The Importance of Being Wanton by Christi Caldwell

Chapter 20

THE LONDONER

SCANDAL!

Yet another scandal has erupted between the Mismatch Club and Club du Livre. This time, shocking though it may be, the scandal belongs to the Earl of Scarsdale!

M. FAIRPOINT

Last night hadn’t marked the first time Emma had rejected Charles.

Even so, in the immediacy of making love to Emma, he’d been fairly certain his feet would never find their way back to Earth.

Until they had.

Until she’d seen his garments and believed every worst thing about him.

And why shouldn’t she have? The evidence had been damning.

And there was no going back this time, the truth of that ushering in a wave of finality that left him bereft.

“Egad, man, you’ve returned to woeful, heartbroken chap,” Landon bemoaned. “But then passing on the buxom beauty last evening, which”—Landon held his cue stick aloft—“by the way, I should thank you for. She was magnificent. That being beside the point, of course. Now you’ve let your billiards game go to hell?” The other man jabbed the bottom of his stick on the floor, thumping it several times. “This isn’t to be borne.”

Had it not been for Landon’s setup, as he’d called it, there wouldn’t have been the rouged shirt, and things with Emma last night would have ended very differently than they had. “Enough with the mention of the damned woman,” he growled. Except it wasn’t Landon’s fault. Not really. Charles had continued visiting those illicit clubs . . . ones where women were put on display. Desperate women, as Emma had pointed out . . .

Emma . . .

Charles’s eyes slid shut briefly until Landon spoke, forcing Charles’s focus back to the marquess.

“Hmph. Seems someone is still resentful. Regretting your decision,” Landon persisted, nagging as only he could.

Charles slammed down his cue stick. “It’s not because of . . . of . . . her.” But rather because of the one woman he wanted in his life and in his heart and in his bed. None of which he could say. None of which he could admit, because to do so would be to acknowledge he’d been with Emma. Charles’s shot went wide.

“Oh, dear,” Landon murmured. “You are in a bad way.”

“I thought you should welcome your win,” Charles shot back testily.

“Ha-ha, yes, of course,” Landon quipped. “Let us all make light of my depleted coffers.”

Coffers all society knew the other man had himself depleted. Reaching inside his jacket front, Charles withdrew a purse and tossed it across the table.

Shooting up a hand, Landon closed a quick fist around it, the coins rattling with a clink. The debt-ridden lord gave the bag a little shake. “And as appreciative as I am for the winnings, it is hardly enjoyable to fleece a distracted man, particularly a distracted friend.”

“Another game? Double the odds?” Charles offered instead, invariably knowing the best way to divert his bothersome, if well-meaning, friend’s attentions.

Landon wagged a finger. “I know what you’re doing, chum.” He grinned. “And I’ll allow it. I was teasing before. I know very well what has you out of sorts. That this has something to do with your Miss Gately.”

Bloody hell.Charles made a show of rearranging the twelve balls, and took the first shot, with Landon following . . . and securing the right to play first for points.

The other man gave him a knowing look. “Hmm,” he said pointedly, and Charles’s skin flushed hot.

He never admitted his friend Landon was correct about anything.

The largest reason being the other man was generally wrong when it came to most matters.

But not a small reason also being the other man was outrageously obnoxious when he did find himself in the right.

And in this, there was no disputing it—Landon had been on the mark.

And what was even worse . . . the other man knew it.

Yes, there was no other explanation for Lord Landon’s sudden propensity for being correct—hell hath frozen over. Or mayhap it was really just that the marquess was more perceptive and an even better friend than he’d credited. Charles, however, still couldn’t bring himself to confide the absolute nightmare that had been last evening. While he wished only thoughts of her in his arms, in his bed, and under him were all he could think of, the fact remained it was what had come after that gripped him. For when she’d fled, there’d been a sense of finality to her leaving. She’d seen that stain, and that crimson mark had resurrected every barrier that he’d managed to break down.

Landon made a study of the table, periodically eyeing his next play too long, then taking his shot. While the other man made quick work of the balls, Charles applied chalk to his stick.

Landon’s next shot went wide, and he motioned for Charles to begin his turn.

Leaning over the table, Charles eyed the scattered balls, and squinted, focusing in on his target. The last thing he needed any more of was Landon’s ribbing. Or worse . . . probing. Charles’s cue stick slipped forward, scraped the table, and missed the target ball entirely.

He and Landon stared in silence at the scraped velvet table, and then Landon burst out laughing.

Charles stuck up two fingers. “Oh, go to hell,” he muttered, and his faithless friend only howled all the more with his hilarity.

Dashing tears of mirth from his cheeks, Landon bent over his cue stick. “Not distracted, my arse. You’ve the look to you. The same look you’ve worn for weeks.”

“I don’t have a look,” Charles repeated . . . unconvincingly to even himself.

“Like a lovesick pup,” Landon squeezed out past his still-noisy amusement.

He bristled. “I’m not a lovesick pup.” He’d not been a pup in years.

“But you are not denying you’re lovesick, though?” Landon chortled.

Charles lifted his palm and gave another two-fingered V.

“Who is in love?” a voice called into the high-ceilinged room, that question echoing.

Oh, bloody hell.

Landon immediately ceased laughing as he and Charles faced Charles’s mother. She swept forward, Charles’s brother, Derek, close behind.

The two men promptly lowered their cue sticks to their sides and greeted the marchioness at the same time.

“Mother.”

“Lady Rochester.”

“Phineas,” she greeted warmly and affectionately as she tucked a loose strand of longer-than-fashionable hair behind his ear. Alas, Charles’s mother had been the only one permitted by the other man the use of a name Landon despised. “Is it you?”

Ever the rogue, for debutantes to dowagers alike, Landon caught her fingertips with his spare hand, and bowed, promptly dislodging that curl, and undoing her efforts of righting him. “As your scoundrel of a husband stole you from me before I had a chance, my heart can belong to no other.” And grotesque as his friend flirting with his mother in fact was, it was a good deal more preferred than had Landon outed Charles’s feelings about Emma.

She snorted. “A rogue since the day you were born, Landon.” The marchioness softened that with a smile, and holding on to his hand still, she raised her spare one to affectionately pat the fingers covering hers. “And a charming one, at that.”

“You’ve always been so wonderful to me, Lady Rochester. But I still have never had that waltz I vowed to one day steal from you.” Releasing his hold upon her, Landon brought his arms into position.

Oh, right, that, however, was a line too far. Charles jabbed the other man in the back with the tip of his cue stick. “Enough already,” he said tightly. It was one thing to bear witness to the marquess going about charming every lady around London, and saving Charles from her probing. It was quite another when it was Charles’s own mother.

“Rest assured, dear, no one is going to seduce me away from your father.” She gave a little snap of her skirts. “I’m quite content in—”

Releasing his cue stick, Charles promptly slapped his hands over his ears. “Ahhhhhhhhh,” he said loudly in a bid to blot out those assurances he had no desire of hearing.

His mother collected his palms and forcibly lowered them to his sides. “My marriage,” she finished. “I was going to say my marriage.” Passing a look over to Landon, she followed that with a wink, which pulled another laugh from the entirely-too-affable rogue.

Charles and Derek turned scowls upon the other man.

“Pick better friends,” Derek said out of the corner of his mouth.

“There’s St. John,” Charles felt inclined to point out for his younger brother. Anyone would be hard-pressed to find offense with the proper viscount.

“Ouch.” Landon staggered back and pressed a hand to his chest in false, wounded affront. “That hurts, gentlemen. Hurts.”

His mother did a glance about the billiards room. “I take it this is not the chosen location for your next meeting,” she said dryly, retrieving the forgotten cue stick from the floor.

“Our next meeting,” Charles corrected, as she was an integral part of the club he’d formed . . . one whose presence had allowed it to occur without scandal ensuing.

“Very well, as you are allowing me some ownership of your new venture, dearest son of mine—”

“I beg pardon.” Derek bristled with indignation.

The marchioness paused long enough in her tirade to pat her youngest son gently on the cheek. “I’m only using it in this instance to accentuate displeasure, dear.”

Derek beamed. “Carry on, then.” He dropped a hip on the edge of the billiards table, and crossed his arms at his chest. “This I’m happy to hear.”

“Fabulous,” Charles said under his breath.

“Continuing on,” she began.

He’d rather she not. At all. “Don’t,” he entreated. The last thing a grown man wished for was a parental lecture . . . and delivered in front of his younger brother and best friend, no less. He nudged his head imperceptibly toward the pair. “Please, don’t.”

Derek and Landon spoke at the same time.

“Ah, please do.”

“Oh, do.”

Alas, Charles’s declination was destined to be overruled by Landon’s and Derek’s encouragement.

The matriarch of the family and society, in general, obliged Charles’s faithless brother and friend. “You have a room full of young ladies scheduled to join us in”—his mother plucked the chain from his waistcoat and consulted the gold timepiece—“a quarter of an hour.” She let the fob fall. “You don’t have a room arranged. I have no idea what discussion is taking place today—”

“I’d wager neither does Charles,” Derek pointed out.

“Et tu, brother?”

His younger sibling blushed. “I didn’t mean any offense.”

Which only made it all the . . . more offensive. That general expectation that Charles didn’t have a proper organized thought in his head. In fairness, he hadn’t. Before now, that was.

Landon raised his cue stick in the air, calling everyone’s attention his way. “If I may also point out . . . he has his head in the clouds. Still.”

Derek laughed, and Charles slid another sharp look his way. His brother immediately coughed into his fist.

There it was. Point. Point. Point. Point. And point. They weren’t wrong . . . the lot of them. And yet . . . “I know what I’m doing.” At the three matching and very pointed stares, he grimaced. “I’ll allow, since its inception, the club may have appeared . . . somewhat disjointed.”

“Whatever would make you say that?” Landon drawled, applying chalk to the end of his stick. “The varying iteration of names?”

His brother jumped in. “The continually different meeting locations. The Green Parlor. The Drawing Room.”

“What is next?” Landon let his arms splay. “The billiards room?”

Charles frowned. “Well, that doesn’t make sense,” he said, thumping the other man on the back. “We’re not a billiards club, nor do we discuss . . .” Giving his head a shake, cursing that blasted inherent tendency of having his mind wander off, he forced himself to focus. “Either way, I believe I have . . .” Nay . . . “I have found my way. Firstly, I’d have it clear, our members are not solely young ladies.”

“Just most of them.” Landon touched a finger to his forehead to chest in an abbreviated cross.

Charles frowned. He’d not have anyone, friends included, make anything salacious out of his club. “I’ll point out there are gentlemen also interested in—”

His mother waggled her eyebrows.

He blanched. “What we are discussing,” Charles said, exasperation pulling those words from him. Good God in heaven, what hellish reversal was this that he, the rogue, had to suffer through scandalous thoughts, ones freely expressed by his damned mother.

“Your brother and some of the gents he calls friends hardly count,” Landon said, chuckling. “Why, I’d wager you ordered the poor lad to join in, and he, in turn, twisted their weaker arms.”

“Well, it is a good thing for you, you don’t have any farthings left to lose,” Derek shot back.

Actually, despite that opinion and assumption, Charles hadn’t coerced or coordinated anyone. Everyone had come—and more importantly, stayed—of their own volition. Brother included.

Landon narrowed his eyes. “That is a low blow, young Hayden.”

Derek surged forward, but the marchioness slid herself between them. “Boys!” She clapped once, and much the way they had as the children they once were, Charles, his brother, and his boyhood friend immediately stopped sparring and drew back their shoulders, standing at attention. “We are now at . . .” She grabbed Charles’s timepiece, and he grunted; lest she break the piece, he allowed her to draw him over to consult the fob. She released it quickly. “Ten minutes away, and there’s no meeting place set up. I just visited the parlor, and I know this is your venture, Charles, but this is also a reflection of—”

“I’ve taken care of it.” Charles had gone back and forth over all options, and had arrived at the only place that made the most sense for his club centered around books.

“You have?” his mother asked.

“I have.”

This time, Charles’s pronouncement was met with like stupefaction, and from this, his greatest supporters. And that collective shock proved somehow even more . . . hurtful than the early words voiced aloud between Landon and Derek. Those, even if they had contained traces of truth, had been delivered in good-natured jest. This awkward silence from all of them was just one more indication of the lack of faith they had in his abilities . . . and in his capabilities. Nay, what was truly worse? They were entitled to their reservations. At what point had he demonstrated himself a man capable of focusing and carrying out . . . anything of import?

“Seating has already been arranged, and an agenda already laid out in preparation. Refreshment trays should be out, even now.”

“Miss Dobson—”

Charles interrupted his brother, anticipating the remainder of that question. “I’ve instructed Cook to avoid any inclusion of almonds due to Miss Dobson’s hypersensitivity to the food.” Yes, that had been . . . a rather unfortunate and ignominious start to their last meeting. The young woman had consumed a ratafia cake, baked in bitter almonds, and her face had immediately swelled while her throat had closed. “I also solicited Camille to send around inquiries about potential food sensitivities to our other members. I’ve seen to the purchase of copies of the text and seen they’ve been distributed to . . . those members whose family are not in the position of parting with the funds.” As was the case with Camille’s closest friend, Miss Fawcett, and several of the young lords who came from notoriously impoverished families.

The trio looked among one another.

“What?” he asked gruffly, fiddling with his cravat.

Tears shimmered in their mother’s eyes, and he tensed.

“I’m sure I’ve forgotten something, but . . .” Charles’s words trailed off as she came forward, and much the way she had when she’d first sent him on to Eton, she tenderly adjusted his cravat.

“I never doubted you.”

Landon shot up a hand. “I did.”

The marchioness turned her famous pillar-of-Polite-Society glare upon him, and the gentleman had sense enough to drop his gaze to the floor.

“’Pologies,” he mouthed, lifting a palm.

Returning her attention to Charles, his mother dabbed the drops from the corners of her eyes. “Now, let us go, as the members are surely arrived and are being shown to the library.”

With a sigh, Landon returned his cue stick to the wall and reluctantly joined Derek.

Charles made to follow after them, when his mother stayed him with a hand on his arm.

He glanced down.

“I am proud of you, Charles.”

I am proud of you . . .

He’d never doubted her love. Not for a single moment. Nor his father’s. Oh, he’d resented him for controlling his life and maneuvering him into marriage as a boy, but he’d also known there was love there.

But pride?

Those were words that had not fallen often—if at all—from either of their lips. In fairness, he’d never given them reason to be proud.

“These . . . things have not come easy to you, as they do Camille or Derek, but it never meant you weren’t clever or capable.”

It meant all that. Bitterness filled his mouth and soured his tongue.

She framed his cheeks in her hands, directing his gaze to hers. “You’ve never believed in yourself, Charles, but that doesn’t mean I never did.”

He’d not had any reason to believe in himself. He’d not excelled in his schooling. He’d not met any of the expectations his father had of him. And now, the one thing his mother could and would find pride in? Well, it had all been conceived for reasons that hadn’t been motivated for the reasons she thought. Unlike Emma, who had set out to create something, he’d simply followed along in a bid to woo her.

His mother searched her gaze over his face, her brow furrowing. “What is it?”

Of course, because a mother saw, and a mother always knew.

Charles shook his head. “You’re making more of . . . this than it is.”

“I don’t believe I am.”

“I only did it because Emma called me out,” he exclaimed, owning the real motivation behind what he’d done. “She insisted that I didn’t take anything seriously.” And she’d not been wrong. “And I . . .”

“And you set out to prove you were capable?”

Rubbing four fingers across his forehead, Charles nodded. “Yes. That is why.” That was what it had begun as, anyway. Heat pricked his skin at the attention his mother trained on him.

The silence his admission ushered in left him hollow; it heightened his sense of shame. “Do you know what I think, Charles?”

He gave his head a tight, curt shake.

“I believe she called you out because she saw there was more to you than the world saw. She encouraged you to do things she knew you could do.”

Charles chuckled, the sound wry to his own ears. Seating himself at the side of the billiards table, he scrubbed a hand over his face. “And you also believed we would have been happily married.” He thought of the shock of betrayal in Emma’s eyes as she’d fled last night, and he closed his eyes tightly.

“I did.” Her eyes twinkled. “And I still do.”

His lips curled up at the corner in a wry twist. “She doesn’t even like me.”

But what about that moment in the bookshop . . . on Regent Street, or at Lady Rutland’s? When it was so easy and so very natural to be with her? And speak to her about topics you both care about and share an interest in . . .

His mother rested her hand on his, pulling Charles back from those wishful and, worse, delusional musings. “When you were children, Emma lit up the moment you entered a room. She adored you . . .”

Until she hadn’t.

Until he’d taken all his resentment out on the person who’d been least deserving of it. The very person whom he’d shared a bond with. Or what would have been a bond, had he not gone and severed the ties of it with his meanness and disinterest. Charles stared blankly at the opposite wall. What was worse . . .

“She doesn’t trust me.” He released a curse. “Nor should she.” Because of his role in concealing Camille’s fall, and because of whom he’d allowed himself to become thereafter.

His mother’s features buckled, and she touched a hand to her mouth. “We didn’t think enough about you, Charles,” she said on an aching whisper. “We didn’t think about how what your father . . . and I asked of you should affect you and Emma, and that was wrong.”

Yes, it had been wrong. But it would have been more wrong had Charles not done everything in his power to protect his sister from the suffering and fallout which would have come following her indiscretion.

As it was, he’d not called out the bounder who’d deceived her, the man with false intentions to elope with her.

“It was my choice,” he said tiredly. Tired of it all. Tired of the deception. Tired of the sins of another man, who had left so many lives altered. And tired of being powerless to win the one woman he wished to. “And regardless of what you asked, I didn’t need to throw myself into that part as I did. And because of that . . . I don’t deserve her.” He spoke quietly, to himself. “I didn’t appreciate her when I had a chance of a future with her. I drank too much. I wagered often. I was not”—his cheeks went hot—“faithful.”

His mother gently cupped his cheeks. “Who you were yesterday, Charles, isn’t who you will forever be. And I know Emma. I trust in Emma. She will one day soon see that.”

Not when what she’d seen last evening had been rouge on his shirt. Not when he should have long ago stopped visiting such establishments.

“Now, come,” his mother said, pulling him from his thoughts. “Punctuality is the politeness of kings.”

As they made the walk to the library, Charles considered everything his mother had said. He’d taken for fact that Emma would never want a life with him because of his past sins. But perhaps his mother was correct. Perhaps the times he and Emma had bonded these past weeks indicated there could be more . . . that she might see him in a new light. And with every step, a lightness suffused him, spreading what felt like a good deal of hope he’d not had for them.

Charles reached the library, and abruptly stopped. His entire body jolted as shock ran through him.

The room was filled, noisy with chatter, and yet it was not the size of the crowd of ladies and gentlemen nor the success of his club that held him motionless.

It was two women.

Two women who’d become recent additions to his club.

As of today. None other than Miss Lee and Miss Linden.

Emma wouldn’t have.

The women gave simultaneous waves in Charles’s direction.

“We received a note from Miss Gately encouraging us to join one of your meetings, Lord Scarsdale!” Miss Linden said, explaining their presence.

And yet as those two women, whose names he’d been linked to and quite scandalously, ventured deeper into the room, that very truth was confirmed—Emma had done just that.

Bloody hell.

His former betrothed had gone too far.