The Importance of Being Wanton - Christi Caldwell Page 0,116

you have a daughter someday, Emma, you will discover that you will protect your child at any costs.”

“Even at the cost of her happiness?” she spat, unable to keep the bitterness from that query.

“Yes,” her mother said evenly. “Even that.”

She came to her feet. “At every turn, you have decided what is best for me.”

“Emma—”

“No!” She shouted her father into silence. “You will listen to me. You chose my future when I was but a child. You decided who I should wed without a regard to how I might one day feel, or what I might want.” Her entire body shook from the force of the resentment burning through her. “And then finally, when I realize it is Charles I love and want in my life, you would keep me away . . . once more deciding that you know what is best.”

Her father made to speak, but the viscountess lifted a hand.

“We are finally hearing you, Emma,” her mother said with a calm that belied the lingering echo of Emma’s cries around the room. “We failed to see you were hurt before. Now, we are looking with clear eyes: after you ended it, he started a rival society. After all his scandals, this is going to be humiliating, and we would protect you from this humiliation.”

That quiet pronouncement brought Emma rocking back on her heels.

For that had been the same thought and fear she’d carried—that in giving herself to Charles, she’d be opening herself up to humiliation. Only to see . . . how very little that had mattered. “I don’t care,” she said softly, the truth coming to her at last. “I don’t care what people say or how it might look.” And there was something so very freeing in that truth. A lightness suffused her chest. So much of what had caused her humiliation had been the absolute absence of control . . . but this? Deciding her own heart, taking ownership of who she wanted to spend the rest of her life with, was the greatest control she’d ever had over herself. She smiled. “I love him,” she said simply. And to hell with anyone—her parents included—who might judge her for it. With that, Emma started for the door.

“Emma,” her father called out imploringly.

Emma ignored that plaintive entreaty.

“Let her go. She needs some time,” her mama said as Emma brought the door shut behind her.

Time was what they thought she required?

She was done with it. Done letting others choose her course. Done letting her parents decide her future.

She knew what she wanted, and more specifically who she wanted . . .

Her heart lifted in her chest, with the sense of absolute rightness . . .

A short while later, she had a bag packed and her crimson cloak donned, underestimated by her family, as she’d always been. Emma found her way outside and went in search of a hackney . . . finding one stopped just across the pavement. She bolted for the carriage. Calling up instructions, she let the driver take her bag, and accepted his hand up.

The moment the door shut behind her, she settled onto the bench and gasped.

A tall figure sat in the shadows, and she immediately brought up her reticule to bring it across the stranger’s face . . .

“Don’t!” he cried out, holding up his arms protectively. “It is me.”

Through the shock of discovering someone in her conveyance, Emma slowly lowered her reticule and stared at the familiar person opposite her. “Owen?” she asked incredulously as the carriage lurched forward. Oh, thank God.

“I thought you might be in need of . . . assistance.”

God love him.

“You scared the devil out of me,” she said, tugging off her gloves and pushing back her hood. “I am ever so relieved it was you.”

“Your parents are not happy,” he ventured, adjusting his spectacles. “With good reason.”

Good reason being . . . the erroneous thought that Charles was somehow guilty in what had occurred this day? A healthy dose of annoyance replaced any earlier relief at finding him here.

Emma had reached for the curtain, to tug it back and peer out, when Owen spoke.

“They are worried about you, Emma . . . as am I.”

Something in his tone froze her efforts, and she gripped the edge of the fabric before releasing it. And even in the dark of the carriage, she saw a hardness she’d never before seen in Owen’s eyes. A manner that she would have said him impossible of possessing . . .