Chapter 1
Her Ideal Gentleman
Bethany folded the lace shawl and then laid it perfectly parallel to the jeweled reticule her mother had asked her to watch. The upholstered chair was rounded, so the final effect was not as precise as she would have liked. She tapped one foot and, unable to help herself, smoothed the edge of the shawl.
Perhaps if she appeared as though she had some sort of purpose sitting here, people wouldn’t consider her a spinster quite yet.
Even so, there wasn’t anything more pathetic than being abandoned by one’s dowager mother to sit alone in the chaperone seating area at the first ball of the Season.
She wasn’t even considered a wallflower anymore. That particular row of chairs was reserved for girls actively shopping on the marriage mart.
Almost as though they were taunting her, the chairs had been lined up unevenly. She had to fight the urge to move the third one closer to the fourth so that the space between them matched. But then she would need to edge the fifth chair closer to the sixth, which would be difficult as Miss Delia Somerset was seated there, hands folded in her lap, ankles crossed neatly.
If some gentleman were to ask Delia to dance, then the chair would be unoccupied, and Bethany could correct the unbalanced arrangement.
The trouble was, Bethany’s own dance card lacked a single signature. If she couldn’t attract anyone to dance with her, how could she possibly convince someone to dance with Delia?
Not that Delia was an antidote. She was simply…
Rather a lot like Bethany.
Both had brown hair, plain features, ordinary faces really, and figures that were slightly more rounded than was considered fashionable.
The most notable difference between the two of them was their eyes. Whereas Delia had large brown eyes, Bethany’s were a grayish blue. And Delia wore spectacles.
At two and twenty, Bethany had inexplicably been relegated to the shelf, which oughtn’t to be the case. Her dear friend Felicity’s dance card had filled up within the first ten minutes of their arrival, and she was two years older than Bethany.
No, the problem wasn’t Bethany’s age.
Whatever quality it was that attracted countless gentlemen to Felicity’s side, or Bethany’s younger sister Tabetha’s, who wasn’t even officially out yet, was notably absent in both Bethany and Delia.
Perhaps if Bethany were simply to ask Delia to move out of the chair for a moment…
Delia glanced up, not with bored eyes, as Bethany would have expected, nor with forced cheerfulness. She appeared anxious. And her hands weren’t merely folded in her lap—she was wringing them fretfully.
Bethany waved her fan, indicating for Delia to join her.
“Me?” Delia mouthed.
“Yes, you,” Bethany mouthed back. When Delia was within hearing distance, Bethany added, “Why should both of us sit alone when we can keep one another company? Sit here.”
She scooped up the reticule and shawl to make room for the other girl but couldn’t keep her gaze from sliding back to the wall of chairs. She couldn’t very well abandon Delia to go straighten the row, now could she?
The prospect became a moot point when a giggling cluster of young women claimed chairs three, four, five, and six. The two unmarried Mossant girls and two other girls she didn’t recognize. And then, horror of horrors, they moved the chairs to form not quite a circle.
Bethany would have been somewhat appeased if the circle had been closed. Or if it had been symmetrical.
She inhaled a calming breath and turned her gaze back to Delia, whose wringing of hands seemed slightly more frantic now. What on earth had put the young woman into such a dither?
“Were you hoping to dance with a particular gentleman?”
Delia snapped her head up. “Oh, no. Not really. Are you? Waiting on a particular gentleman, that is?” For the moment, her hands stilled.
The brightest blue eyes imaginable popped into Bethany’s mind, eyes she’d dreamed about since the first day she’d peered into them. She supposed that if pining for that one particular person who would always be unattainable was considered waiting, why then, yes. Yes, she was.
“Absolutely not.”
Delia shrugged. “Neither am I.” She then turned to face the dance floor, effectively ending their dazzling conversation.
A tingling tiptoed up Bethany’s spine, and she glanced around.
Ah, yes. There he was.
Triston Aaron Corbet, the Baron of Chaswick.
Chase. The person attached to said brilliant blue eyes.
His toffee-colored hair stood out from the rest. Since she had pined for him for just over seven years, all of her senses had become finely tuned to his presence.
From the first night her brother had brought Chase home, Bethany had wanted to know everything a person could know about him.
When one obsessed over a certain gentleman for as long as Bethany had, no detail was ever considered inconsequential. Born on the thirteenth of April, year of our Lord, 1799, he was due to turn thirty this spring. As heir and only child to the late Lord Chaswick, his birth and lineage was prominently recorded in Debrett’s. Which made no difference to Bethany. Had he been born a pauper, she would have regarded him with just as much adoration.
This evening, he wore a maroon satin waistcoat beneath a perfectly fit black jacket. His face was freshly shaven, and his thick hair that sometimes looked brown and other times almost a caramel color had been cut recently. He’d kept it tied in a queue at the back of his neck when she’d last had the opportunity to bask in his proximity at her mother’s house party earlier that year.
Either way, he was beautiful.
Half sitting, half leaning on an ornamental pedestal, he turned and studied the room with hooded eyes. Bethany sat up straight but his gaze didn’t so much as waver when it drifted over her.
The joy she’d initially felt upon seeing him flagged. Should she be concerned?
The angle of his head and the slight curl of his lip gave away his less-than-sober state. Not that the casual onlooker would notice. As his ardent admirer, she noticed more about him than others would. But in the past year, a subtle change had come over him. He was wound too tight.
He threw back his head and laughed at some comment made by Mr. Stone Spencer. Likely, she was worrying over nothing.
Her brother, the Earl of Westerley, and his companions from school were all inclined to consume a good deal of spirits when together.
At least Westerley was married now—to Miss Charlotte Jackson, the daughter of an American whiskey distiller. Except Charley was a Fitzwilliam now. She was Lady Westerley.
Bethany wished she could be more like her new sister-in-law—daring, brave, and more than a little irreverent.
Chase’s gaze swooped back to her. Catching her eye, he elbowed Stone Spencer and winked.
Oh, dear. She was not mistaken. Both of them were jug-bitten, and they were coming her way. She was grateful her brother was absent this spring, providing her with one less vulnerable bachelor to worry about. Didn’t they realize what some of these ladies would do to land a wealthy and titled gentleman? Even worse, what some of their mothers would do? Even Stone Spencer, the only Mister amongst them but the second son of an earl, wasn’t safe from the traps.
Idiots.
“They’re coming this way!” Delia announced unnecessarily. “I’ll positively swoon if one of them asks me to dance. They’re your brother’s friends, aren’t they? How do you stand it? All those handsome men coming around? And most of them titled?”