The Importance of Being Wanton by Christi Caldwell

Chapter 13

THE LONDONER

DOWN WITH BOOKISH LADIES

Miss Gately is rumored to be single-handedly responsible for the surging interest amongst young ladies on matters of politics and business. For shame!

M. FAIRPOINT

Twelve hours after Emma’s early-morn rendezvous with Charles, she was certain she was never going to be able to clear the haze left by those stolen moments of bliss found with him.

He’d opened her eyes and body and soul to passion, which she’d never before thought to know.

And now she was never going to be the same.

Her world had been shaken. After all, what did it say about her that she’d faltered as she had in Charles’s rooms?

If she wavered in this way, she’d lose all that she had left where Charles and society were concerned—her pride.

Emma gripped the fabric of her skirts. No one could ever know.

An elbow collided with Emma’s side, snapping her from her reverie and bringing her back down to Earth. Or as Earth would have it . . . the uneven cobblestones of Watling Street.

“We are in a pickle . . . ,” her sister was saying.

Having lost the ability to think of anyone and anything but Charles and that passionate exchange, Emma knew her sister wasn’t wrong on that score.

“It is hard to say what is most dire about the situation. The fact that . . .” Isla stopped abruptly and slanted a sharp, assessing glance Emma’s way. Her eyes flared. “Are you paying attention?” she demanded with a no-nonsense quality to her tone.

“Of course,” Emma lied, her cheeks burning up.

Fortunately, one of the privileges enjoyed by eldest-born sisters everywhere was the freedom from being lectured.

Alas, Isla seemed not to have gotten those important notes.

“No, you are not!” she charged.

Or mayhap it was more a product of the Mismatch Society’s influence upon the previously measured girl. For she’d not ever been one to challenge Emma, and certainly not openly in the presence of company. Albeit Olivia and Owen . . . but company, still.

Isla marched at an impressive pace better suited to a military general. “You have no idea what I’ve been speaking about since the carriage ride. Do you?” she demanded of Emma.

It was one thing for Emma to acknowledge to herself that she’d been woolgathering. It was quite another to hear it from her younger sister, and youngest sibling. For it confirmed the very fear she’d carried, that the world would see all the ways in which she’d weakened toward the last man she should be weak over.

Her stomach muscles twisted.

No idea? In truth, she’d no blasted clue what her sister spoke of. Since Emma had taken her leave of Charles in the early-morn hours, she’d been incapable of thinking about anything beyond—

Isla gasped. “My God, you are either woolgathering or clueless as to what I have been saying about your role in saving the Mismatch Society.”

Emma bristled. This time she had been more . . . silently worrying than woolgathering. “I resent that. You are my sister. You should have faith in me to know I’d never woolgather, and that I am taking my current responsibility very seriously.”

Her youngest sibling gave her a dubious look.

“And furthermore,” Emma went on, “you are being melodramatic.”

“Then you aren’t paying attention.”

“I settled the matter . . .” Last evening. A blush singed Emma from the tips of her toes to the roots of her hair, and she hurriedly pulled her bonnet into place to conceal that telltale color that came with the resurrected memories of everything Charles had done to her.

“Are you fighting?” Olivia called from behind them.

Emma and Isla spoke at the same time.

“Yes.”

“No.”

Unfortunately, Isla’s denial came louder, clearer, and more emphatic.

“Well, it behooves me to point out that, given the state of the Mismatch Society, we can hardly afford to have contention between our remaining members.” Olivia scolded better than any of the stern nursemaids and governesses Emma and Isla had suffered through over the years. “And that includes the both of you.”

So it wasn’t only Isla who feared the current state of their society. “I’ve already told you.” Emma attempted to reassure her naysaying sibling. “We needn’t worry any more about Charles’s group. That matter has been settled.”

Her sister snorted.

Do not take the bait . . . do not take the bait . . .

It was futile.

“What?” Emma asked, unable to tamp down her exasperation.

“If you think the same gentleman who’s been doggedly paying visits in the hopes of winning you back wouldn’t show the same tenacity in this?” Isla shook her head. “Then you have learned nothing about Lord Scarsdale and what he is capable of, and the Mismatch Society is destined to perish.”

Emma winced. Destined to perish? And worse, her sister suggested the inevitable failure was in part because of Emma’s failings. This time, Emma’s cheeks heated for altogether different reasons, at being called out in the one endeavor in which she’d taken pride in . . . in . . . well, the entire course of her life. “You are wrong.” About both Charles and the doomsday-like quality of Isla’s warning.

“I certainly hope so,” her sister allowed. “But in the event I’m not? Hmm? What do you intend to do to see that we don’t continue losing members?”

Had Isla always been this . . . unrelenting? “I have . . . some ideas.” None. She’d absolutely no thoughts as to how to focus the next meeting, her first real role of leadership since the inception of the society.

Not breaking stride, her sister pointed a finger her way. “I heard that.”

“Heard what?” Olivia called from behind them.

“It was a pause.”

“I heard no pause,” Owen volunteered, and Emma cast a grateful smile over her shoulder for his defense.

Undeserved though it may be.

“Then you weren’t listening hard enough, Owen Watley,” Isla shot back, and taking Emma’s arms, she commanded her sister’s focus once more. “Assuaging your ego should hardly be your concern. Our society is under siege. Everything we’ve created, and everything we hold dear, is being threatened, and as one of the founding members charged with righting the faltering ship, well, it requires at least some attention from you.”

Well. That was quite the verbal takedown.

“Thank you for your faith in me, little sister,” Emma drawled.

“It isn’t that I don’t have faith in you,” her sister protested. “It is simply that—” Isla abruptly stopped talking as a handsome couple with their small army of children filed past, and a nursemaid, trailing close, approached. The moment they’d passed, Isla resumed, this time speaking in a barely audible whisper. “It is simply that you’ve been uncharacteristically distracted . . .”

Emma held her breath, braced for the completion of that thought.

. . . since last evening . . .

Since she had dashed barefoot from Charles’s household after he’d made love to her. Except . . . she still had her virtue. Or anyway, Emma did in the strictest sense of the word. Was it really, therefore, the same to classify whatever wonderful wickedness she’d experienced last evening as— “Ouch!” she squeaked, rubbing at the forearm her sister had just pinched.

“This. This is what I’m talking about,” Isla said flatly as they came to a stop outside the Old Corner Bookshop. She drew Emma by the elbow away from the entrance so that they were framed by the sparkling windowpanes. Isla ran a concern-filled stare over Emma’s face. “You’ve just created something so special, and something so wonderful, and I would hate to see all your efforts for naught because . . . because . . .” Of him.

Emma stiffened.

This time, there could be no doubting those unspoken words. Rather, this time, a name.

“Emma?”

They both looked over.

Owen stood with the door open, and Olivia poised on the threshold, staring back, a question in her eyes for Emma.

“We’ll be along shortly,” she promised, waiting until Olivia and Owen had continued ahead, leaving Emma and her sister alone.

The moment the Watley siblings had disappeared inside, she turned her attention back to Isla.

“You are . . . not wrong,” she conceded, because she respected her sister too much to lie any more than she had. “I am no more distracted now than I’ve been since I ended it with Charles,” Emma said quietly.

Her sister smiled sadly. “That is hardly a ringing endorsement of your focus, nor any real indication that you’ve moved on from him.”

That charge brought Emma’s fists curling. She wanted to lash out at her sister. To call her out for having dared think the thoughts she had.

And yet this was her sister, and sisters oft knew a woman better than the woman knew herself, and this moment proved no exception.

Her gaze snagged on the happy family that had passed them earlier, the handsome gentleman lifting each child up into the carriage, their merry mirth and happy laughter a touching scene of everything Emma had secretly longed for with Charles. Then he caught the pretty brunette by the waist, and—

It was too much. Emma forced her stare away from that intimate exchange, and she found her sister watching her once more.

“I am doing the best I can to put him from my thoughts, but it . . . isn’t as easy as all that. We have been betrothed since we were children. I have seventeen years of thinking my life would be one way with him, and just two months of readjusting to this new norm.” Emma caught her sister’s hands and squeezed lightly. “But just because I am, does not mean I’m incapable of helping to make the Mismatch Society everything I, you, and every other woman wish it to be.”

Isla’s throat moved furiously as fury burnt through the worry that had been there in her sister’s eyes. “I do not doubt you are capable of doing anything, and saving our society, at that. I just don’t want to see you give him any more of yourself than he’s already had. He was never worthy of you.” Those words came as if torn from deep within Isla.

Emotion swarmed Emma, and she fought the sting of tears. “Thank you,” she said past a thick throat.

Her sister went up on tiptoe and kissed her cheek. She hesitated and, by her still-troubled eyes, appeared as if she wished to say more, before finally hurrying inside the bookshop.

Emma stared after her, taking a moment to order her thoughts. Though she believed Isla exaggerated several points she’d made this day, her sister was also correct on any number of other scores. Emma had not been putting proper attention where her attention was due.

As she entered, Emma loosened the lace strings of her bonnet, lowering the article.

She was to be the one organizing the topic of the next Mismatch meeting.

As such, she should have been devoting her full attention to developing the agenda for the first full session she would be organizing and moderating. Emma headed past the enormous collection of gothic novels and romance tales to the philosophical section at the far corner of the shop that she frequented when she came. She wandered down one of the narrower, empty aisles. Absently, she plucked a copy of Rousseau’s Du Contrat Social from the shelf.

Alas, since she’d fled Charles’s house and boarded the hackney home, she’d been unable to think of anything . . . but him. And the passion he’d awakened. And her sister was right. It was past time that she put her efforts where they should—

“It’s no wonder he won’t even buy a book for you . . .” A child’s voice cut through her silent musings, and Emma picked up her head.

“He will,” another boy shot back. “He would. He offered. I chose . . . stop it!” Those words came more strident, more desperate than commanding.

There came the distant sniggering.

Emma narrowed her eyes. It was a sound she knew all too well. Not a true laugh, but more a taunting cruelty disguised as mirth. Shifting course, she followed those voices. Those jeers and sniggers grew increasingly louder.

She stopped, at last finding a trio of children. Two tall, gangly boys of similar height, but one in possession of bright crimson curls and the other ink-black hair, stood over a much smaller child, who sat on the floor. Even seated as he was, Emma could make out the slight, painfully slender form, a good deal smaller than the ones now confronting him. Even so, there was an impressive strength and courage to the cornered child, who, behind spectacles that appeared too large for his face, glared up at his detractors.

Fury for the child, and on the child’s behalf, sizzled in her veins as rage briefly blanketed her vision.

“He doesn’t even like to be seen with you . . . ,” the redheaded boy jeered.

“You’re wrong. He’s here. He’s—”

The other nasty child kicked the book out of the smaller boy’s fingers, sending the volume flying back into his face and knocking his spectacles loose. The literary missile landed hard on the floor, knocking into the small stack of leather-bound titles that had been sitting there.

That pile tumbled over, toppling forlornly open upon their now-wounded spines.

That was really enough. “You there.” Three sets of gazes swiveled her way as Emma stormed over. “You miserable little cur.” She looked between the two bullies. “The both of you.”

The ginger boy, the clear ringleader of their pair, flushed as red as the hair on his head. “I’m not little,” he blustered, while his still cruel but somewhat wiser friend edged away from Emma.

Resting her hands akimbo on her hips, she ran a condescending stare up and down each of their persons. “I’m a woman, and I have you pegged a good six inches shorter than me.”

The color on both children’s cheeks deepened by several shades. “I’m not done growing,” the mouthier of the two shot back.

She snorted. “That remains to be seen. In fact, who is to say you haven’t stopped already?” Emma continued marching forward until both boys, this time, retreated from the silent, wide-eyed child on the floor.

Mouthy Boy and his follow-along friend backed square into the shelving until she had put an effective end to their retreat and had them anchored perfectly so she could dole out the lecture they were in desperate need of. “And let me be clear . . . ?” she began, looking between the two.

When both boys were too cowardly to respond, she cast a glance over at the solemn-looking little boy who’d just taken to his feet.

The child cleared his throat. “Lord Whitley”—he stuck a little finger in the redheaded boy’s direction—“and Lord Asher,” he supplied, earning matching scowls from his bullies.

“Shut your mou—”

She glared away the remainder of that threat from Lord Whitley. “Let me be clear, Lord Asher and Lord Whitley. You may think you are tall. You may think you are strong. But you are both small in the ways that matter most. You are bullies,” she said bluntly. “You are beasts. And you think you’re clever, but your strength only comes from hurting others, which makes you the smallest of boys.” She took a step closer, and leaning down and highlighting the height difference between them, she stuck her nose close to Lord Asher’s. The boy’s large Adam’s apple jumped. “And no matter how much you might grow in meters? As long as you remain the same vile, heartless, ruthless beasts you are this day?” She shifted, fixing all her rage on the ringleader. “Then you will never grow to become a man.”

Shamefaced, both boys dropped their gazes to the hardwood floor.

She clapped her hands close to their faces, startling their focus back to her. “Now go,” she snapped.

The pair bolted, taking off running.

The moment they’d gone, Emma looked to the nameless little boy staring wide-eyed up at her. With those children gone, she now had her first real look at him. Thin to the point of gaunt, his skin pale and his green eyes enormous, he couldn’t be more than eight or nine years of age. As one who’d been a frequent recipient of gossip and unkindness, her heart ached at the thought of this child fielding such cruelty so young.

Emma smiled gently at him, and his cheeks bloomed with color. She quit her place, walking with slow, measured steps until she stood beside him. The boy craned his head all the way back to look at her. Emma fell to a knee beside him. “Hullo,” she greeted.

“You were rather rough on them,” he whispered.

“Too rough?”

The child grinned, his lips moving up slowly until he revealed white but adorably uneven teeth, in his first smile since Emma had come upon him. “Not at all.”

Returning that smile, Emma rescued the boy’s spectacles from the floor. She used the front of her cloak to clean off the smudged lenses before returning them to his elfin face.

His smile widened, and a blush filled his cheeks. “Many thanks.” The color deepened. “For my glasses . . .” That newly found brightness dimmed as he looked down at his fine leather boots. “And for rescuing me.” That last part emerged more of a mumble, and her heart tugged again.

At what he’d endured.

At the lack of self-worth he felt in this moment, when the only ones who should feel shame were the boys she’d run off.

She scoffed. “You didn’t require my rescuing,” she said, and the child’s head came flying back. “I should thank you for allowing me to speak up to such bullies. It is one of my favorite pastimes.”

“Indeed?”

Emma offered a solemn nod. “Undoubtedly. I’ve fielded unkind words myself.” One eventually developed armor, but occasionally, no matter how many a person fielded, those barbs found the weak spots within. She set to work collecting and stacking the boy’s books.

The child joined her on the floor, watching a moment as she worked. “Why would anyone be mean to you?” he asked before handing over a copy of de Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws.

“Why is anyone mean to anyone?” she countered rhetorically.

“Well, they are mean to me because I’m a bastard,” he said so matter-of-factly and unexpectedly that she lost her grip upon the book she held.

Emma fumbled, ultimately retaining her grip.

This was the reason for the cruelty he’d faced.

Even as her own father had been a loyal, devoted husband, the larger reality for most was that bastards were the way of Polite Society. Gentlemen joined their clubs, drank their brandies, and fathered illegitimate children upon the mistresses who’d never be their wives, but whom they’d bestow their affections and attentions upon.

She was ashamed to realize . . . until this moment? She’d never given proper thought to how those children were treated. What hardships they must know.

Was this what Charles’s son faced?

Anger brought her teeth snapping together so hard that pain raced up along her jawline.

“I can leave,” the child whispered, misunderstanding the reason for her silence, mistaking it for a rebuke of his birthright, factors beyond his control, ones she resented for him. He made to stand.

Emma shot out a hand, staying him.

“That is not the reason they are unkind to you,” she said quietly. His brow dipped with confusion. “The truth is, cruelty is what fills heartless people with something other than the emptiness in that organ. Insults are merely the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong.”

“That is splendid,” he said in awed tones.

Emma rescued a copy of Rousseau’s work and held it aloft. “Alas, those latter words belonged to Mr. Rousseau.”

His features softened.

Eager to continue diverting his thoughts away from the meanness he’d known that day, she made a show of examining the title a moment. “This is a rather impressive collection of works to read.” Emma gathered up another, studying the maroon lettering. “John Locke, Two Treatises of Government?” She glanced up.

“I enjoy it.” His spine grew several inches, and he looked taller for the now proud set of his shoulders. “And I’m ten. Not so young. I am just”—he wrinkled his freckled nose—“small,” he said under his breath.

Emma set Locke’s work atop the neat stack they’d formed. “Bah. As I said, height has nothing to do with how tall a person truly is. Why, I was teased mercilessly when I made my Come Out because I was too tall.”

“You were teased?” the boy ventured hesitantly.

“Mercilessly. Lesser people can and will always find some perceived flaw to bully a person over.” Memories filtered in . . . of that meanness she’d met from other debutantes at Almack’s, women who’d attributed Emma’s height as just one of the many reasons her betrothed had wanted nothing to do with her. “Now, how one lives one’s life? How he or she treats others? How he or she helps others in need of help? That is what matters . . . ?” She stared at him questioningly, seeking his name.

“Seamus,” the child murmured. “My name is Seamus.”

Emma held out her spare hand. “And I am Emma.” The boy stared at it a moment before placing his fingers in hers and shaking. His hand was so very fragile and so very small, and for a moment, she wondered what it would be to have a child of her own. A tiny boy or girl who loved the same books she did. She’d thought of that once.

Before she’d fully appreciated just how very much her betrothed had despised her and the idea of a future with her.

Drawing back her hand, Emma forced aside thoughts of what was never to have been, and shifted her attention squarely to her new companion.

Lowering onto her stomach, she reached for the nearest book.

“Who is your favorite, Seamus?”