The Importance of Being Wanton - Christi Caldwell Page 0,115
“And furthermore, it is more that I’m forbidding him from seeing you.”
“That is the same thing,” she said bluntly.
“Is it?” He hemmed. “I don’t see it that way.”
“Very well.” Emma clasped her hands before her. “Then I’d like to see Charles.”
Her father’s nostrils flared. “No.”
Emma threw up her arms, and immediately regretted that sudden movement. She winced and reflexively touched a hand to the knot at the back of her skull.
“You really should not be out of your bed, Emma,” her mother chided as if she were still the small girl who’d sneaked from her chambers and wandered the household in the dead of night, when everyone else was sleeping, in search of the night’s pastries that hadn’t been eaten.
“I am fine,” she snapped, then promptly winced at the dull throbbing from the place at the back of her skull where she’d taken that rock.
“That!” her mother exclaimed, pointing at Emma. “That is precisely why you should be abed.” Wrapping an arm about Emma’s waist and another around her shoulders, she guided her toward the door. “Help me see her abovestairs, dear heart.”
Emma dug in her heels. “I am not leaving.” She ground her feet to a stop, so that if her mother continued forward, she’d be forced to drag her down. “And I do not want to be shown to my rooms.”
Her parents exchanged a look, and then reluctantly, Emma’s mother shifted course and led them over to a different chair, and Emma sat. They stared at one another. “Are you mad?” she demanded.
They gasped.
“And I am not asking or using that word as any manner of insult. I am just trying to understand, because nothing else could explain how you, the both of you who know Charles as you do, who have been pressing me to wed him, should somehow come to believe that he could hurt me.”
When she’d finished her tirade, her father made to speak, but his wife held up a hand, and commanded the floor. “He has hurt you, Emma.”
Emma stared back, waiting for her to say more. “When?” she cried out.
“By not honoring your commitment years ago. By establishing a rival club. Should I continue?”
Her father cleared his throat. “Because she can,” he interjected, and promptly sank back in his seat when mother and daughter sluiced glares his way. “As you were.”
“Now is the time when you decide to hear things that I told you years ago?” Emma asked incredulously.
“Your father has it on the authority of someone he trusts, whom our family trusts,” her mother corrected.
“Who?” she demanded.
There was a beat of silence, the faintest look passed between them, and Emma narrowed her eyes.
“We’ve sworn to secrecy,” her father finally admitted.
This time her vision blurred, and it wasn’t her injury but rather the bright flash of rage that blinded her. Someone had come to her parents with information that affected her future and her happiness, and they would withhold that name?
Emma took a deep breath, and tried again to reason with her parents. “This is Charles. Your godson. The man you played billiards with, Papa.” She switched her focus to her mother. “The man whom you once told me scraped his knees and you helped tend him when he was a babe.” For a moment, her mother’s expression wavered, and Emma thought she’d reached them. “He wouldn’t do what you are accusing him of.” She pressed her point.
And apparently pushed too hard.
Her papa grunted. “Then the investigation will yield as much.”
“The . . .” My God. Emma couldn’t even make herself finish that. But she had to. “You hired an investigator.”
“We are not necessarily saying he is guilty,” her mama hedged. “Just as we are not saying you can never see h—”
Emma cut her off. “When?”
“And we weren’t rude. We were very polite.”
A humorless laugh spilled from her lips. “Oh, I hope you are prepared to lose your lifelong friendship with Lord and Lady Rochester, because they will never forgive this affront.” Nor should they. This was an unforgivable slandering of a man who was good and who was honorable.
Emma’s warning managed to leach the color from their cheeks.
“Then so be it.” Her mother spoke quietly. “If they cannot understand, then our friendship is not one that should be saved.”
“We have issued no public declarations,” Emma’s father insisted. “We are simply saying we wish to be sure he wasn’t. We want to be sure that if you intend to marry him, that he is someone who is absolutely safe.”