The Importance of Being Wanton - Christi Caldwell Page 0,9
wrong thing. Because he was apparently supposed to know just whatever calamity had resulted in his parents barging into his chambers at this ungodly hour.
With a sound of disgust, the marquess slashed a hand through the air and stalked off, as if he’d quit his son completely. But then he began to pace. “Tell him, Aster.” And Charles rather wished the pair of them had quit him.
Alas . . .
His mother drew in a deep, heavy breath, then pressed her fingertips to her lips, shaking her head, not getting the words out. And for the first time since they’d stormed his household, he registered the drawn lines at the corners of the marchioness’s eyes. Creases that revealed her worry. His mother, who wasn’t given to histrionics and who didn’t bluster and overreact.
Panic grew in his chest. Grabbing the blanket, he drew it over his legs. “Mother?” he asked, sitting upright, as there came the first real stirrings of dread. “What is it?”
Whatever it was that had brought them here was surely—
“Your brother has not seen Morgan or Pierce this week.” That announcement exploded from her lips, and her shoulders sagged.
Emma’s brothers? That was what this was about? Charles puzzled his brow.
Because of . . . that? He stared at them. This was why they’d roused him from his rest and visited this misery upon him? He waited for her to add something more than that. “Annd?” he asked when it became apparent she had no intention of doing so and he couldn’t even begin to fathom why he was at the heart of this latest disappointment.
“And they are best friends.” His mother released a sigh. “Surely that must matter to you. Why, imagine if you weren’t speaking with St. John or Landon. Hmm?”
“If I weren’t speaking to St. John or Landon, then you have my express permission to never do something as bothersome as darken Derek’s door in the dead of night.”
His father sputtered. “Why— Why . . .”
His mother held a hand aloft, quelling the tirade her husband couldn’t get out. “And furthermore, what is this nonsense about the dead of night? Hmm? Charles Christopher Ashton Hayden, it is seven o’clock.”
“Seven o’clock is an unholy hour for a soul to be up,” Charles insisted.
“Especially when one was getting oneself completely foxed the night before, eh, boy?” his father said, looking him up and down disapprovingly.
Fortunately, he’d grown well accustomed to his father’s disappointment. And yet . . . his father had welcomed that deficit in Charles’s character when it served him. When it had served the family. Now, he’d expect Charles to simply . . . cease being what he and the world expected him to be. Nay, what his father had once needed him to be. “This is the problem right here,” his father said, shaking a finger Charles’s way.
Charles slumped on the mattress and covered his eyes with a hand. It was coming. In fairness, however, the marquess had waited a good deal longer for the customary lecture than he usually did during their visits.
“He’s a rogue.”
“I thought you appreciated my being a rogue?” Charles drawled.
Color suffused his father’s cheeks at the reminder Charles leveled there, the one neither of them spoke about anymore because of the hint of risk that could come should anyone, absolutely anyone, overhear and learn . . .
The marquess quickly found himself. “When you were a lad of twenty-three. I didn’t expect the charade to become real and for it to drag on for years and years beyond that. Now that you’ve lost Emma, you must take on a more proper role to make a good match. Why, you’re past an age when most gentlemen wed.”
Ah, so that’s what this was about. Making himself respectable now, so he could find a wife.
“It no longer suits you for me to be a scoundrel, so I am to shift course to ‘proper gent’?”
“Charles,” his mother said admonishingly.
Yes, it was an unfair blow to level, given Charles had willingly taken on that persona for the end it had served. “Either way,” he said, frustration creeping into his tone, “I’m not a scoundrel. I don’t drink and wager . . . nearly as much as I once did,” he added in fairness.
“My, how . . . honorable.” His mother gave him a sad look that was somehow worse than the marquess’s blatant condemnation.
Charles felt his cheeks heat with a blush. “I’m merely saying when compared with other gentlemen, my actions are not outrageously wicked.”