The Importance of Being Wanton by Christi Caldwell

Prologue

1812

This was hell.

There was nothing else for it.

Or Charles Hayden, the Earl of Scarsdale, was being punished.

Or his parents hated him.

Or, perhaps, it was a combination of every given factor.

Either way, this was where he drew the absolute last line.

Gasping and out of breath, Charles raced along the dew-slicked grass.

“Chaaarles! I am calling you!”

Yes, the whole damned county could hear as much. That pursuit was also the reason for Charles’s flight. He clenched his teeth. Well, not just that pursuit. The reason behind it.

All of it, really.

The Marquess of Rochester was entirely to blame.

The soles of Charles’s leather shoes proved another enemy to him that day. He went skidding and sliding forward. On a gasp, Charles shot out his palms and caught himself against the trunk of the ancient yew. His heart pounding from the race he’d just run, he leaned against the enormous tree.

Mayhap his father wouldn’t find him here. Mayhap—

Something struck Charles in the chest, and he glanced down. A small rock rested atop the tip of his shoe. What in hell? He whipped about, searching for the source of that missile. It would seem he was under attack from a number of foes this day.

His father’s voice grew increasingly closer. “. . . aaaarles . . . !”

His panic swelled, replacing his momentary distraction, and Charles scoured the horizon.

A mere speck appeared in the distance. There could be no doubting, however, the identity of that figure drawing nearer.

Nay, those two figures.

Tossing aside one shoe, Charles reached for his other. Haste, however, made his fingers clumsy, and he fumbled with the damned thing.

At last, he managed to get the Blucher boot free.

“I said . . . get back . . .”

He firmed his jaw. By God, if they wanted him, they were going to have to catch him.

Hopping up, Charles climbed onto the old, gnarled limb a foot from the ground, then used the enormous yew as his ladder toward freedom.

He’d reached the sixth branch, some seven feet from the ground, when they caught up to him.

The illustrious Marquess of Rochester skidded to a stop similar to his son’s, with Charles’s mother arriving close behind.

Hunched over, his long white hair tousled, Charles’s father gasped for air. However, even with his hands resting on his knees, he still somehow managed to glower up at Charles.

But then, that was the way of the marquess. Capable of commanding with a single look. Of ruling all. Including one’s son. Especially one’s son. Alas, Charles had been ordered about for the last time.

“What in thunderation are you doing?” his father cried.

“I think that should be fairly clear.” Charles paused. “I’m climbing a tree.” And hiding. But he’d be damned if he used those words.

His breath having resumed a semblance of normality but for the intermittent gasp, the marquess straightened. “Get down here before you kill yourself and I am left heirless.”

The hell he would. Charles made no move to abandon the spot he’d secured himself. “You’ve plenty of hair. Far more than is fashionable,” he called down. “In fact, I have always been stunned that someone as stringent as you in terms of society should—”

“I meant heir-less.” His father scowled. “As in without an heir.”

Charles smirked. It was entirely too easy.

“I believe he was making a jest,” Charles’s still-winded mother explained to her husband. Cupping her hands about her mouth, she spoke loudly enough to make the marquess wince. “Isn’t that right, Charles?”

Charles gave a little mock salute. “Indeed.”

With a pleased smile, she turned back to the marquess. “See? As I said. Merely a jest.” Yes, because she had always had a sense of humor and often was left attempting to explain even the simplest quip to the staid, humorless, duty-driven marquess. Betrothed as children, the pair had been married forever, and had known each other even longer.

Charles shuddered. It was the last fate he would ever want, that medieval manner of marriage. And the one he desperately sought to escape now. “Though technically, you’d not be heirless, either, Father,” Charles gleefully pointed out. “You’d be spare-less, as there’s always Derek to fill the role.” Derek, who, by his fortunate entry after Charles, would never be saddled with the hell Charles had.

“This is not the time for games or jests or technicalities . . . or . . . or . . . tree-climbing,” the marquess sputtered.

All the while, Charles’s mother proceeded to murmur calm platitudes to her husband.

“He is being unreasonable, Aster.” His father spoke as if Charles weren’t even present.

“I’m being unreasonable?” Charles called, climbing another branch higher. “I am?”

“Come down this instant. You are too old for climbing trees, young man,” the marquess bellowed. “Tell him, Aster.”

There came a slight rustle and a grunt, and Charles looked all the way down just as his mother pulled herself onto the first branch, and then the second. “Your father says you are too old for climbing trees,” she said, and the slight emphasis she placed on those first two words brought Charles his first real smile of the whole miserable day. Catching his eye, she winked.

His grin widened.

Alas, that smile also proved short-lived.

“The guests have already begun arriving, Charles,” his mother said from where she balanced on a lower branch. “Emma’s father is asking to speak with you before the ceremony.”

Charles’s stomach lurched, and by the way his belly turned, he was pretty certain he was going to cast his morning biscuits down below. Which . . . might not be an altogether bad thing. Surely his father would cancel the whole damned day after such a horror?

The marquess shook his fist. “I am not going anywhere. If you don’t come down, I will bring the damned ceremony to you. Is that clear?”

Charles peered down at his father. “Ah, but doesn’t the ceremony require two?”

“She’s gone exploring, as she’s wont to do. You know that.” His mother rolled her eyes. That was likely something Charles should have known about his intended. And perhaps he would have if the betrothed in question weren’t six, and if, instead, he were a grown man, marrying a grown woman of his choosing. “In fact, she’s likely already been found. If you’d just come down . . .”

As the marquess shouted up his demands, Charles’s mother spoke just two words down to her husband. “Dear heart.” There was something in her quiet voice, calm enough to break through the blustery tirade.

“I know that . . . I’m not . . .” The marquess sighed. “Very well.” He opened his mouth to say something else to Charles, but his wife gave him a long look. “Very well,” Charles’s father mumbled once more, and with a last glare for his son, he marched off.

The marchioness waited several moments for her husband to leave before drawing herself higher up onto the tree.

“Mother!” Charles called down warningly as she continued to make the high climb. When she gave no hint of stopping, he immediately scrambled down several branches, meeting her halfway.

As if she were greeting any of the expected guests for that day and not on a high perch some eleven or twelve feet from the ground, his mother seated herself on the wide branch. “And this from someone who was adamant that age shouldn’t be a tree-climbing deterrent?”

“You’re a lady.”

“And if you’re speaking like that, then I’ve failed in my role as a mother,” she said drolly.

No, she hadn’t. Quite the opposite. She’d been loving where his father had been removed. She’d been supportive where his father couldn’t have been bothered. And yet, even with all that . . . she’d still attempt to come up here and compel him to wed.

“She’s a lovely girl, Charles,” his mother said with a quiet insistence, as if she’d followed the very thoughts he’d spoken.

Yes, that was it, exactly. “She is a girl. A little girl. A babe.”

“Yes, yes, but she won’t always be, and then she’ll be grown up and you’ll suit one another very nicely. You will.”

He cast his mother a sideways look, searching for a sign that she was jesting, because surely she was.

“Why, I married your father, and we were betrothed as babes. And look at us.” She smiled widely, and he took a moment to realize that she was deadly serious. That her words were not spoken with sarcasm or in kidding.

Far be it from him to point out that their comfortable, tedious arrangement accounted in large part for the reason he’d resurrected his tree-climbing skills.

With a sigh, he looked out between the enormous yew branches to the rolling green hills he so loved. A place that would now forever be tainted with this thing his parents would have him do. Because if he couldn’t reason with his mother, there was absolutely no hope. Still, he tried one more time. He forced his gaze away from the countryside and over to the one parent he had always thought valued his opinion and would let him have a say in his future. “You are really going to make me do this?”

“Oh, Charles,” she murmured with such pity and regret that they served as answers enough. She moved closer to him, and he reached out a hand to steady her, to make sure she didn’t go tumbling below and break her neck and destroy this day even further.

His mother, however, waved him off. She wrapped her arms over his shoulders and lightly hugged him. “The truth is, Charles, sometimes we have to do things we do not want to.”

“Like marry the Gately girl?” he spat, vitriol pulling that surname from deep within his chest, from a place where resentments would forever dwell.

“Like marry the Gately girl,” she confirmed, giving no indication that she’d heard his hate-filled tone and disallowing him even that small satisfaction of her acknowledging those feelings. “Furthermore, I would be remiss if I did not point out that I think she perfectly suits you.”

And he managed the impossible that day. Charles burst out laughing, that amusement so unexpected and fulsome that he was the one who lost his balance, and the only thing that kept him on his perch was his mother’s quick and steady hand.

Except she winged an eyebrow and gave him a long look, confirming she hadn’t been speaking in jest.

“My God, you are serious,” he choked out.

“Well, I’m not your god, just your mother. But I am sincere. Very much so. You should have a care, Charles; she may be a child, but as I said, she won’t always be. The little ducks grow up and become swans. And remember, Charles . . . swans are capable of flight. As such, you would do well to not stray so far from the pond.”

Charles puzzled his brow. What in thunderation was she talking about?

Leaning over, she pressed a kiss to his cheek. “If you are clever and wise and honorable, you’ll be fortunate to never know what I mean. Now, how much time?”

“An hour?”

She shook her head. “I cannot manage that.”

“Thirty minutes?” he asked.

“Twenty.” She reached over and brushed back a damp strand that had fallen over his brow. “And another twenty to see yourself presentable,” she murmured, ever so lovingly and tenderly adjusting his rumpled cravat, perfectly fixing the folds, and smoothing the lapels of his jacket. Then with the same impressive ease with which she had scaled the tree, his mother found her way down, and lifting her hems, she headed off to meet her husband. The pair spoke for several moments. Or rather, his mother did. His father listened, periodically nodding. Raising her hands to his mouth one at a time, he placed a kiss upon her knuckles before they took their leave.

Charles stared on at them, walking hand in hand; it was a relationship he’d never understand. Because there couldn’t be two people more different than his parents: his mother, warm and nurturing and loving. And then there was . . . his father. Charles’s father, who spent most of his days in his office with a magnifying glass in hand as he read whatever ledgers or books a man such as him bothered with. Still, for all the differences between the Marquess and Marchioness of Rochester, for some unexplainable reason Charles would never understand, his mother not only loved the surly marquess but was also happy. Blissfully so.

He scrunched up his mouth. His mother and father together, and their happiness, formed a riddle he’d never solve, and one he didn’t even care to.

Perhaps, though, that was why she expected Charles should find himself like her.

But he wasn’t. He never would be. Because unlike her, he would forever be filled with resentment and anger at that which they had forced him to do.

At last, his parents’ figures disappeared from view, and Charles began to count. He counted the seconds as they became minutes. The moment he reached the agreed-upon twentieth minute, he waited another second, allowing himself that control, and climbed back down.

The moment his feet hit the ground, he donned his shoes, then started on the same path his mother and father had when a figure in the near distance snagged his notice. Her tiny frame clad in ridiculously large-for-her skirts, her golden hair limp around her face, the child stood amidst a small army of mute swans. In her white garments, she nearly perfectly blended in with those creatures that filled his family’s lake.

However, it was not the sight of either her skirts or the swans that struck him.

It was . . . her stare.

Even with the twenty paces between them, there could be no disputing the fiery anger in the girl’s eyes. Burning, blazing hatred that he knew all too well. But somehow more . . . striking . . . when he saw it reflected back in the gaze of a six-year-old girl.

Charles gave his head a disgusted shake. His mother had spoken of his wedded bliss someday.

With that hellion?

Cursing to himself, Charles began the trek back to the manor, where he’d sign the betrothal documents binding himself forevermore to a child bride.

Seventeen years later

It made sense that she should have requested a meeting . . . beside a lake.

Albeit a different lake.

Not the private, secluded one of his family’s Leeds estate.

Rather, the very public Serpentine.

Although not at this hour. At the five o’clock morn time, only a lone gent stole a ride through the graveled riding paths, and the pink pelicans glided lazily over the serene surface.

Within a few hours, the very path he now strode would be bustling with passersby, all pretending for a brief interlude that they were away from the cacophony that was the metropolis of London life.

And it was the first time in the whole of his seventeen-year betrothal that Charles found himself intrigued by something—or anything—about the woman he was slated to wed in one month, four days, and—he consulted his timepiece—a handful of hours.

Charles crested the rise, and stopped in his tracks.

For the sight of the young woman, with her lace-ruffled skirts, may as well have been a still life from that time, long ago. Then, she’d had messy golden hair that had hung about her shoulders. Now, she was notorious for her tightly drawn-back hair and her features pinched in what he was convinced was a perpetual state of disapproval.

His earlier intrigue was swiftly replaced by the more familiar customary annoyance, one that he immediately concealed; as testy as she always was on the rare occasions they were together, she was still the daughter of his parents’ best friends, and she was still to be his bride. In sickness and in health. As long as they both should live. Doffing his hat, Charles started forward. “Good morning to you, Emma.” He called out that greeting, commandeering her Christian name, even as the lady despised it.

As he walked to meet her at the shore, he caught the greater tensing of her narrow lips and recalled the curt rebuke she’d dealt when he’d first called her thus at her Come Out.

Do not call me Emma. It is hardly proper. You do not even know me . . .

Though if he were being honest, shameful as it was, he quite enjoyed getting a rise out of the usually aloof, and almost unfailingly unexcitable, miss.

He reached her side, and dropped a bow. “I received—”

“You are late, Lord Scarsdale,” she said tersely, giving him a harsh once-over. “But then, you’ve made a habit of it.”

A habit of it?

A large part of him wanted to debate the chit on the point. Except, even as he wasn’t one who was generally tardy, he wasn’t altogether certain how carefully she’d been watching his comings and goings at ton events.

He flashed a smile. After all, she was his future bride, and his grin was the greatest weapon he had to thaw her.

She stared back coolly, proving herself once more wholly un-thawable.

Very well. Let them get on with whatever urgent matter had merited his presence for a morning meeting. Charles returned his hat to his head and adjusted the article. “You wished to see me to discuss our upcoming nuptials. I thought I was clear; matters pertaining to the flowers and breakfast arrangements and music selection”—and anything and everything else—“are entirely at your discretion.”

“Yes, you were.” Something flashed in her eyes, a glimmer different from the usual ice that filled the stares she directed his way. There was also a trace of . . . sadness . . . contained within. Gone so quick he may as well have imagined it. That, however, was enough to prod his guilt.

“Was there . . . however, something that you wished to consult me on?” he gently nudged, as he wasn’t averse to offering his opinion if she wished it. But he’d also known well enough before that a woman such as his betrothed wouldn’t want his interference in the arrangements surrounding the nuptials.

Emma clasped her hands before her primly, as if in prayer, laying the steepled fingers against the flat of her belly. “My mother was handling them.”

Then something registered . . . A simple word choice, casually spoken and slipped in, one that signaled a tense that had passed.

My mother . . . was . . . handling them.

Ah, so there was a matter of her mother’s intrusion. She’d ask Charles to involve himself in wrangling the planning away from their determined mothers. “And . . . you would like my assistance in . . . speaking to our mothers about their handling of those details.”

She gave a slight shake of her head. “Not at all. I have since . . . handled my mother.” She grimaced. “Or rather, it. I have handled it.”

And for a second time that day, his intrigue was roused by the not-so-very-mousy-after-all Miss Emma Gately. Her mother, a leading matron of Polite Society, roused terror in most men. He couldn’t have fathomed a situation where Emma Gately handled the determined viscountess . . . in anything. Until now.

Emma didn’t require his assistance in the matter of their wedding . . . which begged the question: What had she called him here for?

“I trust you are wondering why I’ve requested your presence.” The young lady not only correctly surmised his thoughts but also had come at him again with that unexpected, and welcome, bluntness.

He inclined his head. “I confess to curiosity.” Intrigue. From the moment her missive had come—and in the dead of night—it was, and had been, outright intrigue. “I expect it has to do with our upcoming nuptials?”

Odd. His mind hadn’t even been able to formulate a thought of that day, let alone speak one from his mouth, without sending his gut churning and his stomach muscles twisting. And yet . . . this time, that customary and bodily response . . . did not come.

“Yes,” Emma confirmed. “I have had time to consider our arrangement. Seventeen years.” She looked out over the Serpentine, her eyes a shade of blue he couldn’t place for the many hues to them. “Seventeen. Years,” she repeated.

Charles ran his gaze over Emma’s tense face, too angular to ever lend itself toward classical beauty, but sharp of planes that gave a man pause to notice, drawing him in. Or . . . in this instant they did, and it drew Charles’s focus to one key realization: he stood in the presence of a woman who’d carefully tracked the length of their arrangement. Until this moment, however, he’d never considered that she might be aware . . . in the same way. Which in retrospect had been rather narrow-minded of him.

A soft breeze stole over the Serpentine, rolling gently; it managed to tug a single straight lock of hair from her tight chignon and toss it against her cheek. He moved closer, drawn nearer by that errant strand, a paradox to the self-possessed woman before him. His fingers came up, reaching for that tress, and he brushed it, tucking it behind her ear. “Yes, we’ve both had time to think on it.” He spoke quietly, and the young lady pulled her stare from the smooth surface of the river and over to Charles . . . Her lips parted, that narrow lower lip lending an upside-down pout to her mouth, and his gaze caught.

His breath caught.

And he, Charles, the Earl of Scarsdale, rogue amongst gentlemen, scoundrel of London, found himself completely enraptured by his future bride. Her endlessly long, flaxen lashes swept low, and Charles swallowed spasmodically. How had he failed to either appreciate or revel in the complexity of that contoured mouth before now?

He lowered his head, determined to rectify that past failing.

Emma took a quick, lurching step backward, catching herself at the edge, so close the water kissed her hemline. “And as such, having had time to consider our betrothal all these years, I have decided it would be in my best interest to sever the formal contract.”

They were confounding words to make sense of when he’d been so very close to taking her mouth with his.

Sever the formal contract.

“Yes,” she said with a tight little nod, confirming with that bob of her long neck and passionless utterance that he’d spoken aloud.

“You are . . . breaking it off with me.” Shock lent a hollow quality to a question that didn’t make sense. He should be relieved. A lot relieved. And only grateful. She would spare him of an arrangement he didn’t want.

Except she had done . . . that which he’d never been able to manage. She would defy their parents. She would reject a union that had been preordained by those same parents, a betrothal she’d been bound to for all but six of her years.

He shook his head, and tried again. “I don’t . . .” Tried. And failed. The words would not come. Because it didn’t make sense. Nothing about any of this exchange, from the note to this sudden, unwitting fascination with her, to the almost kiss, to the reason for his summons, did. “I don’t understand.” There—he’d at last managed to get out a full coherent thought, one that demanded clarity.

“I am breaking it off. Severing the arrangement,” she said matter-of-factly, as if they discussed this very fine clement spring they now enjoyed. Emma stared at him expectantly.

What, however, was expected of him?

“I . . . did not ask for the betrothal to be severed,” he finally said when he found his voice and a suitable response.

“No. I know that.” She patted his hand; her fingers were long and tan, as if the lady enjoyed shucking her gloves and feeling the sun upon them. Did she? Or did her skin contain the gift of her family’s old Roman roots? Both details he didn’t know about her. But he likely should have. “You needn’t worry that you will be held responsible,” she said, misinterpreting the reason for his silence. “My parents will not blame you, Lord Scarsdale.”

He latched on to that. “You’ve not spoken to your parents then?” Because had she done so, that lent an added . . . finality . . . to all this.

“I have,” she corrected, adding that final nail. “They are well aware that I am the one who wishes to be set free.”

Set free.

It was . . . singularly odd to have spent the whole of his adult life resenting his betrothal and the woman whom he’d one day wed.

Only to have her use those very words.

When he, usually glib of tongue, remained wholly without.

Alas, upon this day, his betrothed had words enough for both of them.

“I understand that you are also likely”—he waited for her to supply a response for whatever it was she thought he was feeling—“concerned as to how your parents might receive this new change in our circumstances.”

This new change in their circumstances.

Yet again, she spoke of their end with an absolute conviction, which stirred more of that odd panic for reasons that had nothing to do with what she thought they did. Or for that matter, even reasons he could make any real sense of. “I do not care what my parents think,” he said tersely, finding himself, and finding his way. Giving her the truth. He’d lived a carefree life for himself, to spit in the face of the life they’d been determined for him to live.

She gave him a small, mirthless, and almost pitying smile. “Ah, but that isn’t altogether true,” she said gently. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t have agreed to the match in the first place.”

Color fired his cheeks and gave Charles his first blush from a lady in . . . in . . . well . . . ever. She was right. “I was a boy.”

“Precisely,” she jumped in, snatching his defense, stealing it for her own purposes. “Our family’s history and friendship is deeply entangled, and I trust, therefore, that you have concerns on that score as well.” She made a lot of assumptions this day, his betrothed did. His almost-former-betrothed. “My father will make it abundantly clear when he speaks to yours that the decision began with me.” Began with me implied Charles was of a like opinion. Again, those words didn’t have the freeing effect they should. Instead, they left him oddly queasy. “Of course, there is the matter of the legal arrangement; however, I have taken the liberty of conducting meetings to review the formal contract.”

He tried to imagine Emma Gately slipping about London, paying visits to various solicitors and posing inquiries about her—about their—betrothal. It didn’t fit with her. It didn’t fit with the passive creature he knew her to be. How many other ways have you underestimated the young lady? Charles forcibly silenced that jeering question in his mind. “You spoke to a . . . solicitor.” And that rankled for all number of reasons. Not the least of which was she’d gone and discussed wanting to be rid of him with another fellow.

She nodded. “Several”—that was another several fellows—“to ensure a similar opinion, of course.”

“Of course,” he said dryly.

“After all, a person cannot rely upon just one legal opinion.”

“What do you know of . . . legal opinions?” That question really wasn’t relevant to the fact that she was asking to be released of their betrothal.

“Enough,” she said vaguely, lifting her head in acknowledgment, and only further sowing the seeds of his intrigue.

He was learning in rapid order that she was . . . nothing like what he’d imagined. In command of herself and what she wanted. Capable of making a decision about the future she wanted for herself, when Charles himself hadn’t been able to do so. Nay, she was . . . different, in every way.

The sun peeked over the horizon, casting a bright flash of light over the water, the gleam nearly blinding. She lifted her parasol and popped it open. “Based upon my research”—her research?—“the arrangement is not formally binding, and neither party, neither of us, need be concerned on the question of a breach-of-promise suit being raised, as that would require a valid betrothal.”

“And ours was not valid?”

It was a question, and also one she apparently had the answer to.

She shook her head. “Promises of marriage when a member of the party is below the age of consent”—she paused—“which I was, are not valid.” She was clearly winding down, that note of finality creeping back into her dulcet tones. Tones that conveyed she’d tired of this exchange . . . and him.

And it was . . . humbling.

To say the very least.

And it was also when he knew he wanted her in his life. And he was going to fight like hell to not only keep her but also convince her that they’d both been wrong about one another.

“The solicitors were all of the opinion that the contract was well executed, though, because of”—she gave him a look—“our fathers.”

“Of course, our fathers,” he said, holding her eyes.

They shared a commiserative look, their first bond forged, a kindred moment born out of the meddlers of their lives.

“And they were all of a like opinion on the archaism of an arrangement fashioned for mere children,” she went on, putting a nail in the coffin of that brief connection.

“They don’t know a damned thing,” he snapped.

“Actually, they do. One was Mr. Duncan Eveleigh, famed for his defense of women, and even more noted for his work on the defense for Lathan Holman, rumored traitor.” She eyed him like he’d sprung a second head. And mayhap he had, and the second head was also the one responsible for him fighting even now to keep her.

Not that snapping at the lady was going to do him any favors.

“I did not wish for it to come as a surprise to you,” she explained. “Not that I expected you would care,” she said, and the absolute absence of inflection somehow caused that cinch to tighten even more than had she met his indifference these past years with tears. “But it is a formal contract we were forced into, and as such, we should each be fully aware of the dissolution of those terms.” Emma adjusted the frilly lace parasol at her shoulder. “I wish you all happiness you might have been otherwise prevented from finding because of our betrothal. Good day, Charles.”

Charles.

It was the first time he should hear his name fall freely from her lips, and on this, a goodbye?

She stepped around him, and put two paces between them before he registered that to be the end of this discussion. Which hadn’t really been a discussion.

“What if I don’t wish to be set free?” he called after her.

The young lady missed a step, then jammed the tip of her parasol into the ground, righting herself. Turning back, Emma faced him. He could make nothing of her stoic features, nor of the gaze she moved purposefully over his face.

He crossed the remainder of the way to join her. “I asked, what if I do not wish to be free, or end”—he gestured a hand between them—“this?” Whatever this was. And whatever it was, it had become . . . so much more in this one exchange than in every other they had shared before now.

Emma’s serious-as-always stare moved over his face.

Then she laughed, the sound tinkling with a slight snort, unrestrained, when the lady had always been tightly laced. And the sight of her proud shoulders shaking under the force of her levity, of her cheeks flushing with added color, held him even more enraptured than the sight of her siren’s mouth.

Had he ever heard her laugh? Before this? He searched his mind. Why hadn’t he made her laugh? He made everyone laugh. But her? He’d not even managed to make her smile.

Because you never tried. And it is a little late, chum, to start trying now.

He knew that. Knowing, however, did not undo the sense that . . . if she left, and if they left it off with a severed betrothal, he’d somehow be missing . . . even more.

After the young lady’s laughter had abated, she gave her head a rueful shake. “Good day, Lord Scarsdale. Thank you for the much appreciated levity.” Emma rushed off, her strides long and as purposeful as any gent’s, and not the mincing, tediously slow ones that society demanded of women.

By God, even her damned steps were intriguing. How had he failed to notice . . . any of it . . . before now?

When it was too late?

A pair of young ladies appeared in the distance, meeting Emma. One he recognized as her sister. The other lady proved unfamiliar to him.

He didn’t even know . . . whom she called friends, and the truth of that hit him in the gut, like a fist-blow of evidence to his failings as her betrothed.

Charles watched on, an interloper amongst the supportive trio of friends and ladies united over his and Emma’s breakup. He clenched and unclenched his hands at his sides.

The women spoke for several moments, with Emma periodically nodding.

It wasn’t a slow or shaky nod that bespoke upset, but rather the vigorous shake of a woman so wholly at peace and in complete happiness at what had transpired this day. The trio fell into step, and with each one that carried her farther away, the pressure in his chest grew and grew, crushing, crippling.

He stilled as Emma tossed a look over her shoulder, glancing his way.

Charles froze, for even across the distance dividing them, he caught it.

Aside from wringing his first laugh from Emma Gately, he managed another first that day—she smiled. One of the young ladies flanking her said something, calling back her attention, and with that, she looked away . . . and continued on.

She’d smiled at him, after all.

And all it had taken was the end of their betrothal.