The Importance of Being Wanton - Christi Caldwell Page 0,51

silvered numbers.

Two o’clock in the morning.

RapRapRapRapRapRap.

There was no escaping them. That rapid, determined knocking was the one that signified his butler’s panic, and his parents’ arrival.

Bloody hell.

Charles searched about for the Tulipwood nightstand, depositing the timepiece.

What in hell was it now? Dragging a pillow over his head, even as he knew his efforts were futile, he ignored that rapping . . . as long as he possibly could.

“My lord?” Tomlinson’s voice came muffled by the pillow and the panel. “You have—” The butler’s words ended on a loud gasp.

Really? After ten years employed by Charles and well accustomed to the marquess and marchioness’s nighttime visits, he’d still not learned the lay of the land?

Well, the last damned thing Charles needed was being caught in the buff by his mother.

Giving up on sleep, he tossed aside the pillow and hurriedly swung his legs over the side of the bed.

He made it only two steps before a pale-faced Tomlinson opened the door and staggered into the room. “Company,” the young man croaked.

“For the love of God, before they come up here, go back and tell them I’m not . . .” Charles’s words trailed off as a person sailed through the door, neither of the ones responsible for his birth. A woman in a crimson cloak with a deep, black velvet-lined hood. Blast and damn. Charles quickly headed for the other side of his bed, to the garments he’d left littered about. The last thing he needed was for Emma to learn he’d received a nighttime visitor so that she could only further her bad opinion of him. “I’ve said no women in my townhouse,” he said tightly. His nephew visited often, and he’d not have the respectability of the household questioned by carrying on with women under that same roof.

The minx, however, seemed to take that as an invitation to stroll deeper into his rooms.

“How . . . honorable of you, Lord Scarsdale,” she said.

Charles froze. He knew that voice. Husked even as it was, there was no disguising the lilting, lyrical quality to it. Nay, impossible. After he’d discovered her emasculating Lord Newhart, he’d thought of her. He’d imagined her as she’d been . . . and then in ways that broke the bounds of everything respectable. He’d imagined her here . . . as she was now.

“It is so good of you to be bound by some rules of respectability.”

It was the smile; who knew a voice could smile? But hers did, and it pulled him back to the moment.

Cursing, Charles dived for the bedding and became tangled over the damned boots he’d shed hours earlier. Coming down hard on his arse, he grabbed for the sheets. Yanking at the coverlet, he tugged it down from atop the bed.

“My lord?” Tomlinson called over. “Should I fetch a constable—”

“Get out,” he croaked. “You can get out, Tomlinson. I’ll receive . . . her.” For all his rules about not allowing women in his household, for her he’d make an exception.

Her, as in his former betrothed, in his bedchambers, cloaked like a siren, with him naked as the day he was born.

There came the rushed footfalls of Tomlinson’s bare feet as he retired from the room, and then the click of the door closing behind the servant. Silence fell, punctuated by only the crackle of the slowly dying fire. Sprawled on his back, on the floor, with only the quiet for company and absolutely nothing happening . . . he found himself blinking back the haze of confusion. Mayhap he’d merely dreamed the whole exchange, after all. Because nothing else explained why Emma would be here, and attired in a shimmering, suggestive cloak befitting a woman who took delight in seducing scandals. Scrambling onto his knees, Charles caught the edge of his mattress and raised himself slightly, peeking over the side.

Emma shoved back the deep hood of her cloak, revealing a pleased smile and a teasing glimmer in her eyes, the pairing of which knocked the breath from his lungs. Before he registered . . . this was Emma staring back at him.

His innocent, virginal, almost-was bride.

Cursing, he dived back to the floor and dragged the sheets atop him once again. Then he stretched up, grabbed a pillow for good measure, and held it protectively between his legs.

The click of her heels upon the hardwood floors resonated as she drew nearer. He looked up. Emma peered down at him with a mix of glee and boredom. It was an unexpected blending