Dive right into book 2, How to Romance a Rogue.

Lady Charlotte loves Lord Noble, who seems to love... every other woman in London. But when he decides to court a wife, she decides to court him. Will her brother's Guide help her romance the rogue she's loved for so long? Or will she have to turn to books of another sort entirely?

Read on for a sneak-peek!

February 1809

Quinton Chance, Viscount Noble was crying, and he didn't know how to stop. It had started with a single tear leaking from the corner of his eye, rolling down his cheek. He'd swiped at it, thought it an anomaly. It hadn't been. He'd been leaking all day long, during the funeral, during the interment. He'd remained behind in the chapel, too embarrassed to follow the others as they'd filed outside into the drizzling rain.

What the hell was wrong with him? Men died every day. Just because this one happened to be his father, and just because he happened to quite like his father, didn't mean he had to wail about it. He took a shaky breath and rubbed the heel of his gloved hand over his raw eyes. His chest constricted, and it took more effort than it should have to pull a breath into his lungs, to push it out again. Was he dying? Rather felt like it.

"Quinton?" The soft voice, so hesitant and so familiar, seemed to brush him on the shoulder, a gentle touch, a query.

He turned around. She stood in the chapel doorway, sunlight flooding around her, making a halo of her golden curls. Lady Charlotte Merriweather, his neighbor and friend—if a viscount could have a girl for a friend—since… forever, stepped toward him, her gait as hesitant as her voice had been, her hands clutched behind her back.

"Can I help?" she asked.

Not are you well. An important distinction, that. Are you well is what everyone had asked him since his father's death. Of course he wasn't bloody well. His father was dead, and he'd become the viscount responsible for everything and everyone around him, at barely twenty years of age. Some men had children already. Quinton knew that. Quinton knew there were men who had held their titles since childhood. But Quinton had never thought to be one of them. His father had been hale and hearty and very much alive, and Quinton should have had time. Time to simply be himself before he had to exist for others.

But Lottie knew he wasn't well as she crept ever closer. Of course he was horrible. He much preferred the question she'd asked. More astute than the customary.

He shook his head. "No, you cannot help me." What good could a sixteen-year-old girl do? Too innocent, too ignorant of the hardships of men's lives.

"It's absolute rubbish," she said, stopping next to him. "Losing your parent. I can't even imagine… I love Mama and Papa so dearly…" She snorted. "Rubbish."

He rubbed another tear away.

She glanced up at him, a quick dart of her blue eyes. "You look horrid. Should I bring everyone back for a second funeral?"

"And a third. You appear to be on death's door, Merriweather. Black does not suit you."

She sighed, deep and heavy. "I suppose I'll take pity on you."

He raised a brow, curiosity punching bright holes in his grief. "You? Pity me?"

"Oh yes. Because you see…" She unclasped her arms from behind her back and shoved a tiny, sleeping puppy into his face. "I've brought you this. To make you feel better for just a little while. My papa's dog had pups, and he said I could give you one. But you've been so impolite, my sympathy has entirely dissipated." Another deep, dramatic sigh. "I suppose I'll relent. From pity. Here." She shoved the puppy at his chest, and its limp, brown body composed almost entirely of large, floppy ears and loose, silken fur burrowed into his cravat. It yipped.

And Lottie smiled. "Feel better?"

He didn't want to, but he did—he grinned and dusty sunlight poured through those holes that curiosity had left in his sadness. "A little."

"And you said I couldn't help." Such satisfaction in her tone, such pride.

Holding a soft pup and with such a confident creature next to him, he should have found a path forward. The tears should have dried up.

They poured, and he dropped to his knees with gut-wrenching sobs.

"Oh." Lottie dropped to her knees, too, her hands fluttering around his shaking shoulders. "Oh, Quinton. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I only meant to tease you a little bit. Not to hurt you, but to distract you. I'm so sorry." Grief choked her voice now.

And that made the tears pour more quickly. He curled in on himself, pressing his forehead to the floor and trapping the puppy in the cavity of his chest with rigid arms. Everything changed. Every damn thing in his life was different and no father to show him the way.

A soft hand settled on his back, on the ridge of his spine. A mere touch. Nothing more. No soft shushing like a mother to a babe, and no false reassurances that everything would be fine. She just sat next to him, a corner of her skirts spilling into his cavern of grief, and let him cry.

Coughing finally roused him. But not hers. Male and from across the room. It echoed around them. Quinton rose and sat back on his heels, wiping his nose with one sleeve and his eyes with the other.

His father's best friend, Mr. Barnaby Percival, stood in the chapel doorway with a stern and craggy face. Gray lightly streaked his dark hair, and the lines on his face spoke more of displeasure than of laughter enjoyed well and often. His gray eyes were sunless skies, capable of striking lightning.

"My lord," he said, "I have need of you."

Lottie popped to her feet, eyes blazing. "What could you possibly need right now? Can't you see he needs a moment alone?"

Seemed impossible, but Barnaby's face grew craggier. "I'm sure your mother is wondering where you are, Lady Charlotte."

Lottie's hands found her hips, and she threw her chin up. She would not be sent away. Always ready for battle, little Lottie. Exhaustion hugged him tight. Nothing left in him for fighting.

"It's fine," he said. "Go find your mother. Thank you."

She studied his face for several seconds, and then with a hard jaw, she nodded and flounced out of the chapel. Quinton laughed without quite realizing it, but when he heard the sound—so astounding—it made him want to laugh again. Lottie… always entertaining. He'd needed her distraction as much as he had needed her understanding.

He pushed to his feet, clutching the pup to his chest. It seemed to have fallen asleep, and its light, limp weight somehow tethered him to the earth. "What is it, Barnaby?"

"A man from London is here to meet with the viscount."

"It can wait. We just put my father in the ground."

"It can't." Barnaby marched forward. "You're the viscount now. You don't have the luxury of grief. The world does not stop because you're wounded." The word said with a sneer. "People do not stop depending on you because you're crying," he said with a hard laugh.

Quinton's hands fisted, and he strode toward the door. Better that than putting his fist in Barnaby's face. How humiliating—to be caught crying by a man so hard a blade against his skin would spark instead of slice. If Quinton hit him, he'd likely break all the bones in his hand.

Barnaby followed, his bootsteps heavy on the stone floor. "Don't think you can ignore this lesson, boy. Don't be weak like your father."

Quinton swung around, and his fist found the man's cravat, tangled, tugged, choked. "Don't say a word about my father."

"He almost ruined everything for his first wife. Did you know that? She fell ill, and he spent almost every penny on doctors, trips, all useless. Thank God, he married a sensible woman the second time around. Your mother didn't want love, and your father didn't want to give it anymore. And do you know what happened?"

Quinton released Barnaby, gave him his back, and stepped into the rain.

Barnaby followed. "He suddenly had a son and heir. And he made good investments to refill the coffers, and he had time to give to his tenants."

"Why are you rambling about this, Barnaby? I know all about my father's first wife. The story grows tedious."

"Because you were bawling like a babe in that girl's lap. I've seen it before. She's dangerous. She'll ruin you."

Quinton rolled his eyes. "I wasn't in her lap. And Lottie's a child, a friend."

"Don't let her close or she'll become more." Barnaby flicked his wrist to the gray sky and tugged the hem of his glove down. An insignificant gesture. To most. To Quinton, it brought the past into screaming life. His father used to do the exact same thing. Then Barnaby folded his arms behind his back and walked forward with a slight lean. His torso would arrive at his destination before his feet. Same as Quinton's father.

Drowning in his own damn tears, Quinton grasped the only bit of wood floating toward him. His father could offer him no guidance, but Barnaby, perhaps, could. He grasped hold, steadied himself with Barnaby's certainty.

"You can't be weak, boy. Ever. A lesson your father learned in the most difficult of ways. Do you think he wants you to make the same mistakes?"

Quinton paused, everything in him freezing in time around that one question.

"Your father's gone, Lord Noble." Barnaby's eyes were hard as buttons. "But I'm here if you need me. Your father asked me to lead you if you require it, to stop you from making the same mistakes he made. You can't be weak. And nothing makes a man weaker than love, than a woman he can cry with."

Had his father truly desired that? He'd not been there in his final days. But Barnaby had. His father had always done what was best for Quinton, and he'd put his future in Barnaby's hands.

"Go ahead and put your heart to sleep," Barnaby said. "You won't be needing it."

Quinton took a final glimpse over his shoulder at the chapel, then left his heart sleeping in the cold sepulcher beside his father.

* * *

June 1813

Lottie ran from the chapel and into the brightest sunshine she'd ever seen in all her one and twenty years. Tears streamed down her face, and the wind stole curls from her coiffure until her hair trailed long and wild behind her in the breeze.

She stumbled into the forest, bouncing from tree to tree, losing a slipper somewhere along the way…

She'd lost so much more than a slipper. She'd lost both parents. Crushed in a carriage accident. Gone. Forever. Too heavy. Much too heavy. Her legs wobbled under the weight, collapsed. She sank as far into the warm earth as it would let her and sobbed, careless of mud or grass or bugs or anything but for the crushing pain squeezing her chest, her ribs like claws around her heart. She'd gained a reputation during her first London Season for always being perfectly attired, perfectly behaved. The perfect duke's daughter. They would not recognize her now. She was no longer a duke's daughter now. Her brother was duke, and she was… she was…

"Merriweather?"

She bolted upright and squeezed her eyes tightly closed. She'd imagined the voice. She had to because Quinton had not spoken a word to her for four years.

The grass crunched behind her, as if beneath the weight of a man's footstep. She must be imagining that as well. Then a warmth beside her.

"Lottie?" Quinton's voice said again, softer this time. And that she could not imagine because she had no experience from which to conjure softness from him.

She opened her eyes and turned her head. He sat next to her, his face pale, and his whisky-colored eyes full of the same sorrow she'd seen in them the day they'd buried his father. His sandy-brown hair had been falling over his face then, but he wore it perfectly styled now, waving back from his forehead as if he'd not run through a forest like she just had. Because he hadn't. He'd followed, presumably, at a more sedate pace, and he clutched her missing slipper between both hands.

"What are you doing here?" She spoke without emotion, studying only the blank future stretching out before her.

"I saw you run off. I was worried." He leaned over her leg and lifted her foot gently, brushed dirt and grass from her stocking, and slipped the shoe on. The touch, so careful, so meticulous, made her want to cry.

Then he sat back down, bent a knee, and rested a forearm against it, and she tried not to notice how the movement pulled the wool of his jacket taut over strong muscle. Unfortunately, she noticed such things about him, even in her grief. She'd tried not to during her Season, had tried to notice such things about other men who noticed her.

Futile. Unfortunately.

"You think me incapable of handling my own grief?"

"I'm sure you can do that fine. I think you incapable of running without tripping over a root."

She gasped. "I would never trip. I'm quite fleet of foot, as you well know. I could beat you in a race, you—"

He grinned.

Her world stopped. Not just because he'd been teasing her. Not just because that grin of his with strong lips and white, even teeth, shone brighter than the happy sun above. But because he never grinned these days. Not that she'd seen. Not since his father's death.

She picked up a leaf near her foot. "Hmph. I'll not succumb to teasing."

"I'm not teasing. You've worn nothing but ball gowns and slippers the last several months, and your only exercise has been sedate strolls in Hyde Park. I doubt you could beat me. I doubt you can even walk without the assistance of a footman. Or a beau."

"When we were children, I—"

"We're not children anymore."

Why did that make her feel… hot? Must be the sun. She inched away from him and leaned against the large trunk of a mossy tree.

"How do you survive?" she asked him.

He sighed and joined her against the tree, their shoulders kissing. "Barely at first, but then a day at a time until it's a bit better." He'd not needed an explanation to know what she meant. The loss of a parent. Or both parents. "Find something else to eat the time up with." He nudged her shoulder with his, sending her almost to the ground. "You can do that, Merriweather."

Could she? She righted herself with a glare his way and leaned her head against the tree. She turned to face him, knowing she gave him her every weakness in the two tears rolling down her cheeks. "I don't know if I can."

His eyelashes, golden somehow despite his darker hair, fluttered, then something shifted in his eyes. He lifted a hand to her cheek and wiped the tear away. A speck of dirt, too, he held up between them before stripping his glove off and letting it fall to the ground. "There are many ways, many distractions."

More tears replaced the one he'd demolished. "Such as?"

"Hell, Lottie." He licked his lips. "Distractions such as this."

He kissed her, a soft meeting of lips, as bright and hot as the sun above, while his ungloved hand cupped her face. He breathed into the kiss, a sound, a rush of sensation that said something she didn't understand and promised something she wanted as much as she wanted her parents back.

When he pulled away, his hand remained, and a groove appeared between his brows.

"Why?" she asked, incapable of language outside of that one word.

He blinked, seemingly unsure. "You comforted me once, so…"

"Comfort me again?"

"I shouldn't."

"Please, Quin—"

His comfort came like fire, sudden and all-consuming as his unoccupied arm curved around her waist, pulling their bodies closer together, and his lips met hers again with greater pressure.

And more passion.

A door unlocked inside Lottie. A light blazed on. And a need that had been sleeping dreamlessly inside her woke up. Not a need for Quinton. She'd long known she harbored an unwise affection for her neighbor and childhood friend.

A new need growled awake within her—for touches, caresses, kisses.

She clutched his shoulders—strong and solid and comforting. Then she tangled her hands in his cravat, pulling him closer, groping her way to the back of his neck where his silky hair curled, and the sensation made her want more.

More. Her mother had told her about it before her Season, wanting her armed with the knowledge of womanhood. Knowledge. She had it. Practice… she wanted it.

She may have squeaked as she leaned into Quinton fully, needing his arms tighter around her, needing so much she couldn't name. He toppled to the ground, and she fell atop him, and he growled and bit her bottom lip, then scattered kisses along her jaw, and she sighed his name.

"Quinton."

He froze.

That couldn't be good. She froze too, looked down at him. "Quinton?"

He unwrapped his arms from around her waist and scurried backward on his forearms. Like she was a hound and he the hunted fox. Once free of her, he jumped to his feet, brushed off his trousers.

"Enough distraction, Merriweather." His throat bobbed as he swallowed. "Are you well now?"

Not even a little bit. "Perfectly fine. Thank you."

"Yes. Perfect. You can distract yourself now?" He waited for no answer, merely nodded, and disappeared around the side of the tree, the crunch of his boots growing fainter until they disappeared entirely.

Lottie sank back against the tree, her hand hovering above her mouth, afraid to touch it lest it banished the sensation of his lips against hers. Her first kiss. A distraction. It had worked, too. And not one likely to be repeated. He clearly thought it a mistake. A moment gone too far with the neighbor girl he'd known all his life. Most kisses were a prelude. This one a nail in the coffin of a brief but brilliant living thing. The kiss had simply added more weight to that she already bore. Another loss to carve her hollow.

What would she do without her parents?

And what would she do without the man who'd awakened her desire?