The Importance of Being Wanton by Christi Caldwell

Chapter 17

THE LONDONER

EDITORIAL CORRECTION

In the previous edition, this editor referred to a feud between Miss Gately’s Mismatch Club and the Earl of Scarsdale’s Le Libre Club. There really is no rivalry. The two do not compare. Stealing ideas from the earl’s club? The Mismatch is destined to shutter its rebellious doors . . .

M. FAIRPOINT

In the following days, Emma poured herself into that which had saved her two months earlier—the Mismatch Society.

Recommitting herself to the group and its salvation and success, she’d openly canvassed for new members, and drafted topics to be spoken about.

And she’d felt . . . enlivened, for the first time in longer than she could remember where the society was concerned. Charles had been, with her, what no one else—certainly not her friends and other society members who were entirely too close to the Mismatch—had: honest. He’d challenged her to not expect that there should be members as their due. Simply because they’d been first did not mean anyone owed her or any of the other ladies anything.

And as enraged as she’d been, Charles had ultimately challenged her to look at herself and her creation . . . and demand better of both.

Annalee banged the gavel. “This meeting is called to order.”

“It comes as no surprise to those of you present that we are fighting for the very soul of the Mismatch Society.” As Emma spoke into the quiet, the focus of each person present was on her. “Lord Scarsdale’s society is new. A novelty. However, he has also highlighted that perhaps our exclusivity has been a detriment.” As he’d taken such delight in pointing out to her their last evening together.

“It wasn’t,” Valerie muttered to herself.

“Hence,” Emma went on, “the addition of our newest members.” Male members of the society. The room’s attention shifted from her over to the three men crammed together upon the too-small-for-them satin settee. Morgan, Pierce, and Owen each lifted a hand in greeting . . . that was met with a stark silence. “If we can provide a Mismatch welcome.”

Except only silence reigned.

“I cannot believe we’ve stooped this low,” Isla bemoaned, sinking in her seat. “Men. We’re allowing men to join us?”

“If one can even call them that.” Annalee laughed uproariously at her own jest.

“I beg your pardon,” Pierce shot over in Isla’s direction. “Need I point out that it was we who were asked to come here?” He nudged his twin. “Isn’t that right?”

Morgan nodded.

“Please, do go; we wouldn’t want to have you if you’ve more pressing things to do.” Seated on the King Louis XIV chair at the elbow of Morgan’s seating, Annalee leaned over and exhaled a puff of smoke in his face.

Indignant, Emma’s brother waved away that little plume. “I beg your pardon?”

“You and your brother are doing a lot of that,” Valerie shot back. “And with good reason.”

“Very well, I think I will leave.” Pierce shot up. “And I’ll take these other two with me.”

Emma raced to put herself between that trio and the exit. The last thing they needed was for Charles to learn that she couldn’t even hold on to her own brothers as male members. “No one is going anywhere.”

Owen cleared his throat. “I’m not! That is, I’m staying. I want to be here.”

Grateful for that loyalty, Emma spared him a smile.

“Very well,” Morgan shot back. “Then Owen can stay and—”

“No one is leaving,” Emma said firmly, and when her other brother made to speak, she said it again. “No one is leaving.” Oh, bloody hell. This was dissolving into a disaster, and fast. Feeling Sylvia’s stare, Emma focused her energies on bringing order to the group.

Everyone immediately ceased their quarreling. “Now,” she began calmly, “that I have everyone’s attention . . .” Her fingers shaking, Emma hurried to gather up the notes she’d assembled. “I have recently been task—” She winced. Wrong word choice. “Assigned the responsibility of coordinating our upcoming meeting, and having lost some of our key members and heard the concerns, concerns I shared, about echoing only to like-minded women—”

“Ahemmm.”Pierce gave her a look.

“And now men,” Emma corrected, “that if we cannot rely on a growing membership to provide new perspectives and new topics we’d not previously considered, we should thereby bring in outside perspectives on topics that we’ve spoken on . . . or mayhap not spoken on.”

“I’m confused,” Annalee said with her usual bluntness. “You were the one who was most adamantly opposed when Sylvia suggested male membership.”

“Yes,” Brenna agreed. “And that was just one man, and him being granted a temporary membership.”

“And this, this would be a permanent change?” asked Annalee.

The eight sets of female stares trained on Emma were incriminating, and guilt brought a heated blush to her cheeks. Her friends weren’t wrong. She had been most outspoken when, just a few weeks prior, Sylvia had recommended adding Lord St. John, and that had been with the intention of securing societal approval so the women would be free to meet without being yanked out by protective guardians.

And yet . . . they were deserving of the truth . . . the whole truth. The reason for her evolution in thought belonged to one person.

“Lord Scarsdale raised the point to me,” she allowed.

Gasps went up.

“Of course he did,” Isla muttered under her breath.

Emma rushed to speak, reassuring her friends that this wasn’t because of any weakening on her part toward Charles. “He pointed out there was no reason women and men cannot come together. We are continually separated. In Parliament. In the household. Why, even after dinner. And in that separation, we can never achieve a status where we are seen and treated as equals.” He’d helped her see as much. Her resentment for how she’d been treated had filled her with such anger toward men that she’d simply wanted them barred from any venture she was part of. “Mayhap more good could come in pushing for an equal place in society.”

“And so your brothers and Olivia’s are our token members?” Annalee quipped.

Emma wrinkled her nose.

“It is just . . . they have everything,” Isla moaned.

Pierce’s brow dipped. “I don’t have every—”

“Not you! Men on the whole.” Isla spoke over her brother. “Men in general. They have clubs. They have streets where they carry out their separate lives. This is ours. I . . . vote for a female-only society.”

“Well, it’s a sad day indeed when a chap has to say he’s driven women to driving all men out,” Pierce said, making to climb to his feet once more, when this time Annalee rapped him on the knee and stopped him.

“Ouch,” he grunted. “What was that for?”

“You don’t get to decide when to leave, pup.” The socialite leaned over and glared Pierce right back into his seat. “Everything is put to a vote, including your presence here.”

Emma’s brother swallowed visibly, but was wise enough to comply.

“What are you proposing, Emma?” Sylvia asked for clarification.

“I’m proposing, unlike before when we invited Lord St. John solely and with the lone benefit of lending his respectability to our venture, now we actually consider welcoming men within our folds.”

Valerie paused in her note keeping, and looked to Emma. “A temporary invitation, again?”

“Only until we reconvene and decide whether to move forward as Isla wishes, with a female-only society. I’m just saying that perhaps we should consider it,” she finished weakly.

“Ahem.”

Everyone looked to Owen.

“I-if I may?” he began, waiting for permission to speak, and when none was forthcoming, he continued to hesitate before finding his voice. “I want to begin by saying how very honored I am to be included in your ranks.”

Pierce and Morgan snorted, twin expressions of mockery effectively silenced by the glare of every woman in the room.

Owen continued. “I would greatly welcome the opportunity to come and discuss whatever matters you may have. As a barrister, I can provide guidance on legal matters members might have.”

And just like that, every woman sat up a bit straighter and attended the young man all the more.

“However, I am . . . suspicious of the motives.”

Emma frowned.

“Not yours, of course,” he said, his voice rising a decibel. “But rather, it is just . . . Lord Scarsdale.”

A pall fell over the room.

“If he is suggesting your society invites male members, then . . .”

“He’s doing it for a reason,” Isla murmured.

Owen’s spectacles slipped forward, and he pushed them back into place. “P-precisely. That is what I’m worried about.”

The room fell quiet as everyone contemplated those fears raised. “We invited Lord St. John because he was respectable and lent that respectability to our society. We cannot afford to be anything but selective,” Valerie pointed out.

Because of Caroline, the lone widowed mother amongst their group. Where it had been a concern for Sylvia before, she no longer had that worry in quite the same way, having been afforded the luxury of protection that came from being married to one of London’s most honorable lords.

“To invite the wrong man,” Owen went on, “is to invite peril to the ladies who are here, and I fear that is why he’s urging you in this direction.”

Murmurs rolled around the parlor.

Emma frowned. There would have been a time once where she’d been of the same exact wariness where Charles was concerned. She’d believed him to be heartless. She’d thought him incapable of thinking about anything beyond his own self-interests. And yet . . . these past weeks, he’d proven himself to be . . . different . . . in ways she had never expected. “I do not believe Ch—” The eyes of every person in the room sharpened on Emma. “Lord Scarsdale’s,” she substituted, “motives are dishonorable in this.”

“That is certainly a shift,” Annalee noted without inflection.

“He’s agreed to cease distributing pamphlets on Waverton Street,” Emma felt inclined to point out. “No one was out there today.”

“And stealing our members?” Olivia demanded. “Is that the act of an honorable man?”

She’d been of the same opinion. She’d been angry and resentful for every woman who’d been a member of the Mismatch who’d instead found her way to Charles’s group. Only to realize pride had been the reason for those sentiments. “Is it really stealing if they left of their own volition?” Emma put the same question to the members that she had made to herself.

Morgan shot up an arm. “If I may, as a valued member, offer my opinion?”

“You are neither, pup,” Annalee quipped, and this time, she leaned over and ruffled the top of Morgan’s dark curls. “Not yet, anyway,” she added with a wink.

A dazed glimmer lit his eyes, and Emma suppressed a smile. Yes, any person, man or woman, was more than a bit besotted by the free-spirited socialite.

“You were saying, brother?” his twin nudged.

Morgan blinked several times, and then a bright blush filled his cheeks. “Er . . . uh . . . yes, I was merely pointing out as—”

“An unvalued maybe-member?” Pierce supplied.

His brother, however, continued on with his train of thought this time. “—a gentleman who knows Lord Scarsdale, he’s not so very bad. He’s, in fact, quite a decent fellow.”

“Aside from the part of his breaking your sister’s heart?” Valerie asked, her expression deadpan.

Morgan nodded enthusiastically. “Precisely.”

His concurrence was met with a series of groans, and it was the moment Emma knew her brother had lost the attention of the Mismatch. Yet again she’d been possessed of the same outrage over that disloyalty. But it wasn’t really disloyalty. Morgan, just as much as her parents and Pierce, spoke of Charles with a knowledge that came from a lifetime of knowing him.

“She was jesting, brother.” Pierce’s whisper was loud enough to be picked up by anyone in any corner of the room, which Emma would wager was no coincidence on the part of the younger twin. “She was jesting.”

“Oh,” Morgan said weakly.

And whatever brief truce he’d arrived at with Annalee died a swift death as she leaned away, putting distance between them.

“I don’t believe a person is all good or all bad,” Emma ventured, and she received such a pitying look from her sister that it took a physical effort to hold her disappointed gaze.

“You’re singing a very different tune,” Isla remarked.

“Ahem, if I may?” Owen called out, and Emma was grateful for that unwanted attention being shifted his way.

Except . . . this time, as he spoke, he made a point of avoiding her eyes. “I took it upon myself to make inquiries into the increasingly vitriolic words being spoken about the Mismatch Society.” Bending down, he retrieved several folded missives from the small leather satchel at his feet.

The ladies arched their necks collectively, attempting to look at those notes.

“I’d noticed a shift in the tone,” he explained. “Frequently disparaging, the attacks appeared to become more”—this time, he did slide a glance Emma’s way—“pointed.”

Her belly churned. Yes, there had seemed to be a change . . . one that she’d not paid too much attention to until now. Until Owen sifted through those notes . . . and refused to look her way once more.

“I made inquiries at The Londoner and found a certain earl, the Earl of Scarsdale, has been paying for certain placements.”

Emma’s entire body went whipcord straight, and around her, Owen’s pronouncement was met with a silence that made this revelation all the worse.

Charles . . . paying to have those negative articles about her appear in every London household. It was . . .

Emma and her brothers spoke as one.

“Impossible.”

“No.”

Their denials, however, were lost to the din of outrage that erupted amongst the members.

Whatever her friends said, however, rolled together in a hum in her ears. It was impossible. He wouldn’t do that.

Ever.

Yes, they’d reached a truce.

And yet . . . she’d been the first to declare war upon him. Granted, since then, she’d thought they had arrived at a truce of sorts, but what if they hadn’t? What if they were still at war and had been all along? And if it was an all-out war . . .

“I . . .” Don’t believe it? Or don’t want to believe it? A voice taunted her for that weakness. Except this time a different war waged, an internal one, one that insisted the man Charles was, was not one who’d do . . . what Owen was proclaiming he’d done. The man who’d made love to her the other evening, and agreed so easily to cease operating on the streets where her own club operated. Emma pressed her fingertips against her temple. It . . . didn’t fit with who she’d believed Charles Hayden, the Earl of Scarsdale, was.

Emma registered the stark silence and stiffened her spine. “I will have answers for us,” she promised. “You will see . . .” That she and Pierce and Morgan were correct in their defense of Charles.

Because the alternative—that he’d deceived her again—was a betrayal her heart could not recover from.