Cocky Earl: A Regency Cocky Gents Novel

by Annabelle Anders

  “Shall we begin with the oldest?” At her enthusiastic nod, he grasped the first bottle lined up, removed the cork, and poured a splash into each of the small glass tumblers.

  “Why would you do this for me?”

  Rather than answer, he simply sent her a meaningful glance.

  It was part of his pretend courtship, but it was also one of the most thoughtful things anyone had done for her.

  Although he’d explained the importance of upholding his honor, he’d already asked for her hand and she’d rejected him. He didn’t have to court her. He didn’t even have to be nice to her.

  “This one is from a private still.” He moved the bottle close to the candlelight. “1772.” Before she could stop him, he broke the seal and popped the cork.

  At her gasp, he flicked his gaze toward her. Recognition struck Charley when he licked his lips. He was looking forward to this as much as she was. Her presence here gave him an excuse to enjoy something that might otherwise be forgotten.

  “It’s too much.” But it was also perfect.

  This was as much an adventure for him as a treat for her.

  “This whisky has been sitting down here for almost fifty years. If not for a beautiful American girl who came thousands of miles to taste some good Scottish whisky, then who should it be opened for?” He lifted the bottle to his nostrils and inhaled and then handed it across to her. “I should have opened them last night. If I remember correctly, my grandfather once told me they’re better after having been opened for a few days.”

  Charley closed her eyes and inhaled. The spicy scent calmed her nearly as much as this earl unsettled her.

  “My grandfather was the Whiskey King before my father took over. His older vintages are hardly worth keeping though. Initially, he didn’t even bother aging them. My father brought out an old bottle that had been forgotten and gave me a taste.” She smiled. “It was clear as water. I nearly choked on it.”

  “The Scottish have been making some form of whisky since—”

  “The fifteenth century.” She tilted the bottle toward one of the short glasses. “May I?”

  “By all means. Did you enjoy painting earlier?”

  “I’ve no talent at all.”

  “I’m quite aware of 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 we make this more interesting?”

  The words reminded her of what her father often uttered while playing a hand of poker.

  “It’s already interesting. How can anything be more interesting than listening to tales of masculine tomfoolery while tasting scotch from the last century?” Charley stared at his hand covering hers. Her skin felt hot beneath his but cool where her palm grasped the tumbler. The pleasure she felt at his touch ought to have been more concerning than it was.

  “For every drink I pour, you tell me something about you that I don’t already know.”

  Charley lifted her gaze from his hand. “Are all earls like you? I thought they’d be...”

  “Stuffy?” He finished for her.

  “Proper.”

  He waggled his brows, eyes dancing and one corner of his mouth raised. “What is so improper about wanting to learn more about my future intended?”

  It would become very tiresome if she was to correct him every time he mentioned their courtship. “W
hat indeed?” But if they were going to play a game, she’d make certain it was a fair one. “For every drink that I take, you must answer a question that I ask and for every drink you take, I will answer one from you.” Charley licked her lips. His eyes already appeared shinier than normal. Did he not comprehend whom he’d just issued this challenge to?

  In response, he lifted his glass, sipped, swirled, and swallowed. “I’ll start with an easy one.” He tilted his head slightly. “What’s your middle name?”

  “You should not waste these, my lord.”

  “You should not waste these, Jules,” he corrected her.

  “Jules.” His name suited him. It was warm, friendly, and yet dignified. “I was christened Charlotte Arabella Jackson.” Charley sniffed her glass. “Pungent. This one will be spicier than the others.” She sipped it slowly before swallowing. It didn’t taste anything like what she and her father produced.

  But it tasted… rich. And old. And something about that made it quite spectacular.

  “Do you enjoy being an earl?” she asked.

  He furrowed his brows. “I’ve known I would be Westerley all my life. I don’t know if I enjoy it or if I do not. I simply am.”

  His answer was what she ought to have expected from him. It explained some of what she’d first considered to be arrogance on his part. Not that he didn’t still come across as arrogant, but his brand of it differed from other noblemen. His confidence came from who he was rather than who he wanted others to believe he was.

  He opened another bottle and, without rinsing the glass, poured a rather generous splash for each of them. “This one,” he tapped the side of the glass, “reminds me of my grandfather. Not because he was dirty and dry but because it was his favorite.” He tilted it back and swallowed half the contents.

  “What do you like most about America?”

  It was a question she would have thought she knew the answer to immediately. “Mostly, that it’s home but also that there is a sense of hope there—a belief that if a person works hard enough and is smart enough, he will find some opportunity.” She swallowed hard. “A white man can make a good life for himself.”

  He nodded slowly and then cocked one brow. He had not missed her use of the masculine pronoun, nor the mention of the color of his skin.

  Charley sipped her drink slowly. At home, despite her normal outspokenness, she’d learned there were some opinions best kept to oneself.

  “It bothers you then, that the ingredients your father will be using at his new facility will have been harvested by slaves.” This man had read far more into her statement than she’d intended. She didn’t want people to think ill of her father. She didn’t want British people thinking ill of their new president. But Jules was right. She hated it, and she hated that people she admired and loved couldn’t see the wrong of an entire system.

  She simply nodded. “My turn.” She ran her finger around the rim of her glass. “What was your father like?”

  “My father,” he swallowed hard, then said, “was the most honorable person I’ve ever known.”

  “Did you get along well with him, then?”

  “I did. But he’s dead because of me.”

  Chapter 14

  LOWERED INHIBITIONS

  His heart stuttered, then scampered rapidly. Julian hadn’t meant to tell her about feeling responsible for his father’s death. This guilt, the pain of it rang like a mantra he played over and over in his own head. Others who knew the details that proceeded his father’s death never brought it up to him.

  It was a wound that could never heal.

  Rather than open another bottle, he poured out more of his grandfather’s favorite for both of them. His limbs felt heavy and relaxed. He wanted to forget what he’d just said, and imagining what Miss Charley Arabella Jackson’s lips tasted like would be the perfect antidote.

  Just now, he was fairly certain, they would taste like scotch. But every woman had her own uniquely feminine flavor.

  He envisioned running his tongue along the seam of her lips and slipping it past her teeth.

  “How did he die?” Her voice wrapped around him like a coat that had been warmed by the hearth.

  Jules lost himself in her emerald eyes. Ironically, if he was to be honest with himself, he’d judged her to be beneath him before he’d even met her because she was American. It had been an arrogant assumption to make and was not well done of him at all.

  What would she think of him when she realized his character was nowhere nearly as strong as that old grandfather of hers?

  “He died because I was a lazy fool.” Julian washed the stench of his words down with another swallow of scotch.

  “Very well, but how did that bring about his death?”

  Her question had him glaring at her but not forgetting that he wanted to kiss her. It bothered him that she was not flirting or smiling seductively or doing anything to invite his advances and yet his body was responding in a rather inconvenient manner.

  How had he killed his father? If she wanted an answer, he’d give her an answer.

  “It happened three years ago. My father, the man whose shoes I’m expected to fill, insisted on acting as my second in a duel.” Jules remembered the events that had led up to all of it. “I failed to present myself and the married gentleman, who’d challenged me for dishonoring his wife, plunged a sword through a few of my father’s organs.”

  Those green eyes of hers had gone wide but he couldn’t make out her thoughts. Suddenly, his fingers itched to remove the pins holding her riotous mass of curls up so that he could take a handful—

  “That’s unfortunate.” She reached out, as though to touch his hand, but then drew it back. She sipped at her drink. “I believe it’s your turn now.”

  His mind required a moment to remember that they’d been asking questions of one another. Ah, yes, he was getting to know his intended.

  Jules shook his head and did his best to dismiss his self-hatred for the moment. “Do you hate all men, or just British gentlemen in particular?” He flicked his gaze to where her fingers thrummed the surface of the table and then back up to try to read her eyes again.

  “I don’t hate men. I don’t hate British gentlemen. I am not inclined to trust them. They have far too much power for their own good.” The thrumming stopped. “I trust you though.”

  “Why?”

  She placed her elbows on the table and rested her chin on her folded hands. “Is there a reason I shouldn’t? Aside from your inability to present yourself at early morning appointments. Did you sleep in, then? Or did you intentionally keep yourself absent?”

  His brows shot up. He wasn’t certain anyone else would be so straightforward with him. Planting his elbows onto the table, he leaned in so that less than a foot of space separated their faces.

  Jules had not slept in once since that morning. He’d never sleep in again. He’d drunk a fair amount the night before but not to the extent that he ought to have passed out. He’d not even intended on sleeping that night. Whenever he’d been a participant in a duel, he’d stayed awake the night before. Although he’d known he needed the rest, his body and mind had always refused to allow it.

  “I slept while Lord Casterley’s blade plunged into my father’s gut.”

  Her gaze searched his. “Did he live long after or did it kill him right away?”

  “Are you always this morbid?” he countered.

  She blinked innocently. “I’m not the one who’s tormenting myself for failing to wake up on time.”

  “When I awoke.” He did not need to tell her he’d awoken in a brothel. “I went to the appointed place. He’d already been taken away and when I arrived home, he wasn’t dead.” His voice broke unexpectedly. “But he never woke up.”

  “I don’t know what I would do without my father.” She frowned and then pursed her lips. “I’m sorry that happened to you. Of course, you didn’t do it intentionally, but you will live with the consequences for the rest of your life.�
� Her gaze dropped to his hands and, not for the first time, he wished he knew what was going through her mind.

  He appreciated that she wasn’t trying to convince him it wasn’t his fault. As his mother had done, as both his sisters had tried to do.

  Mantis, Stone, Peter, Greys, and Blackheart had all realized that he could never atone for such a dishonorable act, even if Blackheart suspected Jules had been drugged.

  Even if he had, it wouldn’t change anything. Jules shouldn’t have been drinking in a brothel the night before a duel. He shouldn’t have believed Lady Casterley when she’d told him her husband didn’t mind that she took lovers.

  There were no shades of grey, no extenuating circumstances. Gentlemen lived and died by their code of honor and damn Jules all to hell, he had broken it. Black darkened the edges of his vision, and he jerked himself upright.

  He’d never see his father again and this truth pierced his soul.

  “You’ll miss him. When he returns to America without you.” Initially silence met his words. Had she heard him?

  And then she dropped her palms down on the table and would have sprung to her feet if he hadn’t taken hold of her wrists.

  “He can’t leave me here. I don’t belong here.”

  Jules rubbed his thumbs along where her pulse fluttered wildly. “You will.” He leaned even closer to her, so close that the heat of her breath warmed his lips. “Because I’ve given your father my word, and I’ll be damned if I won’t honor it.”

  Her lashes fell and he knew she was watching his mouth now. She wanted him to kiss her. She’d like it too. She’d more than like it.

  “Look at me,” he demanded. As she lifted her gaze to meet his, the black of her pupils edged out dazzling emeralds. “Don’t lull yourself into believing I’m not serious.”

  Her breath hitched and then she licked her lips, sending heat rushing through his veins. If not for the table between them, he’d have her clasped against him. He’d show her exactly how serious he could be.

  His gaze caressed the curve of her cheek around to the slight tremor of her lips, and he itched to lunge across the table and discover for himself what American mischief tasted like.