The Importance of Being Wanton - Christi Caldwell Page 0,106

. . ?”

“Do not make me out to be more honorable than I am. I’m not, Emma,” he said bluntly. “I still did . . .” His color deepened, and when he spoke, he did so in a furious whisper. “All of those things you’ve hated me for doing.” As if he were unable to meet her eyes, Charles directed his gaze out on a pair of pink pelicans gliding to a graceful stop atop the water.

Emma stood there, studying Charles, her mind putting together all the pieces of the puzzle this man had been to her. His parents had come to him, a young man at university, and thrust the weight of their family’s broken world upon his shoulders. And he’d done as they wished, agreeing to live a lie to protect his sister.

And in that moment, she fell in love with him. Her eyes slid closed as she staggered under the weight of that discovery. She’d always been in awe of him. Enamored and charmed. But this? This was deeper. She fell in love with who he was, a man who’d love Seamus, fostering the boy’s love of learning. She fell in love with him for having allowed her the freedom on Regent Street to stand up for herself.

And she loved him for all he was.

A noisy splash of the fowl at play on the river brought her eyes open, and her heart lurched at finding Charles frozen, immobile in the same way he’d been.

These past weeks, she’d come to see Charles in a new way, but she’d still been left with more questions about the man he truly was.

All along, she’d resisted what her eyes and heart had been showing her about who he was. She’d been so blinded by her own hurt pride . . . until this moment. For in this moment, she understood him.

At last.

Emma’s silence was far worse than any words she could have spoken. It was heavy and vague, and he didn’t know how to make sense of what she was thinking. About him.

Even with that, however, having shared with her the truths that had tormented him filled Charles with a lightness he had been missing.

At last, someone knew.

Nay, she knew. He’d wanted to share it with her. From the moment they’d been betrothed as children, their lives had intersected in ways that had brought them to this very moment.

As such, she’d been deserving of not only the history he’d withheld, but his fidelity as well.

He pulled his gaze from the Serpentine and made himself at last look at Emma.

She hugged her arms about herself and glanced out at the sun creeping higher upon the horizon. That orange orb bathed her features in a soft light, burnishing the tightly drawn-back strands of her golden hair, and his breath hitched. One day, just one day, he wished to see her as she was, with the sun about her, in this very spot, without the world falling down around them . . . or without either of them resurrecting past pains. He wanted it to have been different.

Forcing himself away from the hungering of that thought and those wishful yearnings, Charles directed his attention forward once more. “I know none of what I shared really matters,” he said, his voice hollow to his ears. He returned his hat to his head. “It doesn’t undo . . . anything.” Nothing would. “But I . . . wanted you to know anyway.”

There came several beats of silence.

The crunch of gravel filled the morning quiet, blending with a noisy splash as one of the pelicans dunked its head under the water’s surface in search of its morning meal.

He stiffened, feeling Emma’s presence even before she took up a place directly beside him, so close their arms brushed, and she stared out with him at the river ahead.

“Of course it would have mattered,” she whispered, and his entire body stiffened. Emma slid her fingers into his. “It does matter.”

It does matter . . .

And with that, she held forth an absolution.

Her words hinting at a future, and not a broken past. “You played the part you were asked to, Charles,” she said with a gentleness he didn’t deserve. “Because it was asked of you. You played a part, Charles,” she said firmly, capturing his hands and tightening her grip when he made to pull away. “You became the part.”

“And I fell into it entirely too easily.” He couldn’t hold back the trace bitterness at his own moral failings.