The Importance of Being Wanton - Christi Caldwell Page 0,42
of one of her former club members. After she physically accosted the poor gentleman, it was only the intervention and rescue from one Earl of Scarsdale that saw her poor victim freed.
M. FAIRPOINT
That same day, alongside his brother, Charles collected and settled the young woman Derek had found into the household with Miss Lee and Miss Linden: two women he’d been linked to over the years. It was a residence he’d come to studiously avoid. If he were discovered at their townhouse, it would not only fly in the face of the plea his mother had put to him, serving to resurrect gossip-filled rumors about his wicked association with those women, but also would add further fuel to Emma’s ill opinion of him.
Mindful of the peril he’d find himself in, Charles adjusted the brim of his hat and quickly made his way out of the Regent Street townhouse.
Derek followed behind him. “Thank you,” his younger brother said quietly as they left.
“Do not thank me.”
“You paid a small fortune to secure her release, and I know what it will mean if you are discovered here . . . for your . . .”
Derek didn’t finish, nor did he need to. “His . . . Miss Gately” had been the way all his family and friends had come to refer to her. Even as she’d never truly been his. Not beyond a document that she’d wanted even less than he had.
They started across the street to the two lads holding the reins for their horses.
“Have you considered telling her?” Derek pressed. Telling Emma? Emma, who already believed Charles couldn’t be faithful to her, who believed only the worst of him . . . and that most of her reasons for doing so were entirely fair and accurate. “I believe if she knew—”
Charles stopped abruptly on the pavement and faced his brother. “That I’ve not been romantic with Miss Lee and Miss Linden, that she’ll suddenly think better of me?” he shot back. “What about the other women before them?” Because whatever she might think or discover or learn about the women whose townhouse he’d visited this day didn’t erase the sins he was truly guilty of. Or the mistresses he’d ultimately taken in his life. “Hmm? The ones whom I did carry on with in the very way she believes I conducted myself?”
His brother went silent, his gaze moving to a point beyond Charles’s shoulder. “Miss Gately—”
“Bloody hell,” he snapped. “Enough with—”
“No. Miss Gately,” his brother repeated, and pointed, bringing Charles’s focus across the street.
He squinted at the young lady in the midst of conversing with some gent who stood entirely too close. Surely not. “Emmmma?” Impossible. Charles rubbed at his eyes, and the sight remained. But Emma . . . with some bounder who had a hand upon her arm. Fury blazed to life, devouring Charles with a hungering for the blood of the fiend who dared touch her.
Charles was already striding across the street.
“Go easy on him,” Derek called after him, his voice indicating he attempted to keep up.
Charles, however, moved at a near sprint toward the pair. Emma . . . and the cad who’d lose a hand this day. Or his life. Likely in that order. Even with the paces between them, that fiery, bold challenge in the lady’s eyes was one he recognized all too well. Lord knew it had been turned Charles’s way enough. But this? Now, here, with a man who’d dare assault her?
He quickened his stride in a bid to reach her, cursing the cluttered streets that threw up barricades to his reaching her.
Charles wound his way around a pair of bucket-bearing boys, nearly knocking into the lads, keeping all his focus upon Emma. The cad took a step closer to her. “You there,” he barked, but his calls were futile in the din of the afternoon activity.
The cad twisted Emma’s arm slightly, a barely perceptible movement that Charles observed in his scrutiny, and his gut clenched, and with a shout he charged on ahead to save—
Emma brought up her knee deftly, and swiftly, catching the gentleman between the legs, instantly crumpling his form. The man cried out, and releasing the cane he held, he clutched at himself.
Slightly breathless from fear and shock, Charles staggered to a stop before the pair . . . just as Emma put a foot atop the bounder, locking him in place on the ground.
And Charles found himself breathless with something else: awe.