The Importance of Being Wanton - Christi Caldwell Page 0,5
been preordained by those same parents, a betrothal she’d been bound to for all but six of her years.
He shook his head, and tried again. “I don’t . . .” Tried. And failed. The words would not come. Because it didn’t make sense. Nothing about any of this exchange, from the note to this sudden, unwitting fascination with her, to the almost kiss, to the reason for his summons, did. “I don’t understand.” There—he’d at last managed to get out a full coherent thought, one that demanded clarity.
“I am breaking it off. Severing the arrangement,” she said matter-of-factly, as if they discussed this very fine clement spring they now enjoyed. Emma stared at him expectantly.
What, however, was expected of him?
“I . . . did not ask for the betrothal to be severed,” he finally said when he found his voice and a suitable response.
“No. I know that.” She patted his hand; her fingers were long and tan, as if the lady enjoyed shucking her gloves and feeling the sun upon them. Did she? Or did her skin contain the gift of her family’s old Roman roots? Both details he didn’t know about her. But he likely should have. “You needn’t worry that you will be held responsible,” she said, misinterpreting the reason for his silence. “My parents will not blame you, Lord Scarsdale.”
He latched on to that. “You’ve not spoken to your parents then?” Because had she done so, that lent an added . . . finality . . . to all this.
“I have,” she corrected, adding that final nail. “They are well aware that I am the one who wishes to be set free.”
Set free.
It was . . . singularly odd to have spent the whole of his adult life resenting his betrothal and the woman whom he’d one day wed.
Only to have her use those very words.
When he, usually glib of tongue, remained wholly without.
Alas, upon this day, his betrothed had words enough for both of them.
“I understand that you are also likely”—he waited for her to supply a response for whatever it was she thought he was feeling—“concerned as to how your parents might receive this new change in our circumstances.”
This new change in their circumstances.
Yet again, she spoke of their end with an absolute conviction, which stirred more of that odd panic for reasons that had nothing to do with what she thought they did. Or for that matter, even reasons he could make any real sense of. “I do not care what my parents think,” he said tersely, finding himself, and finding his way. Giving her the truth. He’d lived a carefree life for himself, to spit in the face of the life they’d been determined for him to live.
She gave him a small, mirthless, and almost pitying smile. “Ah, but that isn’t altogether true,” she said gently. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t have agreed to the match in the first place.”
Color fired his cheeks and gave Charles his first blush from a lady in . . . in . . . well . . . ever. She was right. “I was a boy.”
“Precisely,” she jumped in, snatching his defense, stealing it for her own purposes. “Our family’s history and friendship is deeply entangled, and I trust, therefore, that you have concerns on that score as well.” She made a lot of assumptions this day, his betrothed did. His almost-former-betrothed. “My father will make it abundantly clear when he speaks to yours that the decision began with me.” Began with me implied Charles was of a like opinion. Again, those words didn’t have the freeing effect they should. Instead, they left him oddly queasy. “Of course, there is the matter of the legal arrangement; however, I have taken the liberty of conducting meetings to review the formal contract.”
He tried to imagine Emma Gately slipping about London, paying visits to various solicitors and posing inquiries about her—about their—betrothal. It didn’t fit with her. It didn’t fit with the passive creature he knew her to be. How many other ways have you underestimated the young lady? Charles forcibly silenced that jeering question in his mind. “You spoke to a . . . solicitor.” And that rankled for all number of reasons. Not the least of which was she’d gone and discussed wanting to be rid of him with another fellow.
She nodded. “Several”—that was another several fellows—“to ensure a similar opinion, of course.”
“Of course,” he said dryly.
“After all, a person cannot rely upon just one legal opinion.”