The Redemption of a Dissolute Earl by Julie Johnstone Read Free Book Online Page A

every part of Drew ached with longing and loss.
He wanted to sleep and forget her in his dreams, but that was
wishful thinking. He would dream of her―he always did.
    He would give his life for the chance to
hold her in his arms and tell her what a fool he had been and that
he would give up everything just to be with her if giving his life
would change a thing. But it wouldn’t. She would still be married,
and he would still be the idiot who had forced her down that
path.
    What if he had been blunt and direct when he
had collided with her in the theatre, instead of trying to be
clever? Would her wedding still have transpired? Would he still
have arrived at Salisbury’s, only to be informed by the haughty,
tight-lipped butler that they had missed the wedding and that the
happy couple was gone on their honeymoon?
    Drew sat back and allowed the devastation he
had stored within himself since this afternoon to fill his heart.
He clenched the edge of the seat against the pain of his loss.
    He would never get to enjoy the fantasy of
domesticity he had painted of them inside his mind. They would not
read by the crackling fire, while their children—at least four of
them—played by their feet. Or there was the fantasy where they were
riding horses through the meadows and they stopped to enjoy a lazy
summer romp in the soft grass underneath the sun’s warming
rays.
    He closed his eyes and saw her face, but not
as it had looked in his fantasy. She was sad. So sad . And no
bloody wonder why. She had married a man who did not love her, and
Drew suspected she did not love Salisbury either.
    Drew had failed himself, failed
her― hell he had even managed to drag Salisbury and Miss
Marchinson down with him and all because one year ago, he’d allowed
his father to convince him that he could never survive without his
inheritance. Drew laughed bitterly. He’d been putting some of the
blame for his shambles of a life on his father, but that was a
mistake. The blame lay squarely on Drew’s shoulders. He could have
rebuffed his father’s demand, he could have married Char anyway,
and he damn sure as hell would have been happy―poor or not.
    What did he have now? Nothing. His
plan since finding out Char was in London and still unmarried had
been to win her back and spend his life proving he was a man worthy
of her love. Now that she was married, he couldn’t even tell her
how he felt and how sorry he was should he ever see her again.
    The carriage jerked to a sudden stop, and
then the door swung open, frigid air blasting him in the face.
“What the bloody hell?” He drew his coat tight around his body as
Edgeworth’s coachman, Roberts, appeared in the door, lit lamp in
hand.
    “I’m sorry for the inconvenience, my lord.”
Roberts drew the lamp near his face. “A coach is stranded on the
side of the road, and I thought perhaps…”
    “By all means,” Drew said and clambered out
of the coach into the biting wind.
    “Oh, no, sir,” the coachman said on a
strangled gasp. “I wasn’t implying that you should get out.”
    Drew waved the man’s assisting hand away. “I
know, but I want to help.” Char may never be in his life again, but
damn it all, he would be a better man. He would be the man
he should have been. The first order of business was putting others
before himself. No longer did Andrew Whitton, Earl of Hardwick,
exist. That self-indulgent fool was gone. If he was going to have
more money and power than he deserved, then he was going to use it
to do good.
    Decision made, Drew followed Roberts through
the deep snow, the lamp flickering eerily in the dark night.
Roberts reached the carriage just ahead of Drew and opened the door
as he approached. The man turned towards him, and Drew faltered in
his step at the deathly whiteness on Robert’s face displayed by the
light of the lamp. “My lord, don’t come any closer,” Roberts
whispered as if talking any louder might wake the dead.
    Disregarding the man’s warning,