Cocky Baron
Regency Cocky Gents (Book 2)
Annabelle Anders
Contents
Chapter 1
Her Ideal Gentleman
Chapter 2
A Vice
Chapter 3
Saving Him
Chapter 4
Uh Oh!
Chapter 5
Big Mistake
Chapter 6
It Was a Mistake, Mother!
Chapter 7
The Day After
Chapter 8
What Comes Next?
Chapter 9
Breathe
Chapter 10
Matters to Discuss
Chapter 11
Byrde House
Chapter 12
A Romantic Dinner
Chapter 13
Chaste as a Lamb
Chapter 14
Starting Over
Chapter 15
Meet My Mother
Chapter 16
A Real One?
Chapter 17
Seven
Chapter 18
A Show of Support
Chapter 19
A Reformed Rake?
Chapter 20
Who Will Lead?
Chapter 21
Not How Mother Described It
Chapter 22
Your What?
Chapter 23
Responsibilities
Chapter 24
Errands
Chapter 25
Settling In
Chapter 26
The Power of Giving
Chapter 27
Damn Blackheart!
Chapter 28
Sisters
Chapter 29
Wagering With Her Husband
Chapter 30
Ups and Downs
Chapter 31
What Business?
Chapter 32
Stop the Bleeding
Chapter 33
Oh Brother!
Epilogue
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“You had the power all along my dear.”
—Glinda the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz,
by L. Frank Baum
Chapter 1
Her Ideal Gentleman
Bethany folded the lace shawl and then laid it perfectly parallel to the jeweled reticule her mother had asked her to watch. The upholstered chair was rounded, so the final effect was not as precise as she would have liked. She tapped one foot and, unable to help herself, smoothed the edge of the shawl.
Perhaps if she appeared as though she had some sort of purpose sitting here, people wouldn’t consider her a spinster quite yet.
Even so, there wasn’t anything more pathetic than being abandoned by one’s dowager mother to sit alone in the chaperone seating area at the first ball of the Season.
She wasn’t even considered a wallflower anymore. That particular row of chairs was reserved for girls actively shopping on the marriage mart.
Almost as though they were taunting her, the chairs had been lined up unevenly. She had to fight the urge to move the third one closer to the fourth so that the space between them matched. But then she would need to edge the fifth chair closer to the sixth, which would be difficult as Miss Delia Somerset was seated there, hands folded in her lap, ankles crossed neatly.
If some gentleman were to ask Delia to dance, then the chair would be unoccupied, and Bethany could correct the unbalanced arrangement.
The trouble was, Bethany’s own dance card lacked a single signature. If she couldn’t attract anyone to dance with her, how could she possibly convince someone to dance with Delia?
Not that Delia was an antidote. She was simply…
Rather a lot like Bethany.
Both had brown hair, plain features, ordinary faces really, and figures that were slightly more rounded than was considered fashionable.
The most notable difference between the two of them was their eyes. Whereas Delia had large brown eyes, Bethany’s were a grayish blue. And Delia wore spectacles.
At two and twenty, Bethany had inexplicably been relegated to the shelf, which oughtn’t to be the case. Her dear friend Felicity’s dance card had filled up within the first ten minutes of their arrival, and she was two years older than Bethany.
No, the problem wasn’t Bethany’s age.
Whatever quality it was that attracted countless gentlemen to Felicity’s side, or Bethany’s younger sister Tabetha’s, who wasn’t even officially out yet, was notably absent in both Bethany and Delia.
Perhaps if Bethany were simply to ask Delia to move out of the chair for a moment…
Delia glanced up, not with bored eyes, as Bethany would have expected, nor with forced cheerfulness. She appeared anxious. And her hands weren’t merely folded in her lap—she was wringing them fretfully.
Bethany waved her fan, indicating for Delia to join her.
“Me?” Delia mouthed.
“Yes, you,” Bethany mouthed back. When Delia was within hearing distance, Bethany added, “Why should both of us sit alone when we can keep one another company? Sit here.”
She scooped up the reticule and shawl to make room for the other girl but couldn’t keep her gaze from sliding back to the wall of chairs. She couldn’t very well abandon Delia to go straighten the row, now could she?
The prospect became a moot point when a giggling cluster of young women claimed chairs three, four, five, and six. The two unmarried Mossant girls and two other girls she didn’t recognize. And then, horror of horrors, they moved the chairs to form not quite a circle.
Bethany would have been somewhat appeased if the circle had been closed. Or if it had been symmetrical.
She inhaled a calming breath and turned her gaze back to Delia, whose wringing of hands seemed slightly more frantic now. What on earth had put the young woman into such a dither?
“Were you hoping to dance with a particular gentleman?”
Delia snapped her head up. “Oh, no. Not really. Are you? Waiting on a particular gentleman, that is?” For the moment, her hands stilled.
The brightest blue eyes imaginable popped into Bethany’s mind, eyes she’d dreamed about since the first day she’d peered into them. She supposed that if pining for that one particular person who would always be unattainable was considered waiting, why then, yes. Yes, she was.
“Absolutely not.”
Delia shrugged. “Neither am I.” She then turned to face the dance floor, effectively ending their dazzling conversation.
A tingling tiptoed up Bethany’s spine, and she glanced around.
Ah, yes. There he was.
Triston Aaron Corbet, the Baron of Chaswick.
Chase. The person attached to said brilliant blue eyes.
His toffee-colored hair stood out from the rest. Since she had pined for him for just over seven years, all of her senses had become finely tuned to his presence.
From the first night her brother had brought Chase home, Bethany had wanted to know everything a person could know about him.
When one obsessed over a certain gentleman for as long as Bethany had, no detail was ever conside
red inconsequential. Born on the thirteenth of April, year of our Lord, 1799, he was due to turn thirty this spring. As heir and only child to the late Lord Chaswick, his birth and lineage was prominently recorded in Debrett’s. Which made no difference to Bethany. Had he been born a pauper, she would have regarded him with just as much adoration.
This evening, he wore a maroon satin waistcoat beneath a perfectly fit black jacket. His face was freshly shaven, and his thick hair that sometimes looked brown and other times almost a caramel color had been cut recently. He’d kept it tied in a queue at the back of his neck when she’d last had the opportunity to bask in his proximity at her mother’s house party earlier that year.
Either way, he was beautiful.
Half sitting, half leaning on an ornamental pedestal, he turned and studied the room with hooded eyes. Bethany sat up straight but his gaze didn’t so much as waver when it drifted over her.
The joy she’d initially felt upon seeing him flagged. Should she be concerned?
The angle of his head and the slight curl of his lip gave away his less-than-sober state. Not that the casual onlooker would notice. As his ardent admirer, she noticed more about him than others would. But in the past year, a subtle change had come over him. He was wound too tight.
He threw back his head and laughed at some comment made by Mr. Stone Spencer. Likely, she was worrying over nothing.
Her brother, the Earl of Westerley, and his companions from school were all inclined to consume a good deal of spirits when together.
At least Westerley was married now—to Miss Charlotte Jackson, the daughter of an American whiskey distiller. Except Charley was a Fitzwilliam now. She was Lady Westerley.
Bethany wished she could be more like her new sister-in-law—daring, brave, and more than a little irreverent.
Chase’s gaze swooped back to her. Catching her eye, he elbowed Stone Spencer and winked.
Oh, dear. She was not mistaken. Both of them were jug-bitten, and they were coming her way. She was grateful her brother was absent this spring, providing her with one less vulnerable bachelor to worry about. Didn’t they realize what some of these ladies would do to land a wealthy and titled gentleman? Even worse, what some of their mothers would do? Even Stone Spencer, the only Mister amongst them but the second son of an earl, wasn’t safe from the traps.
Idiots.
“They’re coming this way!” Delia announced unnecessarily. “I’ll positively swoon if one of them asks me to dance. They’re your brother’s friends, aren’t they? How do you stand it? All those handsome men coming around? And most of them titled?”
A valid question, certainly. Because even though Chase possessed a considerably rakish reputation, Bethany could do nothing to calm her racing heart as the man of her dreams approached, Mr. Spencer behind him.
“My dearest Lady Bethany and Miss Delia!” The adorable reprobate swooped into an exaggerated bow, periwinkle eyes twinkling.
Mr. Spencer echoed him and bowed as well, exhibiting only half the feigned enthusiasm.
Bethany went to rise but forgot she was holding the shawl and reticule and sent the contents of the latter tumbling onto the parquet floor, bouncing and rolling about in all directions.
“Don’t move, My Lady, I am at your service.” Chaswick dropped to his knees to gather her mother’s belongings. Mortified at her clumsiness, Bethany sat stiffly and watched as he gathered perfume, a pencil, a tin of comfits, a handful of hairpins, and a miniature of her deceased father, then stuffed them into the small velvet pouch.
“Have I missed anything?” He brushed around the hem of her dress in his search for other feminine paraphernalia.
“No. No,” she replied breathlessly as he presented her mother’s belongings to her. She hadn’t even realized he’d gathered the shawl up as well. Why would she? She’d been so intent upon staring at the top of his magnificent head, noticing that some of the strands were almond-colored, several a deep chestnut brown, and a few a dark mahogany. Would the shiny strands feel as soft as they looked?
“Stone here—” Chase rose and continued as though she hadn’t just made a spectacle of herself. “Mr. Spencer, that is, has promised your brother he would keep an eye on Lady Tabetha but cannot locate the minx. I told him that we could always count on Good Old Bethany to help a gent out. Your sister is in attendance tonight, is she not?”
Good Old Bethany.
Bethany gathered her composure enough to address the gentleman at Chase’s side. “As she won’t be having her come-out for another ten days, she is not. You may rest at ease knowing she is safely ensconced in my brother’s home.”
“For now.” Mr. Spencer twisted his mouth into an inscrutable expression.
Bethany couldn’t decide if he looked more relieved or disappointed. Although almost as handsome as Chase, with wavy ebony hair and piercing indigo eyes, Stone was the second son of an earl, untitled, and therefore not lofty enough for her sister’s aspirations.
Even as she reassured Mr. Spencer of her younger sister’s whereabouts, Bethany considered the information that her brother had asked one of his friends to watch out for Tabetha. Had he ever done the same for her? Likely, he hadn’t deemed such diligence necessary.
“The Season won’t be the same without Westerly in town this year.” Chase grimaced.
“Blackheart will be scarce as well,” Stone added.
“But the duke’s twin sisters are to make their come-out in a few days,” Bethany reminded them. “It’s not as though he could launch Ladies Lucinda and Lydia into society on their own. He must at least make an appearance.”
Chase caught Stone’s stare and bit back a smile. “Not to worry. It’s not as though Blackheart isn’t…around.”
“Well, then why on earth—?” Bethany wrinkled her nose. “I don’t want to know, do I?” The duke’s lack of availability this Season must have something to do with one of their ill-advised wagers.
“He must be present for their come-out,” Delia finally put in. “They’ll be devastated if he isn’t there to show his support.”
“As my mother is sponsoring them, they’ll be fine,” Mr. Spencer provided confidently. It was a valid point as the Countess of Ravensdale was one of the most widely admired ladies in all the ton.
Bethany shifted a glance toward the dance floor. This would be the perfect time for one of the two gentlemen to ask either Delia or herself to partner them. If she was Felicity, or even her younger sister, she’d know what to do to encourage just that.
There must be something she could say, or do, so that Chase could see her as anyone other than Good Old Bethany, his best friend’s sister. Good heavens, more often than not, these gentlemen treated her the same as most men treated a beloved aunt.
“Er…” What would an accomplished flirt say in this circumstance? She searched her mind for everything she’d read about flirting. “The weather certainly has been lovely, hasn’t it?” She flipped open her fan and fluttered her lashes while staring over the top of it. In chapter four of The Fine Art of Flirtation, the author promised that this combination would ensure a lady could appear alluring and mysterious at the same time.
Chase looked confused, Stone amused, and Delia stared at her, horror-stricken.
“Hasn’t it?” Bethany persisted, more determined than ever. “Been lovely?”
“Hasn’t what been lovely?” Chase asked. “Do you have something in your eye?”
“The weather. Yes, yes, undeniably, My Lady. Lovely weather,” Stone answered for both of them before turning to address Chaswick. “Shall we locate the card room, then?”
“Indeed.” This time when Chase bowed, he lifted Delia’s hand to his lips before taking hold of Bethany’s. Nothing in the world could have prevented the shiver of awareness that shot through her when his lips touched the back of her glove. “Until we meet again, Ladies.”
And then both men turned and strolled away. Bethany’s gaze absolutely, positively did not linger on Lord Chaswick’s post
erior as he did so.
And then they were gone.
That was it. The highlight of her evening. Likely, the short encounter was something she’d dwell on for many nights to come.
Deep down, she’d known neither of them would ask her to dance, but she had hoped, and now she hated the inevitable disappointment that followed. She sighed and grimaced at Delia, who was once again twisting her hands in her lap, and then shifted her gaze back to the goings-on before them.
One dance after another, they watched couples take their turns with one another, bowing and smiling and laughing. The vivid, captivating people mingled and danced and flirted and, not for the first time, Bethany longed to be more than a spectator.
What would that feel like? To have gentlemen actually desire her company? To experience all these dances in public with partners who weren’t other wallflowers or her dancing master?
It was just as well, she conceded. Likely she wouldn’t know what to do as she almost always was prevailed upon to dance the male role. She was far more confident leading than being led.
As she’d suspected earlier, both she and Delia lacked that elusive something necessary to hold a gentleman’s attention. What was it?
Bethany glanced down at her hands, clasping her mother’s reticule, shawl, and the bright fan resting in the sprig green skirt of her gown.
Her gloves were lacey and pretty. She sat with her knees pressed together and her back straight. Although a little plump, her figure wasn’t all that different from other young women her age. Her hair was admittedly brown, and she would rather it be any color but that, but it was shiny, and she never failed to wear it in a tidy chignon at the back of her neck.
Cocky Baron: Regency Cocky Gents (Book 2) Page 1