The Importance of Being Wanton - Christi Caldwell Page 0,24

. . . You’re a womanizer . . . You wager too much . . .”

All the while, her opinion of you was . . . is . . . that.

Seated at his private table at White’s, he glared into the contents of his whiskey glass, then set it down hard.

A shadow fell over his table, and he glanced up to find his two longest and truest friends in the world: Lord Landon, fellow rogue, and Lord St. John, the actual saint of their trio.

Landon grabbed a chair and seated himself, with St. John slower and more measured in doing so. “Good God, the foul mood persists,” Landon greeted with his unflagging charm.

I was once the same damned way.

And Charles was more than tempted to grab his half-drunk whiskey and finish it off. Which he would have . . . had Emma Gately’s accusations not been ringing in his head.

“Drink too much,” he muttered to himself.

“Yes, I think that is my point,” Landon piped in. “You’re at it again, but this time in a foul mood.” A servant came forward with two glasses, one the marquess grabbed up while St. John set his off to the side, with a word of thanks for the footman. “I thought it could not get worse than your moping,” Landon remarked when the servant had gone. He helped himself to the bottle of whiskey Charles hadn’t been able to bring himself around to drinking.

“I was not moping,” Charles groused.

Both men looked back at him.

“Oh, fine. I was moping a bit.”

“Well, angry-drunken Scarsdale is even worse than depressed-forlorn Scarsdale, isn’t that true, St. John?”

“I’m not drunk.” Charles only wished he were.

If that didn’t require him fulfilling those low opinions Emma had leveled at him.

“I’d rather not see him angry or depressed,” the viscount said as if Charles hadn’t spoken to his own sobriety. He’d long been the reliable one of their group, and just then, St. John had that steady, concerned gaze trained on Charles. “What is it, Scarsdale?” he asked quietly, with a solemnity Landon had forever been incapable of.

Charles shoved his glass across the table. “She doesn’t wish me to see her family.”

The viscount’s deep-set brow creased. “She?”

“Who the hell else do you think ‘she’ means, St. John?” Landon asked in exasperated tones. “His former betrothed,” he said, removing a pipe and waving it in Charles’s direction. “The estimable Miss Gately.” Another footman rushed over and lit the wooden scrap before rushing off. Landon sighed, and rubbed four fingers along his right brow. “Oh, bloody hell. Let’s get on with it, then. What has the lady done to upset you now?”

And that was why Landon, disreputable, in dun territory, and preferring his women and spirits too much, would always be a best friend. Because when it came down to it, ultimately he wished to help, and he cared about the people he called friends: Charles. St. John. “She doesn’t wish for me to see her father. She insisted she doesn’t want me to join the viscount for billiards or . . . anything.”

Silence met his pronouncement.

St. John cleared his throat. “And?”

“And . . . I, well, I don’t think it’s her place to say.”

“Because you of a sudden enjoy hanging out with elderly lords whom your father calls friends?” Landon asked without inflection, and also absent the sarcasm leveled Charles’s way by Emma.

His friends’ words danced close to the accusations Emma had tossed when she’d called Charles out before the bulk of their families. “Not that it is either here or there, but I do enjoy my time with my father and the viscount. Which is what I told her.”

“And you’re still trying to win her back?” Landon asked slowly. “Or have you given up on that?”

“The former,” Charles confirmed.

Chuckling, Landon saluted him. “Then you’re going about it a deuced funny way, friend.”

“She’s insisted she doesn’t want you visiting with her father, and yet you’ve explicitly gone against her wishes?” St. John asked slowly.

“Because if I don’t”—Charles dragged out each syllable—“then I’m not going to see her.”

Landon pounced. “Then . . . find other places to see her, old chap.”

“I don’t know where that is,” he said quietly, as her charges hurled at him came back to haunt Charles in this moment.

You should have a care, throwing around willy-nilly jests about my ability to laugh or smile, Lord Scarsdale . . . You never took time to learn anything about me. As such, allow me to advise you . . . I’ve always