Cocky Earl - Annabelle Anders Page 0,3

family, then, who are English?”

“On my mother’s side.” Oppressive ones.

Charley kept herself from grimacing as she answered Lady Bethany’s seemingly innocent inquiry. Her grandmother had essentially demanded her father bring her to England to stay with them and then ended up disappointed in Charley immediately after meeting her. Obviously, they’d expected her to be more like her mother had been—blonde, petite. Refined.

Charley was very much her father’s daughter and very much American.

Ahmherican. The half hiss, half admonishing sound her grandmother made when she spoke the word sounded in her head.

The fact that Charley was American was only slightly less problematic than the color of her hair. Oh, but her first two weeks in England had been wearisome, to say the least. When her father had returned from London and informed her they’d attend a house party, she’d nearly fainted in relief. Because following the party, her father promised they’d journey to Scotland to tour some distilleries. In Charley’s mind, such an excursion was sure to make the long ocean journey from America worthwhile.

Grandmother had argued at first, insisting that Charley, having already—and most unfortunately—achieved the advanced age of four and twenty, lacked the poise necessary to mingle with society. She’d hardly begun to learn even the most basic rules required to participate in a Season.

But then Charley’s father had offered the name of their destination.

“Westerley Crossings, you say?” A cunning look had entered her grandmother’s eyes. “Perhaps I am being hasty.”

Charley nodded vaguely as Lady Bethany regaled her with all the places in London that she must visit when the house party ended and Lady Tabetha offered—seemingly irrelevant—details about who surely must be every eligible bachelor in all of London.

Charley shifted her gaze to the paintings around the room and then out the windows. This estate was horrendously vast. And ridiculously opulent. Even more so than Thornton Park.

“Must you, Tabetha?” Bethany scowled in her sister’s direction. “Forgive my sister’s… eagerness to discuss every eligible gentleman she’s ever met.”

The blonde girl rolled her eyes.

“Was the crossing from America dreadful?” Lady Bethany changed the subject. “I can’t imagine being confined to a ship for days and days.”

“Journey by sea is many things but never boring. In the daytime, it feels as though the ship is the only place in the world. Alarming, almost. But I loved standing at the helm, I could almost believe I was flying. And after the sun sets, stars light up the sky, making a person realize how utterly insignificant she really is.” No, she had not found it boring.

And to pass all the time in-between, Charley had buried her nose in the books she’d brought with no one to interrupt her but her father—who was just as likely to be reading himself.

“Where in America do you live?” Lady Tabetha’s question was at last something that Charley could warm to. “I hear it is dangerous and wild.”

“When one ventures from a city, it can be.” Charley was almost tempted to make up some story that would have their hair standing on end. Once a bear had broken into their kitchen in the middle of the night and that had been harrowing. She could embellish on that, she supposed…

But she would not. Because although she took issue with various practices embraced by some of her countrymen, America was not, in fact, uncivilized. Philadelphia boasted theaters and mercantile shops and churches…

She supposed one might meet with dangerous and wild threats when venturing outside of the cities.

Which posed an altogether different variety of dangers.

“Our home and our main distillery sit just outside of Philadelphia.” Using her hands to draw in the air, Charley took it upon herself to explain where the states lined up along the coast as precisely as she could without a pen and paper. She pointed out where the capital was located as well as Williamsburg and Boston and New York and other significant places.

When Lady Tabetha’s eyes glazed over, Charley fumbled a moment, absently shooed a moth away, and then dropped her hands.

And when she did so, an almost harmonic moan arose from the group of gentlemen seated behind the pianoforte.

Lady Tabetha glanced over her shoulder and giggled. “Aside from my overbearing brother, aren’t they positively divine?”

“Our brother is not overbearing,” the older girl chastised her younger sister. “And his friends are far too old for you.”

“They’re mostly thirty, and it’s well known that ladies mature earlier than gentlemen, making such a match ideal. You’d know some of this if you bothered to give the least amount