted memories stayed
with him.

As if haunting memories weren’t enough to
make a gent depressed, Drew had, over the course of his year in
France, come to understand some choices he had made were
irreversible. He bloody well wished someone would have told him
that little fact before he’d made such colossally bad choices.
Enlightenment, after the fact, was not nearly as great as the
Frenchies tried to make him believe.

It had taken Drew awhile, but he had finally
stumbled upon something he was a smashing success at. He was a
master at ignoring the past, so the fact that he was now being
asked to face it infuriated him.

He’d assumed he had imagined every ploy his
family might try to bring him back into the fold, and he had felt
secure in the knowledge that he had come up with a sound
counterattack for each of the tricks they might resort to. When
countless letters had arrived from his sisters, he had summarily
thrown them into the fire. Who knew what sort of erstwhile
entreaties lay inside them? He certainly didn’t, since he’d never
opened a single one.

If he had, he held no doubt he would have
felt badly when he read how his disappearance had hurt both his
sisters and mother. A worse thought than feminine disappointment,
though, was the idea of having to read news of his father, a man
Drew hated almost as much as he hated himself.
Almost
. But
not quite. The Marquess of Norland
had
been the catalyst
that propelled Drew towards a bleak future—but if he was going to
pretend for a moment to be a man, he had to admit his own cowardice
had sealed his fate. A sorry fate, indeed.

He had everything he had thought he could
not live without—money, a title, the promise of a greater title
when Norland finally croaked—but Drew couldn’t care less. He wasn’t
happy. He was less than happy. In fact, he was bloody well
unhappy
, but he couldn’t for the life of him figure out how
to change the picture he had painted with his own brush of
stupidity.

To make matters worse, he was now being
forced back home to Danby Castle in order to secure the inheritance
he had given up everything for. An inheritance he was sure he no
longer gave a flying leap about.

He glared at the shabby boat before him and
then at Nicholas Beckford, Lord Edgeworth, his one-time favorite
cousin now turned traitorous errand boy. Edgeworth couldn’t really
expect him to risk his life by crossing the Channel back to England
in
that
contraption, could he?

“That crotchety old goat,” Drew muttered. He
couldn’t believe his grandfather had sent this sorry excuse for a
boat to carry him back to England. Drew eyed the tiny vessel with
peeling paint and cracked boards. “As much money as the old man
has, and he expects me to risk life and limb in this?”

Edgeworth shot Drew a disapproving look.
“You shouldn’t speak of Grandfather that way.”

Drew motioned to the boat. “You do see that
floating coffin, don’t you?”

“I see it,” Edgeworth said. “Might I remind
you, I’ve already ridden in it once.”

“Entirely your problem,” Drew snapped,
wishing he had thought to put a flask of whiskey in his pocket.
Char’s raven-haired image was flickering in his head―a sure warning
he was entirely too sober. “I’m not getting in that death
trap.”

The captain of the boat, a wiry old man with
weathered, sun-beaten skin that reminded Drew of his favorite
broken-in saddle, snorted. “Simpering dandy,” the man hissed under
his breath then spit into the water.

“I heard that, you miserable, craggy-faced
lout,” Drew returned.

“That’s the spirit,” the captain said with a
chortle. “I’ll be waiting aboard for the two of you. Five minutes.
No more.” The captain climbed aboard the ship and disappeared
below.

“Let’s go,” Edgeworth said, putting one
booted foot onto the edge of the rocking boat.

Drew’s stomach turned over with each dip and
creak of the vessel. “I don’t think I can,” he said, unwilling to
admit that the thought of riding in the boat made him feel ill.

Edgeworth took their grandfather’s summons
from his pocket and waved it in the air. “Need I remind you?”

“What do you think?” Drew grumbled. “I’m
standing here freezing my bollocks off, aren’t I?”

“Just being here will not help you keep your
inheritance, Hardwick. You’ve actually got to go home to Danby
Castle as Grandfather demands, unless you want to be
penniless.”

Drew wasn’t sure he cared if he was
penniless or not. That was the problem. He pulled his overcoat
tighter about him to ward off the frigid December air as he
listened to the water lapping against the boat. Each splash
reminded him his time to make a decision was running out.

“Did I mention that if you don’t return by
December twenty-fourth, you will be impoverished?” Edgeworth shoved
the crumpled summons under Drew’s nose. “As in cut off without a
bucket to piss your whiskey-soaked urine into.”

That last part got Drew’s attention and made
him shudder. How was he to buy whiskey to forget who he was and
what he had done if he didn’t have two coins to rub together?

“Let’s go,” he said, jumping aboard and
going below to the dark, damp cabin. He strode towards one of the
narrow cots bolted to the wall, laid down, and closed his eyes. He
had a few hours before he would be back on English soil, then a
two-day ride at best before he would be standing on the hallowed
grounds of Danby Castle. After that, it might take five to ten
minutes, depending on who he ran into, before he would be in his
bedroom where he had taken Char’s innocence.

Char.

Charlotte.

He clenched his teeth on the desire to call
out her name.

It was probably good she had disappeared
from Danby Castle and into thin air. He might have done something
stupid if she had stayed, and he’d been forced to see her degraded
by his father. Drew had no doubt his father would have taken every
opportunity to remind Charlotte and Drew she was nothing more than
a servant’s poor daughter.

Fresh anger, as if his father’s order for
Drew to break his impetuous offer of marriage to Char had happened
minutes ago, rolled though him. He curled his fingers into the cot,
gripping and releasing the sheet. The boat rolled, and he broke out
into a profuse sweat.

Yes, it was a damn good thing she’d gone. He
might have done something chivalrous. He might have actually become
a decent man and not the rotter he was. But he would never know for
sure, and Char, no doubt, had left Danby Castle and never thought
of him again.