The Importance of Being Wanton - Christi Caldwell Page 0,8
his face when it bounced back toward him. “Charles,” he greeted, as if it were any other social call a father might pay his son and not a storming of said son’s household.
Wiping the sleep from his eyes, Charles donned a taunting grin. “Fath— Oh.” Bloody, bloody hell. His father had brought reinforcements—diminutive in size but dominating in spirit . . . and wearing skirts.
“Charles,” she said as she swept past her husband and laid siege to her son’s chambers.
Charles cursed and scrambled to get himself under the covers. “Mother?” he croaked. This was certainly a new and even more ruthless tactic. And that was precisely why his father was a formidable foe.
He peeked out from around the edge of the blankets.
The marchioness smiled at Charles’s butler. “Thank you for all your assistance, Tomlinson,” she said, drawing off her gloves one at a time and handing them over to the servant. “If you would be so good as to have these left with my cloak.”
Putty in her hands, Tomlinson went all soft-eyed. “Of course, my lady,” the young servant said, and after sketching a deep bow, he headed for the exit.
“Thank you, Tomlinson.” Charles called out that sarcasm-laden response loudly for his traitorous butler. “That will be all.”
Tomlinson closed the door on the remainder of that droll reply.
The moment he’d gone, Charles’s mother stalked forward. “You’re drunk, aren’t you? You’re slurring your speech.”
“It was a deliberate exaggeration,” Charles said, and the closer his mother approached to him and his naked self, the deeper he inched under the blankets.
Alas, his mother ignored those assurances, looking to her husband. “He’s drunk, isn’t he?”
The marquess leaned over the head of his cane and shrugged. “He’s always drunk.”
“I am not drunk,” Charles called, climbing all the way under the blankets. Not this time anyway. “Though receiving a visit from both my mother and father in the middle of the night, I rather wish I was.”
“He’s making a jest, isn’t he, Aster? That was a jest, wasn’t it?”
“Indeed it was, dear.” She paused. “And a poor one at that, Charles,” she said, though it wasn’t clear whether the disapproval in her tone was a product of his supposed weak attempt at humor or the fact that he was also supposedly drunk.
There came the groan of a floorboard and the rustle of fabric.
His father instantly yanked the covers aside and tossed them to the floor.
Charles squeaked. What special hell was this? “Good God, man, have a care,” he sputtered, grabbing a pillow and holding it protectively to himself, all the while avoiding his mother’s gaze. He tipped his head pointedly in her direction.
“Why are you tilting your head like that?” his clueless-as-always father demanded. “Have you gone and injured your fool neck while you were drunk?”
“Oh, for the love of all that is holy, I’m not drunk, and I’m motioning to Mother.” Abandoning his efforts there, Charles looked once more to the only parent who did not require everything be spelled out in terms of emotions, sentiments, or intentions. “If you would, please, Mother?” Lying down as he was, with his parents both hovering around his bed, certainly robbed Charles of any real authority when he spoke.
“Please, what?” she drawled, and from the corner of his eye, he caught the way she folded her arms at her chest and stuck out a foot, indicating in every way that she had no intention of taking herself off that easy. Or letting him off that easy, either.
She’d really make him spell it out? “Would you please excuse us? Given my current”—heat exploded in his cheeks, and he glanced pointedly at the feather pillow across his person—“circumstances?”
“Naked,” she said bluntly. “Those are your circumstances, and secondly, that man, as you referred to him, is, in fact, your father, and I am your mother. And I assure you, I’ve seen everything there is to see where a man is concerned. Including your once very small bits, and—”
Grabbing for another pillow, Charles promptly dragged it over his head, muffling the remainder of those words. Alas, it was too late. The words his mother had uttered couldn’t be unheard. They would dwell forever in his ears, as rotten as poison. “Very well. Would you both allow me a moment to dress myself? Then I promise we can speak about”—refusing to relinquish his hold on his pillows, he settled for shifting his head back and forth between them—“whatever this is?”
His father’s eyebrows dipped. “Whatever . . . this is?”