Spinster Ever After (The Spinster Chronicles #7) - Rebecca Connolly Page 0,69

at Michael as he stood in the doorway of the room, his hands at his side. “You needn’t have followed me, you know. You’re here with guests, you should go back to them.”

Michael did not react but for the fingers of his right hand rubbing together. “What is it?”

She ought to have known he would see through her politeness. Still, she was not about to confess her pain to satisfy his curiosity. “My dress,” she lied easily, just as she had to Georgie. “The bodice is particularly fitted, and I feel rather trapped in it. Nothing drastic, just my lack of fashionable training to give me the proper stamina.”

His brow wrinkled, and he took four steps into the room. “Why do I not believe you?”

Charlotte managed to quirk a brow and dropped her hands to her lap, elbow at her knees, still slumped over inelegantly. “Because you’ve never worn a gown that requires a tighter setting of your stays than is reasonable.”

He blinked once. “I generally don’t wear stays at all, so I can agree with you there.”

She grinned without meaning to, his usual dry quip doing more to set her to rights than anything else could have, even if his voice lacked an encouraging tone. Quickly, she sobered and straightened in her seat.

“I like Miss Palmer, Michael,” she told him, the words nearly choking her, true though they were.

Michael almost smiled but didn’t quite manage it. “That’s because she’s nearly obsessed with you and the Spinsters.”

“Well, that does help her win more favor,” Charlotte admitted with another smile, this one more controlled. “It shows her excellent taste.”

“It certainly shows something, I grant you.” He moved further into the room, watching Charlotte.

That searching look, the eyes that could see more than she wanted, was more than she could bear. She rose and turned her back to him, rubbing her palms together. “She seems rather lovely,” she told him, her voice perhaps a touch too loud. “Sensible, intelligent, and good-natured. Have you known her long?”

“Charlotte, we’re not going to talk about Diana in here.”

His use of her Christian name slashed through Charlotte painfully, seizing her chest with a chill that took a number of heartbeats to recover from. “I’m trying, Michael,” she whispered harshly, glancing over her shoulder without actually looking at him. “As your friend, I’m trying.”

“Don’t,” he said, the word almost a bark. “Don’t try to enjoy this. Don’t try to make it better that I’m doing this, that you’re here with Riley, that we can’t avoid each other here.”

Charlotte closed her eyes again, her throat moving on a lump she simply could not swallow. “I didn’t know we were avoiding each other. I didn’t know you were shutting me out. I didn’t know we were ending our friendship as we pursued love for ourselves.”

Michael didn’t respond, which prompted Charlotte to turn to face him.

His expression was hooded, his fingers now fists at his sides, his eyes on her.

Anger roared within Charlotte, and she took two steps forward. “I didn’t know,” she snapped, “that my best friend was replacing me with a pretty girl ten years his junior. I didn’t know that, in spite of cutting me off, you still feel entitled to ask my family for favors.”

Michael’s mouth opened as though he would retort something, but Charlotte wasn’t finished.

“I didn’t know,” she went on, “that you wouldn’t be laughing with me anymore. That we couldn’t even look at each other anymore. That I would begin to lose years and years of memories with you because you could not stand to be near me during one of the most terrifying times of my life.”

“What else am I supposed to do, Charlotte,” Michael cried, his hands splaying out before him in an almost desperate gesture, “when I am still madly in love with you?”

Whatever Charlotte had been about to say vanished, and her heart plummeted into the pit of her stomach, making her toes tingle ominously. “What?”

Michael shook his head, exhaling what seemed to be a laugh, though torment lay in his features rather than humor. “You still don’t see. After all this time, you still don’t…” He shook his head and strode forward, jaw set.

Charlotte stuttered back a step or two, her breath hitching in the face of his determined approach.

Then his mouth was on hers, his hands on either side of her face, his body flush against hers. She couldn’t move, couldn’t think, could not comprehend that Michael… Michael…

Instinctively, Charlotte relaxed against him, began to move her lips