A Baron’s Lucky Star (Preview)

Chapter One

“If you keep moving, I will never finish your portrait,” Lady Rosalind Hawthorne half-heartedly scolded her cousin.

“It’s only this drape is terribly scratchy,” Lady Matilda moaned as she scratched the midnight velvet with its golden embroidered trim.

“It’s not a drape; it’s a cloak demonstrating your power and divinity befitting the great goddess Asteria. Try and stay still and regal; I’m almost done with your face,” Rosalind admonished as she returned to her painting. 

“Well, I believe the Greeks made their cloaks of linen, and it certainly wouldn’t have itched so terribly or been quite so stifling.”

Lady Matilda began to fan herself. 

Rosalind set down her brush with a sigh as she waited for her cousin to settle herself back into position. However, in the fanning process, Lady Matilda upended the stick-crown Rosalind had placed on her head to hold the place of the star-studded one she was currently working to capture on canvas.

“Oh, just a moment. I’ll fix it,” Lady Matilda cooed as she repositioned her hairpiece.

Rosalind let her eyes wander away from her subject for the first time in several hours. Her focus floated to the open window—drape-less—and currently spilling in the optimal amount of afternoon light for her work.

In an hour’s time, the unusually clear sky would see the sun dipping below the elegant townhouses, thus removing her ideal source of light. She gave out another sigh in frustration. She would undoubtedly have to call her cousin back tomorrow to finish her work. 

Candlelight was simply not suitable for her work. However, as she took her mental estimation of remaining light to paint by, she also reveled in what darkness would bring. A chance to see the stars again.

Rosalind was well aware that she spent most of her days simply waiting for night to appear. Lady Hawthorne, Rosalind’s mother, was just as eager for evenings since they returned to London for the season. However, her motives were as different from her daughter’s as the night was from the day.

“What on earth have you done with my drapery?” Lady Hawthorne’s sultry voice cut through her daughter’s musing.

Rosalind whipped around in her seat to find her mother standing at the entry of the drawing room, hands on narrow hips, nostrils flaring as was usually the case when she entered a room with her daughter in it.

“It’s not a drape, it’s her … oh, never mind,” Rosalind grumbled as she stood from her painter’s stool. “I suspect we will have to be done for the day,” she added in her cousin’s direction.

“Oh, thank goodness, I think I permanently damaged your crown,” Lady Matilda responded apologetically as she held three pieces of the woven sticks.

“No matter, I’ll make another one tomorrow,” Rosalind assured.

“You most certainly will not. You are not little girls anymore,” Lady Hawthorne continued angrily as she strode into the room and took a seat. “No more dressing up, no more foraging for flora. You want to play with plants, arrange some flowers,” she finished with an exasperated huff.

“I’m improving on my talents,” Rosalind motioned to the canvas and used the phrase her mother had parroted over the years. “I’m afraid stick crowns and drapery are necessary to help me create my art.”

From Rosalind’s earliest memories of interactions with her mother, there had always been a single motivation behind them—marriage. No knowledge, talent, skill, or pastime was worth pursuing unless it would lead to the attraction of the opposite species. 

She often wondered why it was the male species in nature that had the beautiful, eye-catching physical attributes when, at least for the ton, it was she who was required to strut and preen in hopes of attracting a mate.

According to Lady Hawthorne, this alone was her sole purpose and only reason for existence. There could be no other value outside of marriage and family for one such as her, and to waste one’s time on other worthy pursuits of knowledge was a slothful and selfish act.

Lady Hawthorne held up her magnifying glass attached to her bodice with a gold chain and inspected her daughter’s work from her seat. In recent years her health had significantly deteriorated, and with it, her sight. But despite the greying of her once-matching golden locks and the lack of vision, Lady Hawthorne was still sharp as ever when it came to her intentions for her only daughter.

“It is clear you have the skills of a talented artist, but you will never be a portrait painter;  why not stick to china and tables as all other fine ladies do,” Lady Hawthorne critiqued.

Lady Matilda and Rosalind exchanged a look. A compliment never came from the lady without the addition of a backhanded correction.

“I like people and landscapes.”

Lady Hawthorne gave a humph as her eyes scanned the half-finished portrait. Aside from shoulders and hair, Lady Matilda’s image was completed, but the background was still nothing more than charcoal sketches.

“And what is all this frivolity she is wearing? Certainly, you could have done without my best velvet drapes,” Lady Hawthorne pressed on. “And the background. It may still be traced, but I hope your sky will not be so splotchy.”

“They are constellations, Mother,” Rosalind explained with a measured breath. “I am painting her as the goddess Asteria.”

“Yes, a fascination of yours of recent,” Lady Hawthorne grumbled as she let go of her eyepiece and sat back on the sofa.

Rosalind bit her tongue to keep from speaking. Although her interest in Greek mythology was fairly new, it was based on her true passion, astronomy. It was why she had gravitated to Asteria—goddess of the stars.

“You know, tonight is our first ball of the season; I hope you will keep this new interest to yourself. We can’t have another year like last. No gentleman wants to be educated by a miss.”

“Yes, Mother, you have explained that to me very emphatically.”

Rosalind twisted her hands in her lap. Truth be told, she hated how much she disappointed her mother. As matrimony was the only wish for her daughter, one would have thought it would have been easy to please the viscountess. However, everything Rosalind did during her debut season last year seemed contrary to that end.

“Yes, well, let’s hope you will be more motivated to heed my advice this year. At least Matilda will be here to aid in the matter, unlike the troublesome Harriet.”

Lady Hawthorne nearly spat out the name of Rosalind’s dearest and best friend. 

“If you remember correctly, Harriet is happily married and settled,” Rosalind countered in the calmest tone she could muster. “How can you accuse her of being contrary to the cause of matrimony with such credentials? One season just as myself and happily settled.”

“Eloped,” Lady Hawthorne corrected. “Eloped with a doctor. Doctor! Barely a gentleman if you ask me.”

“Perhaps hastily done, yes, but still very much in love and happy if her letters from Scotland are any indication. Is that not what is the most important when it comes to a match?”

Lady Hawthorne’s blue eyes widened to the size of saucers, and she clutched her chest with a sharp intake of breath. 

“Certainly not! It’s as if you haven’t listened to a word I have spoken all these years. Women do not marry for love; they marry for security. What sort of security can a doctor provide, especially one so far away from her family and connections?”

“Perhaps you can have both, Aunt Beatrice?” Lady Matilda chimed in.

Rosalind gave her companion a sideways glance and a weak smile of thanks. Though this verbal onslaught was a regular occurrence for the miss, it was rare that she had a companion able to come to her aid. 

In most situations, when the lady scolded and reprimanded her daughter, it was only Lord Hawthorne present. Though Rosalind loved her father dearly and was sure he was a fierce man in business, he shrunk behind his wife’s opinions regarding female matters.

“My parents have great affection for each other,” Lady Matilda pressed on. “Surely it is possible to find not just an agreeable, respectable gentleman but one that makes your heart flutter?”

“Well, your parents’ affection is so great that your poor mother has sent you here to me to chaperone while she still looks after your five younger sisters,” Lady Hawthorne grumbled. 

“Or one could not marry at all,” Rosalind said before she could stop herself.

Her hands itched to clap over her mouth as soon as the words were spoken. But once they were out and her mother’s ice-cold eyes fell on her, there was no going back.

“I’m just saying, Mother,” she added less the lady forgot that it was frowned upon to murder one’s own daughter, “after growing up and seeing Uncle Henry and Aunt Liza, and then watching Harriet falling in love, I’m not sure if I want matrimony without it. In fact,” she tilted her pointed chin up an inch higher, “I am quite comfortable choosing not to marry without it.”

“Not to marry,” Lady Hawthorne repeated as if slowly translating a foreign language.

“Yes, I could join the Grand Amateurs.”

“My Lord, I may need my smelling salts,” Lady Hawthorne said.

She produced a fan and beat it so ferociously that Rosalind feared it might break.

The idea of never making a match had wormed its way into Rosalind’s mind after last year’s disastrous attempt at coming out into society.

She hadn’t meant it to go so wrong. However, it seemed at every turn, no matter who she was introduced to, they were instantly turned off by her desire to be more than an ornamental attachment to their arm.

Rosalind refused to marry or even consider courting one of the vapid gentlemen of the ton that Lady Hawthorne pushed toward her. Men that seemed so surprised that she could have passions or opinions beyond stitches and floral arrangements. 

If she really thought about it, it wasn’t the fact that every gentleman of the ton was surprised by her desires to learn and discover just as a man might but that they were disgusted by it. How could she bring herself to share a life with a man who held so little respect for her intellect? 

Her introduction to the men of the ton had been so contrary to the ones she had grown up to admire. Her father had never once dissuaded her from her passions–well unless her mother was present. Even then, he only became silent in his encouragements. 

But if she really thought hard about her personality, which was so different from her peers, it was all her grandfather’s fault. 

The former Viscount Hawthorne had been a constant loving presence in her life since childhood. Having no other children besides her father, he had always relished keeping his single granddaughter near him.

In fact, she had become the late viscount’s mini shadow nearly every day of her life till his passing in her twelfth year. He never shielded her from his business dealings or, more importantly, his favourite pastime–astronomy.

Rosalind’s mother had never approved of the actions of her father-in-law, often citing that he treated her like she might one day take over the lordship—which, of course, was preposterous and, in her opinion, a complete waste of his time.

Lady Hawthorne mainly kept her opinions as grumbles under her breath out of respect for her husband’s father, but once he passed, she wasted no time enacting her own agenda in Rosalind’s life. 

Gone were the meetings with members of the House of Lords, many of whom mentioned to the new Lord Hawthorne that her opinions were missed in their dealings. Rosalind was sad, of course, to go from what seemed like a life of importance in the realm of the empire to stitching and teatime gossip. Still, it hadn’t affected her as much as her mother’s insistence on removing all behavior deemed unladylike. Sciences were the first jotted down on the list.

No longer was Rosalind allowed to attend lectures, accept invitations at observatories, or even peruse a natural museum unless she could attach it back to finding a match. As of yet, she had failed to find a gentleman able to secure such a connection.

It was why she often spoke so candidly with potential suitors at the last season’s balls and events. She was desperate to get back to the places she loved so dearly. The places that involved a telescope in hand and meaningful conversations about the future of our world and its place in the universe. The place that reminded her so much of the fond times spent with her grandfather.

However, despite her willingness to forgo what her mother considered the most crucial act she could ever commit and her whole reason for being, there was still a side that pained for the love she saw between her friend and new husband. Even more, she felt the sting of guilt as she watched her mother turn more and more ashen white at the thought of her daughter dying a spinster. 

“I’m sorry, Mother,” she finally resigned to saying. “I don’t know what came over me. Of course, I will marry someday. With any luck, this season will find me a match,” she added with a weak but hopefully genuine-looking smile.

Lady Hawthorne only narrowed her ice-blue eyes at her daughter for a moment, judging her sincerity. Though it was lacking, the guilt showing on Rosalind’s face apparently was sufficient for the need. Lady Hawthorne let out a rush of relief and snapped her fan closed.

“Good. Now I have a list of topics that would suit tonight’s ball, lest you get any ideas of your own,” Lady Hawthorne stared with renewed vigor.

Rosalind sighed and did her best not to sag back onto the sofa as she quietly listened to her mother’s demands for the night’s frivolities.

 

Chapter Two

“Richard, you’re not ready.” Lady Portia Stanhope’s voice cut through her son’s intense musings.

Baron Westerleigh, and future Viscount Stanhope, looked up from his riffling of papers and pamphlets with a confused look on his otherwise chiseled face.

“Ready for?” he asked, though, from the gown, he suspected what his mother referred to in her accusation.

“Really, Richard!” she huffed, waving a feathered mask in her hands. “If it’s not painted a thousand miles away in the heavens, you simply don’t have a care for anything, do you?”

He let out a long sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose. Setting his notes to the side, he sat in the thick leather chair behind his father’s desk, a place he had quite recently made his own, to hear his mother out.

“I suspect we have a social engagement that I have forgotten?” he asked.

“Only the Argyle Rooms masquerade ball. The most prominent opening event of the season. I told you about it last week and then reminded you again over breakfast. I knew you weren’t listening; you never listen when you get those silly papers.”

Lady Stanhope waved her hands towards the latest astrological pamphlet the Grand Astrological Society printed. It was a newly created and quickly budding group of serious gentlemen looking to aid in the scientific progress of humankind. More specifically, they hoped to understand better the heavens surrounding Earth.

“It’s not a silly paper, certainly not as useless as the gossip rags you insist on subscribing to twice daily. This has real scientific merit, in fact.” He held up a finger before his mother could interrupt him.

Pulling out the latest pamphlet, he flipped to the section on recent anomalies. Then, reaching for his notebook, he flipped to a page where he had recorded his anomaly crossing in front of Mars just last week.

“There is a chance that I may lend serious aid in discovering a new heavenly body. You see, just last week—”

“Please, Richard, no more of this talk. You know I don’t have the constitution to discuss trivial things like rocks far away when more pressing matters are at hand.”

Richard pressed his lips into a fine line. Unlike his father, Lady Stanhope had never found anything interesting outside of her own circle of acquaintances. Still, he would have thought the possible discovery that could rewrite current knowledge about the contents of space made by her own son merited at least listening to.

He would have liked to tell her that these were not just trivial skipping stones discovered on the shores of the Thames. Great leaps were being made all over the sciences, and astronomy was no different. Why, in the last decade, two more planets had been discovered in the solar system, forever memorializing the man who found them. 

Could she not see that he, too, was on the cusp of finding something great? That through his endeavors, he could actually be used by humankind? If she could but see past her own nose, he was sure she would understand that balls and operas were nothing compared to the tremendous scientific advances that he so desperately needed to be a part of.

However, none of this was an argument he was willing to get into with his mother yet again. Better to have her remind him of whatever obligation he owed, do his duty, and return quickly as possible to continue his work.

“The pressing matter is that I have promised to escort you to the masquerade. Forgive me for forgetting myself, Mother.”

“It is not that I need your escort. Naturally, that is important with your father’s ill health keeping him from the city, but more importantly, it is a chance to set your mark.”

“My mark?”

He couldn’t help musing that the mark she was considering was surely not the one he had just been rehearsing in his mind.

“Yes, your father’s ill health should be a wake-up call to you.”

“It was only a cold,” Richard reassured.

“Still, he is growing old in age. Not to mention you are in your twenty-seventh year. It is high time that you put aside your hobbies for the time being so you can focus on what is far more important, marriage.”

Richard let a laugh escape at his mother’s serious expression, which he quickly covered with a cough. 

Of course, he knew as the first son and heir to his father’s viscount title that he would have to find a wife to propagate the future generation eventually. However, it was far from a pressing or even important matter in his mind. 

In fact, not only did he not care to entertain the matter at present, he rarely sought out social engagements that seemed to only focus on it. Though his mother had always been prejudiced against his lack of social inclusion, the start of this season seemed to bring on her a new fervor.

“I hate to inform you, Mother, I’ve only agreed to escort you this season because I know how important good society is to you; I have no intention of finding a match.”

“Intention or no, I am keenly aware that this is the first and quite possibly last season I will have you attending social engagements. I will not let such an opportunity pass me by. You may not think your lack of a wife a great concern, but it is for me … and your father. It is not just a cold that has sent him to his bed. He has grieved over your lack of serious consideration for the viscountcy.”

Richard felt a pang of guilt at his mother’s accusations. Truthfully he didn’t know if they could be believed. He had barely seen his parents speak a word to each other over the past year alone, so the idea that they discussed their son’s future seemed just as far away from the truth as stars from Earth.

Growing up as the only child in a family where partners could not even be considered amicable towards each other had not been easy. He was constantly put between mother and father, often pitted to take one parent’s side over the other. 

Part of him respected and loved his parents in their own ways, but as a pair, he had grown to despise how they had used him as a shield and often a weapon to wield at one another. 

Unlike a simpering miss of the ton, he knew better than to lean into the fanciful dreams fed by popular romance novels. The romance was simply a fabricated ideal to trick the idle-minded into forfeiting their time and money in its unattainable pursuit. 

Marriage, on the other hand, was a regretfully necessary transaction. He had come to terms that one day he would have to submit himself to the contract, as his parents had been forced to do, but that didn’t mean he had to do it right now.

He still had far too much left to explore before he settled himself down to the miserable state that his parents lived in every day till they finally succumbed to the Earth.

Though he was still inclined to think his mother’s accusation that he was the cause of his father’s ill state was a fabricated mode of guilt, it still hit home all the same.

“I have agreed to escort you this season, and I do mean to keep my word,” Richard said in a calm, even tone. “But I have no intention to seek a wife yet.”

“Not even for your father’s sake?” Lady Stanhope arched her brow at him.

Richard considered asking his mother when, if ever, she truly cared for the viscount’s sake. Still, he had that pang of uncertainty growing in his gut. What if Lord Stanhope was troubled by the lack of a grandchild? Richard hated to think that his actions could be making his father’s health decline. 

How much of his life had been blessed because his father worked so diligently in his lot in life? Richard had never wanted—even when those wants were the latest scientific advancements—because his father had been dedicated to the title and responsibilities he bore. Certainly, the same could not be said for all the lords of the ton. So many had squandered their inheritance, leaving their future generations nothing but a pile of debt. 

After all his father did to secure him a successful future to inherit, did he not at least owe him the security of knowing the title would continue to the next generation?

Richard let out a long sigh of defeat before raking his hand across his face and through his chocolate locks. Lady Stanhope clasped her hands in front of her gown, and a smug look of satisfaction highlighted her lean features.

“I suppose you are going to tell me of some plan you have in mind,” Richard finally spoke begrudgingly.

“You don’t have to do anything, my dear,” she cooed as she sat across from him. “I’ve already begun examining the best candidates. All you need to do is meet them and pick one,” she added easily.

“You speak as if we are perusing for a new pair of riding gloves.”

“Marriage is really no different,” Lady Stanhope replied. “I already have an up-and-coming prospect for you to meet tonight.”

Richard motioned with his hand for his mother to continue.

“Just this afternoon, I had tea with Viscountess Davenwood. Her younger daughter is not yet matched, Miss Esme. She is not far off from your age.”

Richard’s head snapped up in surprise. He really didn’t have a care for when a miss chose to marry, but for one to go so long in years without a match was never a good sign. 

“Now, don’t look like that,” his mother cautioned. “The Davenwoods are a very good family. She had three older sisters, and frankly, that has kept Lady Davenwood quite busy. Why they chose to have a brood of six when the second was a son is beyond my understanding,” Lady Stanhope mumbled to herself, “but I assure you the girl is not defective.”

Richard cringed at his mother’s callous words. 

“But she is of importance to you for a specific reason, I am sure,” he pressed forward, wishing to get to the root of his mother’s desires.

“Well, not only is she from good breeding, she would come to the marriage with her own financial securities.”

“And …?” Richard motioned with his hand. 

“You know those two things alone are tough to come by,” Lady Stanhope huffed. “Now, enough of this talk,” she came to stand. “I refuse to be late and make a spectacle of our entrance. You really must change. I am sure the carriage is already waiting.”

With that, Lady Stanhope turned in a swirl of glittering satin and exited the study. Richard sat back in his chair with a huff. Why were interactions with his parents always so exhausting? Never was there a simple exchange; there were always agendas that would need to be peeled back over time.

He had no doubt that this situation was precisely that. There was some underlying reason that his mother would choose this Miss Esme as a possible prospect for him. A reason he would uncover in the end.

He stood from his father’s chair and finished arranging the notes and pamphlets on the desk before resigning himself to leave the work for the present. 

He would do as his parents wished. Find a match, suffer a marriage, and satisfy the needs of his title, and with any hope, he could do it expeditiously. Then he could finally get back to matters that actually held importance, like making his mark on the scientific world.

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“A Baron’s Lucky Star” is an Amazon Best-Selling novel, check it out here!

Miss Rosalind Hawthorne feels like a beautiful bird trapped in a gilded cage, her heart yearning for freedom and love that seem out of reach. Despite her best efforts to break free from the suffocating confines of an arranged marriage to a despicable nobleman, her dreams remain elusive. However, a ballroom encounter with the charismatic Baron, Richard Westerleigh, presents a daring opportunity for a fake courtship.

Will this audacious charade finally lead her to the true love she’s always dreamed of, or is it merely a whimsical gambit with an uncertain outcome?

Baron Richard Westerleigh finds himself torn between the weight of familial duty and his personal ambitions. Enchanted by Rosalind’s hidden intelligence and wit, he becomes entangled in a thrilling fake courtship that evolves into an overwhelming longing. As the scandalous truth lurks around them, he faces a life-altering dilemma: to succumb to his profound feelings or retreat into the safety of his old convictions…

Can he muster the courage to break free from his mother’s expectations and embrace a love he never thought possible?

In a world governed by societal expectations and familial obligations, Rosalind and Richard’s lives unexpectedly intertwine. A charade meant to please their meddlesome mothers draws them closer, blurring the lines between pretense and genuine affection. Will they seize the chance to embrace this unpredictable journey their hearts call for, or will fear of the unknown hold them back from a love that could defy all conventions?

“A Baron’s Lucky Star” is a historical romance novel of approximately 60,000 words. No cheating, no cliffhangers, and a guaranteed happily ever after.

Get your copy from Amazon!