The Importance of Being Wanton - Christi Caldwell Page 0,102

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.

Chapter 21

THE LONDONER

A LADY SPURNED!

Whispers abound that the scandal which has shaken Le Libre Club was nothing more than a tawdry orchestration on the part of Miss Emma Gately. For shame!

M. FAIRPOINT

Emma had always wished to receive a note from her former betrothed.

It was a secret she’d carried and shared with no one for the sheer foolishness of having it.

It had been just one of many private longings she had harbored where the gentleman was concerned.

She had let herself to thoughts of pretty sonnets, or even bad ones. Verses drafted just for her, a secret between the two of them.

And at last, he had written.

But once more, in yet another way, it was nothing she’d ever hoped for from him.

Meet me at the Serpentine at dawn. Same place as our last meeting.

—Scarsdale

Seated on the bench of her carriage, she lingered her gaze upon two details: the absence of her name and the addition of his formal one.

It was silly to be disappointed still, in any way, over Charles. Given the rouge-stained shirt that had lain atop garments she’d shed in his room, there shouldn’t ever be any illusions again on her part about who he was. A vise squeezed painfully about her heart, proving the damned organ still wasn’t done bleeding where he was concerned.

It was far better, far safer, to see him for the threat to the Mismatch Society that he was.

Folding the missive along its heavy crease, which had been made all the heavier from the constant reading and rereading she’d done of that scrap, Emma tucked it back inside her reticule. She stole a look across the bench to where Heather snored softly, and quietly let herself out of the carriage. Emma closed the carriage door with a careful click so as to not awaken the young woman she’d dragged along at this ungodly hour, and set off to meet Charles.

Nor did she have any illusions about what this meeting was about.

Or the gossip that had ensued.

And yet none of it had felt like any form of triumph. She’d felt only . . . all the worse inside.

Their truce, if it had ever really been that, had come to an end . . . after they’d made love, when she’d seen the evidence of his deeds that night contained upon his shirt and been reminded of all the ways in which she was still a fool for Charles.

She’d already crafted a response, one constructed on everything he would no doubt say. And focusing on that, as she made her march through the serene grounds of an empty Hyde Park, proved steadying.

Lifting her skirts to keep them from dragging on the dew-slicked earth, Emma found her way along the same path she had when she’d ended it with Charles. As such, there was a poignant familiarity to the impending exchange, a different confrontation that was also not so very different—two people who’d almost been wed, destined to be at odds forevermore.

Emma crested the slight rise and stopped, her gaze instantly

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