He was a bit of a hero, Charlotte decided, watching as John spun Miss Ashby around the dance floor. She’d been able to cut Viscount Lionell down to size, but she would never have been able to achieve what John had.
When the reclusive Viscount Harrow, whose rare presence in society only made him more intriguing, announced that no woman could inspire him to dance and then asked a girl to waltz, he was effectively singling her out as remarkable.
He’d rescued her from Lionell’s taunts and, in the process, made her worthy of attention from London’s most highly admired. Charlotte felt fine about that. Absolutely fine.
It was a kind and courageous and admirable thing that he’d done to put himself in a situation where he was awfully uncomfortable simply to help a stranger. And it was for that reason that the fizzy, bubbly feelings she’d always had for him were settling into something more tangible. She’d always thought him kind, but to see that kindness and selflessness in action only made her admire him more.
But of course, it had to be a dratted waltz he was dancing with Miss Ashby. She was not jealous. Not jealous at all. So what if his shoulders were broad and his arms promised strength and they encircled another woman?
So what if his bearing was perfectly tall and proud? So what if his legs were long and lean and his skin-tight pantaloons molded to thighs and calves that needed no padding and those same legs pressed against another woman’s skirts?
“Excuse me,” she said to the girls around her who were also standing, mouths agape, watching the most beautiful man in the room dance with their friend.
She went to the retiring room for a moment of peace to gather all the threads of her emotions and wrap them back up, but she was only there for seconds when the door swung open, cracking against the wall with a bang. The attendants flinched and stood at attention.
Charlotte turned slowly, fixing an unfazed aspect to her expression, suspecting who it was before she even laid eyes on them.
“What are you up to?” Luella hissed at Charlotte.
Ever mindful of who was watching, Charlotte smiled sweetly. “Lady Luella, how lovely to see you again.”
The smile Luella returned was as fake as her own had been. She threaded her arm through Charlotte’s and towed her toward a corner where they couldn’t be overheard.
“I repeat, what are you doing?”
“I’m dancing and talking and trying to relieve myself, which you are interrupting.”
Luella’s eyes narrowed. “With Lord Harrow. What are you doing with the viscount?”
“Nothing,” Charlotte snapped. “We have not even danced together.”
“And yet all the talk is of how the reclusive viscount is spending his time with a certain duke’s sister. He is my fiancé. There is a contract.”
Frustration boiled up inside her. “A contract that he didn’t sign. That he had no part in. That he doesn’t want.” Luella truly was the devil.
“If that’s the case, then why hasn’t he cried off? Why hasn’t he come to see my father or sent word to our solicitor to say that he will not honor Walter’s commitment?” Luella’s voice wavered at the fourteenth Viscount Harrow’s name.
Walter. Luella had been on a first name basis with him. It had been more than an arranged match then. A courtship, maybe? Regardless, it didn’t excuse Luella’s attempts to trap John now.
“Perhaps the temptation of your dowry is proving difficult for Lord Harrow to break from. That was the purpose of your father offering such an obscene amount, was it not? To encourage men to overlook their distaste for you?”
They were cruel and hurtful words, and Charlotte regretted them the moment they were out of her mouth. Whatever enmity there was between the two of them, she had never before said something so bitter. Not to anyone. Not to a person’s face, anyway. A Wildeforde was better than that. Charlotte went to apologize, but Luella’s expression was so full of hatred that she recoiled.
“You are jealous,” Luella spat. “Walter loved me, and now his brother will marry me and you’ll still be the duke’s little sister on the shelf.”
A wash of shame crept over her. Luella was right. Charlotte was jealous. Luella could solve John’s problems in a way that Charlotte couldn’t. If John’s creditors got impatient, there was still a very good chance that Luella would end up married to the man whom Charlotte cared for.
She hadn’t known that Walter and Luella had loved each other, but had she been aware, she would have been sick with envy that her nemesis had found love first.
She couldn’t bring herself to deliver a retort, though. Her insult had been an unkindness borne of ill-feeling, and she deserved the insult she received in return. Both of them lost this battle.
“Good night” was the only thing she trusted herself to say before returning to the party.
* * *
An hour later, she’d barely said two words to John. He’d danced three times with other women, and every time he and she stood together and the strains of a new song started, another lord would ask Charlotte to dance. And a Wildeforde did not turn down a dance if she was free.
John would sometimes follow, sometimes not. Either way, he ensured the wallflowers were the subject of envy. Not that he was enjoying the attention. He seemed coiled tight, as though ready to flee at the slightest provocation. His head kept turning toward the gaming room, where they’d yet to make an appearance.
Charlotte tried to keep her attention where it should be—on her dance partner, Lord Mallen—but her gaze kept returning to John, whose audience was billowing in size as the night wore on and more people arrived.
Lord Mallen kept up his usual stream of conversation and it was a good thing Charlotte could talk under water if she needed to because she, hopefully, carried the conversation forward without him being at all aware that her focus was elsewhere.
John couldn’t be comfortable. He was a man of few words, and the crowd he was surrounded by would demand more than a few from him. He slipped a hand into his pocket and Charlotte could imagine the tap, tap, tap of his hidden fingers.
She circled her dance partner, ducking beneath the arms of the couple next to her.
John pushed his spectacles up his nose.
She circled again, holding Lord Mallen’s hand high as a couple ducked beneath.
John crossed his arms.
She circled again.
John was gone.
As Lord Mallen escorted her down the middle of the line, she scanned the crowd. She only had to follow the ripple of turning heads to find him. Some of the younger women ducked behind their fans, hiding their blushes. Older women—married, widowed, spinsters—did not even bother to hide their ogling. The elusive viscount, more handsome than they’d expected and just as intriguing.
He escaped the ballroom through the door that led to the main house. Was he leaving? What had been said? They still had a job to do.
Despite the urge she had to follow him immediately, she kept on dancing. There were only a few refrains left, not worth the gossip that would ensue if she left the floor midway through. So she smiled and laughed and looked for all the world as though she weren’t deeply concerned. When the music ended, she didn’t wait for Lord Mallen to escort her.
“Excuse me, my lord. I have a pressing matter to attend to.” She wove in and out of the crowd, avoiding those who would want to engage her in conversation, smiling apologetically as she navigated her way around groups.
Once she reached the foyer, there were two paths he might have taken. The first led outside to where the carriages were, but she didn’t think that he would have left before they’d visited the gaming rooms.
The other path led down the hall. There were sitting rooms in that direction and an orangery. He might have gone into any of them.
The first three were locked; clearly their hosts did not want to risk the scandal of inappropriate liaisons. The door to the orangery was not. As she pushed it open, the sweet scent of citrus hit her.
Lamps were lit along the paved path that ran the perimeter of the room. Another path meandered through the potted garden. She took it, knowing a bench seat sat in the middle of the sanctuary. As she turned a corner around an old and large bergamot, she saw him there, lying on the bench, his legs hooked over one end, his head propped up against the other. He was staring up through the glass ceiling to the sky beyond, where the moon, hidden by heavy clouds, cast a silver glow to their edges.
He was beautiful like this. The tension that had infused his expression since they’d arrived at the ball had vanished. “You look thoughtful,” she said.
He lurched upward at the sound of her voice. “Charlotte,” he said, his shoulders relaxing as he realized who had intruded on his space. He stood immediately. “This is not the most effective of hiding places, then.”
“Not one I would rely on, no. Are you well?” That he had come in here to hide suggested he was not. She clasped her hands firmly together to keep from brushing back the lock of hair that had flopped into his eyes.
“I’m well. I simply needed a moment to breathe.” He gestured to the bench, and she sat at one end, spreading her skirts so that they folded in neat waves.
“I needed a break from all the…fawning,” he said as he sat, leaning with his back against the side of the bench so that he faced her.
“Much to the chagrin of the ladies. You seem most popular.” She hoped her jealousy hadn’t escaped into her tone.
John grimaced. “Popularity is not my preference. I’d much rather we go straight to the gaming room. Small talk is exhausting.” He took off his spectacles and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket.
It was interesting, this idea that people exhausted him, though it explained his absence from society. “I find the opposite true,” she said. “Nothing energizes me like a crowd. When the season ends, I count down the days until it begins again.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “You don’t find the conversation vapid and superficial?”
She cocked her head. “No.”
His lips pressed thin and he tapped them with his fingers, a sign that he was mulling things over. “How often can you talk about the weather before you feel as though you’re a parrot?”
She rolled her eyes. “I rarely talk about the weather, at least not with friends, and I’m friends with almost everyone.”
John shook his head. “It’s not possible. You cannot have that many friends.”
What a bizarre statement. “Why not?”
“Because friends are those who you can trust completely, who are there for you, regardless of time or distance, who truly know every aspect of you.”
Charlotte had never thought to define friendship, but if she had, it would have been a somewhat looser definition. “How many friends do you have?” she asked.
“Five.”
“Five?” He said the number with such immediate conviction. Charlotte couldn’t count the number of friends she had if she were given a day to do it. “But you have people you work with every day. Surely, they’re friends?”
John shook his head. “We’re friendly. I like them well enough, but no; they aren’t friends.”
His reasoning was so foreign. If you spent time together and you were friendly, wouldn’t that automatically constitute a friendship?
“Goodness, then what am I?” she asked. “One of your special five?” She regretted the words as soon as she spoke them. It was difficult enough to be told he did not want to marry her. Her heart couldn’t take being told he didn’t even consider her a friend. She held her breath, waiting for the answer.
He cocked his head, his soft lips pursed in thought. “No.”
“Oh.” All breath escaped her, and she sagged under the heavy disappointment. “Well, that’s flattering, that I’m not even a friend.” She tried to keep the hurt from her voice but had little success. They should just go to the gaming room and get this night over with.
He straightened, a hand reaching out and landing in the space between them, just inches from her leg, nudging the edge of propriety. “You are not a friend. You’re something I cannot classify.”
His words electrified the space between them, as though they were a promise, implied but not made, that changed the order of things. She could classify him well enough—he was an unrequited infatuation. An impossible tendre. A man who would likely break her heart with a mallet that she, herself, put into his hands. “Well, I’m not sure that’s better,” she said, shifting uncomfortably. “You make me sound awfully like a strange bug.”
He smiled. “You are a little strange to me. Your entire world is, with its constant flitting about. Why can’t you be alone?”
No one had ever asked that of her before. Everyone knew she was a social butterfly who could be found at almost every ball, who danced with every man who asked, and who was rarely at home. It was part of what people admired about her. John was the first person to speak of it as though it were a flaw, or something unusual that had to be explained.
The truth was, being alone made her jittery. Her eyes would keep flicking toward the door, wishing that anyone would enter. She rarely allowed solitude to happen. On the occasional morning that she had no plans, she’d seek her brother or sister, or have Grace attend to her in the sitting room. The murmur of conversation would quiet her nerves.
“You know my mother,” she said. John nodded. He’d been on the receiving end of the dowager’s sharp tongue on more than one occasion. “Well, after my father’s death, she developed exceedingly high expectations of how a Wildeforde should behave. We were to be the perfect family, as though it could make up for his scandal.”
“Oh, I know,” John said. “I saw how she treated your brother. Edward spent his entire youth trying to live up to her expectations.”
“Well, whenever I didn’t meet her lofty standards, she would punish me. Not with a rod,” she said when John’s body tensed. “Not as she did with Ned and Will, although I’d have preferred that. Instead, she would stop talking to me. She would stop listening to me. She would pretend I didn’t exist. If I did not behave like the perfect lady, if I was not cherished by all, she completely withdrew her affection.”
“That’s awful,” John said. “I am sorry.” He shifted closer to her until his leg pressed against hers. The touch of him, their first actual contact that wasn’t gloved hand on sleeve, was less thrilling than it was oddly comforting. It spurred her to tell him the worst of it, the part she’d never even told her brothers for fear of them realizing how very disappointing she must have been to deserve it.
“If I failed too badly, Mother would forbid the household staff from talking to me, even my nanny. They wouldn’t look at me; they wouldn’t speak to me; they wouldn’t come when I called. I know, now, the impossible situation they were in. They had their own families to think of and any servant who showed me even a little kindness during those times disappeared the next day. But that sense of loneliness was ghastly.”
Ghastly was an understatement. It had been soul-crushing, and she had done everything in her power to avoid it, whether that meant acquiescing to her mother’s ridiculous demands, helping anyone who asked so that she would always have an invitation and somewhere to be, or asking her maid to share a bed until she fell asleep.
“That’s not right,” he said. “She was such a b— cow.” He reached over and took Charlotte’s hand, untwining it from the skirts that she’d clenched into knots without even realizing. “The thought of you hurt and alone makes my chest ache. You are too good, too kind, to be treated that way.”
He raised her hand and pressed a kiss to it, his thumb brushing against her fingers as he drew back. That touch was more than comforting. It made the hairs on the back of her neck stand and her heart skip a beat before working double time. For a moment, she forgot how to breathe. She swayed toward him, inhaling the clean sweet scent of citrus, her head spinning.
For the barest second, his grip on her hand strengthened, as though he, too, had experienced something unexpected, and then he pulled away.
“No.” She raised a hand to his cheek, and he stopped still. His lips were so perfect, so pink, so soft. She stroked them, and he inhaled swiftly. Even through the silk of her gloves, she could feel his warmth. Unsure of what she’d see, she looked up, meeting his gaze. His green eyes swam with the desire she knew he could see in hers. He didn’t soften, though. He sat as rigid and as beautiful as marble.
She leaned forward and the breath that proved he was living mingled with hers. Slowly, tentatively, she raised her lips to his and kissed him. It was sweet and soft and everything a first kiss should be. Her other hand lifted by its own accord, finding rest on his jacket, through which she could feel the erratic thump-th-thump of his heartbeat.
She pulled away, head still spinning, but it was his turn to murmur “no.” He took her face in his hands, his fingers sinking into the back of her hair. He kissed her and it was not a light embrace. There was an urgency to the press of his lips, and his fingers tightened in her curls. His tongue stroked her lips and, tentatively, she opened them, gasping as his tongue immediately sought hers out, exploring it in a way that left her unsure what was happening.
“Charlotte.” He pulled away at her hesitation, and she felt the loss deep within her.
“No.” She wrapped her hand around his neck and pulled him toward her, perhaps not sure what she was doing but certain that she wanted to keep doing it. Her lips met his. It was her turn to explore, her tongue reaching forward. His groan sent goose bumps skittering across her skin.
He scooped her up into his lap where the strength of his desire was plain and heat swirled in her belly, sending a tingle down her spine and lower. His fingers grazed across her back, leaving trails of desire across her.
He nudged her head backward, his lips trailing across her neck, finding a place beneath her jaw that made her throb. His hot breath on her ear made her shiver.
“John,” she whispered, her fingers digging into his shoulder. “Please.” She did not know what she was begging for; she simply knew that this was just the barest hint of what she could feel.
Her plea had the opposite effect to what she intended. He pulled back, and her desperate “no” went unanswered. Mortified, she shuffled off his lap.
He grasped her hands before she could get up and away. “I cannot do this,” he said. “I promised…We simply cannot.”
Her eyes were hot with tears. “Because you’re going back to America?”
“Yes.”
“And if you weren’t?”
John looked agonized. “There is no point dwelling on what might be, no matter how pleasant the dream.”