The Importance of Being Wanton - Christi Caldwell Page 0,61

herself into her desire.

God help him; after she’d marched off like a goddess warrior leaving a battlefield behind her, sleep had been impossible as he’d thought of nothing but her and her cries of surrender.

Following her barefoot exit last evening, he’d not been able to think of anything but her. Those memories followed him still the next morn as he walked down the cobbled streets toward the Old Corner Bookshop with his nephew, Seamus, prattling at his side.

“I’ve decided to leave Eton.”

“Hmm.” As a gift, she’d left behind those translucent silk stockings, those languorous articles that still bore the rosewater scent of her.

Seamus gripped his arm and steered Charles around a pair of approaching young ladies and their chaperones. The quartet all walked with their gazes down . . . unlike the bold woman who’d laid siege to his household last evening.

“I’m also going to join a circus. I’ve always been rather good at somersaults, you know.”

“Yes.” And her crimson laced, heeled shoes had been abandoned in her departure. He would forever . . . “I know . . .”

Seamus held up his arms toward the overcast London sky, then made as if to spring forward.

Wait a moment . . .

Slowing his steps to a stop, Charles blinked in confusion. “That would be a terri—” He caught the teasing light in the boy’s eyes too late. “You’re ribbing me.”

“It was easy to do.” With a grin, Seamus winked, the very wink he’d pleaded with Charles to teach him on one of his weekly visits. “You weren’t paying attention.”

Nay, because his mind had been firmly on Emma Gately and their late-night meeting. Details which, of course, couldn’t be shared with anyone. Ever. And especially not his almost-eleven-year-old nephew. “I was paying attention,” he lied. “You . . .” He furrowed his brow. Charles turned, and dropping to a knee, he faced the little boy. “Aren’t truly thinking of leaving Eton?” he asked, searching his nephew’s heavily freckled face. Seamus loved his studies. Nothing short of sheer misery would make him quit attending the school he’d always longed to go to.

His nephew stared back with a somberness better suited to a man sixty years his senior. “I think of it quite regularly.” The boy paused. “And joining the circus,” he added, a slow grin forming on his lips.

“Not paying attention, you say? See, I heard everything you said.” Charles reached out a hand.

His nephew ducked out of the way, attempting to dodge his efforts, but Charles looped an arm around Seamus’s narrow shoulders and pulled him close. Forming a fist, he lightly tousled the top of the boy’s head until Seamus snorted with laughter.

Charles ignored the sharp stares shot their way from passersby who sniffed their disapproval at the air.

Seamus immediately sidled closer. “I don’t like that people look at me like that,” the boy confided after they’d resumed their walk down the pavement.

Charles tensed. That disapproval followed whenever he and Seamus made their way about society. “It doesn’t matter what they think,” he said tightly, hating the world for turning their unkindness upon a boy. Hating himself for not being able to do anything to prevent it. It was generally why Charles opted for places where there would be less of that scrutiny: less-traveled areas of London. Hyde Park in the early-morn hour. Shops that were not the most popular ones.

Seamus scrunched up his small brow. “Perhaps.” An anger that Charles had never observed before from the boy flashed in his green eyes. “But I still don’t like it. It isn’t fair.” His nephew spoke with all the truth only a child was capable of.

It isn’t fair.

“No.” There could be no truer words uttered about everything surrounding Seamus’s birth and Camille’s broken heart. “It’s not.” None of it was. For any of them.

Fortunately, they reached his nephew’s favorite place in the world, and the conversation found a natural, if abrupt, end. As he opened the door and Seamus went scurrying off, Charles stared after the little boy as he disappeared behind the enormous shelves.

Or mayhap it was just that he let the matter rest because he was a coward. But God help him, he’d no idea how to handle . . . any of this in terms of Seamus’s reception.

Upon Seamus’s birth, Camille and his parents had insisted the boy be hidden away as much as possible. At that family meeting, they’d disagreed with Charles’s opinion that Seamus would be better served confronting whatever was directed his way, and preparing for