Forever Your Rogue

FOREVER YOUR ROGUE ERIN LANGSTON Copyright © 2023 by Erin Langston All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Cover Design by Erin Dameron-Hill Edited by Rachel Shipp Created with Vellum For Pete: Thank you for keeping my dreams until I was ready for them. And for Adam and Claire: My golden boy; my silver girl. Keep becoming. CONTENTS Prologue Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Epilogue Author’s Note Acknowledgments About the Author PROLOGUE June 1818 Aldworth Park, Berkshire In Cora Dane’s estimation, this seemed the sort of occasion that called for whisky…or at the very least, the sort of occasion that called for the pageantry of whisky. To be sure, it was rather difficult to determine the proper etiquette for a moment such as this. Only minutes ago, her butler had delivered a letter, its bland parchment belying the staggering news within. Her heart filled her throat as her fingers followed the scrawling calligraphy. She wanted to absorb the shape of the words, to press them against her bone-dry eyes. Cora swallowed hard, trying to temper the cautious hope rising in her chest. She sensed herself standing at the edge of a precipice, peering over a strange, welcome landscape… Yes. Whisky was undoubtedly in order. Wordlessly, Cora stood, smoothed her skirts, and padded down the hall. She paused at the bottom of the staircase to listen for sounds from the nursery. It appeared her children were finally asleep. Good. She loved Tess and Leo to distraction, but she had no need for distraction tonight. She reached the viscount’s study and hesitated, rubbing the ornate latch with the pad of her forefinger. In a fog of incredulity, she entered the empty room. The fire hissed and popped, sending flickering shadows over the trappings of her husband’s private domain. At first glance, the study revealed nothing of his apathetic nature, but as she approached the desk, Cora saw the cracks in his façade. An unbalanced ledger, a slew of unanswered correspondence, a stack of unpaid account slips. Lord Dane had always been adept at illusion. Unhurriedly, she wandered the perimeter of the silent room, her hand trailing over bookcases filled with leather tomes her husband had surely never read. On the wall above her hung the massive, pompous portrait of Dane in his parliamentary robes. She peered around the dim study. There were no portraits of Cora, none of their children. She supposed it made sense, given there had been no room for them in his heart. She abruptly recalled why she had come to the study in the first place. The pageantry of whisky, indeed. As she turned toward the tantalus in the corner, her eyes snagged on the broad, peeling spine of the Dane family Bible. Cora had never opened it, but given the content of the letter in her sitting room, she supposed she needed to update the family tree. Cora carried the tome to the polished desk. She carefully opened the heavy cover, mindful of the frail, sticking paper. The intricate family tree was on the second page—Dane’s ancestors, his parents, his sister, Edith, and her insufferable husband and progeny. Next to Dane’s own name was Cora’s. And underneath— Cora froze. That can’t be. Leo’s birthdate was wrong. Dane had the month correct, May 1815. But the date was five days off. The louse hadn’t even known his own son’s birthdate. Cora should hardly be surprised; Dane had paid less than no attention to the children. But still. His son, his heir. She had assumed that sort of thing mattered to him. Sliding her finger down the page, expecting the same treatment for Tess, Cora blinked in confusion. There was no name next to Leo’s. Dane hadn’t included Tess at all. Fury clouded her vision. The uncaring, unbothered boor had left his daughter’s name out of the family tree. He had been so disinterested in her birth, he hadn’t even recorded it. Cora thought of Tess, of her apple-cheeks and downy curls, hardly a year old and already the biggest personality in the house. She thought of Leo, so careful and concerned, always trying to do things exactly right. Her golden boy, her silver girl. The brightest spots in every lonely, gray day throughout her disappointing marriage. And useless Frederick Dane had all but blotted them out. No, Cora vowed. Absolutely not. Fuming, she found a quill, bent over the family tree, and heatedly corrected Leo’s birthdate. She emphatically added Tess’s, making it just a bit bigger than the other entries. Then, she turned to Dane’s name. Cora hesitated—to be sure, it was a bizarre task—and next to his birthdate, she drew a small line followed by today’s date. 25 June 1818. She stared at the entry. Seeing her legacy, how she, Tess, and Leo would endure while Dane would not, felt more real than the pronouncement in the letter. Cora was suddenly, shockingly, untethered from Lord Dane—thanks to a broken carriage axle, a rainy night, and her husband’s fixation with an opera dancer. It was so laughably predictable. Cora hadn’t needed to look at his appointment book or smell the perfume on his waistcoat to know Dane spent half his time with his mistress at her London residence. Frankly, she