The Importance of Being Wanton by Christi Caldwell

Chapter 14

THE LONDONER

A MEETING BETWEEN RIVALS

The dashing Earl of Scarsdale was seen beside the sour Miss Gately. Society is abuzz with what the two leaders of rival establishments might have been meeting on . . .

M. FAIRPOINT

Having collected a not-so-very-small stack of books for his new club, Charles deposited them at the counter and went off in search of his nephew, knowing implicitly where he’d find Seamus. And even more exactly, how he’d find him.

Seamus would be precisely as Charles had left him: sprawled upon his stomach with a stack of books spread out before him. But for the periodic turning of pages, he’d be absolutely silent, completely engrossed in whatever title he read that day.

As it turned out, when he came upon the boy, Seamus proved not so silent, but still engrossed . . . just in a way different from all the previous times before it.

And also . . . not alone.

“He is quite possibly the most critical thinker, the most accomplished of all the Enlightened philosophers,” Seamus said with more enthusiasm than Charles ever recalled of the boy.

“Oh, come,” the young woman who lay shoulder to shoulder beside Seamus scoffed. “He is highly overrated.”

From where he stood at the end of the aisle, Charles froze. That woman and her voice were both familiar. But it was impossible. It was more a product of him seeing her anywhere and everywhere. For there was no other accounting for how she’d come to be here, and with Seamus . . .

“Never!” Seamus said. “His is one of the most widely disseminated works of all the Enlightenment.”

Angling a hand out before her, she proceeded to tick points off on her fingers. “Born into a prominent family. A family whose influence provided him with the schooling and connections to rise effortlessly?”

“Well, who do you think is the best?” Seamus challenged, that slight emphasis indicating whomever it was would never hold up against the philosopher whose work he supported.

“Do you want to know?” Emma kicked up her heels, rucking her skirts slightly below her knees, and Charles swallowed hard, certain there wasn’t a more magnificent sight than she, conversing on matters of political philosophy with her shapely calves so exposed. At her side, Seamus brought his legs up, matching Emma’s posture.

The little boy nodded vigorously, his glasses slipping down. And then with the tenderest of movements, Emma leaned over and ever so naturally slid those rims back into their proper place.

Charles’s breath hitched, the sound thankfully lost to that unlikely pair so very engrossed in their debate.

“Le Rond,” she said.

Seamus blinked. “Le Ronnnd?” The added syllable to that particular name highlighted the boy’s incredulity and disappointment.

Emma nodded. “Yes.”

There was a pause, and then Seamus burst out laughing. “You’re ribbing me.”

“Not at all,” she said with a seriousness that penetrated through the boy’s mirth. Fishing around a neater-than-usual stack of books, carefully piled and clearly a product of Emma’s influence, she plucked one of the titles free and popped it open.

“Le Rond isn’t as notable as the other Enlightened thinkers. But he also didn’t have a fancy, fine upbringing, as so many of them did. He didn’t come into the world with connections.” As she spoke, Seamus sat absorbed in her telling, with a riveted awe and fascination that Charles understood all too well, as he’d been bewitched by the same spell she wove. Emma paused on one of the pages and pushed it over to the child at her side. “He was illegitimate,” she said softly, and Charles stiffened, but he needn’t have been worried on Seamus’s behalf. With an almost reverence to his hesitant movements, Seamus pulled the book closer and looked down at whatever words Emma now pointed to. “He was left upon the steps of a church—abandoned. His education was paid for, but everything he did with that education? Well, that came because of him and being free of the powerful influence enjoyed by so many of these others.”

As the pair launched into a discussion about the French thinker, Charles stared on, a silent observer. His mind raced, and it was physically impossible to leave. Even though he should. Even though his being here infringed upon this special moment Seamus had found.

Nay, this special moment Seamus had found . . . with Emma.

Charles tried to make sense . . . of any of it: How had the two come to be here, together? How had they struck up such a familiar discussion on a topic that was so dear to the boy . . . and apparently, to Emma? It was one more thing Charles had never known about her. So much of her remained a mystery.

Charles ran his gaze over her long, slender form. A mystery that he desperately wished to understand and uncover . . . and share in.

Here all these years, Charles and his family had spent the better part of his life keeping Seamus from the world. There’d been an even more concerted effort to keep him away from Emma Gately.

Only to now stumble upon the pair of them sprawled on the floor, conversing ever so effortlessly, as though they were not only the fastest of friends, but longtime ones at that.

Crossing her comfortable-looking boots behind her, Emma spoke animatedly, gesturing to the page as she did. Periodically, Seamus nodded, which only fueled the enthusiastic cadence as Emma spoke, her words lost, but not her excitement . . .

And in that moment, with Emma Gately lying on a bookshop floor, conversing freely and joyously as she did with Seamus, Charles fell head over heels in love with her.

He caught the end of the shelving unit, the world shifting under him.

The floorboards also moved under Charles’s unsteady balance.

Fortunately, wholly engrossed in what she was sharing, Emma remained oblivious to Charles’s presence, for which Charles would be eternally grateful. Everything spun and whirred. His thoughts all skidded together; his pulse raced. He’d known he wanted to marry her—too late, of course. He’d belatedly discovered she was a woman of wit and courage and confidence. But these past two days, he’d seen her in ways he’d failed to before.

But seeing her here, like this? It left him shaken to the core. This tangible, living, breathing proof of why his heart belonged to Emma Gately, and why it wouldn’t properly beat until he managed to convince her of the impossible—that he was deserving of her.

Seamus angled a glance over his shoulder, and his eyes brightened. “Scarsdale!” he greeted.

The book promptly slipped from Emma’s fingers, landing with a dull thwack, as she whipped around to face him.

Her lips moved several times before any words emerged. “Charlesss?” Emma’s beautifully sharp cheeks went through varying shades of red before arriving at a bright hue of crimson . . .

Charles hooded his eyes.

The same color of red she’d worn last evening when—

“You know one another?” Seamus blurted, effectively dousing the wicked thoughts Charles had no place having. At least, not here. Not now. And not with the young boy before him doing the questioning.

“Uh . . .” Charles doffed his hat. For it . . . felt . . . inherently wrong that he’d never before introduced Emma to the nephew whom he was raising as his son.

Slowly, Emma sat up but didn’t rise. She drew up her legs, with her knees close to her chest. “We . . . do,” she supplied for him, of course more courageous and capable of finding her words than Charles.

Alas, no child, particularly not his inquisitive nephew, would ever be contented with that veiled, incomplete explanation.

Seamus looked back and forth from Charles to Emma, then finally settled on Charles.

“This is Miss Gately,” Charles said quietly.

His nephew’s already big eyes bulged. “This is Miss Gately? But—”

As Emma’s focus sharpened on the boy, Charles made a loud clearing sound, slashing a hand at his throat, cutting off the remainder of whatever ill-timed response the child might make. Emma looked back swiftly, and Charles hastily disguised that motion, scratching at his throat instead.

She narrowed her eyes, the suspicion there so very different from the unrestrained warmth and openness with which she and Seamus conversed. And Charles proved the miserable rotter Emma and society believed him to be, because he found himself envying his nephew the closeness he’d found with her. “And . . . you know one another,” she stated, when Charles failed to own his connection to Seamus.

“Seamus is my son.” He’d breathed the lie so much it had become truth to the world.

He braced for Emma to tense. To leave. As would be her right, given that to her knowledge, he’d been unfaithful to her, and in other ways Charles had been. It didn’t matter that he’d done so to maintain a lie to spare his sister’s reputation. Because she didn’t know those details.

Because you never told her . . . But what if you had . . .

Perhaps then she wouldn’t have looked upon him with wary mistrust . . .

What he was unprepared for was the warmth of the smile . . . this time, directed at Charles. “Your son is a clever young man.”

Charles’s heart filled.

The little boy grew several inches under that praise, beaming and proud.

And damn it all if Charles didn’t fall in love with her for a second time that day. “He is,” he said hoarsely.

Sitting up, Seamus sat with his ankles crossed and his knees folded close to him. He urged Charles to join them, but Charles hesitated, not wanting to infringe upon their meeting, and not wanting the brief moment he’d shared with Emma to end, and for them to find themselves in the place they always did . . . at odds and battling.

Seamus’s smile wavered.

Emma waved Charles over.

And he would have followed her wherever she led in that moment.

Venturing deeper down the aisle, Charles joined Emma and Seamus, lowering himself to the floor.

“Miss Gately,” the child began as soon as Charles had taken up a spot between Emma and Seamus.

“Emma,” she corrected, tendering that use of her Christian name.

“Emma knows ever so much about the Enlightened thinkers. So. Much.” Seamus lifted his hands and held them apart to signify the breadth of his new idol’s knowledge. “And do you know what she said?” The boy didn’t wait. “Le Rond was a bastard, Scarsdale. A bastard. And he was left on a hospital’s steps and . . .”

While the child launched into a near word-for-word recitation of everything Emma had shared on the philosopher, Charles caught her eye.

They shared a smile, and he felt a buoyant lightness fill every corner of his being at the warmth there. At the connection between them.

This is what it could have been . . .

As she looked back to Seamus, the smile froze on Charles’s face, tense and tight and painful. For this was what it could have been if he hadn’t resisted a future with her. If he hadn’t directed undeserved anger her way, over decisions their parents had made. Their parents, who had known better than Charles what he needed.

If he’d just taken the time to know her.

Nearly breathless, Seamus concluded speaking. “Scarsdale insists that Locke is the most clever.”

Emma whipped another startled gaze up Charles’s way. “You read the Enlightened thinkers?”

And his fingers twitched with the need to yank at a suddenly uncomfortably tight cravat. “I . . .”

“Oh, yes!” Seamus happily supplied for him.

He felt Emma’s stare, the interest in her pretty blue eyes deepening. “Indeed?”

No one had looked to him for any form of intellectual discourse. They’d taken him for an athlete. A fellow given to a good jest. In fact, he’d been laughed at for his academic attempts at university. But with Emma . . . for the first time, he felt free in discussing topics previously denied him.

“I’m not nearly as versed or even half as intelligent in the topic as Seamus,” he explained. Academics had never come easy and, as such, had never been any remotely strong suit of Charles. But proud as he was—nay . . . embarrassed as he was—he couldn’t bring himself to admit any of that aloud. “Everything I’ve learned has been from this one.” Leaning over, he ruffled his nephew’s golden locks. “I wouldn’t have even known anything of it, hadn’t it been for him.”

“Bahhh.”Seamus swatted at his hand. “Tell Emma what you told me about Locke and why you like him so much?”

Oh, hell, he felt exposed. And this time, Charles did wrestle with his cravat. “Miss Gately doesn’t want to hear—”

“Oh, she does!” Emma exclaimed. She swiveled her attention back to the little boy. “I do.”

“Once, I had a nasty tutor . . .” Seamus went on, happy to supply that which Charles attempted to withhold. “A mean, stern fellow. He rapped my knuckles”—he lifted his hand, displaying the sight of that old, now invisible wound for Emma—“and often.”

She gasped. “The bounder.”

“Worry not; Scarsdale sacked him.” The little boy flashed a crooked-toothed smile. “But only after he’d punched him in the stomach.”

Charles winced. “I didn’t really hit him”—he managed a sheepish grin—“that hard?”

Clapping lightly, Emma laughed. “I shall always applaud the defense of another in need.”

And with that dimpled, radiant smile trained upon him, Charles had an understanding of just how Seamus had felt, being elevated so by this woman before him.

Emma looped her arms about her knees and rested her chin atop them; she rubbed it back and forth over her skirts distractedly. “Now tell me, Lord Scarsdale, what is your opinion on Mr. Locke and his writings?”

Once again, Charles’s mind went racing back to all the times at Eton and Oxford when he’d been marched to the front of the classroom and put on display, to fumble through some point that he hadn’t fully understood. The damp palms, the churning in his stomach that had been eased only when he’d donned a grin and made up some jest or another to distract the class, and spare himself anything but the fury of the preceptors.

The gentle encouragement in Emma’s eyes, however . . . proved different from the coldness of frustrated instructors who’d not known what to do with a marquess’s son and failed student. That warmth radiating from her gaze pushed aside all the keen reminders of his failings and allowed him to continue. “I pointed out to Seamus that Locke spoke of learning by play and recreation, and as such, every child should be thusly so encouraged.”

Emma stopped that distracted movement of her chin, and resting it there on her knees, she stared at him. “That is lovely,” she said softly. And in this moment with her, he didn’t feel like a failure of a student. He didn’t think about all the details he didn’t know. “I never thought of it in quite that way.” Her nose wrinkled at the end in what he’d come to learn was an endearing indication of her in contemplative thought. And he wanted all those details about this woman. He wanted to know everything about her, and all the subtleties that made Emma Gately, Emma Gately.

Even as you are undeserving of one as clever and strong and witty as she is,a voice taunted. And it was . . . the first time in which he’d made himself own that reality, that she was entirely too good for him.

“My own governesses all sought to turn me into what society viewed as an appropriately serious student,” she went on through the tumult of his thoughts. “Until I came across one who opened my eyes to the philosophers and deeper thought, and I just naturally came to expect that to consider scholarly topics, one need behave in a way that is considered scholarly.” She straightened. And this time as she spoke, she did so almost more to herself . . . as if her eyes had been opened to a point she’d never considered, and as that thought took root, her excitement grew. “But why must it? Why should children be expected to be—”

“Miniature adults?” Charles supplied for her.

Emma nodded frantically. “Precisely!” She sat back. “Why, I think you are the one who has had the right of it all these years, Cha—” She slid a glance in a grinning Seamus’s direction. “Lord Scarsdale,” Emma substituted.

“I told you,” Seamus said with a pride that Charles was undeserving of.

And damned if he didn’t feel himself blushing like the schoolboy he’d once been. “Yes, well, as I said, my knowledge is less extensive than either yours or Miss Gately’s. And that selection of Locke is only because I never knew of Le Rond”—Charles held Emma’s eyes—“until Miss Gately.”

“Do not diminish your own thoughts and opinions, Charles.” Emma spoke with a quiet yet gentle insistence, and his mouth went dry as it hit him square between the eyes: she saw.

She saw and knew that he’d attempted to shift away praise and return their focus to his deficits—of which there were many.

It was too much. Too intimate. And it was all happening too quickly, in this very public place.

Charles cleared his throat and averted his gaze, bringing it over to his wide-grinning nephew.

And by that wide grin, the boy also saw too much. “You did not say how you and Emma came to meet?” It was a question that, the moment it left his lips, Charles wished he hadn’t asked, because the light the boy had previously radiated . . . dimmed.

The boy’s gaze fell to the tips of his boots, and he studied the leather as intently as he did the books he pored over in the late-night hours. “Miss Gately was kind enough to . . . help me when . . . when . . .”

“You make more of it than there was,” Emma said quickly, resting a hand so gently, so naturally upon Seamus’s shoulder that a cinch squeezed tightly about Charles’s chest.

“I’m not.”

“Then we shall agree to disagree,” she said with a gentle but firm insistence. The pair exchanged a look, a warm, kind bond that only deepened the pressure weighing down on Charles.

“Emmma?”

They looked back as one to the trio standing there at the end of the aisle: Emma’s sister, Miss Isla Gately; and her friend Lady Olivia; and . . . Charles sharpened his gaze on the tall, wiry fellow scowling back at him.

Emma scrambled to her feet. “Isla! Olivia! Owen!”

Owen?

Not taking his eyes off the gentleman still glaring at him, Charles stood more slowly.

The gentleman whom Emma had spoken to so naturally looked her way. In an instant, the hardness left the fellow’s angular face, as he went instantly soft at the sight of her.

Charles’s back went up.

He knew the look of a besotted man. Nay, a man besotted with Emma Gately. It was a look he himself had worn for the better part of two months. And who was to say how much longer this gent had . . . and how long he’d been squiring Emma and her sister and friend about?

And not for the first time that day, he felt the burning sting of jealousy as it sizzled to life and ran through his veins like an electric charge, that seething sentiment more potent . . . this time not for the easy companionship Emma had known with Seamus, but because of the man before him.

Yes, he also knew a rival when he saw one.

“Seamus, Lord Scarsdale, allow me to introduce my sister, Isla; my dearest friend, Lady Olivia; and her brother, Mr. Owen Watley.” The gentleman, Mr. Owen Watley, dropped a stiff and reluctant bow. “This is Lord Scarsdale’s son, Mr. Seamus Hayden,” Emma finished.

Her pronouncement ushered in a quick, thick, and awkward silence.

Tension whipped through Charles, his own blistering resentment toward the younger gentleman’s regard for Emma temporarily forgotten, and he slid closer to Seamus. He rested a hand upon his nephew’s shoulder. From the corner of Charles’s eye, he caught a slight movement. In a show of solidarity and support, Emma flanked the boy’s other side.

God, she was . . . magnificent. Beautiful in her strength and support and honor.

What a fool he’d been.

The quiet abruptly ended.

Isla and Olivia, instantly smiles, came over to join them, exchanging pleasantries with Seamus. All the while, Emma facilitated a discussion between the boy and pair of ladies. Periodically, she’d nod, and say something that earned a blush or smile from Seamus.

Charles’s skin prickled as Mr. Watley hung on the fringe, glowering once more at him.

Given the deplorable way in which Charles had behaved toward Emma these past years, he certainly wasn’t exempt from the other man’s disapproval. Even so, Seamus had no part of the decisions Charles had made, and as such, Charles hardly intended to let a young pup—and at that, a young pup who’d been making eyes at Charles’s former betrothed—go about glowering his way like a stern Lady Jersey at Almack’s.

Charles lifted a single eyebrow in the younger man’s direction. Mr. Watley flushed and looked away.

Alas, Mr. Watley wasn’t the only one to ice Charles with a single look.

Emma’s sister pinned an impressive glare upon him. “We should be going, should we not, Emma?”

There was a brief moment of hesitation.

“Yes, we should be going,” Emma murmured.

Or mayhap it was merely Charles’s own yearnings for that slight pause, some indication, any indication, that Emma wished to remain here . . . as he so desperately wanted her to. But as they’d been with Seamus, before her small army of friends had arrived.

She held out her fingers to Seamus. “It was a pleasure, Mr. Hayden.”

“The same, miss,” Seamus returned, giving her palm a mighty shake.

Emma turned to Charles, her gaze softer than he ever remembered . . . at least as it had been directed to him. It was time for her to leave. And he hated it. He hated that this trio had come upon them and stolen the too-brief exchange he and Emma and Seamus had shared.

“Miss Gately,” he said quietly.

She bowed her head. “Lord Scarsdale.” And with a curtsy, she took her leave, and pausing at the end of the aisle, she cast one more glance his way.

Her sister said something, and then reaching back, she grabbed Emma and dragged her off.

The moment they’d gone, Charles continued to stare after the place she’d been.

His nephew came to stand next to him, and Charles reluctantly forced his attention away from that empty spot and down to Seamus.

“That was your Miss Gately,” his nephew whispered.

“Yes.”

“The very one you did not want to marry?”

Charles flinched. “Yes?”

Seamus gave his head a rueful shake.

“I know. I know.” Charles swiped his hands over his face. “I knoww,” he added for a third time. Because it really couldn’t be stated enough, all the ways in which he’d made a blunder of it where Emma was concerned.

In the greatest reversal of roles, the small child patted Charles on the low of his back. “Better to have discovered it now, than never.”

“No, you have me there.” The right corner of Charles’s lips tugged up. “Come,” he said, shifting away from further talk of Emma that was only destined to lead to details too complex for the child before him. “As penance for my years of folly, I shall purchase this whole collection for you.”

Seamus giggled. “No.” He held aloft a small, brown leather volume. “I only want this one.”

Charles scanned the title.

Le Rond.

Whether that philosopher was truly Emma’s favorite thinker, or whether she’d merely been attempting to help a hurting boy, was unclear.

As he and Seamus returned the remainder of the books to their respective places upon the shelves, Charles knew only one certainty—he’d been thoroughly bewitched this day by Emma Gately, and he’d not been the only one.