Page 17 of The Earl’s Hoyden

They had been introduced before. On several occasions, in fact, as she’d always seemed to forget that they were acquainted. Now she let her confident gray gaze take him in before she lowered into a slight curtsey. “Good evening, Lord Brightstone.” That audacious stare met his once more. “I trust you are well.”

For a moment, he didn’t reply. She wasn’t mocking him. She wasn’t approaching him for sport. And she remembered who he was.

With a flirtatious twist of her shoulders, she batted her eyes at him.

She was…interested.

In him.

“We are both quite well, thank you,” his mother replied from beside him after his prolonged silence.

“Indeed,” he added daftly.

Lady Alison was not the only woman to approach him. Lady Diana soon followed, a dark-haired beauty with a brilliant smile. Then after her came Miss Smithwick, who gaped up at him.

Truly. A simple haircut and the addition of a few new pieces to his wardrobe—the attention those details garnered was astounding.

A proud smile graced his mother’s face as she discreetly nudged him with her hand at his arm, encouraging him deeper into the season’s first assembled gathering.

The inhibitions plaguing him upon entry into the ballroom were whisked away, replaced by a strange sense of pride in how others beheld him. He straightened his back a little taller, his shoulders squaring and his smile more ready.

Not that his updated appearance afforded him much in the way of conversation as he bumbled his way through each new woman he spoke with.

“You should be asking every one of these women to dance,” Lady Brightstone said under her breath.

He chuckled at the suggestion. “You know I don’t dance, Mother.”

“After what has been paid on your dance instructors…” She slid him a glare that indicated his reply did not amuse her. “I suggest you learn to enjoy dancing if you intend to acquire a wife.” With that, she sailed toward a group of women, freeing him from her oppressive presence.

A pretty brunette near the lemonade smiled at him, and though he returned the gesture, he did not approach. Not when he wasn’t sure what to say.

He needed more than simply his attire to be altered. He had to be different in speech and manner as well.

A bright laugh rose suddenly above the orchestra and conversation. He looked toward the sound and his heart caught.

Miss Bexley was in attendance.

Her red hair was styled into an upswept coiffure adorned with pearls and ice-blue ribbons that matched the very shade of her dress, making her eyes stand out like gemstones. A flush of delight warmed her fair cheeks, and the smile on her face was so beatific that his own dampened mood suddenly lightened.

He took a step toward her, drawn in by her vivacity as surely as plants were to the brilliance of the sun, but stopped himself in time. There was no reason to go to her. And if he did, what would he say?

She was surrounded by several other ladies, likely friends of hers.

He would have to interrupt them to speak to her. And with no purpose.

Unless, of course, he sought her counsel on how best to converse with women, the same as he’d previously sought help with his attire. Once she was finished visiting with her friends, of course.

Miss Bexley and the other ladies leaned close and grinned at one another, conspirators in the same shared secret.

Never had he been close acquaintances with others as Miss Bexley and her friends appeared to be.

At least not as an adult. There had been Lord Ranford, whom Lucien had known at school when they were boys, but that had been an age ago. It still afforded Lucien invitations such as the one tonight, but he’d let the bond between them fall away. The earl stood on the other side of the room, engaged in a chat with the Earl of Darington, a man with a wretched reputation.

Lucien wasn’t adept at idle chatter per se, but at least it was easier to do so with other men. While he waited for Miss Bexley to complete her conversation in the hope he might catch her alone, he resolved to reconnect with Lord Ranford.

He strode to the other two men and nodded in greeting.

“Sporting a new suit and approaching old friends,” Lord Ranford said as he joined them. “Who is this man masquerading as Old Brightstone?”