Spinster Ever After (The Spinster Chronicles #7) - Rebecca Connolly Page 0,92

emotional connection rebuilding between them.

Charlotte shook her head, her eyes steady on his. “That should have been enough.”

He gave her a sympathetic smile. “I couldn’t fill every role in your life. You’ve always wanted the wild romance, something that brings you to your knees. There was nothing wrong in seeking that. Still isn’t.”

“But I shut you out to do so,” she insisted, her voice breaking a little, dark eyes luminous with welling tears.

He did reach out now, setting his hand safely at her arm. “Charlotte, I closed myself to you first. I couldn’t imagine losing you to another man, or for anything to change between us in any way. It was selfish and naïve, not to mention shortsighted.”

Her lips curved in a smile again. “Might we be friends again? Not as we were before, as so much has changed, but friends all the same?”

A tear lingered at her cheek, and he gently brushed it away, ignoring how his finger burned from the contact. “Of course,” he said as he sat back, breaking the connection between them. “We will always be friends.”

“Good.” She exhaled, the sound seeming a sigh of relief, and her smile turned more to the one he was used to from her. “I’ve missed you. Conversation is never quite as stimulating at events without your input.”

Michael laughed in disbelief. “I barely contributed at all. Far too much of a lurker in Society, which, unfortunately, has been lost to me now.”

“Lurker or no, you always had something to say that was worth hearing.” Charlotte shrugged against the cushions propping her up. “It will be nice to have that again.”

He shook his head ruefully, giving her a wry look. “You might be the only person on earth to find me interesting, Charlotte.”

She was completely unruffled and dipped her chin in almost regal, classic Charlotte fashion. “That’s because I am exceptionally perceptive and have marvelous taste.”

“I know.” He smiled, exhaling his own sigh of relief to find this easy way between them again.

There was something new in the way she looked at him, something softer and warmer, something that made him long to stay and desperate to leave at the same time. Had the loss of who they had been affected her that much? He’d felt it keenly, but what had it done to her?

“I’d better go,” he heard himself say. “You need your rest, and I only wanted to see that you were not too ill.”

Charlotte blinked, somehow appearing smaller and more fatigued now than a moment ago. “Not too unwell. Just unwell enough.”

“That sounds about right.” He smiled and rose, looking down at her with a torrent of emotion filling him. “Take care of yourself, Charlotte.”

“I always do.” She returned his smile, but it seemed to waver.

He couldn’t think about that, couldn’t dwell on it, had to forget it. Not wonder what it meant.

Bowing, he turned and left the room, the tips of his fingers tingling strangely as he did so.

“Ah, good. You’re up.”

Charlotte looked at her mother without emotion as she entered the drawing room. “Yes, I do get up on the regular.”

Her mother ignored the comment and took up a chair next to her. “I count each morning you get out of bed as a victory. You had me dreadfully worried those days you did not.”

“I did not mean to worry you,” Charlotte told her, instantly contrite. “I could not think of anyone but myself at the time, and myself had no desire to leave the comfort of my bed.”

“It is a wonder you did not take with fever.” Her mother shook her head, smiling as she drummed her fingers on the arm of the chair she was in. “I daresay Society thinks you must have. We even sent for the doctor a time or two for appearances.”

Charlotte laughed in surprise. “When was that? I don’t remember.”

Her mother winked. “We always sent for him while you slept. It made your symptoms far less suspicious.”

That was the most beautifully devious thing her mother had ever said, and Charlotte grinned for the first time in weeks.

“Will you not now tell me what dropped you into such depths of despair?” her mother inquired, her face filling with concern that would have broken Charlotte’s heart had it not been broken already.

Charlotte shook her head firmly, giving her an apologetic smile. “I will not. There is nothing to be done about it, so I must let myself break so that I may heal. I must learn to live with what has broken