The Importance of Being Wanton - Christi Caldwell Page 0,10
his father muttered to himself. “Is it a wonder she ended it?”
Charles winced.
Clapping once, his mother held up her hands between them. “Gentlemen, that is enough. We have not come to discuss the state of your betrothal.”
His broken betrothal.
“You haven’t?” he asked incredulously.
“No,” his parents responded at the same time, suspiciously in lockstep.
“Well, that, then, is certainly unexpected,” Charles muttered under his breath.
“We are here because Lord and Lady Featherstone have failed to invite us to a dinner party, Charles,” she continued over him.
“And?” he prodded when it became apparent neither intended to say more. That this was it. The offense.
Both of his parents looked pointedly at him.
“And you know we’ve never not invited one another to one’s events. They are our best friends.”
“Or they were”—his father glared Charles’s way—“before you went and made a blunder of that.”
“Surely you aren’t . . . suggesting I’m at fault?” he choked out.
The marquess and marchioness struck a like pose, folding their arms and sticking out an opposite foot and eyeing Charles from under arched eyebrows, their silence serving as his answer.
So they were suggesting he was to blame. “Well, that is as unfounded as it is preposterous.” He gritted his teeth. “Whatever upset you might have with me, I am not the one who broke it off with Miss Gately.” They could be upset with him for overindulging and wagering and for the company he kept, but this? “Take your upset to the Gately household, and perhaps you’ll get yourself somewhere.”
His mother looked at Charles for a long moment before speaking. “Jared?”
The marquess promptly headed for the door and let himself out.
“You really should teach me the skill of dispatching Father,” Charles said when he and his mother were alone. “It would prove ever most useful.”
Her expression was unwavering, revealing none of her usual warmth. “As much as I always enjoy your levity and jests, this is not one of those moments.”
Bloody hell. He’d never been able to close his damned mouth. It was the curse of his existence.
Amongst a lengthy list of many.
Coming over, she seated herself on the edge of his bed. “I’m not happy about . . . a lot of this.”
He tensed his mouth.
“And wipe that petulant look from your face,” she chastised. “This instant. I’m not here to lecture you upon your drinking and womanizing.” His ears went hot. “Or wagering. Though I’d be well within my motherly rights, were I to do so.”
Charles sighed. “Very well. What is it?”
“I want the situation with the Gatelys resolved.”
He swallowed back a curse. “I cannot marry someone who doesn’t wish to marry me, Mother.” That rejection, Emma’s rejection, chafed still. Because he’d not appreciated what he might have had . . . until he’d lost it.
His mother angled herself on the bed so she was facing him more directly. “I’m not asking you to marry Emma. Not any longer. That proverbial swan has soared.”
“More swan analogies?”
“Always swan analogies,” she corrected.
Well, they made even less sense now than when he’d been a boy of sixteen about to make the matrimonial march to his child bride.
“You owed the viscount a discussion”—she raised her voice slightly, edging him out of a place to speak when he attempted to do so—“indicating that you cared about the arrangement and that you have regrets for how it turned out.” Her lips pulled in a grimace. “Or rather, how it did not turn out. That you recognize your fault, and that you value our family’s relationship with his.” She hesitated. “That is, if you indeed feel those things?”
“Of course I do.” He may have always resented being betrothed as a boy to Featherstone’s young daughter, but Charles had also always seen the older gentleman as a second father of sorts.
Her shoulders sagged slightly. “That is reassuring, as I did not believe I had raised a son who was indifferent to such bonds.”
“However,” Charles went on, “neither do I believe it will serve any good for me to speak to h—”
“It will.”
Charles ran his hands over his face. She’d have him pay a visit to the viscount and take complete ownership of his and Emma’s failed betrothal? So much for the lady’s assumptions that none would hold Charles at fault. “I thought a mother’s loyalty was to her son.”
“It was. That was before you went and broke me and Alice Featherstone apart. If you learn nothing in your life, Charles, know this: women shall not tolerate any man who comes between them.”