How To School Your Scoundrel Read online

  How To School Your Scoundrel

  A Princess In Hiding [3]

  Juliana Gray

  Berkley (2013)

  * * *

  Rating: ****

  Tags: Romance, Historical Romance, Regency Romance, Regency England, Princesses, Love Story

  Three intrepid princesses find themselves targets in a deadly plot against the crown - until their uncle devises a brilliant plan to keep them safe...

  Princess Luisa has devoted her life to duty, quietly preparing to succeed her father as ruler. Nothing, however, primed her to live on the run, disguised as a personal secretary to a notorious English scoundrel. The earl is just the man to help her reclaim her throne, but Luisa is drawn to her powerful employer in ways she never imagined…

  Philip, Earl of Somerton, has spent six years married to a woman in love with another man - he refuses to become a fool due to imprudent emotions ever again. Only, as his carefully laid plans for vengeance falter, fate hands him hope for redemption in the form of a beautiful and determined young princess who draws him into a risky game of secrets, seduction, and betrayal. And while his cunning may be enough to save her life, nothing can save him from losing his heart…

  Rave Reviews for the Princess in Hiding Romances

  How to Master Your Marquis

  “This entrancing and searing love story is highly recommended.”

  —Library Journal (starred review)

  “Her smart characters, snappy dialogue, and ingenious literary devices turn the ordinary into extraordinary. Gray keeps readers glued to the pages in her latest Princess in Hiding installment.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “An intriguing, sensual historical romance . . . I enjoyed this addition to the series immensely and am eager to see what Ms. Gray comes up with next.”

  —Romance Junkies

  How to Tame Your Duke

  “Fun, engaging, sensual, and touching, [How to Tame Your Duke] reads like a slightly outlandish fairy tale, but Gray’s lyrical writing, intense emotion, and spirited characters carry the sophisticated plot to satisfying fruition and keep readers invested every step of the way . . . A delightful romance treat.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Featuring astute writing and charm, this work from Gray sets off a new series with some serious heat.”

  —Library Journal

  “Crackles with chemistry and romantic tension . . . Emotionally electric scenes between strong characters make this one a winner.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “Gray’s witty writing, flawless characterization, and fanciful plotting make this Victorian-set historical romance an absolute treasure.”

  —Booklist (starred review)

  Praise for the novels of Juliana Gray

  A Duke Never Yields

  “Gray makes one of the best trilogy debuts in years, proving she is a literary force to be reckoned with.”

  —Booklist (starred review)

  “A mesmerizing, enthralling romance . . . Bright, witty dialogue and superb characterization are the backbones of a fun, intricate historical storyline.”

  —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

  “Funny, sensual, romantic, with lots of passion and drama thrown in . . . A wonderful and satisfying ending to the series.”

  —The Romance Dish

  “[Gray] demonstrates a knack for writing a sexy story, a battle-of-wits romance, and now a funny tale tinged with paranormal elements . . . Gray has a bright future.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  A Gentleman Never Tells

  “Scintillating wit, lusciously layered characters, and sizzling, sensual romance . . . [Gray] truly is the newest incandescent star in the romance firmament.”

  —Booklist (starred review)

  “The dialogue is witty, the descriptions incredibly vivid, and the emotion evident in every scene.”

  —The Season for Romance

  “Gray’s talent for storytelling and characterization will make her a fan favorite.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  A Lady Never Lies

  “Exquisite characterizations, clever dialogue, and addictive prose . . . make this exceptional debut stand apart.”

  —Library Journal (starred review)

  “Buoyed by an abundance of deliciously tart wit, spiced with a generous amount of incendiary sexual chemistry . . . and graced with a cast of captivating characters, Gray’s impeccably crafted debut romance . . . is a complete triumph.”

  —Booklist (starred review)

  “A smart, witty tale that introduces readers to a marvelously unconventional, eccentric cast of characters and an enchanting Italian setting.”

  —RT Book Reviews (Top Pick)

  “Charming, original characters, a large dose of humor, and a plot that’s fantastic fun . . . Prepare to be captivated by Finn and Alexandra!”

  —Jennifer Ashley, USA Today bestselling author

  “Fresh, clever, and supremely witty. A true delight.”

  —Suzanne Enoch, New York Times bestselling author

  “Shakespeare meets Enchanted April in this dazzling debut . . . The best new book of the year!”

  —Lauren Willig, national bestselling author

  “Extraordinary! In turns charming, passionate, and thrilling—and sometimes all three at once . . . Juliana Gray is on my autobuy list.”

  —Elizabeth Hoyt, New York Times bestselling author

  “A delightful confection of prose and desire that leaps off the page. This romance will stay with you long after you have turned the final page.”

  —Julia London, New York Times bestselling author

  “Juliana Gray has a stupendously lyrical voice . . . The story feels tremendously sophisticated, but also fresh, deliciously witty, and devastatingly romantic.”

  —Meredith Duran, New York Times bestselling author

  Berkley Sensation titles by Juliana Gray

  A LADY NEVER LIES

  A GENTLEMAN NEVER TELLS

  A DUKE NEVER YIELDS

  THE PRINCESS IN HIDING ROMANCES

  HOW TO TAME YOUR DUKE

  HOW TO MASTER YOUR MARQUIS

  HOW TO SCHOOL YOUR SCOUNDREL

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  USA • Canada • UK • Ireland • Australia • New Zealand • India • South Africa • China

  penguin.com

  A Penguin Random House Company

  HOW TO SCHOOL YOUR SCOUNDREL

  A Berkley Sensation Book / published by arrangement with the author

  Copyright © 2014 by Juliana Gray.

  Excerpt from The Duke of Olympia Meets His Match by Juliana Gray copyright © 2014 by Juliana Gray.

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Berkley Sensation Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group.

  BERKLEY SENSATION® is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

  The “B” design is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-61302-3

  PUBLISH
ING HISTORY

  Berkley Sensation mass-market edition / June 2014

  Cover art by Alan Ayers.

  Cover design by George Long.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  To readers of romance, who make the world a lovelier place to live.

  CONTENTS

  PRAISE FOR JULIANA GRAY

  BERKLEY SENSATION TITLES BY JULIANA GRAY

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  BABYLOGUE

  SPECIAL PREVIEW OF THE DUKE OF OLYMPIA MEETS HIS MATCH

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  There are mornings when I wake up and can’t quite believe how lucky I am to write stories for a living, and I cannot imagine undertaking this adventure without the support of my agent, Alexandra Machinist, and the energetic professionals at Janklow & Nesbit. You make my life better with every book.

  My most profound thanks are also due to the wonderful team at Berkley: my marvelous editor, Kate Seaver, Katherine Pelz, Courtney Landi, and all the talented people in marketing, production, art, and sales who bring good stories to great readers.

  As usual, I owe a great debt to the creators of stories before me. Readers of my earlier books will recognize the Earl of Somerton and his personal secretary, Mr. Markham, from A Gentleman Never Tells, which was inspired in part by the love triangle in Giuseppi Verdi’s opera Don Carlo. I had King Philip very much in mind in the creation of the troubled Earl of Somerton, and the late-night scene in the library, where Somerton plays his cello, echoes a deeply moving scene in the king’s study in Madrid, when he confronts the truth that his wife never loved him. Somerton may have been my most difficult character to write, but as I worked my way through that scene, his character was illuminated for me. I hope it does the same for readers.

  Finally, I am forever grateful to the readers and writers of the romance community, who are so filled with love and laughter and encouragement. For every morning filled with happy wonder, I occasionally wake up to mornings of sheer terror, when I wonder how on earth I’m going to finish the book. Your messages, tweets, emails, and hugs pull me out of every death spiral, and remind me, every so often, that I’m doing something important.

  PROLOGUE

  Holstein Cathedral

  Holstein-Schweinwald-Huhnhof, Germany

  October 1889

  The undertaker, hastily summoned, had mixed up the shoes on her husband’s feet, and Luisa longed to switch them back.

  Poor Peter, to go into his eternal rest with the right shoe on the left foot and the left one on the right. But it was fitting, in a way. That was Peter exactly. Tall and spindly, large-eared and bespectacled, he kept his nose in his books and never—at least until they were married, and Luisa hired him a proper valet—wore two socks of the same color. His necktie drooped perpetually in his soup, his right cuff dipped perpetually in his ink, and on their wedding night in June he had actually . . .

  Well, never mind that. He had figured it all out eventually, after consulting a book of anatomy. Regardless, he was her husband, he was the posthumous Prince Consort of Holstein-Schweinwald-Huhnhof, and he deserved a little more dignity than a corpse that looked as if its legs had been hacked off and reattached on the wrong ends.

  Luisa turned and made a quiet signal to the priest.

  “Yes, Your Highness?” he whispered respectfully.

  “See to it that the Prince Consort’s shoes are switched to the correct feet before the public viewing begins.”

  The priest looked in horror to the pair of caskets lying in state on the altar of Holstein Cathedral. “Yes, Your Highness,” he gasped.

  With Peter taken care of, Luisa turned her attention to the other casket, the one containing the mortal remains of her father, the legendary Prince Rudolf of Holstein-Schweinwald-Huhnhof: legendarily handsome, legendarily vigorous, legendarily unable to produce a legitimate male heir despite his own tenacious efforts and those of his three wives, each one younger than the last. Side by side, he dwarfed his son-in-law as Goliath dwarfed David: his shoulders twice as broad, his neck twice as thick, his thighs twice as massive. Even his nose thrust into the air with decidedly more assertiveness. His burial robes were trimmed in ermine, and his shoes were manifestly on the correct feet.

  Wake up. Luisa’s stern mind willed the words toward the two caskets. Wake up, the both of you. You can’t possibly be dead. Two days ago, you were prancing on your horses in the courtyard, you were sipping your last from the stirrup cups, you were galloping across the new-fallen leaves into the Schweinwald. You were stalking stags, you were breathing the good clean air, you were alive.

  Alive.

  But the men didn’t move. Not a flutter from an ermine-trimmed chest, not a flicker of a sleeping eyelash. The two grave faces remained as still as wax.

  From somewhere to Luisa’s right, one of her two sisters suppressed a tiny sob. Stefanie, probably, youngest and by far the most impetuous. Emilie would be kneeling in quiet dignity, thinking her mysterious inner thoughts.

  Another sob rose up, rather less suppressed, from a female throat in the ranks behind her.

  Two more sobs, both at once. One of them belonging unmistakably to the Baroness von Spitzberg, of whose five children only two were commonly known to be sired by her husband, the Baron.

  Like a dam strained to bursting, the tears broke out among the ladies of the household and the court. A tide of weeping rose to its flood, echoing endlessly along the soaring nave of Holstein Cathedral, as Prince Rudolf’s lovers, mistresses, and convenient instruments of carnal relief lamented his loss to heaven above.

  Luisa crossed herself and rose. She was the ruler of Holstein-Schweinwald-Huhnhof now, and someone had to take charge of this undignified display of emotion.

  She nodded to the priest and walked up to the caskets.

  A low chord issued from the massive pipe organ at the rear of the cathedral, a gift of the Duke of Olympia, the brother of Prince Rudolf’s English first wife—Luisa’s mother—on the occasion of her marriage. Luisa came to a stop in front of her father’s proud nose. How was it possible that this pile of sculpted flesh, which so perfectly resembled Prince Rudolf, no longer contained his soul?

  “Auf Wiedersehen,” she whispered softly, which was an odd choice, because they all spoke English to one another within the family. Prince Rudolf had been sent to school in England, her mother was English, they had often spent much of the summer visiting English relatives.

  But the final farewell came out in German.

  Auf Wiedersehen. Until we meet again.

  Her sisters were behind her, waiting to pay respect. Luisa moved to the next casket.

  Peter. Her old friend, her new husband. Over the winter, following the death in childbed of his third wife, Prince Rudolf had called Luisa into his library and told her that he had given up hope of a ma
le heir, that he would have her created Crown Princess in a state ceremony, and that she would be married at the same time to reassure the people of a strong leadership, a secure succession, and a damned good party.

  After all, what loyal subject doesn’t love a royal wedding?

  Her father had chosen Peter for her, and she hadn’t objected. She’d known him all her life, the son of the Prince of neighboring Baden-Wursthof, more agreeable than most gentlemen and rather handsome, really, when he could be persuaded to endure the attentions of a valet. Why object? She was a princess, after all. She had always known that her body belonged to the state, to the people of Holstein-Schweinwald-Huhnhof, and not to herself. That was the price one paid for privilege. It was her duty. She might as well complain that she had to rise and dress in the morning, or that, in order to live, she had to trouble herself to breathe.

  Now she gazed on Peter’s still face, on his spindly body dressed in its rich burial clothes, and a cold anger rose up in her chest. Peter had only been doing his duty, too. He had married her in a tedious three-hour ceremony, he had moved to Holstein Castle, he had plunged without complaint into all the responsibilities of the consort to a ruler-in-waiting.

  And for this, he had been ambushed in a forest, shot like a dog, and left to die.

  Next to her, Stefanie was sobbing quietly into a white lace-edged handkerchief. Emilie’s shoulders heaved.

  But Luisa felt no desire to cry. She had no wish to waste her time on useless mourning.

  “Auf Wiedersehen,” she said softly to Peter, and then she turned and walked down the center aisle of the cathedral, looking neither right nor left, while her sisters and the church officials hastily assembled themselves to walk behind her.

  The air was chilly, crisp with the promise of autumn. In the distance, the white-tipped peaks of the Alpine foothills rose like an echo above the jagged rooftops. Thousands of people thronged in the cathedral square, their red-rimmed eyes gazing at her in eerie silence. Were they quiet out of grieving respect for their fallen Prince, or because they disapproved of their new ruler? Was it sympathy that lay so heavy on the cobblestones of the Kirkenplatz, or an outraged discontent?