The Importance of Being Wanton - Christi Caldwell Page 0,103
finding him; his hands folded at his back, Charles stared out across the serene Serpentine, the faintest traces of the sun just creeping over the horizon bathing that river in an orange light, the water set afire.
Taking a breath, she continued the remainder of the way.
She reached him and opened her mouth to begin the scripted exchange she’d arrived here with this day, when, his back to her still, Charles spoke into the quiet. Cutting off her attempts.
“Do you know, Emma,” he said quietly, his focus still directed out, “I came here knowing exactly what I planned to say to you.” She bit the inside of her cheek under the evidence that they’d been alike, even in this. Charles let his arms fall to his sides, but made no move to look at her. “I’d planned what I intended to say about your sending Miss Lee and Miss Linden to my family’s household.” He spoke as if more to himself. “I arrived earlier, and I just . . . stood here. And do you know what I saw, Emma?” At last, he cast a glance her way, his eyes containing so much emotion, too much to ever make sense of without any deciphering from him.
Dampening her mouth, Emma shook her head.
“I saw you here . . . and myself, marching over that same rise you just walked.” He pointed beyond her to the path she herself had been so reflecting on in the very same way. “I thought of that day you broke it off. And why you did.” He paused. “It was something I’ve understood from that day. Why should you have wanted a life with me? Why, when you don’t even respect me?”
“I . . . respect you, Charles,” she said, joining him at the very edge of the shore. At the look he slid her way, she clarified. “Perhaps not before, but these past weeks . . . I’ve seen—”
“Precisely.” He pointed a finger at her. “That is precisely it. You didn’t know me, and I didn’t know you, and it was because I never allowed for it.” And this time an emotion she did recognize and knew all too well flashed in those dark brown irises: regret. “Instead, you’ve been left to form whatever opinions you have based on what you do know of me.” His lips pulled. “None of which are . . . honorable.”
What was he saying? What was he trying to say? She hung on, her breath bated, wanting to understand what exactly he was saying, a puzzle of a mystery she couldn’t solve without his explanation.
He sighed. “And so I initially came driven by anger that you’d dare send Miss Lee and Miss Linden to me. But then as I stood, waiting for you to come and thinking of the day you severed our arrangement, it hit me—you don’t know anything about my relationship with them.” Those words cleaved her in two, left her splayed in ways she hated because she cared about him. “You don’t know about my relationship with Seamus.” His features spasmed. “Hell, Emma, you didn’t even meet him . . . because of me. Because I never let you in, and that was wrong.”
I never let you in . . .
She bit down hard on the inside of her cheek. “Why?”
He stared questioningly at her.
“Why was it wrong?” she clarified, her arms wrapped about her middle in a solitary embrace she didn’t recall making. “It was ordained by our parents. You were never required to have to let me in or want me in your life. There was no fault in your not wanting me.” It had taken until just recently for her to realize as much.
His throat moved. “Because I never gave us a chance, and I failed to see you as you deserved to be seen. I failed to appreciate you as you deserved to be appreciated.
“And mayhap it wouldn’t have changed anything,” he continued, running his eyes over her face. “Mayhap you still would have chosen the very path you have . . .” He looked to the graveled one they’d both traversed this day, and another before it. “But the truth remains, I’ve shared nothing with you. I’ve let you to your beliefs. About Seamus. About Miss Lee and Miss Linden.”
He’d let her to her beliefs . . . which implied not everything was as it seemed in terms of those people in his life.