The Importance of Being Wanton by Christi Caldwell
Chapter 16
THE LONDONER
FROM RIVALRY . . . TO FEUD
Between Miss Gately’s Mismatch Club and the Earl of Scarsdale’s Club du Livre, never before has London been beset by a rivalry between two, since the War of the Roses.
M. FAIRPOINT
After a fortnight of direct challenges to the Mismatch Society from Charles, and the endless barrage of social scrutiny their rivalry had received, Emma had resolved that day to not let herself dwell on him or any of it.
She’d not focus on the praise being lavished upon Charles’s venture, while disparagements rained down on hers. Or the fact that his numbers continued to rise, while hers continued to fall. Or the fact that he’d somehow ascertained topics of her discussion and incorporated them into his meetings. Or the fact that he’d sent flowers and French chocolates in the middle of a Mismatch meeting, effectively distracting everyone from the day’s agenda, because, really, which lady was capable of resisting chocolate?
She wasn’t going to think of any of it.
Nay, none of it.
Alas, fate was a cruel, fickle mistress, who was surely born of Polite Society.
In the middle of Lady Rutland’s soiree, from where Emma stood at the entrance to one of the hostess’s card rooms, laughter filled the air, so strong it washed over her like a wave of hilarity.
“Are we . . . not in the card room?” Owen asked puzzledly.
Yes, because none would ever know it, given the sound echoing around the room. Not the laughter of Polite Society—practiced giggles tittered behind hands.
This was the belly-deep amusement roused only by a master storyteller and charmer.
“Oh, no. We are,” Emma seethed. “We are precisely where we are supposed to be.” It was everyone else, however, who appeared mistaken about what it was they were supposed to be doing in here.
The lanky lord, taller than most men, angled his neck in a bid to get a better view.
“Charles,” she said between her teeth. Fortunately that bold claiming of his name was lost on another round of laughter from the people surrounding him.
From her, Isla, Olivia, and Owen’s vantage in the doorway, it was hard to make out much of anything beyond the crush of bodies. None of which were seated at the card tables, and all of whom were surrounding one table at the very center of the room.
Emma narrowed her eyes. And there could be absolutely no disputing which charmer was at the center of that show. Was it any wonder? Was it any wonder at absolute all that Charles Hayden, the Earl of Scarsdale, had had the success he had in establishing his club amongst Polite Society? Any wonder at all?
Emma gritted her teeth.
Or that he’d done so with the ton’s utmost approval and appreciation. When the Mismatch Society should be condemned. It was unpardonable. It was a crime against women.
“Let us leave, Emma,” Olivia said softly, taking her arm to steer their quartet away.
Emma gently but firmly disentangled herself and locked her feet to Lady Rutland’s drawing-room floor.
“Yes, we can go to the other card room,” Isla urged.
The other card room, which was no doubt empty because nearly all the guests had crammed themselves inside this particular drawing room, filling up every space, like some kind of overstuffed armoire. And she was half tempted to agree. That, however, would be an act of cowardice. A concession in a battle with her former betrothed.
“Come, Emma,” her sister insisted once more, and Emma ignored her, squinting for a glimpse of the thief of her ideas.
And then she found him.
She narrowed her eyes.
Lords and ladies of all ages swarmed Charles’s card table, where he lounged comfortably, gesturing with his hands while he spoke. His mirth-filled baritone rose over the noisy crowd. Most of his words were lost, but not the infectiousness in them. He’d always possessed an absolute ease around all that she’d been in awe of. And secretly envied him for. No person should be so unaffected when there was Emma who was . . . well, Emma.
“And Lord Alvanley said—”
“I’ll tell it, Scarsdale,” Lord Alvanley interrupted, and several figures shifted slightly, revealing a hint of the pair who held the entire room enthralled. “You wanted me to join a club. I already belong to four . . . and he said . . .” He paused, the room falling silent, and it was as though the masterful storyteller who held the room enrapt with Charles knew how to draw out the moment. “Not like this one, Alvanley. You see, there aren’t just gents present, but ladies, too, with the finest”—Emma’s eyebrows shot up—“discussions.”
Floored by the shock of that almost outrageously improper comment, it took a moment to register. And then the room erupted with their mirth.
Lady Jersey tapped Charles’s shoulder with her fan. “You naughty boy, teasing so!”
Emma rolled her eyes. Only Charles could charm the most respectable matrons while behaving so wickedly.
“He snagged Alvanley’s membership,” Isla whispered.
Emma searched her gaze over the pair at the center of the crowd’s attention. “Yes, I see that.” The wittiest lord, more noteworthy and sought after than the late Beau Brummell, should have joined Charles’s ranks? Bloody hell, this was dire. This was dire, indeed.
“Well, I vote for choosing any room but this one,” Owen said indignantly. “I won’t have us keep company with someone who’d so threaten your endeavor.”
“Yes,” Olivia agreed. “I am of the same opinion as Owen.”
“No,” Emma said calmly. Though appreciating those efforts on her behalf from each of her friends, she’d not be run off. And with her sister and Olivia pleading quietly behind her, Emma ventured into the room.
Not that she need worry about anyone having bothered trying to run her off; they were all fully engrossed in Charles and Lord Alvanley’s telling. Grabbing the chair of a vacant table far from the night’s entertainment, Emma seated herself.
Her friends hovered there, silent. Isla was the first to join Emma on one of Lady Rutland’s Dutch Marquetry side chairs. The others promptly fell into the vacant ones.
“There,” Emma said, reaching for the deck of new cards. “That is better.” Feeling her friends’ eyes on her, she paused and looked up. “The way I see it, we easily found a table, and no one is paying us any mind, which is how we prefer it.”
“Really?”Isla said tersely. Emma should have known better than to expect her sister would allow her that self-delusion. “Is there anything better about any of this . . . ?”
“Demmed hilarious, you are, Scarsdale,” Alvanley boomed, his high praise ushering in an echo of concurring opinions from the earl’s adoring audience.
Emma tightened her mouth. Yes, hilarious.
She resumed shuffling.
Hilarious, the way he’d rescheduled his meetings so they coincided with her meeting times.
Hilarious, how he’d sent a small army of children to distribute information about his club all down Waverton Street to passersby.
The crowd shifted, putting Charles on display, just as a lady pressed herself against his shoulder.
The cards flew from Emma’s fingers and rained down about the table in a wrinkled mess.
And, of course, Charles would choose that moment to look up. His gaze found hers, and she held his stare, because she’d be damned if she looked away first. Or at all.
He bowed his head in silent greeting.
The entire room’s attention swung her way.
Oh, bloody hell.
Affixing a smile to her lips, Emma returned that greeting, lest any more be said about how cold and emotionless she was. She hurried to gather up the cards, stacking them. Alas, her shaking fingers made the task impossible.
“Here,” Owen murmured, gently taking the sloppy stack from her.
“Thank you,” she mouthed.
Olivia’s brother smiled, then effortlessly saw to the shuffle, allowing Emma a chance to get her thoughts ordered. When he’d finished, he set them down, having Isla see to the cut. Collecting the deck, Emma distributed them, doling out thirteen for each . . . when a shadow fell over the table.
And she knew, implicitly, intuitively, born of her awareness of him.
She fumbled her deal, revealing the king of hearts.
How perfectly suited, she thought.
Emma forced herself to look up, and as one, she and her tablemates rose, dropping respective curtsies, and a reluctant bow from Owen.
Charles’s eyes, however—his gaze belonged to Emma. It was the manner of piercing stare that made a woman feel as if she were the only one in the room, and he was there to join her in that solitude, making the moment theirs. Which was utter romantic rot. They weren’t the only two, and there was an entire room of ton members gleefully watching the charming earl and the gangly Gately girl, who’d not been able to hold him. Even so, their gazes remained locked, the moment belonging to only them.
“Miss Gately,” he murmured in that smooth baritone that had likely brought many a woman to surrender and sin for him. “Would you join me in a turn about the room?” And not unlike that serpent who’d first tempted Eve, he offered his elbow as the apple it was.
“Shove off, Scarsdale,” Isla snapped. “We’re in the middle of something.”
To Charles’s credit, he displayed no outward shock or outrage at that greeting. “Miss Gately,” he said with a smile. “A pleasure, as always.”
“Only when you’re gone,” she said, returning that smile.
“Isla,” Emma warned.
And when presented with the possibility of having her friends flay Charles, and in a public way, or accept that invitation and take on the attention herself, she’d always choose the latter. Hastily placing her fingers atop his sleeve, she allowed him to escort her off, and start their journey around the perimeter of the parquet floor.
“Have a care with that one, Emma-love,” Charles said. “You’re going to break his heart.”
Puzzling her brow, she followed his pointed stare across the busy room, over to a glowering Owen.
“Owenn?”she asked, before lowering her voice. “He is a friend.” Charles steered them right out of Lady Rutland’s drawing room and onward to the other card room. The other empty card room. “Only you insist on making all matters between a man and a woman romantic,” she said, her voice echoing around the large, vacant drawing room. Because they’d all gathered to listen to this man and Lord Alvanley.
“That gent is eyeing you with romantic eyes,” he said bluntly as she slipped free of his arm and ventured deeper into the room. “Trust me as one who knows.”
Envy whipped through her, green like a snake unleashing its poison. “Because you’ve made so many romantic eyes?”
“Yes, because they’re my own these past months whenever I see you, Emma-love.”
His words, smooth and low, rumbled through the room, and Emma trembled. “Don’t call me that.” To give her fingers something to do, she picked up a deck from the nearby card table. “You are so practiced with your words. A rogue through and through.”
He strolled closer, his a languid glide, until he stopped on the other side of the table. “Not in this,” he said quietly. “Only with you, Emie.”
“Stop it,” she ordered, dampening her mouth. “That is what my father calls me.”
“Then Emma-love it shall be,” he murmured in that deep, rich baritone, steeped in warmth and sin. How was it possible for a voice to bring a woman’s body to tremble? Charles leaned across the table, and her breath quickened in her chest. “Never fear, I shall keep searching for the endearment you so choose.”
It implied his resolve—one that had annoyed her in the initial months, but after their meeting over billiards in her family’s household that not-so-long-ago day, had served only to . . . confuse her. “Why are you here?” she asked, gripping tightly the playing deck. All the while, she felt Charles’s gaze upon her. “You studiously avoid soirees.”
“You know that?”
Her fingers fumbled the shuffle, and she promptly righted the deck . . . and herself. “Of course I know that,” she said, her cheeks heating at how much she’d inadvertently revealed. Unlike him, she had paid attention to how he’d spent his evenings, and to the events he preferred attending. Which was how she could say with enough certainty that she’d wager freely at all the card tables present everything she knew about Charles’s affaires de coeur—and win.
“Yes, well, you are not incorrect,” he murmured. “I despise them, Emma,” he said. “I did come here with the express certainty of seeing someone.”
Her heart lifted.
“Camille appreciates when I . . . attend the same events she does.”
Camille.
His sister.
“You came . . . because of your sister?” And oddly, that garnered even more warmth than when she’d been foolish enough to believe he was here for her.
“Do you take me for a cur?” The right corner of his mouth crooked up. “Never mind. Don’t answer that.”
Except he’d already opened the door for her, and she slipped through. “Do you know, I think you are a cur, Charles Hayden,” she said. Putting down the cards, she stepped around the table to confront him head-on.
He stiffened.
“But I do not think of you as a cur for the reasons you believe. You’re a loyal brother, and a devoted son. And a good friend.”
He grinned, a silly, dazed-looking, boyish smile that didn’t fit with the completely confident rogue who moments ago had charmed Lady Rutland’s drawing room. “Indeed.”
“Do not”—she stuck a finger in his chest, earning a little grunt from the gentleman—“let it go to your head.”
His smile widened. “Too late.”
Yes, she could see that. “Who you are to your family, however, doesn’t undo the fact that you are wreaking havoc on my society.”
“How so?” He bristled with an over-the-top indignation that rang loud for the patent falseness it was.
“Chocolate, Charles.” Emma folded her arms at her chest. “You sent chocolate?”
“Everyone loooooves chocolate. I thought it should please you.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Do you truly expect me to believe that load of rot?”
He winked.
“You are poaching my members.”
“Ah-ah-ah.” He wagged a finger. “Au contraire, mon amie—I am welcoming all members. You see, I am not so . . . exclusive. So restrictive. So . . . narrow-minded,” he continued over her gasp, “in who I allow or disallow. Men and women should be free to interact in society, not separate from one another, but free to challenge each other.” He dropped a hip atop the card table and folded his arms. “You see, we’re really quite progressive.”
Which was precisely what the papers had called him. Her mouth went slack, and she sucked in a noisy gasp before expelling it in a noisy exhale. “You?”
His brow dipped. “What is that supposed to mean?”
He’d “what-is-that-supposed-to-mean” her? “You have The Londoner in your pocket.” Emma jabbed her finger at his lapel.
He scoffed. “What rubbish. Of course I don’t have them in my pocket.” He paused. “I merely posted advertisements, nothing more.”
She peered at him.
“My God,” she exclaimed, shaking her head hard enough to send her chignon loose and several blasted strands free. “And this is why they’re printing such horrid things about the Mismatch Society. They ceased their personal attacks on me but moved over to the Mismatch Society,” she spat. “Now it makes sense.”
“I would never pay for the spread of unfavorable words spoken about you or your society, Emma.” His hurt was palpable, and was not any that even the best London stage actor could feign.
She managed a smile. “All that, I’ve managed to secure on my own?”
He nodded. “Precisely.”
The moment that affirmation left him, Emma’s and Charles’s eyebrows both went flying up. “No. That is not”—he made a slashing motion with his arms—“what I meant. Not you. There’d never be anything anyone could ever say about you,” he said quietly, his words a physical caress.
“Just my society.”
He nodded.
With a sound of disgust, she made to step around him.
“I’m making a blunder of this, I am,” he said quickly, hurrying to put himself in her path.
Emma stopped short, and again, crossing her arms, she glared at him. “Indeed, you are. For someone so very urbane and smooth.”
Charles turned up his hands sheepishly. “I told you, love; I’m not capable of any pretense around you.”
And she hated her heart for reacting as if that solemnly delivered vow actually meant something to him.
“You would challenge my society, Charles? Suggest it is somehow inferior.”
“I’ve done no such thing!”
“All the while, you pass yourself off as—”
“Progressive,” he finished for her.
Emma burst out laughing.
She laughed so hard the tears came running, streaming down her cheeks. She tried to speak, opening her mouth, and then, shaking her head, she leaned into her amusement all the more. Good Lord, it was just too much. Too much.
Charles frowned. “What is so amusing about that?” he demanded when her laughter subsided.
“It means that I’d hardly think a man who consigns desperate women to the role of mistress to see to your pleasures is so very progressive.”
His color turned an interesting shade of red she’d never before seen human skin turn. “I . . . I assure you. My . . . my . . .” Oh, now this she was rather enjoying, the smug, assured Lord Scarsdale stammering like every last lady, from debutante to dowager, he’d charmed the pantalets off.
“Mis-tress,”she clearly enunciated for him, and his cheeks went crimson. And here, before talking to Charles at various points in the last several months, she’d not believed scoundrels and rogues capable of that feat.
“First, Emma, I would have you know that those women were—”
“In need of funds to secure their futures?”
His frown deepened. “I was going to say ‘quite pleased with the arrangement.’”
That blow landed, no doubt, exactly as he’d intended, like a sharp barb between the breasts. “Oh, undoubtedly,” she drawled, heaping all the sarcasm she could into those two words. Emma headed for the door.
“Never tell me you’ve not thought of that night we shared.”
His words brought her up short, halting her in her tracks. He’d gone there . . . that place she’d no chance of holding the upper hand over. Even so, Emma brought back her shoulders and faced him anyway.
It was a mistake.
He smiled slowly, then pushed away from the table and, letting his arms fall, began a slow, languid stroll across the room. Toward her. His steps sleek, his movements even sleeker. He stopped between her and the doorway out.
She knew what he was doing. She knew exactly what he intended, and knowing should have made her immune to it, and yet, God help her, he moved like a panther she’d once watched in fascination at the Royal Menagerie.
He stopped, a fraction apart, so close she felt his breath, a hint of brandy and the whisper of chocolate, an unexpectedly sweet flavor upon him, that begged to be tasted.
Her opinion of him was so very low.
And for only good reasons.
Why, he’d spent years giving them to her. Glad she resented him as much as he resented her. Until now. Hating it with all his soul . . . that he’d not been better for her.
In this moment, everything he wanted to do with her and to her marked him the very scoundrel she took him to be. But God help him, with her eyes fiery and her cheeks flushed with that bright color, and those long, straight strands falling over her shoulder, she seduced him more than any scandalous garment she could have donned.
Reaching behind her, he brought the door shut, and turned the lock.
Click.
Emma followed his actions with her eyes. “What are you doing?” Even as he brought a hand up, cupping her cheek, and her lashes slid shut, and she leaned into him.
“I have thought of only you and that night, Emma.”
“And destroying my club,” she added. But her hands crept up, and she gripped the front of his jacket.
“Well, building up my own.” He ran a trail of kisses down the curve of her cheek.
“It is the s-same thing.” She moaned, the little wanton spill of her desire from her lips fueling his, and Charles filled his palms with her lush buttocks, drawing her close to his shaft.
“I thought you were a society?” he asked, nipping lightly at her neck.
“D-did I not say that?” Emma reflexively moved her hips against him, and Charles buried his face in her shoulder. His breath grew faster, as with her every undulation, his passion swelled.
“You didn’t.” And then he shifted his head, hovering his mouth along the bodice of her dress, that pause a clear signal that this moment was for her to decide. That Emma would be in charge of where this night should go. This time. Emma lifted her lashes and looked him in the eyes.
“We shouldn’t be here. Not a-alone.” Her voice quavered, but neither did she make a move to leave or end this forbidden exchange they stole on the fringe of Lady Rutland’s revelries.
“Lord Alvanley has quite secured the attention of everyone present.” He lowered his mouth close to hers, and Emma lifted her head to meet his. But Charles stopped. “Do you want to leave, Emma-love?”
“No,” she whispered, and then her eyes slid shut as he kissed a path along her neckline. “Wh-what is it about you th-that I cannot w-walk away?” she rasped.
“Because you’re learning what I learned too late . . . that we are meant to be together, Emma.”
“You infuriate me.”
“You captivate me, so it cancels out.”
She laughed softly, her amusement fading to a husked groan as he slipped her bodice down and freed her breasts to his attentions. Charles lifted one of those gentle swells and lowered his head to worship the peak.
“Ohhh . . .”She panted, those desperately quick intakes of air a symphony of the same hunger he carried for her.
Outside the room, beyond the door panel, the tinkling laughter of guests passing by filled the room, but lent an even greater, forbidden wickedness to what they did here, just a stone’s throw from discovery, and that heightened the sexual tension of this moment. He suckled on the shell of her ear, and she moved against him, knocking the door slightly with that restive thrusting.
Those footfalls outside slowed.
“Shh.”He urged her to silence, and Emma went motionless in his arms, and as she did, Charles laved the tip of her left breast.
Her breath caught.
“Shh,”he said again, challenging her as he made love to her.
The murmurings of the guests drifted by and away until it was just the two of them once more.
Dragging her skirts up around her waist, Charles slid a knee between her legs. She immediately sank onto his thigh, and with a primitive rocking as old as time, she rode him. “That’s it, love,” he encouraged, his voice harsh and low. Charles rotated his leg in a smooth, slow circle that brought another moan spilling from Emma’s lips.
“This is wicked, isn’t it?” Except she sounded enlivened by that revelation.
“Oh, yes, love.” The manner of naughtiness that saw them dancing with scandal, and never more had he wanted to waltz than he did in this moment, with her thrusting upon him, her breath noisy and wantonly wonderful. “Very, very illicit. I can show you more,” he vowed.
That hoarse promise seemed to fuel her even more. She moaned, and pushed herself against him harder, clinging to his jacket as she did, grinding herself onto his thigh. With each thrust, there grew a frantic desperation to her exertions.
Her eyes locked with his, her golden eyebrows stitched, her glistening features a study of concentration as she attended to her own pleasure. And never more did he wish he were, in fact, the cad she and the world accused him of being, because he ached to lay her down on Lady Rutland’s floor and plunge himself into the welcoming heat that surely pooled at her center.
Even the thought was too much. He needed to feel her.
Charles reached between them and slid a finger inside her damp curls. “You feel so good,” he praised, moisture slicking the way as he stroked her. Reluctantly, he pulled away, knowing what she needed to attain that level she sought.
Emma resumed riding his thigh. This time with a greater frenzy than before, the rocking of her hips uneven and jerky. She stiffened, and he anticipated her surrender before she even gave herself fully over to it. She climaxed, moaning and crying out her desire over and over. Until her hips ceased rocking, and she collapsed, limp, against him.
Charles smoothed his palm over her lower back. “Good?”
Emma tilted up her face. “You know it was, you scoundrel.” The smile in her voice softened that rebuke.
He grinned in return.
“You’re so very arrogant, aren’t you?” she said with a roll of her eyes as she made to step out of his arms. But Charles caught her, keeping her anchored against him longer, unwilling to let the moment end.
“Not arrogant,” he murmured, roving his gaze over her face. He brushed a damp strand back behind her ear. “Only pleased that I could bring you that bliss.” And he wanted to show her more than this. He wanted to have a whole future with her.
Except, inevitably, desire faded, and they were left with the reality of what they were. Or what they weren’t. But more importantly, what had come before this.
Emma stepped out of his arms, and this time, he let her go.
Her satin skirts fell in a noisy rustle down her legs, and she made a show of smoothing the front of them.
They both spoke at the same time.
“Em—”
“Charles.”
He motioned for her. “You first.”
“I . . . don’t know what to make of you,” she said, her voice pained. “I enjoy being with you.”
He nodded frantically. “Yes, and I enjoy—”
“But everything I know, every part of me scared of being hurt, says to not trust you.”
“I hurt you,” he said solemnly. “And I don’t expect that to be something so easily forgotten. It is just my hope, in time, that you can see I do”—her eyes locked with his, those enormous blue pools growing wide—“care about you.” But he’d never be worthy of her. That he couldn’t promise.
Did he imagine the regret there? Had she wished for him to say more?
“If you care about me, you can stop making a jest of the Mismatch Society,” she finally said.
“It’s not my intention—”
“But that is what you have done,” she interrupted with a quiet insistence. “Regardless of your intentions, battle lines have been drawn, and society is playing out their favorites, of which I will never emerge triumphant.”
“You do yourself a disservi—”
She released a sound of frustration. “Charles, I know who I am, just as I know who you are.”
He stiffened, knowing implicitly the manner of person she believed him to be.
“You are charming,” she said, knocking him off balance with that praise. “You are personable and witty and clever . . .” With every bit of unexpected praise she heaped upon him, his spine grew, and his heart swelled along with it. “Whatever you do will be a success because of who you are.”
“No one has ever felt that way about me,” he said past a thick throat.
Her eyes softened, and her lips formed a wistful smile. “Then those people don’t know you.”
Her words would suggest his own parents didn’t. That she somehow saw in him something the world—his parents, his siblings, his friends—never had.
“I should go.” She lingered.
“Yes.”
But oh, how he wanted her to stay. He wished for the world to melt away so that it was just they two together. There wasn’t a past. There wasn’t this present. There was only the future he dreamed of for them.
Alas . . .
Emma turned to go.
“Emma!”
She paused, sliding a questioning glance his way.
“I will stop soliciting on Waverton Street. I’ll move that to some area not near where you hold your meetings. But you have my word.” His gaze locked with hers. “I would never disparage you or seek to hurt you or your venture.”
“Thank you, Charles,” she said with a quiet solemnity, and gratitude underlining it.
And then she was gone.
The moment she slipped out, Charles closed his eyes. God, he wanted her. In his bed. In his life. In every way. He’d alternated between wanting her, in spite of his failings, and thinking he had no right to a future with her, because of them. Only, with the words she’d spoken here this night, she’d opened his eyes to the fact that he was more than his failings. That she saw worth in him, because there was worth there.
And it firmed his resolve to earn her love.
As if her thoughts had led her back, the door opened, and he quickly turned. “Emm—” The greeting died as he faced not the golden-haired nymph who’d just left his arms, but the scowling, spectacle-wearing Mr. Watley. “Oh, hello, chum,” Charles said, affecting a grin for the other man’s benefit.
“I’m not your chum,” the gentleman said stiffly. The young man’s eyes went to Charles’s cravat. He followed his stare. Nay, to Charles’s wrinkled cravat that Emma had undone a short while ago, as she’d been coming undone. Mr. Watley balled his hands into fists. “Stay away from her.” He clipped out that command.
So they’d get right to it, then, would they? Charles winged up an eyebrow. “You speak for the lady?”
“I know what she wants,” the bold pup shot back with a daring that would have raised him in Charles’s estimation if it weren’t Emma the young man proclaimed to know. And what was worse . . . he did know her. And Charles hated him for it. Hated him with the fire of a thousand burning suns as he acknowledged his unlikely rival for Emma’s affections.
“And if you think she wants you speaking for her,” Charles said coolly, “you know the lady a good deal less than you think you do.”
Mr. Watley blushed, but then found his voice again. “Who do you think she came to when she wanted out of your arrangement?” The boy didn’t wait. “It was me. I am the one who gave her the guidance.”
Ah, one of the barristers had been his rival for her affections. Charles hadn’t stood a chance. “I wouldn’t presume to decide for her, and I suggest you do the same.”
“You hurt her before, and I’ll not see you hurt her or the Mismatch Society again.” Any more than he already had. “Good day.” Turning on his heel, the young man left.
The moment he’d gone, Charles let go of the thought of him, refusing to allow himself to think of anything about this night but what he and Emma had shared.
