The Importance of Being Wanton - Christi Caldwell Page 0,47
this time, however, he had filled his days with largely empty pursuits. Until now. Until these past ten days.
What had begun as a way of challenging Emma’s views of him had morphed into something more. The short time in which he had begun his work in the Club D’égalité had been some of the most productive and rewarding, and also humbling.
For he’d not anticipated just how much went into the creation and organization of such a pursuit . . . and how little he, in fact, knew about it. Even more shocking had been the discovery for Charles that . . . he didn’t hate it. Not at all. Oh, he wasn’t good at any of the organizational details of the club. There was still a greater hint of chaos than order to the weekly meetings . . . which might or might not have resulted in a greater interest in his club than the actual content being discussed at this point. The structure of the meetings was not fully set.
But he was learning, and the Club D’égalité was growing, and . . . there had been an unexpected sense of . . . accomplishment . . . to it all.
Closing his notes for the day, Charles adjusted the leather notebook so it sat framed in the very center of his desk.
He patted the top of it, the gold lettering of his initials faded by time. And pushing his chair back, Charles stood and headed across the room. He shucked off his shirt and tossed it aside as he went; his trousers followed suit as he littered a path of garments on the way to his bed.
And climbing under the covers, he slept.
As a young child, Emma had been far from a dutiful, proper young lady.
Far from it. Swimming naked on the lake at her family’s estate. Fishing in the dead of night until she’d cleared out her father’s stock, then transporting those creatures to another pond so they might be saved from giving their fish-lives in the name of sport.
Dampening the powder used by her father and his guests on their hunts.
Undoing all the traps that had been set for those hunts.
The list went on and on, of scandals that had brought her mother to tears and her father to lecture and her siblings to amusement. Every last one of those outrageous acts had taken place before her twelfth birthday.
That was the year when everything had changed. She had changed. She’d been saddled with Miss Finch, a governess who’d praised Emma’s intelligence, schooled her in the art of using one’s mind, and urged her to present an image of solemnity to the world.
Until Miss Finch, no one had spoken to Emma about her mind mattering.
That stern, solemn instructor had reshaped every way that Emma wanted the world to see her, and the way that she chose to present herself.
Rather . . . she’d been . . . fascinated.
From that moment on, she’d presented herself in a way that she could be proud of. What she hadn’t anticipated was that she’d also become someone her betrothed could not stand being with.
As such, in the whole of her adult years, she could count on just one hand the number of outrageous actions or activities she’d taken part in. Really, she could count on just one finger: the visit she’d paid to Waverton Street, which had led to her cofounding of the Mismatch Society.
And from that moment, all manner of impropriety had sprung.
Perhaps her founding the Mismatch Society, however, had freed her in some way. For here she sat, poised to do something so shocking it made the formation of the Mismatch Society look like a Lady Jersey’s approved, sanctioned tea.
Yet, seated in the crowded hackney in the dead of night, with most of respectable society firmly in their beds for the evening, she didn’t feel the dread or horror or any other proper sentiment she should. Nay, with Olivia and Isla crammed on the seat beside her, and Owen stationed across from them, she found herself filled with an anticipation.
Alas, the indignation and anger she’d felt after learning of Charles’s rival society hadn’t been quite . . . what it was since he’d come upon her on Regent Street.
Stop being a ninny. Would a man feel any such compunction about calling out one’s rival? Would a gentleman let one mere interaction—even if it had been a special one such as what she’d known—allow his course to be altered?