The Importance of Being Wanton - Christi Caldwell Page 0,4

. A simple word choice, casually spoken and slipped in, one that signaled a tense that had passed.

My mother . . . was . . . handling them.

Ah, so there was a matter of her mother’s intrusion. She’d ask Charles to involve himself in wrangling the planning away from their determined mothers. “And . . . you would like my assistance in . . . speaking to our mothers about their handling of those details.”

She gave a slight shake of her head. “Not at all. I have since . . . handled my mother.” She grimaced. “Or rather, it. I have handled it.”

And for a second time that day, his intrigue was roused by the not-so-very-mousy-after-all Miss Emma Gately. Her mother, a leading matron of Polite Society, roused terror in most men. He couldn’t have fathomed a situation where Emma Gately handled the determined viscountess . . . in anything. Until now.

Emma didn’t require his assistance in the matter of their wedding . . . which begged the question: What had she called him here for?

“I trust you are wondering why I’ve requested your presence.” The young lady not only correctly surmised his thoughts but also had come at him again with that unexpected, and welcome, bluntness.

He inclined his head. “I confess to curiosity.” Intrigue. From the moment her missive had come—and in the dead of night—it was, and had been, outright intrigue. “I expect it has to do with our upcoming nuptials?”

Odd. His mind hadn’t even been able to formulate a thought of that day, let alone speak one from his mouth, without sending his gut churning and his stomach muscles twisting. And yet . . . this time, that customary and bodily response . . . did not come.

“Yes,” Emma confirmed. “I have had time to consider our arrangement. Seventeen years.” She looked out over the Serpentine, her eyes a shade of blue he couldn’t place for the many hues to them. “Seventeen. Years,” she repeated.

Charles ran his gaze over Emma’s tense face, too angular to ever lend itself toward classical beauty, but sharp of planes that gave a man pause to notice, drawing him in. Or . . . in this instant they did, and it drew Charles’s focus to one key realization: he stood in the presence of a woman who’d carefully tracked the length of their arrangement. Until this moment, however, he’d never considered that she might be aware . . . in the same way. Which in retrospect had been rather narrow-minded of him.

A soft breeze stole over the Serpentine, rolling gently; it managed to tug a single straight lock of hair from her tight chignon and toss it against her cheek. He moved closer, drawn nearer by that errant strand, a paradox to the self-possessed woman before him. His fingers came up, reaching for that tress, and he brushed it, tucking it behind her ear. “Yes, we’ve both had time to think on it.” He spoke quietly, and the young lady pulled her stare from the smooth surface of the river and over to Charles . . . Her lips parted, that narrow lower lip lending an upside-down pout to her mouth, and his gaze caught.

His breath caught.

And he, Charles, the Earl of Scarsdale, rogue amongst gentlemen, scoundrel of London, found himself completely enraptured by his future bride. Her endlessly long, flaxen lashes swept low, and Charles swallowed spasmodically. How had he failed to either appreciate or revel in the complexity of that contoured mouth before now?

He lowered his head, determined to rectify that past failing.

Emma took a quick, lurching step backward, catching herself at the edge, so close the water kissed her hemline. “And as such, having had time to consider our betrothal all these years, I have decided it would be in my best interest to sever the formal contract.”

They were confounding words to make sense of when he’d been so very close to taking her mouth with his.

Sever the formal contract.

“Yes,” she said with a tight little nod, confirming with that bob of her long neck and passionless utterance that he’d spoken aloud.

“You are . . . breaking it off with me.” Shock lent a hollow quality to a question that didn’t make sense. He should be relieved. A lot relieved. And only grateful. She would spare him of an arrangement he didn’t want.

Except she had done . . . that which he’d never been able to manage. She would defy their parents. She would reject a union that had