The Importance of Being Wanton - Christi Caldwell Page 0,67

eight or nine years of age. As one who’d been a frequent recipient of gossip and unkindness, her heart ached at the thought of this child fielding such cruelty so young.

Emma smiled gently at him, and his cheeks bloomed with color. She quit her place, walking with slow, measured steps until she stood beside him. The boy craned his head all the way back to look at her. Emma fell to a knee beside him. “Hullo,” she greeted.

“You were rather rough on them,” he whispered.

“Too rough?”

The child grinned, his lips moving up slowly until he revealed white but adorably uneven teeth, in his first smile since Emma had come upon him. “Not at all.”

Returning that smile, Emma rescued the boy’s spectacles from the floor. She used the front of her cloak to clean off the smudged lenses before returning them to his elfin face.

His smile widened, and a blush filled his cheeks. “Many thanks.” The color deepened. “For my glasses . . .” That newly found brightness dimmed as he looked down at his fine leather boots. “And for rescuing me.” That last part emerged more of a mumble, and her heart tugged again.

At what he’d endured.

At the lack of self-worth he felt in this moment, when the only ones who should feel shame were the boys she’d run off.

She scoffed. “You didn’t require my rescuing,” she said, and the child’s head came flying back. “I should thank you for allowing me to speak up to such bullies. It is one of my favorite pastimes.”

“Indeed?”

Emma offered a solemn nod. “Undoubtedly. I’ve fielded unkind words myself.” One eventually developed armor, but occasionally, no matter how many a person fielded, those barbs found the weak spots within. She set to work collecting and stacking the boy’s books.

The child joined her on the floor, watching a moment as she worked. “Why would anyone be mean to you?” he asked before handing over a copy of de Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws.

“Why is anyone mean to anyone?” she countered rhetorically.

“Well, they are mean to me because I’m a bastard,” he said so matter-of-factly and unexpectedly that she lost her grip upon the book she held.

Emma fumbled, ultimately retaining her grip.

This was the reason for the cruelty he’d faced.

Even as her own father had been a loyal, devoted husband, the larger reality for most was that bastards were the way of Polite Society. Gentlemen joined their clubs, drank their brandies, and fathered illegitimate children upon the mistresses who’d never be their wives, but whom they’d bestow their affections and attentions upon.

She was ashamed to realize . . . until this moment? She’d never given proper thought to how those children were treated. What hardships they must know.

Was this what Charles’s son faced?

Anger brought her teeth snapping together so hard that pain raced up along her jawline.

“I can leave,” the child whispered, misunderstanding the reason for her silence, mistaking it for a rebuke of his birthright, factors beyond his control, ones she resented for him. He made to stand.

Emma shot out a hand, staying him.

“That is not the reason they are unkind to you,” she said quietly. His brow dipped with confusion. “The truth is, cruelty is what fills heartless people with something other than the emptiness in that organ. Insults are merely the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong.”

“That is splendid,” he said in awed tones.

Emma rescued a copy of Rousseau’s work and held it aloft. “Alas, those latter words belonged to Mr. Rousseau.”

His features softened.

Eager to continue diverting his thoughts away from the meanness he’d known that day, she made a show of examining the title a moment. “This is a rather impressive collection of works to read.” Emma gathered up another, studying the maroon lettering. “John Locke, Two Treatises of Government?” She glanced up.

“I enjoy it.” His spine grew several inches, and he looked taller for the now proud set of his shoulders. “And I’m ten. Not so young. I am just”—he wrinkled his freckled nose—“small,” he said under his breath.

Emma set Locke’s work atop the neat stack they’d formed. “Bah. As I said, height has nothing to do with how tall a person truly is. Why, I was teased mercilessly when I made my Come Out because I was too tall.”

“You were teased?” the boy ventured hesitantly.

“Mercilessly. Lesser people can and will always find some perceived flaw to bully a person over.” Memories filtered in . . . of that meanness she’d met from other debutantes at Almack’s,