The Rake’s Bride (Reformed Rakes #1)

Prologue

If one researched the word “rake”, one would likely discover an etching of the sinfully handsome visage of Rafael Hart, Viscount Blackwood, provided as its sole definition.

The man changed his paramours more often than the world did its seasons. Many a lady had bemoaned the fact that she had failed to be the one to convince him to settle down and give up his wild ways.

He was, according to more than one tabloid, “absurdly handsome,” thanks to his dark coloring, lean height, and pleasantly athletic physique.

He possessed a caustic wit and ready smile, as well as a reputation that made debutantes salivate and their mamas steer them as quickly as possible in the other direction.

He’d been but a young buck when he’d inherited his title his last year at University, born as the second of only two children from parents more advanced in age than was customary.

His impending birth had been touted as a pleasant surprise—a miracle—until his mother died of a fever without ever leaving the birthing bed.

The old viscount had been torn between joy at finally having a son and heir, and irrationally blaming an innocent babe for the death of his wife of nearly two decades.

As a result, young Rafe had been left with his elder sister as his only advocate and replacement mother figure.

Ten years his senior, Alice had shown her tiny brother love and unfailingly reassured him that he was never a burden, nor had his birth been a mistake.

Despite her best efforts, this had not always canceled out their father’s hard words of criticism or his grief-fueled rage whenever he looked upon the son who so looked like the mother who’d given her life for his first breath.

To Rafe, Alice had been one of the only truly good things in his existence, and he’d have done absolutely anything for her.

This was why the news of her sudden death alongside her husband in a carriage accident had crippled Rafe.

When he’d have rather crawled into a hole and allowed death to claim him as well, he hadn’t even been afforded that courtesy.

His brother-in-law’s solicitors had arrived on his doorstep and asked him what they should do with his sister’s children: a boy of ten, a girl of three, and an infant girl not yet weaned.

Apparently (and for some unknown and ill-advised reason), their will had stipulated that Rafe, of all people, receive guardianship of the children in the unlikely event that they both perished.

Rafe, feeling particularly bewildered and lost, had been uncharacteristically frustrated that Alice hadn’t had the forethought to remember that Rafe’s life never went according to plan, and putting his name on that document had all but ensured he’d be the one to wind up caring for these children when he didn’t know the first thing about how to do so.

“There is also an Aunt Agatha Hart mentioned as an alternative,” hedged one of the solicitors who, upon taking one glance around the house, saw not one bit of warmth and comforts one would expect in a home where children would be raised.

If anything, the home was little more than a facade in the literal sense—mismanagement of the Blackwood holdings prior to Rafe’s inheritance meant he’d received little more than the shabbily furnished home in which they stood, and a paltry annual income from the dregs that remained of the estate’s holdings that was barely enough to keep him clothed in the appearances befitting his station.

It certainly was not enough to house, clothe, and educate three children as befitting their noble blood.

He did not know the first thing about children above their universal love of sweets and presents, but even he knew they were not inexpensive.

Though the solicitor had indicated there was another option…

Rafe barely suppressed a shudder at that woman’s name.

Agatha was their father’s spinster sister, whom Alice had always feared as a girl—there was a reason Agatha had never married, and it wasn’t purely her bulbous nose and permanent scowl.

Unfortunately, she was also the last living relative either of them had.

Alice’s husband, while he’d been a good and kind man whom Rafe had genuinely liked, had brought with him a tragic dearth of relations.

These poor children certainly were not spoiled for choice.

As Rafe saw it, they’d either become wildlings beneath his unworthy hand, or they’d whither beneath Aunt Agatha’s strict cane and unkind, rheumy eyes.

Joy would be a thing of the past if their great-aunt had her way.

And this was how Rafe, one of London’s most notorious hell-raising rakes, inherited three small children.

It was also how, after a few months of living with said children—being thrust from the free life of a titled bachelor to that of a pseudo-father figure—he concluded that he needed to commit the ultimate sin: He needed a wife.

As abhorrent as he found the situation of marriage, it was clear that a woman’s hand was required to manage the situation…

not to mention he was in dire need of the influx of capital a hefty dowry would provide.

It made him nauseous, but Rafe would have to trade his title for a mother to his nephew and nieces, and money in his coffers.

Following his acceptance of the responsibility, the solicitors had immediately launched into an explanation of all the intricacies involved in taking on three small charges.

Rafe lost his grip on his final shred of hope and watched it flutter away upon a brittle breeze.

Though his nephew had inherited a title and some funds upon his parents’ demise, payment of the death tax and safeguards put in place by solicitors who were clearly skeptical of Rafe’s ability to be responsible (likely even more so now that they’d seen the depressingly inadequate interior of his home), the boy’s income was tied up too tightly to make any difference until he reached his majority.

All that said, Rafe required a rich wife…and he needed her fast.