The Importance of Being Wanton - Christi Caldwell Page 0,11
also applies to one’s own child?” he asked dryly.
“Is one’s own child a man?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “Then yes. I would say, especially one’s son.” With that, she stood. “Fix it, Charles,” she said. “Fix your reputation. Restore your image. Make yourself the respectable man I know you can be.” She started for the door. “Just fix it,” she repeated, not even glancing back. She swept out and closed the door firmly behind her.
Fix it.
As in make peace enough between his and Emma’s families so that their parents and brothers could all resume their friendships, and he could set to work reforming himself and improving his reputation.
Perhaps it wouldn’t be so very difficult, after all. With that in mind, Charles dashed off a quick note, then rang for his footman.
The young servant arrived almost instantly. “My lord?”
“See that this is delivered posthaste to the viscount,” he asked, folding the note and handing it over to Wickham’s care.
Then heading back to his bed, Charles burrowed into his mattress.
It was done.
Chapter 2
THE LONDONER
SHAMEFUL!
After finding herself jilted, a bitter Miss Gately is determined to bring that same suffering to other ladies of the Marriage Mart . . . encouraging rebellion and disavowing marriage.
M. FAIRPOINT
Two months ago, Miss Emma Gately had paid a visit to three scandalous ladies on Waverton Street, living on their own.
From Emma’s visit had sprung the Mismatch Society, a group of young women who met twice weekly for one purpose and one purpose only: asserting themselves in a man’s world and giving nothing to those lords they’d been expected to wed . . . no matter how unhappy they were.
This morn, however, seated in her family’s Mayfair residence, Emma headed up an altogether different meeting.
Her younger sister, Isla; Emma’s best friend, Lady Olivia; and Emma’s identical twin older brothers sat in a circle around a tray of refreshments that a maid had brought in some twenty minutes earlier.
Morgan, older than Emma by two years, and than his twin by an hour, was the first to move. Leaning forward, he reached for a chocolate biscuit from the tray.
Isla shot out a foot, catching him square in the shins, wringing a gasp from him and knocking the biscuit to the floor. The confectionery treat rained sprinkles of sugar and chocolate forlornly as it went before landing with a plop atop Morgan’s boot.
“Whatever was that for?” he demanded.
Isla glared. “Because we are focusing, Morgan.”
“And you think a man can’t focus while indulging in a biscuit?” he shot back.
“Actually, I don’t think a man can focus on anything, biscuit or not, which is why I thought it was a bad idea to have either of you”—Isla nudged a chin between the twins—“here.”
At her side, Emma’s best friend didn’t even attempt to hide her smile.
Pierce bristled. “I resent that. I’m not the one indulging in biscuits.”
Morgan tossed up his arms in exasperation. “Then why even have the damned tray if we weren’t supposed to be eating from it?”
Isla sighed. “You really are bad at this, aren’t you?” She looked to the other women present. “He really is terrible at this, isn’t he? Let me explain, dear brother; it is for show. When there is a gathering of guests, they have refreshments, and it signifies a casual gathering.”
Morgan stared blankly at her. “And when there are no refreshments?”
“Why, then we are discussing business and everyone knows it,” the youngest Gately explained in tired tones. She followed up that pitying response with an equally pitying pat on his knee.
“Well, I don’t believe that makes much sense,” he said, eyeing the tray covetously before ultimately sitting back in his chair and giving up all attempts at one of those treats. “Any sense,” he added under his breath.
Isla smirked. “Nor do I expect it to.”
Morgan tossed a pillow across the rose-inlaid refreshment table, which Emma intercepted. Catching the frilly lace article to her chest, she set it down in the empty space beside her.
“Might I suggest we return to the matter at hand,” she said firmly.
All assembled looked her way.
Emma pressed her fingers together, steepling and unsteepling them, then stopped. “Something is amiss.”
Morgan was the first to respond . . . or he attempted to anyway. “What is—?”
“She’s referring to Mother’s and Father’s persistence with Scarsdale.” Pierce took mercy on Morgan, sparing him from asking the remainder of that question and earning more of Isla’s ire.
“Scarsdale.” Morgan spat the name like it was the vitriolic curse it had become in the household.