The Importance of Being Wanton - Christi Caldwell Page 0,83
hurt you,” he said solemnly. “And I don’t expect that to be something so easily forgotten. It is just my hope, in time, that you can see I do”—her eyes locked with his, those enormous blue pools growing wide—“care about you.” But he’d never be worthy of her. That he couldn’t promise.
Did he imagine the regret there? Had she wished for him to say more?
“If you care about me, you can stop making a jest of the Mismatch Society,” she finally said.
“It’s not my intention—”
“But that is what you have done,” she interrupted with a quiet insistence. “Regardless of your intentions, battle lines have been drawn, and society is playing out their favorites, of which I will never emerge triumphant.”
“You do yourself a disservi—”
She released a sound of frustration. “Charles, I know who I am, just as I know who you are.”
He stiffened, knowing implicitly the manner of person she believed him to be.
“You are charming,” she said, knocking him off balance with that praise. “You are personable and witty and clever . . .” With every bit of unexpected praise she heaped upon him, his spine grew, and his heart swelled along with it. “Whatever you do will be a success because of who you are.”
“No one has ever felt that way about me,” he said past a thick throat.
Her eyes softened, and her lips formed a wistful smile. “Then those people don’t know you.”
Her words would suggest his own parents didn’t. That she somehow saw in him something the world—his parents, his siblings, his friends—never had.
“I should go.” She lingered.
“Yes.”
But oh, how he wanted her to stay. He wished for the world to melt away so that it was just they two together. There wasn’t a past. There wasn’t this present. There was only the future he dreamed of for them.
Alas . . .
Emma turned to go.
“Emma!”
She paused, sliding a questioning glance his way.
“I will stop soliciting on Waverton Street. I’ll move that to some area not near where you hold your meetings. But you have my word.” His gaze locked with hers. “I would never disparage you or seek to hurt you or your venture.”
“Thank you, Charles,” she said with a quiet solemnity, and gratitude underlining it.
And then she was gone.
The moment she slipped out, Charles closed his eyes. God, he wanted her. In his bed. In his life. In every way. He’d alternated between wanting her, in spite of his failings, and thinking he had no right to a future with her, because of them. Only, with the words she’d spoken here this night, she’d opened his eyes to the fact that he was more than his failings. That she saw worth in him, because there was worth there.
And it firmed his resolve to earn her love.
As if her thoughts had led her back, the door opened, and he quickly turned. “Emm—” The greeting died as he faced not the golden-haired nymph who’d just left his arms, but the scowling, spectacle-wearing Mr. Watley. “Oh, hello, chum,” Charles said, affecting a grin for the other man’s benefit.
“I’m not your chum,” the gentleman said stiffly. The young man’s eyes went to Charles’s cravat. He followed his stare. Nay, to Charles’s wrinkled cravat that Emma had undone a short while ago, as she’d been coming undone. Mr. Watley balled his hands into fists. “Stay away from her.” He clipped out that command.
So they’d get right to it, then, would they? Charles winged up an eyebrow. “You speak for the lady?”
“I know what she wants,” the bold pup shot back with a daring that would have raised him in Charles’s estimation if it weren’t Emma the young man proclaimed to know. And what was worse . . . he did know her. And Charles hated him for it. Hated him with the fire of a thousand burning suns as he acknowledged his unlikely rival for Emma’s affections.
“And if you think she wants you speaking for her,” Charles said coolly, “you know the lady a good deal less than you think you do.”
Mr. Watley blushed, but then found his voice again. “Who do you think she came to when she wanted out of your arrangement?” The boy didn’t wait. “It was me. I am the one who gave her the guidance.”
Ah, one of the barristers had been his rival for her affections. Charles hadn’t stood a chance. “I wouldn’t presume to decide for her, and I suggest you do the same.”
“You hurt her before, and I’ll not see you hurt her