Cocky Earl - Annabelle Anders Page 0,53

scotch but her conversation with Jules. He was her friend. Nothing else. This was only a pretend courtship.

Her dejected mood had nothing to do with the fact that he’d made himself absent for the evening. Was he angry with her for pressing him to talk about his father?

She was the one who ought to be angry. His persistent refusal to accept that she wouldn’t marry him was… wearing her down. She wanted to think of him in nothing more than friendly terms, but people didn’t imagine kissing someone who was nothing more than a friend.

She had not, anyhow.

Earlier that day, sitting across from him in the light of the candles, she’d been almost magnetically drawn to him. Gravity had been altered and turned all of its pull onto the Earl of Westerley.

Julian. Jules.

She’d found herself leaning across the table. She’d touched his hand on a few occasions with no actual purpose for doing so. When he’d escorted her back up the winding staircase, she’d been wondering what it would feel like to press her lips against his. His mouth had been shiny, from the scotch, and from the moment before, when his tongue had slipped between his lips and licked them.

She’d thought he would kiss her, but of course, he hadn’t. It was a fake courtship, after all.

But he hadn’t joined the party tonight. Lady Westerley stood near the doorway almost as though she too was watching for him and his gang to arrive. She was perfectly cordial to her guests, but Charley suspected the countess was none too pleased when Lord Brightly speculated loudly as to what had happened to all of the bachelors this evening.

There were other bachelors present, but it went without saying that the absent ones were those who were the most sought after. Bethany had introduced Charley to two other young ladies who’d arrived that day, Miss Rachel Somerset and her younger sister, Miss Delia. They were pretty girls with glossy brown hair curled into ringlets and large brown eyes. Their similarities ended there. Whereas the elder girl was tall and slim and inclined to look down her nose, the younger was short and delightfully plump and admitted to being practically blind without her spectacles.

“Charley made the most interesting flower arrangement.” Hearing Tabetha say her name forced her to smile pleasantly. “She used herbs instead of the usual green cuttings. It smelled positively divine.”

The elder Miss Somerset raised her brows with what seemed to be a pained smile. “How charming.”

Except she didn’t sound as though she thought the idea charming at all. Charley had thought that brown eyes could not really look cold, but Rachel Somerset’s managed to do so.

“It’s probably good that we missed that activity,” Miss Delia said, sounding far less haughty than her sister. “Certain flowers make my eyes and nose run. Mama says I have a poor constitution, but nothing brings it on like being around roses.”

“You shouldn’t speak of such matters, Delia.” Rachel Somerset scowled at her younger sister.

“My mother was the same way around horses,” Charley said without thinking. The memory was a distant one, but it was the only time that her mother hadn’t seemed perfectly put together.

Miss Delia sent a grateful smile in Charley’s direction as Bethany finished playing her piece at the pianoforte.

“Do you play, Miss Jackson?” Miss Somerset’s cool brown eyes challenged her.

“No.”

“And you don’t paint?” Miss Somerset asked with what could only have been considered a sneer. “Everyone was discussing your… attempt… when I first arrived.”

“Ooooh, Westerley has finally deigned to grace us with his presence,” Bethany said. “Mother looks fit to be tied.”

Tabetha looked almost gleeful, whereas her older sister seemed pained at the prospect of her family not getting along.

All thoughts of Rachel Somerset’s insults fled Charley at the mention of their host. He looked weary as he responded to his mother. But he still smiled. He would still be charming.

She dropped her gaze to her hands but then felt a quiver of awareness. When she peeked up at him from beneath her lashes, that gravitational pull was at work again. She wanted nothing more than to return his smile, especially if doing so would will him to join them, but she was acutely aware of the chaperone seated beside her.

And of his mother.

When she glanced up again, Lord Chaswick was bowing before her, his pale blue eyes looking slightly bloodshot.

“Visions of loveliness everywhere.” He bent over her hand, and Charley’s musings as to where Julian had been all evening were immediately