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The Game and the Governess (Volume 1) (Winner Takes All) - Softcover

Buch 1 von 3: Winner Takes All

Noble, Kate

 
9781476749389: The Game and the Governess (Volume 1) (Winner Takes All)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1476749388 ISBN 13: 9781476749389
Verlag: Pocket Books, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

Trading Places meets Pride and Prejudice in this sexy, saucy romance—first in a new series from the author of YouTube sensation The Lizzie Bennet Diaries.

Three friends. One Wager. Winner takes all.

The Earl—‘Lucky Ned’ Ashby. Pompous, preening, certain that he is beloved by everyone.
The Miller—John Turner. Proud, forced to work as the Earl’s secretary, their relationship growing ever more strained.
The Doctor—Rhys Gray. Practical, peace-loving, but caught in the middle of two warring friends.

Their wager is simple: By trading places with John Turner and convincing someone to fall in love with him, Ned plans to prove it’s him the world adores, not his money. Turner plans to prove him wrong.

But no one planned on Phoebe Baker, the unassuming governess who would fall into their trap, and turn everything on its head…

Three best friends make a life-changing bet in the first book in a witty, sexy new Regency trilogy from acclaimed author Kate Noble, writer of the wildly popular Emmy award–winning web series The Lizzie Bennet Diaries.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Kate Noble is the national bestselling, RITA-nominated author of historical romances, including the acclaimed Blue Raven series and the Winner Takes All series. Her books have earned her numerous accolades, including comparisons to Jane Austen, which just makes her giddy. In her other life as Kate Rorick, she is an Emmy-award winning writer of television and web series, having written for NBC, FOX, and TNT, as well as the international hit YouTube series The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. Kate lives in Los Angeles with her husband and son, and is hard at work on her next book. You can find Kate online at KateNoble.com.

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The Game and the Governess
1

It begins with a wager. . . .

LONDON, 1822

It has been said that one should not hire one’s friends.

No doubt, those who have said this have a deep ­wisdom about life, a spark of intelligence that recognizes inherent truths—or perhaps, simply the experience that proves the veracity of such a statement.

The Earl of Ashby had none of these qualities.

“Determined I was. And luckily, I came of age at the very right moment: I join the army, much to my great-uncle’s dismay—but two days later, Napoleon abdicates and is sent to Elba!”

What the Earl of Ashby did have was luck. In abundance. He was lucky at cards. He was lucky with the fairer sex. He was even lucky in his title.

“Of course, at the time, I did not think of it as lucky, ­although my great-uncle certainly did, I being the only heir to Ashby he could find in the British Empire. At the time I would have believed that the old man had marched to the Continent and locked Boney up himself to thwart me.”

It was nothing but luck that had the old Earl of Ashby’s son and grandson dying in a tragic accident ­involving an overly friendly badger, making the ­nearest living male relative young Edward Granville—or Ned, as he had ­always been called—the heir to one of the ­oldest earldoms in the country. It was just such luck that had the old earl swoop in and take little Ned away from the piddling town of Hollyhock and his mother’s genteel poverty at the age of twelve, and raise him in the ­tradition of the aristocracy.

“But then that French smudge manages to weasel his way off the island, and this time, true luck! I actually get to go to war! But the real luck was getting placed in the same regiment as Dr. Gray here. And— Oh, Turner, stop standing back in the shadows, this story is about you too!”

It was luck, and only luck, that found Ned Granville in the right place at the right time to save his friend and ­commanding officer, Captain John Turner, as well as seventeen others of their regiment on the last battlefield.

“So there we are in the hazy mist of battle on a field in Belgium, of all places—and thank God too, because I was beginning to think war was going to entirely be marching in straight lines and taking Turner’s and Gray’s money at cards—and suddenly, our flank falls behind a rise and takes a hail of fire from a bunch of Frenchies on top of it.

“So we’re pinned down, waiting for the runner with extra ammunition to arrive, when Turner spots the poor runner shot dead on the field a hundred feet away. And Turner, he jumps up before the rest of us can cover him, and runs out into the field. He grabs the ammunition and is halfway back before a bullet rips through the meat of his leg. There he is, lying on the field, and holding our ammunition. But all I see is my friend bleeding out—so of course, I’m the idiot who runs into the fray after him.”

His actions that day would earn him commendations from the Crown for his bravery. They would also earn Ned Granville his nickname.

“It was just luck that none of their bullets hit me. And once I got Turner back behind the line, and the ammunition to our flank so we could hold our position, we beat the enemy back from whence they came. The next morning, Rhys—Dr. Gray here—had patched Turner up enough to have him walking, and he came over, clapped me on the shoulder, and named me Lucky Ned. Been stuck with it—and him!—ever since.”

It was from that point on that “Lucky Ned”—and everyone else around him—had to simply accept that luck ruled his life.

And since such luck ruled his life, it could be said that Lucky Ned was, indeed, happy-go-lucky. Why bother with worries, when you had luck? Why heed those warnings about hiring your friends? Bah—so bothersome! It would be far more convenient to have a friend in a position of trust than to worry all the time that the servants would cheat you.

Yes, it might breed resentment.

Yes, that resentment might fester.

But not toward Ned. No, he was too good, too lucky for that.

Thus, Ned Granville, the Earl of Ashby, hired his best friend, John Turner, formerly a Captain of His ­Majesty’s Army, to the exalted post of his secretary.

And he was about to regret it.

They were at a club whose name is not mentioned within earshot of wives and daughters, in their private card room. Well, the earl’s private room. And the earl was engaging in that favorite of his activities: telling the tale of his heroism at Waterloo to a room full of jovial cronies.

But as the night wore on, said cronies moved off to their own vices, and soon only three men remained at the card table: Mr. John Turner, silent and stiff-backed; Dr. Rhys Gray, contemplative and considerate; and the Earl of Ashby, “Lucky Ned,” living up to his name.

“Vingt-et-un!” Lucky Ned cried, a gleeful smile breaking over his features, turning over an ace.

The two other men at the table groaned as they tossed their useless cards across the baize. But then again, the men should be used to such results by now. After all, they had been losing to Ned at cards for years.

“That’s it,” Rhys said, pushing himself back from the table. “I will not play anymore. It’s foolish to go against someone with that much luck.”

“It’s not as if I can help it.” Ned shrugged. “I was simply dealt a better hand.”

“It would be one thing if you shared your luck,” Rhys replied, good-naturedly. “But you have always been the sole man left at the table, even when we were playing for scraps of dried beef in camp.”

“I take exception to that,” Ned replied indignantly. “I do so share my luck. If I recall correctly, Turner here ­pocketed a number of those beef scraps.”

“And little else since,” John Turner said enigmatically.

Annoyed, the Earl of Ashby gritted his teeth slightly. But perhaps that was simply in response to his latest hand of cards, which the good doctor was dealing out.

“Besides”—Ned instead turned to Rhys—“you were so busy tending to the wounded that you likely saw little of those games. Even tonight you refuse to play for barely more than dried beef.”

“As a man of science, I see little point in games of chance. I have long observed their progress and the only consistent conclusion I come to is that I lose money,” Rhys replied with good humor.

“Little point?” Ned cried on a laugh. “The point is that it’s exciting. You go through life with your observations and your little laboratory in Greenwich and never play for deep stakes. What’s the point of that?” He looked over to the stern-mouthed Turner across from him. “What say you, Turner?”

John Turner looked up from his hand. He seemed to consider the statement for a moment, then . . .

“Yes. Sometimes life is made better by a high-stakes gamble. But you have to choose your moment.”

“There, Turner agrees with me. A rarity these days, I assure you,” Ned replied, settling back into his hand. “Honestly, you are such a...

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Verlag
Pocket Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2014
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1476749388
ISBN 13 
9781476749389
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
432
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Verantwortliche Person
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