The Importance of Being Wanton - Christi Caldwell Page 0,80
present everything she knew about Charles’s affaires de coeur—and win.
“Yes, well, you are not incorrect,” he murmured. “I despise them, Emma,” he said. “I did come here with the express certainty of seeing someone.”
Her heart lifted.
“Camille appreciates when I . . . attend the same events she does.”
Camille.
His sister.
“You came . . . because of your sister?” And oddly, that garnered even more warmth than when she’d been foolish enough to believe he was here for her.
“Do you take me for a cur?” The right corner of his mouth crooked up. “Never mind. Don’t answer that.”
Except he’d already opened the door for her, and she slipped through. “Do you know, I think you are a cur, Charles Hayden,” she said. Putting down the cards, she stepped around the table to confront him head-on.
He stiffened.
“But I do not think of you as a cur for the reasons you believe. You’re a loyal brother, and a devoted son. And a good friend.”
He grinned, a silly, dazed-looking, boyish smile that didn’t fit with the completely confident rogue who moments ago had charmed Lady Rutland’s drawing room. “Indeed.”
“Do not”—she stuck a finger in his chest, earning a little grunt from the gentleman—“let it go to your head.”
His smile widened. “Too late.”
Yes, she could see that. “Who you are to your family, however, doesn’t undo the fact that you are wreaking havoc on my society.”
“How so?” He bristled with an over-the-top indignation that rang loud for the patent falseness it was.
“Chocolate, Charles.” Emma folded her arms at her chest. “You sent chocolate?”
“Everyone loooooves chocolate. I thought it should please you.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Do you truly expect me to believe that load of rot?”
He winked.
“You are poaching my members.”
“Ah-ah-ah.” He wagged a finger. “Au contraire, mon amie—I am welcoming all members. You see, I am not so . . . exclusive. So restrictive. So . . . narrow-minded,” he continued over her gasp, “in who I allow or disallow. Men and women should be free to interact in society, not separate from one another, but free to challenge each other.” He dropped a hip atop the card table and folded his arms. “You see, we’re really quite progressive.”
Which was precisely what the papers had called him. Her mouth went slack, and she sucked in a noisy gasp before expelling it in a noisy exhale. “You?”
His brow dipped. “What is that supposed to mean?”
He’d “what-is-that-supposed-to-mean” her? “You have The Londoner in your pocket.” Emma jabbed her finger at his lapel.
He scoffed. “What rubbish. Of course I don’t have them in my pocket.” He paused. “I merely posted advertisements, nothing more.”
She peered at him.
“My God,” she exclaimed, shaking her head hard enough to send her chignon loose and several blasted strands free. “And this is why they’re printing such horrid things about the Mismatch Society. They ceased their personal attacks on me but moved over to the Mismatch Society,” she spat. “Now it makes sense.”
“I would never pay for the spread of unfavorable words spoken about you or your society, Emma.” His hurt was palpable, and was not any that even the best London stage actor could feign.
She managed a smile. “All that, I’ve managed to secure on my own?”
He nodded. “Precisely.”
The moment that affirmation left him, Emma’s and Charles’s eyebrows both went flying up. “No. That is not”—he made a slashing motion with his arms—“what I meant. Not you. There’d never be anything anyone could ever say about you,” he said quietly, his words a physical caress.
“Just my society.”
He nodded.
With a sound of disgust, she made to step around him.
“I’m making a blunder of this, I am,” he said quickly, hurrying to put himself in her path.
Emma stopped short, and again, crossing her arms, she glared at him. “Indeed, you are. For someone so very urbane and smooth.”
Charles turned up his hands sheepishly. “I told you, love; I’m not capable of any pretense around you.”
And she hated her heart for reacting as if that solemnly delivered vow actually meant something to him.
“You would challenge my society, Charles? Suggest it is somehow inferior.”
“I’ve done no such thing!”
“All the while, you pass yourself off as—”
“Progressive,” he finished for her.
Emma burst out laughing.
She laughed so hard the tears came running, streaming down her cheeks. She tried to speak, opening her mouth, and then, shaking her head, she leaned into her amusement all the more. Good Lord, it was just too much. Too much.
Charles frowned. “What is so amusing about that?” he demanded when her laughter subsided.