The Importance of Being Wanton - Christi Caldwell Page 0,89
and get me bedded?” God spare him from the well-meaning intentions of rakes and rogues.
“No. Yes.” Landon cursed. “Hell, I’m trying to shake you from whatever this Miss Gately has done to you,” the other man whispered. Not that he needed to have bothered, as every last lord present was thoroughly foxed and obscenely loud in their bawdy jests and laughter. “She has made you miserable.”
“But . . . we could have been happy together,” Charles said quietly. He’d realized that, too late. Which was likely for the best, as she was entirely too good for him.
“Well, you’re not. With her, or happy with her, and it’s time to move on . . . beyond your book club and efforts to snag the lady’s attention,” Landon added more emphatically when Charles attempted to speak.
Charles stared into his drink, gave the contents a counterclockwise swirl, and then reversed course, the turbulent little whirlpool he created a perfect metaphor for him and Emma. He’d not even given them a chance as a couple. And he’d failed to appreciate her wit, and strength, until it had been too late. Until he’d cost himself the possibility of them.
“You didn’t even like her,” Landon said with the blunt directness that only one’s best friend was capable of.
Frowning, Charles looked up. “I liked her . . . enough.” He’d resented her. He’d blamed her. Realizing too late how unfair it had been to place any of those sentiments at the young lady’s feet.
“You avoided her for eighteen years.”
“That’s not true. It was more like seventeen. And prior to that, I visited her in the nursery, and we played spillikins together, and she wasn’t all that—”
Landon looked at Charles as if he’d lost the remainder of his head. “Have you gone mad? Or are you making a jest?” Landon pleaded with his eyes and his words. “My God, man, please tell me you’re making a jest, because if not, I think you’re very well beyond even my help.”
It was likely the former. Fortunately, Charles was saved from answering.
“Either way, that is my very point, Scarsdale. You’re not yourself, and we need to get you back to being yourself.”
Perhaps it was that at the ripe age of three and thirty, with all the years since Seamus’s conception spent carousing—or playing at it—he’d begun . . . to tire of the lie and the lifestyle. Charles glanced around the pleasure palace; most of the drunken men laughing uproariously and shouting bawdy jests among their friends were ten years or so younger than him. And another handful were men thirty years older—dissolute, disreputable lords who’d never tired of the life.
Was that what he wanted to be?
He could say unequivocally it wasn’t.
Until recently, he would have said he was perfectly content with letting the world think whatever they would about him, and would have wanted just that.
But that had been until Miss Emma Gately had snapped their betrothal and freed him of that boring future he’d thought awaited him.
Landon had called Charles here to talk to him about getting back to himself. The rub of it? At thirty-three, Charles was only just realizing he didn’t have a damned clue as to who, exactly, he was.
The rogue. The scoundrel. The dutiful son, attempting to make amends. The miserable betrothed.
He’d become all those rolled together, and was now left trying to figure out who and what he was.
And had it not been for Emma and her influence, he’d have never even looked.
“God, for a charming rogue, you’re deuced bad at this.” Landon shoved back his chair. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to steal that delicious golden beauty you sent over to Waters.”
Charles stared after Landon’s retreating figure as he headed over to Lord Waters’s table, and then the men proceeded to . . . share the young woman.
Landon hadn’t been wrong about much this night. Quite the opposite. And watching on as the two dissolute lords sampled the Cyprian’s wares, Charles felt . . . an ennui.
He’d never much gotten the carousing . . . not the way Landon did. Oh, in his university days sowing his oats, Charles had enjoyed the favors of skilled courtesans. Enough that when the time had come to save his sister’s reputation and fall on the sword of his own indiscretions, he’d been able to do so without society batting an eye. They’d seen what he and his family had hoped they’d see: a young, careless lord who had sired a babe out of wedlock.