Earl Lessons by Valerie Bowman
Chapter Two
Mouth agape, Annabelle stared at the door the man had just disappeared through. Who in the world was he? In all her twenty-three years she’d never had a gentleman be so rude to her. Was he even a gentleman? The fact that he’d been invited to Lady Harrison’s party made her guess that he must be, but she’d never seen him before, and she’d met all the gentlemen of the ton. Every one of their boring, predictable souls. She might have guessed he was foreign, but he’d spoken in perfect English without the trace of an accent. She didn’t know many foreigners who spoke English so well. However, the funny cheroot she’d shared with him was wholly unfamiliar. Nothing like the ones she’d secretly smoked after pilfering them from the humidor in her brother’s study. Perhaps the man was foreign, after all.
To make the entire situation worse, the man was handsome, blast him. He looked to be about thirty years of age, tall, with dark-brown hair and dark-blue eyes, a combination she’d always found intriguing. He had wide, square shoulders, a narrow waist, and a jawline you could strike a flint against. Half of his face had been covered in darkness when she’d first seen him, but when he’d stepped into the candlelight, the breath had nearly been knocked from her lungs. And not because he’d been smoking in front of her, of all impertinent things.
Normally, when men followed her outside and tried to compromise her, they did an awful job at pretending they didn’t know she was there. This man had gone a step further and begun smoking in front of her. That was new. She’d admired his ingenuity. She’d taken a couple of puffs just to shock him. Sometimes behaving outlandishly worked to scare them off, causing them to decide immediately she wasn’t wife material after all. Some of the prigs were downright horrified by her actions. Predictable. Boring. At times, funny. This man, however, appeared entirely nonplussed by her behavior. He seemed more affronted by the fact that she’d accused him of pretending to not know she was outside already. That was new, too. She did give him credit for being more original than the others. Plus, his rudeness at the end, saying he wouldn’t pay a call on her if she were the last lady left in London… While slightly dramatic, it had been unexpected, to be certain. She narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest, drumming her fingers against the opposite elbows. Hmm. Perhaps she was mistaken. Perhaps this particular man hadn’t known she was outside. Perhaps he truly didn’t know who she was. Difficult to believe, but admittedly possible.
Annabelle sighed and opened the door to enter the house. Mama would have a conniption if she knew half of the things Annabelle had done to discourage suitors. But Mama didn’t know. None of the men would tell her. They didn’t dare risk drawing the ire of the dowager Marchioness of Bellingham, nor the ire of her brother, Beau, the Marquess, for that matter. Besides, no matter how outlandish her behavior, Annabelle was trapped as one of the most eligible ladies on the marriage mart. And it wasn’t just because she had an indecently large dowry and was from an impeccable family. No. The real reason she was a such a prize to the men of London’s Beau Monde was because she’d had the grave misfortune to have been born beautiful. Uncommonly beautiful. According to nearly anyone she’d come in contact with for the last five years, she had a striking figure and an incomparable face. Blasted inconvenient, if you asked her. But apparently true.
Her beauty seemed to turn nearly every eligible male in the country into a raving lunatic when they were in her presence. She’d long ago stopped being flattered by the attention and now she was simply tired of it. She’d already turned down over a score of marriage proposals. Well, to be precise, Beau had turned them down on her behalf. But she hadn’t been interested in any of them. Not a one. To her suitors, she was merely a prize to be won, and none of the men cared about her wit or her cleverness, not to mention her needs, wants, and dreams. Half the male population of the ton had attempted to court her and not one of them had ever asked her about her thoughts. She was sick of it. And even though Beau and her mother were despairing of her ever marrying, Annabelle refused to wed some puffed-up shirt who only wanted her on his arm because of her looks and her dowry. More importantly, she refused to belong to any man.
Thankfully, Beau hadn’t pressed the matter and on the eve of her sixth Season, Annabelle had no more intention of picking a husband this time than she ever had. Though she didn’t tell Beau as much. What her beloved older brother didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. Besides, Beau had recently announced his own betrothal to lovely, red-haired Marianne. The wedding was soon, but it would surely keep everyone occupied for the first few weeks of the Season, at least.
Annabelle stepped into the house and shook off the chill from having been outside so long. She took a mint from a small tin in her reticule to hide the smell of smoke on her breath. Mustn’t worry Mama.
Using a looking glass set above a table near the door, Annabelle poked at her coiffure. She turned her head from side to side. There was no help for it. She looked precisely as she always did. Perfectly put together on the outside, perfectly miserable inside. Though no looking glass could capture that. She would pray for looks to fade sooner than later, but she’d long ago given up the useless act of praying. It accomplished nothing.
Oh, what did it matter? Tonight’s party was just like any of the other dozens of parties she’d been to over the years. With one exception. Tonight, she would go back to the dinner table and do her best to ignore that quite rude, albeit quite handsome, man. Whoever he was.