Make-Believe Wife

      Anne Herries

Prologue

      ‘Damn you, sir. I have had enough of your wild behaviour,’ the Earl of Hartingdon thundered at his grandson. ‘I shall not tolerate the disgrace you have brought upon us.’

      ‘Forgive me,’ Luke, Viscount Clarendon, said and looked contrite. ‘This should never have come to your ears. Rollinson was a fool and a knave to come prattling to you, sir.’

      Tall and almost painfully thin, yet with a commanding presence, the earl’s bushy white eyebrows met in a frown of disapproval.

      ‘Do you deny that you seduced the man’s wife?’

      Luke hesitated. The truth of the matter was that he had no idea whether or not he had seduced Adrina Rollinson. The evening in question was hazy to say the least. He had been three sheets to the wind and, when he’d woken to find himself lying next to the naked and undoubtedly voluptuous beauty, he had hardly been given time to wonder before her husband came storming into the summerhouse to demand satisfaction.

      ‘I can only tell you that I have no memory of it happening, sir.’

      ‘What sort of an answer is that, pray?’ the earl demanded. ‘You puzzle me, Luke. You have had every advantage and yet you insist on carrying your wildness to excess. If you cannot recall making love to a woman like Lady Rollinson, you must have been drunk.’

      ‘Indeed, that I shall own,’ Luke said instantly. ‘I would not call the lady a liar, but I doubt I was capable of making love that night.’

      ‘I suppose your taste is for whores?’

      ‘I do not know what you may have been told of me, sir, but I assure you I have done nothing of which I am ashamed.’

      ‘Indeed? I