The Importance of Being Wanton by Christi Caldwell
Chapter 4
THE LONDONER
FATHERS AND GUARDIANS BEWARE
The Mismatch Society poses a very real danger to Polite Society . . . and all the institutions it extols. At the start of their formation, they may have enlisted the honorable Viscount St. John to provide a veneer of respectability; however, the shine is well and truly off.
M. FAIRPOINT
Lots of people spoke disparagingly about Charles.
They’d done so when he’d been a wild youth in Oxford.
The words spoken of him had only increased after Seamus’s arrival. But then, society never tired of whispering about those babes born outside the bounds of matrimony.
Charles had managed to let those unfavorable words roll off; people’s opinions of him mattered far less than the well-being and happiness of his family . . . of any of his family: His parents. His brother . . . His lone sister, whom he would have done anything for, and whom he’d also failed so terribly.
And Seamus.
In fact, Charles had believed himself immune to the ill opinions.
Only to be proven wrong that day by Emma’s impressive takedown of him.
Why does it matter to you? She has made clear what she feels about you . . . and it is . . . nothing.Nay, it was worse than nothing. She despised him. She didn’t respect him.
So why did he care so very much? Why did he hate that she thought him to be . . . the exact same thing the world believed him to be?
Because you saw in her, too late, a woman of spirit and strength and convictions, the likes of which you’ve known in no other person before her.
“You don’t take anything seriously, Charles. Everything and everyone is a joke to you. You’re notoriously late . . . You hunt . . . You drink too much . . . You’re a womanizer . . . You wager too much . . .”
All the while, her opinion of you was . . . is . . . that.
Seated at his private table at White’s, he glared into the contents of his whiskey glass, then set it down hard.
A shadow fell over his table, and he glanced up to find his two longest and truest friends in the world: Lord Landon, fellow rogue, and Lord St. John, the actual saint of their trio.
Landon grabbed a chair and seated himself, with St. John slower and more measured in doing so. “Good God, the foul mood persists,” Landon greeted with his unflagging charm.
I was once the same damned way.
And Charles was more than tempted to grab his half-drunk whiskey and finish it off. Which he would have . . . had Emma Gately’s accusations not been ringing in his head.
“Drink too much,” he muttered to himself.
“Yes, I think that is my point,” Landon piped in. “You’re at it again, but this time in a foul mood.” A servant came forward with two glasses, one the marquess grabbed up while St. John set his off to the side, with a word of thanks for the footman. “I thought it could not get worse than your moping,” Landon remarked when the servant had gone. He helped himself to the bottle of whiskey Charles hadn’t been able to bring himself around to drinking.
“I was not moping,” Charles groused.
Both men looked back at him.
“Oh, fine. I was moping a bit.”
“Well, angry-drunken Scarsdale is even worse than depressed-forlorn Scarsdale, isn’t that true, St. John?”
“I’m not drunk.” Charles only wished he were.
If that didn’t require him fulfilling those low opinions Emma had leveled at him.
“I’d rather not see him angry or depressed,” the viscount said as if Charles hadn’t spoken to his own sobriety. He’d long been the reliable one of their group, and just then, St. John had that steady, concerned gaze trained on Charles. “What is it, Scarsdale?” he asked quietly, with a solemnity Landon had forever been incapable of.
Charles shoved his glass across the table. “She doesn’t wish me to see her family.”
The viscount’s deep-set brow creased. “She?”
“Who the hell else do you think ‘she’ means, St. John?” Landon asked in exasperated tones. “His former betrothed,” he said, removing a pipe and waving it in Charles’s direction. “The estimable Miss Gately.” Another footman rushed over and lit the wooden scrap before rushing off. Landon sighed, and rubbed four fingers along his right brow. “Oh, bloody hell. Let’s get on with it, then. What has the lady done to upset you now?”
And that was why Landon, disreputable, in dun territory, and preferring his women and spirits too much, would always be a best friend. Because when it came down to it, ultimately he wished to help, and he cared about the people he called friends: Charles. St. John. “She doesn’t wish for me to see her father. She insisted she doesn’t want me to join the viscount for billiards or . . . anything.”
Silence met his pronouncement.
St. John cleared his throat. “And?”
“And . . . I, well, I don’t think it’s her place to say.”
“Because you of a sudden enjoy hanging out with elderly lords whom your father calls friends?” Landon asked without inflection, and also absent the sarcasm leveled Charles’s way by Emma.
His friends’ words danced close to the accusations Emma had tossed when she’d called Charles out before the bulk of their families. “Not that it is either here or there, but I do enjoy my time with my father and the viscount. Which is what I told her.”
“And you’re still trying to win her back?” Landon asked slowly. “Or have you given up on that?”
“The former,” Charles confirmed.
Chuckling, Landon saluted him. “Then you’re going about it a deuced funny way, friend.”
“She’s insisted she doesn’t want you visiting with her father, and yet you’ve explicitly gone against her wishes?” St. John asked slowly.
“Because if I don’t”—Charles dragged out each syllable—“then I’m not going to see her.”
Landon pounced. “Then . . . find other places to see her, old chap.”
“I don’t know where that is,” he said quietly, as her charges hurled at him came back to haunt Charles in this moment.
You should have a care, throwing around willy-nilly jests about my ability to laugh or smile, Lord Scarsdale . . . You never took time to learn anything about me. As such, allow me to advise you . . . I’ve always been capable of doing so, and were I you, I wouldn’t go throwing about my lack of amusement in your presence, given you never provided me with a reason to laugh or smile . . .
“That is my point exactly,” Landon was saying, casual through Charles’s tumult. “Does she go to the parks? Which shops does she visit?”
Nothing. He knew none of those things about her.
“Find her there, and don’t make it damned confrontational.” Landon tossed back his drink.
“It would be a waste of time, given my latest meeting with the young lady,” he said tersely. “She accused me of being unable to take anything seriously.”
A damning silence met that revelation.
Landon and St. John looked between one another, pointing at each other . . . debating who’d speak next . . . as if Charles weren’t staring back at the pair of them. “Fine,” Landon mouthed. He turned back to Charles. “Why the great offense being taken? You aren’t serious about anything.”
Charles bristled. “Of course I am.” When both friends were silent, he looked to St. John for support.
“You are a devoted brother,” the viscount was quick to oblige.
A devoted brother.
Landon pointed his pipe Charles’s way. “There you go.”
Those words, coming from a man such as St. John, with six sisters and a widowed mother he cared for, why, there was no greater praise. And yet . . .
St. John had six sisters, and Charles just one . . . one whom he’d failed spectacularly. That always-with-him truth still hit like a kick to the gut. He gave up the battle he’d waged since arriving and grabbed his glass and swallowed down a large sip of his whiskey.
“That is all?” Charles asked, glancing between his suddenly silent friends.
Landon released a frustrated sound. “Do you want to know my opinion?”
“N—”
“Why should you want to impress the lady? It is over.” It is over. There was such a finality to his friend speaking it that Charles’s heart squeezed painfully. “And she isn’t worth any more of your heartache.”
Landon was wrong on any number of scores there.
Charles glanced down at the varnish of the same stale table he’d sat at year after year after year.
Emma, mastermind of a society to advocate for better lives of women, and a lady determined to exert control over her own life, was a woman worth the heartache, as his friend called it. Only it wasn’t about impressing Emma. Not really. Yes, he despised that she looked at him and saw a wastrel, scoundrel, libertine. But he hated more the idea that . . . she was, in fact, right about him.
“Ahem.” St. John made a clearing sound with his throat until Charles looked up.
“When it comes to matters of the heart, Landon,” the more contemplative and measured of his friends said, “it is not your place to tell Charles or any man whether it is time to call something ‘over.’”
“No, you are correct,” Landon readily conceded.
Of course, St. John’s assertion, they now knew, came from the fact that he had been secretly in love with the wife of their late best friend, the Earl of Norfolk. “Thank you, St. John,” Charles said quietly.
The viscount lifted his head in acknowledgment.
For years, both Charles and Landon had been oblivious to the sentiments St. John carried for Lady Norfolk. Charles, however, had come to suspect something was amiss eventually—after all, the honorable St. John had completely turned his back on Sylvia, who’d been his friend, after her husband’s death. That suspicion only grew when they reconnected.
St. John could speak better than most about unrequited regards.
Sighing, Landon dragged his chair closer, clamped his pipe between his teeth, and held two palms aloft. “Very well. I shouldn’t be the one to tell you when to quit Miss Gately. You are asking for help, different help, then. It is like this . . .”
“Here we go,” St. John muttered, choosing that moment to reach for the bottle and snifter.
“A man is either blithe”—Landon waggled his right fingers—“or . . . serious about life.” He gave a wag of his left palm. “This”—the marquess held up the blithe hand once more—“is you. You must be one or the other. You have to pick one.”
Pick one.
St. John rolled his eyes. “For the love of God, man, a person can be both.”
“That’s your wife’s society speaking,” Landon shot back. “It’s not the way things really are.”
Both men proceeded to launch into a debate. As they did, Charles contemplated the point they argued.
The way Landon spoke of it, there was a choice . . . a choice in how Charles had lived his life these past years. When for so long he’d not been afforded that option. Not really. Instead, he’d been forced to, as Landon said, choose one over the other, and Charles had done so gladly—to protect his family. And the secret his family carried.
Society had formed their low opinion of him.
All the while, he’d accepted his circumstance, but he’d also gone through life annoyed at the perceptions that surrounded his existence, and a decoy existence that he’d fashioned himself, at that.
As his friends chatted, he stared absently out across a crowded White’s.
His mother’s latest directives whispered forward.
“Fix your reputation. Restore your image. Make yourself the respectable man I know you can be . . .”
She’d charged him with the responsibility of improving himself, while Landon insisted it was an impossible task.
All the while, there’d been a woman such as Emma, who with her society was putting forward views that challenged the black-and-white opinions Landon spoke of now.
Charles’s thoughts slowed, and then took off at a rapid clip. Emma had set out to start something . . . and she had done so in a way that expanded minds. The world saw one thing. And one thing only. And she’d identified that deficit. Just one group such as hers, however, would never be enough to undo the flaws steeped within society’s perceptions of . . .
“My God,” he whispered. It was the answer to so much: his mother’s latest orders for him, and . . . Emma. “That is it!”
His friends stopped midconversation and eyed Charles with matching degrees of wariness.
“What?” St. John asked in hesitant, fear-laden tones.
Leaning across the table, Charles gripped St. John’s face and kissed his cheek. “You are brilliant, man.”
Charles released him quickly, then sat back in his chair.
“People are certainly going to talk about that,” Landon said on a laugh.
Sure enough, any number of eyes had already landed on their trio. “Fine. Let all the bastards talk. That is precisely what this is about.”
“I . . . I . . . am afraid I’m not following,” St. John admitted. “Precisely what . . . what is about?”
“I confess, Scarsdale,” Landon added. “For the first time, I’ve joined St. John here in the department of cluelessness.”
Enlivened for the first time since Emma had ended their betrothal, Charles shared the idea which had taken root. “The ladies, your Sylvia, my Miss Gately—”
“She is not really your—”
Charles pinned a glare on Landon, effectively ending that unnecessary and unwise interjection, particularly as it was an unwelcome distraction in light of what had come to him.
Landon cleared his throat. “You were saying?”
Warming to the topic, Charles grabbed his chair and dragged it to the very edge of the table until the side bit into his stomach. “What Emma and Lady Sylvia have introduced was considered scandalous—a group of women coming together to discuss political ideas and opinions. They are no different from a salon during the Enlightenment. Hosted primarily by women. In fact, I’d say they are quite the same. Do you know the difference?” His friends stared back blankly. Charles grinned. “The difference is there was a counterpart—a male-oriented counterpart—the café . . .”
A slow understanding settled in St. John’s eyes, followed swiftly by dread, as the other man managed nothing more than a slow shake of his head.
Oh, yes. In creating something such as that, it not only proved Charles was capable of being more than the blithe lord even his friends took him for . . . it was also surely something Emma could respect.
Landon kicked back his chair so it rested on two legs. “What do you know about . . . Enlightened thinkers?”
Yes, that would be the opinion. Nor, for that matter, was his friend truly off the mark. Charles hadn’t involved himself in such scholarly matters. “I confess, not much. Everything I’ve learned has been from Seamus.” Charles couldn’t have been prouder.
“Then leave it to Seamus to one day do what you are thinking,” St. John pleaded.
Confusion creased the place between Landon’s eyes. “What is he thinking?” He shifted focus from St. John to Charles. Then horror lit his gaze. “My God, I’ve become St. John.”
Both Charles and St. John ignored the other man’s theatrics, carrying out a conversation all their own. “There has been a need revealed, thanks to your Sylvia and my Miss Gately—”
“Splendid! Then just say thank you and leave it be,” St. John implored. “But do not do . . . what you are thinking to do.”
“Oh, no.” Charles shook his head. “Not ‘thinking to do.’”
The viscount’s shoulders sagged with a palpable sign of his relief.
Charles smiled again. “What I am going to do.”
“Will someone please enlighten me in exactly what you two are talking about?” Landon paused. “No pun intended.”
Waiting for the undivided attention of his audience of two, Charles spread his arms wide. “I shall also be offering a place for people to come together and discuss . . . matters.”
“Matters?”St. John repeated.
Frowning at that underwhelming response from his two closest friends in the world, Charles waved his fingers in an emphasizing circle. “We shall work out those details as we go. But it shall be important matters, pertaining to . . . politics and life and society and—”
St. John cut him off. “And which exact ‘we’ will make up your society?”
Charles gave him a pointed look.
The viscount didn’t blink for several moments.
Charles nodded slowly for the other man’s benefit.
Horror filled St. John’s wide eyes. With a groan, the recently wedded chap grabbed the bottle once more and splashed several fingerfuls into his empty glass. He paused, contemplated the glass for several moments, and added more of the spirits.
Charles and Landon watched as he downed his drink in a single long, painful-looking swallow.
“Ah.” Charles wagged a finger. “And I should point out, we are not a society. We are a club. ‘Societies’ suggest stodgy groups who’d exclude people from their ranks.”
St. John proceeded to dissolve into a fit, strangling on the last remnants of his brandy.
Leaning close, Landon slapped him hard on the back. “This is your idea to win back the lady?” he drawled while their other friend choked. “If so, it is a terrible idea.”
“The w-worst,” St. John managed to force out, and proceeded to refill his glass.
“I disagree,” Charles said for the pair of naysayers. “Why, having established a club of her own, she may even appreciate mine.”
His friends spoke in unison. “She won’t.”
Fair enough. She might not react favorably. Not at first, perhaps. After all, a gent could never truly be certain where a lady was concerned. “Well, at worst she’ll be indifferent.” As indifferent as she’d proven to be toward him these past months.
“That is not the worst,” St. John said with a shake of his head. “At. All.”
Landon stared at him incredulously.
“Nor, for that matter, is it entirely about winning back Emma.” There was a small element of rehabilitating his reputation, which might have just a bit to do with his mother’s last visit and . . . also winning Emma back. Charles reached for his drink.
Both men gave him a look.
“What? It isn’t,” Charles insisted, forgetting his snifter. Some of it had to do with proving—not just to her, but to all of society—that intellect was not reserved for a certain, select type of person, a person Charles had never been and would never be. Why should there be just the one group, and an exclusionary one at that?
“Well, let me spare you the ending. You’re wrong,” Landon said bluntly. “It is a rotted idea.”
“Oh, no. It’s not that at all. She doubts I’m capable of seriousness. I’m just as capable, if not more, of discussing and debating . . . things.”
Landon snorted. “Things?”
Charles slid another glare his friend’s way. “Laugh all you want . . .”
In the midst of drinking his brandy, St. John lifted a palm. When he finished, he held on tight to his glass. “Oh, I assure you, I am not laughing.”
Nay, in fairness, the viscount sounded one more idea from Charles away from dissolving into tears. Charles could understand that. His wife was the head of the only club for the improvement of thoughts. “With the exception of St. John here, they’ve barred gentlemen from entry. They’ve meticulously selected their membership. Only certain women, fitting certain criteria, are allowed. Well, we shall be the alternative. A place . . . for all!” He shot out an arm.
Alas, his friends sat stone-faced, and visibly unimpressed. So much for the support of a man’s best friends. Charles let his arm fall. “You think it’s a terrible idea because of my intent to win back Miss Gately.” He directed that at Landon. “And you . . .” He shifted focus to St. John. “Your real concern is how your wife will receive you joining an alternate club. You, who don’t even attend her meetings anymore, because they are hers.” When St. John’s eyebrows dipped, Charles rushed to clarify. “I am not passing judgment. I am pointing out that you were only invited to join the ranks in the first place because they had a need of you . . . but when they received the legitimacy that your presence provided, and you were married to Sylvia, you ceased attending. You let them to their group, as you should have. However, people need choices,” Charles pointed out. “Why should there be just one club? A need was identified . . . and as such, there should be many places that allow people to come together and share in ideas and frustrations and beliefs.”
This time, a different silence met Charles’s words, this one neither mocking nor confused, but contemplative. It was the sound of two men who recognized the truth in what Charles spoke . . . even as St. John was determined to resist it.
“It is a society,” St. John said, desperation in his voice.
Charles grinned. “Well, again, we are a club . . . and we are going to be a club like no other. We shall meet, and our membership will include both men and women.”
Always proper, St. John tried once more to interject his pragmatic reasoning to derail Charles’s idea. “And just where do you think you are going to hold meetings for men and women, in a way that society isn’t scandalized? You’re a rogue,” the other man said bluntly. “Landon is a rogue.”
“Ohhh, I prefer rake.” Landon kicked back his seat, balancing on the hind legs of his chair once more.
“And of a sudden,” St. John continued purposefully over that amusement-laden interjection from their friend, “proper mothers are going to simply let their proper, marriage-minded daughters visit your household?”
No. In a world where a lady’s unsullied reputation was the currency upon which empires were built, the ton would never allow it, and yet . . . there were . . . ways.
When St. John had concluded that diatribe, Charles wagged a finger under his desperate friend’s nose. “Ah, you shall leave those details to me.”
Raising his drink, Landon laughed, and touched the rim of his snifter to Charles’s. “Oh, now this I am going to enjoy.”
St. John dropped his poor head to the table, and proceeded to knock it lightly against the smooth mahogany surface. And with his head down, he raised his glass and touched it to Charles’s and Landon’s still-raised drinks.
For the first time in a very, very long while, Charles was enjoying himself, too . . . and all thanks to Miss Emma Gately.
