The Importance of Being Wanton by Christi Caldwell

Chapter 6

THE LONDONER

BRILLIANCE ABOUNDS

A valuable addition to Polite Society has recently sprung: a club that provides a valuable means of bringing persons together to speak. Unlike the Mismatch Society, which takes itself too seriously and tries entirely too hard, it is no wonder so many are clamoring for a place within this new, exciting establishment, hosted by none other than the Earl of Scarsdale.

M. FAIRPOINT

White’s was more crowded than usual, even for the afternoon hour. That fact was not just some matter of chance.

Reclining in his chair, Charles stared at the Baron Waldegrave. The young rogue, with his Brutus curls and deliberately unkempt cravat, wore a look Charles recognized all too well.

And he didn’t trust him on sight for it. “State your intentions,” he said, turning to an empty page in his notebook.

The fellow cleared his throat. “I . . . I thought . . . is this an interview?”

Landon snorted. “Surely you don’t think our club would have such low standards that we wouldn’t conduct interviews?”

Charles and Landon both leveled the younger man with a look that effectively doused the cocksure arrogance the boy had come in with.

Ducking his shoulders, the baron squirmed in his seat. “To join the club?”

“Is that a question?” Charles asked. He didn’t wait, turning that query instead to Landon. “Was that a question?”

Taking that cue from him, the marquess shook his head disapprovingly. “It sounded like a question to me.”

Lord Waldegrave immediately shot up in his chair. “Not a question. A request?” When both men continued to stare at him, he said, “An appeal?”

Charles shook his head. “Another question.” He made a note in his book; feeling the younger man arching forward to examine the words there, he looked up quickly.

“Tsk-tsk,”Landon said, cradling his drink in his hand.

Waldegrave immediately sat back.

Then Charles got to it, the heart of the question that mattered most. “Why do you wish to join?”

And just like that, all the nervousness seemed to seep out of the young man’s wiry frame. Waldegrave’s lips formed one of those affected, crooked half grins that Charles knew all too well. Dropping his left elbow onto the table, the young man leaned forward. “I think that should be clear.”

Charles sharpened his stare on this latest interviewee. Of course, the lad was too arrogant, and too young to lose his grin over it. “Say it anyway.”

The other side of the boy’s mouth completed his smile. “A room full of ladies without the benefits of their mothers present?” And with that, he waggled his eyebrows, holding Landon’s gaze first, and then Charles’s, a young rogue who recognized like company. But he was also too much a fool to know there was a difference between a rogue and a rake.

Charles and Landon looked at one another.

“Get the hell out, Waldegrave,” Landon snapped.

“But . . . but . . .” The young man sputtered, struggling and failing to get his complete thought out in one piece. “I thought this was a way to get men with ladies who have a taste for passion.”

Anger briefly darkened Charles’s vision. “It’s not,” he snapped. “You really think I’m going to stage seductions between men and innocent women in my mother’shousehold?”

Waldegrave hesitated. “Uh . . .”

“I advise you don’t answer that.” Landon helped the young man out, effectively saving his life. The young baron immediately closed his mouth. “Go.”

Waldegrave jumped up and immediately fled.

“Who is next?” Charles asked before the rake had even gone. Skimming a finger along his sloppy notes, contained within what might have actually been an empty page in one of his ledgers, he settled his index finger on a name. “Beaufort.”

Charles glanced over to the balding young gentleman hovering in the wings.

“This day has proven enlightening,” he said, snapping his book shut. Of the seven interviews they’d conducted thus far, all but one had resulted in the same outcome.

Landon chuckled. “What did you expect? That you were going to have a sea of bookish lords interested in talking philosophy and life? Why, we’re not all that different from any of those other ones.” He nudged his chin at a table full of the gentlemen who’d assembled to commiserate over their rejections. All six of the men glared back their way.

Yes, it was a fair point. They hadn’t been vastly different from all the men whose ulterior motives and interests were solely on interacting in ways that were noneducational with the ladies who made up his club. But neither had they preyed on unwed ladies.

Charles stared, frozen, vacantly at the cover of his notebook.

“Don’t look so glum,” Landon said, pouring him a glass of brandy and pushing it his way until the snifter touched his fingers. He consulted his haphazard notes, then glanced over to the young gent hovering in the wings. “We’ll find the honorable ones. Rare though they are. Why, here is one now!” With that, he held up his hand in greeting, and Charles looked to the approaching lord.

Landon brightened. “St. John! Grab a chair. You’re right on time. Almost anyway.”

The viscount passed a horrified gaze over the cluttered table. “What in helllll is this?”

“Interviews,” Charles explained, raising a hand and staying the approaching Lord Beaufort, holding on to their privacy a bit longer.

“Interviews?” St. John repeated.

Charles and Landon nodded in response. The other man continued to stare back blankly, his brow creased in lines of perplexity, before he at last availed himself of a seat. “Explain,” he said with an ease that could come from only a man with six troublesome sisters.

Lord Beaufort pointedly cleared his throat. All three men shot up a hand, holding him at bay. The young gent, recently out of university, rocked back on his heels and remained there, waiting.

“I think it should be clear,” Charles explained, shuffling through the first stack of papers, evening those sheets, and then arranging the others. “We’re conducting official club business.”

St. John shook his head, then several moments later, continued shaking. “And you somehow decided White’s was the best place for official business?”

“Well, it couldn’t very well be at Forbidden Pleasures. That would defeat the purpose,” Charles said jovially, leaning over to pat his friend on the back. “It’s the easiest way to assemble honorable gents and interested parties. Get them all in one place and—”

“Weed them out,” Landon supplied. Reaching for the barely touched bottle of brandy, he proceeded to refill his glass.

“Let me get this straight: you two, leading rogues of Polite Society, are interviewing lords to see if they are . . . respectable enough.” St. John paused, then promptly burst out laughing.

Landon grunted. “Quite judgmental of you, old chum. One should think you’d approve of us being careful in our process.”

“Yes. No. I . . .” The befuddled gentleman dragged a hand through his hair, then began again. “Of course, I am pleased that you are placing such emphasis on the character of the members.”

“Did you expect otherwise?” Charles asked, already knowing. Already knowing the opinion society . . . even his best friends and family . . . had of him. He was entirely deserving of it. But it chafed still.

“Of course not,” St. John said unconvincingly.

“I’m allowing gentlemen to enter my family’s household, the place where my sister and Seamus live . . . and where your sister and other men’s sisters and wives will meet,” Charles said. “Do you truly think I’ll allow just any rogue to attend?”

Folding his arms at his chest, Landon stared pointedly at the viscount. “Hmm?”

Properly chastised, St. John bowed his head. “You . . . my apologies,” he said quietly. “You are correct. I’m just . . . pleased to see the measures you’ve put into place.”

Surprised Charles would do the right thing? It didn’t need to be said. The meaning of those unspoken words was clear.

Coughing into his fist, St. John nodded for them to continue. “As you were.”

Landon motioned for their next potential member to join.

Beaufort trotted over and hovered until Charles gestured to the last open seat. “Join us, Beaufort.”

The young fellow promptly sank into the seat. “A-all three of you intend to interview me?”

“Is that a problem?” Charles, Landon, and St. John asked at the same time.

The boy’s enormous Adam’s apple leapt. “No,” he croaked, his voice climbing several octaves. “Not at all. It is an honor.” He swept his arms wide and dropped a deep, seated bow that managed to connect the lad’s forehead with the corner of the table.

All three men collectively winced at that solid thump.

Blushing, Beaufort straightened.

“Now . . .” Charles’s question faded as he caught sight of the latest addition to White’s. His brother wound his way through the crowded floor, beating a purposeful path forward until he came to a stop at Charles’s private table.

Derek doffed his hat, slapping it against his palm and sending a cloud of dust wafting.

“Hey, pup,” Charles greeted. He stretched out a leg, using the tip of his boot to snatch one of the empty chairs from a nearby table and shove it over to Derek. “Joining the big lads, are you?”

Derek ignored that offering, his expression dark, his eyes troubled.

All Charles’s fraternal senses went on brotherly alert. “Out of here, Beaufort,” he said, cutting off the young man still in the midst of conversing with St. John.

The other man stopped abruptly and frowned up at Charles’s brother. “I beg your pardon. I’ve scheduled my appointment, Hayden. You’re stealing my time.”

Derek blinked in confusion. “What . . . is happening?” he asked with the same confusion St. John had arrived with earlier.

“Nothing anymore. You heard the Haydens. Time to shove off, Beaufort,” Landon said, pushing the smaller man’s chair back with his right foot to edge it away from the table.

“Gentlemen, if you’ll allow me a moment?” Charles said the moment Derek had seated himself.

As if at last sensing the tense shift, his friends looked between one another.

“Of course,” St. John murmured, climbing to his feet.

As both men took their leave, Derek didn’t offer so much as a parting goodbye, and the sense of dread only spiraled. “What is it?” Charles asked the moment they’d gone.

“I . . .” Derek averted his stare, the club’s bounty of candles casting a bright glow over the room, highlighting his flushed cheeks.

“What is it, Derek?” Charles urged a second time, gently but firmly.

“I attended a club that caters to men and women.” A wicked establishment Charles had frequented time enough in his youth, at first in the name of duty, and then because it had become easier to be numbed by the solace found in a stranger’s arms than to confront directly how he’d failed his sister. Such clubs were dens of sin, and he despised that his brother had found his way into that world. “There was . . . a young woman there,” his brother finished, glancing down at his feet.

Impatient for the details that had sent Derek racing here, Charles controlled himself, allowing his sibling the time he required.

“She wasn’t dressed like the other women. She was attired like a proper lady, in modest garments. And she was pale . . . and”—Derek dragged a hand through his hair—“I managed to speak to her alone.” His brother’s mouth hardened. “Some cad told her he loved her, ruined her, and sold her. She is just seventeen.”

She is just seventeen.

Oh, God.

Sweat slicked Charles’s palms. His stomach roiled.

The past came rushing up to meet him, and he thought of another young lady who’d suffered such a fate. Not a stranger, but his sister, Camille. Who’d been differently but similarly ruined by the dissolute lord who’d inherited the ramshackle properties next to their Kent country estates. That rake, who’d met her secretly, had seduced her out of her virtue, then left her with a babe in her belly—the babe Charles had come to pass off as his own in a bid to protect Camille from the scandal and suffering that would await her as a single mother.

Since the moment he’d learned of his sister’s fate, Charles had been left desperately trying to put together the pieces of something that could never truly be fixed . . . But even so, he’d tried like hell anyway.

“Charles? Charles?” his brother repeated a second time, more insistently, pulling Charles back from the abyss of so many regrets.

“Yes, forgive me.”

“I couldn’t get her out,” his brother said tightly. “The chap was quite condescending, and I couldn’t. I’m not a lord with any influence. I don’t have the funds to even try. I—” His features spasmed, and he slammed a fist on the table, that thump an echo of his fury and frustration, attracting attention from nearby patrons.

“Shh,”Charles urged. “It is fine.” He willed a thread of firmness into that assurance. “Tell me where they are. I’ll coordinate what must be done.”

“Thank you,” his brother mouthed, his shoulders sagging, revealing just how young he still was.

A short while later, he and his brother rode for Cannon Street.