Cocky Earl - Annabelle Anders Page 0,47

that, but did you enjoy it?” He lifted one of the glasses she’d poured.

Charley lifted the other. “I might have if I had been spared an audience.”

“Let’s toast.” He stopped her before she could lift it to her mouth. “To our marriage.”

“Acquaintance,” she countered.

“Betrothal,” he persisted.

“Friendship.” She wanted to laugh.

“Courtship.”

If she wasn’t careful, this man could wear her down. “Fake courtship.”

He shook his head but clinked his glass lightly against hers. “To all of those.”

Wanting to correct him but unwilling to delay tasting the drink in her hand, Charley lifted the glass and tilted it against her lips.

It was dry, woodsy, and very smoky. She swallowed and it burned more than she’d expected.

“What do you think?” He studied her over the rim of his glass, making her wonder if the warmth in her chest and belly was only from the scotch.

Unnerved, she sipped from her glass a second time before answering. “It reminds me of my grandfather. He wasn’t a very pleasant man, but he had character. In spades. I think he only washed once every few weeks and his hands were rough and calloused. He was strong, purpose driven, and he always smelled of tobacco.” She tipped the last few drops into her mouth. “He frightened me a little.”

“But you loved him.”

“I did.”

Julian leaned back in his chair and narrowed his eyes at her thoughtfully. “I do believe this is going to be more interesting than I first imagined.”

“What do you think of it?”

He lifted a pitcher of water and poured enough into each of their glasses to rinse them out and then poured the water into a bucket on the floor beside him. “I cannot improve on your description.”

“You don’t have to open another one,” Charley protested half-heartedly just before he broke the seal on a second bottle.

“I know of a few gentlemen who will be more than happy to assist me in finishing these bottles later on.”

“Lord Chaswick? I cannot keep all of them straight. You all seem to have known one another for some time.”

“We went to school together. Living away from home at such an impressionable age, the six of us found it easier to survive together—eventually eight of us, if you include Peter Spencer and Major Lord Lucas. At one point, we considered ourselves something of a gang.”

“Did you give your gang a name?”

“We did not.”

“The Cocksure Gents,” she suggested without thinking.

He cocked one eyebrow and gave her a half smile.

“I would think that as lords, none of you would have had anything to worry about. I’d imagine the tutors would watch out for you.”

“It was part of our education. Navigating bullies. A rite of passage.” Julian slid her now half-filled glass across the table. “This one is 1780. Glenturret.”

Her mouth watered. “It’s from one of their early batches.” She had done her research. She lifted the second one to taste. Just as she’d expected, based upon the lighter amber color, it wasn’t nearly as flavorful as the first had been. “You were sent away for school then? Were the school masters cruel?”

“They weren’t necessarily cruel, just rigid. The older boys, however, those who’d already formed alliances… delighted in torturing the younger ones. We entered at the age of fourteen and not all of us had physically grown out of childhood.”

“I bet you weren’t one of the smallest, though,” she guessed, picturing him as a smiling gangling youth. It was impossible to imagine him without his cocksure smile and slouch.

“Lord Chaswick, dear God, had the bad luck of being born pretty. He quickly learned that running fast was his most effective protection.”

“I’ve heard you call him Chase. Is that how he got that name?” Charley took another sip, watching his features in the flickering light and feeling an unusual intimacy wrap around the two of them.

He nodded. “It didn’t take long for us to realize we needed one another. Chase, the Spencers, Greystone—even Blackheart. Manningham-Tissinton, Mantis, was more stubborn than the rest of us. He hadn’t grown into the hulking fellow he is now. He took more beatings that first term than all of the rest of us put together.”

As they tasted from the next few bottles, he regaled her with other interesting anecdotes from his school days. Strings of silk seemed to wind around the two of them, making her feel like they were the only people in the world.

And the only thing that mattered was scotch and the dancing candlelight.

And him.

When she reached for the next drink, he caught her hand. “Shall