The Importance of Being Wanton - Christi Caldwell Page 0,25
been capable of doing so, and were I you, I wouldn’t go throwing about my lack of amusement in your presence, given you never provided me with a reason to laugh or smile . . .
“That is my point exactly,” Landon was saying, casual through Charles’s tumult. “Does she go to the parks? Which shops does she visit?”
Nothing. He knew none of those things about her.
“Find her there, and don’t make it damned confrontational.” Landon tossed back his drink.
“It would be a waste of time, given my latest meeting with the young lady,” he said tersely. “She accused me of being unable to take anything seriously.”
A damning silence met that revelation.
Landon and St. John looked between one another, pointing at each other . . . debating who’d speak next . . . as if Charles weren’t staring back at the pair of them. “Fine,” Landon mouthed. He turned back to Charles. “Why the great offense being taken? You aren’t serious about anything.”
Charles bristled. “Of course I am.” When both friends were silent, he looked to St. John for support.
“You are a devoted brother,” the viscount was quick to oblige.
A devoted brother.
Landon pointed his pipe Charles’s way. “There you go.”
Those words, coming from a man such as St. John, with six sisters and a widowed mother he cared for, why, there was no greater praise. And yet . . .
St. John had six sisters, and Charles just one . . . one whom he’d failed spectacularly. That always-with-him truth still hit like a kick to the gut. He gave up the battle he’d waged since arriving and grabbed his glass and swallowed down a large sip of his whiskey.
“That is all?” Charles asked, glancing between his suddenly silent friends.
Landon released a frustrated sound. “Do you want to know my opinion?”
“N—”
“Why should you want to impress the lady? It is over.” It is over. There was such a finality to his friend speaking it that Charles’s heart squeezed painfully. “And she isn’t worth any more of your heartache.”
Landon was wrong on any number of scores there.
Charles glanced down at the varnish of the same stale table he’d sat at year after year after year.
Emma, mastermind of a society to advocate for better lives of women, and a lady determined to exert control over her own life, was a woman worth the heartache, as his friend called it. Only it wasn’t about impressing Emma. Not really. Yes, he despised that she looked at him and saw a wastrel, scoundrel, libertine. But he hated more the idea that . . . she was, in fact, right about him.
“Ahem.” St. John made a clearing sound with his throat until Charles looked up.
“When it comes to matters of the heart, Landon,” the more contemplative and measured of his friends said, “it is not your place to tell Charles or any man whether it is time to call something ‘over.’”
“No, you are correct,” Landon readily conceded.
Of course, St. John’s assertion, they now knew, came from the fact that he had been secretly in love with the wife of their late best friend, the Earl of Norfolk. “Thank you, St. John,” Charles said quietly.
The viscount lifted his head in acknowledgment.
For years, both Charles and Landon had been oblivious to the sentiments St. John carried for Lady Norfolk. Charles, however, had come to suspect something was amiss eventually—after all, the honorable St. John had completely turned his back on Sylvia, who’d been his friend, after her husband’s death. That suspicion only grew when they reconnected.
St. John could speak better than most about unrequited regards.
Sighing, Landon dragged his chair closer, clamped his pipe between his teeth, and held two palms aloft. “Very well. I shouldn’t be the one to tell you when to quit Miss Gately. You are asking for help, different help, then. It is like this . . .”
“Here we go,” St. John muttered, choosing that moment to reach for the bottle and snifter.
“A man is either blithe”—Landon waggled his right fingers—“or . . . serious about life.” He gave a wag of his left palm. “This”—the marquess held up the blithe hand once more—“is you. You must be one or the other. You have to pick one.”
Pick one.
St. John rolled his eyes. “For the love of God, man, a person can be both.”
“That’s your wife’s society speaking,” Landon shot back. “It’s not the way things really are.”
Both men proceeded to launch into a debate. As they did, Charles contemplated the point they argued.