The Importance of Being Wanton - Christi Caldwell Page 0,64

all the ways in which she’d weakened toward the last man she should be weak over.

Her stomach muscles twisted.

No idea? In truth, she’d no blasted clue what her sister spoke of. Since Emma had taken her leave of Charles in the early-morn hours, she’d been incapable of thinking about anything beyond—

Isla gasped. “My God, you are either woolgathering or clueless as to what I have been saying about your role in saving the Mismatch Society.”

Emma bristled. This time she had been more . . . silently worrying than woolgathering. “I resent that. You are my sister. You should have faith in me to know I’d never woolgather, and that I am taking my current responsibility very seriously.”

Her youngest sibling gave her a dubious look.

“And furthermore,” Emma went on, “you are being melodramatic.”

“Then you aren’t paying attention.”

“I settled the matter . . .” Last evening. A blush singed Emma from the tips of her toes to the roots of her hair, and she hurriedly pulled her bonnet into place to conceal that telltale color that came with the resurrected memories of everything Charles had done to her.

“Are you fighting?” Olivia called from behind them.

Emma and Isla spoke at the same time.

“Yes.”

“No.”

Unfortunately, Isla’s denial came louder, clearer, and more emphatic.

“Well, it behooves me to point out that, given the state of the Mismatch Society, we can hardly afford to have contention between our remaining members.” Olivia scolded better than any of the stern nursemaids and governesses Emma and Isla had suffered through over the years. “And that includes the both of you.”

So it wasn’t only Isla who feared the current state of their society. “I’ve already told you.” Emma attempted to reassure her naysaying sibling. “We needn’t worry any more about Charles’s group. That matter has been settled.”

Her sister snorted.

Do not take the bait . . . do not take the bait . . .

It was futile.

“What?” Emma asked, unable to tamp down her exasperation.

“If you think the same gentleman who’s been doggedly paying visits in the hopes of winning you back wouldn’t show the same tenacity in this?” Isla shook her head. “Then you have learned nothing about Lord Scarsdale and what he is capable of, and the Mismatch Society is destined to perish.”

Emma winced. Destined to perish? And worse, her sister suggested the inevitable failure was in part because of Emma’s failings. This time, Emma’s cheeks heated for altogether different reasons, at being called out in the one endeavor in which she’d taken pride in . . . in . . . well, the entire course of her life. “You are wrong.” About both Charles and the doomsday-like quality of Isla’s warning.

“I certainly hope so,” her sister allowed. “But in the event I’m not? Hmm? What do you intend to do to see that we don’t continue losing members?”

Had Isla always been this . . . unrelenting? “I have . . . some ideas.” None. She’d absolutely no thoughts as to how to focus the next meeting, her first real role of leadership since the inception of the society.

Not breaking stride, her sister pointed a finger her way. “I heard that.”

“Heard what?” Olivia called from behind them.

“It was a pause.”

“I heard no pause,” Owen volunteered, and Emma cast a grateful smile over her shoulder for his defense.

Undeserved though it may be.

“Then you weren’t listening hard enough, Owen Watley,” Isla shot back, and taking Emma’s arms, she commanded her sister’s focus once more. “Assuaging your ego should hardly be your concern. Our society is under siege. Everything we’ve created, and everything we hold dear, is being threatened, and as one of the founding members charged with righting the faltering ship, well, it requires at least some attention from you.”

Well. That was quite the verbal takedown.

“Thank you for your faith in me, little sister,” Emma drawled.

“It isn’t that I don’t have faith in you,” her sister protested. “It is simply that—” Isla abruptly stopped talking as a handsome couple with their small army of children filed past, and a nursemaid, trailing close, approached. The moment they’d passed, Isla resumed, this time speaking in a barely audible whisper. “It is simply that you’ve been uncharacteristically distracted . . .”

Emma held her breath, braced for the completion of that thought.

. . . since last evening . . .

Since she had dashed barefoot from Charles’s household after he’d made love to her. Except . . . she still had her virtue. Or anyway, Emma did in the strictest sense of the word. Was it really,