Page 60 of The Season of Lady Chastity

Chastity laughed along with him, remembering the grip on her arm and Comstock’s shocked expression and subsequent pinwheel to the floor when Bastian’s fist connected with the lord’s face.

“What now?” she asked.

Bastian made no pretense of not knowing what she spoke of. “Courtship, though soon, I will ask your father for your hand in marriage. The contracts will be drawn up, the banns read, and you will become the Countess of Mansfield.” There was no hesitancy left in his tone, and Chastity suspected she loved this confident, unabashed Bastian as much as she adored the pensive, quiet earl she’d met by the moat.

They were one and the same.

Just as she was the plain, unnoteworthy youngest daughter of a marquis but also the witty, charming Lady Chastity the earl had first encountered.

It had only taken the right man at the exact right time to reveal it.

Perhaps Chastity was much like her mother, but only when close to the one lord who mattered.

“You are going to do all of those things before a proper introduction has been made?” Her father had longed for Chastity and Prudence to take suitable gentlemen if only to make certain they were cared for and no longer his responsibility. However, meeting Bastian for the first time as he asked for Chastity’s hand? She wasn’t certain how her father would react to that.

“Torrington is on my side,” he said with a shrug. “It is time I live, not merely watch as life passes me by.”

“Well, you will have fierce advocacy from my brother,” she jested. “Anything my father is against, Triston will be for. It is the way of their relationship.”

“I know only one thing, Chastity. I am for you.” Bastian laid his fingers against her cheek, the warmth of his flesh suffusing her skin through his gloves.

“As I am for you.” She turned and placed a light kiss on the palm of his hand. “I love you, Bastian.”

“I love you, too.” His fingers trailed down her cheek to her neck, and a shiver ran through her. “Today, tomorrow, a year from now. Sitting by a moat or in a moat.”

They both laughed—laughed so hard and long, Chastity’s stomach ached.

A series of three thumps sounded, rattling the door on its hinges and echoing through the library.

“Bastian, are you ready to meet my father?” she asked.

Instead of an answer, he took hold of her hand, and they started for the library door, together.

She’d come to Oxburgh Hall determined to be someone more than she’d always been; more than a wallflower, more than a debutante on the fringes of a ballroom, more than the forgotten Downshire daughter. To live in a way her mother had embraced: bold, brazen, and unapologetic.

Yet, her search for the identity of her mother’s dearest Cam had only led Chastity to discover herself—who she wanted to be, and how she wanted to live her life.

She’d wanted to shine, to step into the spotlight, to grasp even a thin sliver of her mother’s passion for life.

It had taken the man at her side to show her that she hadn’t needed to be noticed by all of society, just one earl.

Bastian.

A new hope blossomed within Chastity as Bastian pulled the library door open, and all those Chastity loved spilled into the room to officially meet the lord she’d given her heart to.

Epilogue

London, England

February 1816

“You, what?” Chastity stared between her betrothed, her sister, and Lady Mansfield, unable to fathom what Prudence had just announced and why Bastian’s mother was bouncing in her seat and clapping her hands. Her mouth hung open in surprise as she attempted to understand what had come over her sister.

Prudence’s chin lifted a notch. “I am going to Dover, to Mother’s family estate.”

Bastian’s hand found Chastity’s under the long dining table and squeezed her fingers.

“But why?” Chastity demanded.