Chapter Eight
Had Julian been asked to guess how Charlotte would respond to learning she was the subject of a wager and that he had been causing her grief in service of that wager, he’d have declared without hesitation that she would be hurt and angry and likely denounce him to all and sundry whilst consigning him to the very devil.
Instead, she’d declared her desire to help him continue his efforts.
Shocking. And humbling. He knew he didn’t deserve her forbearance or forgiveness. He would, however, do all he could to help her avoid a marriage she didn’t wish to enter into.
In the interest of that commitment, he hied himself to Charlotte’s London house for another at home, determined to make himself equally as bothersome as he had on his last attendance there should Mr. Travers or Mr. Vernon be in attendance or should her father seem to be favoring another gentleman.
And it was, in fact, another gentleman whose path he crossed first upon entering the drawing room.
Heaven help Charlotte if Sir Duncan was her father’s choice.
As Julian dipped a quick acknowledgment, he glanced around the room, looking for some indication that the haughty baronet had somehow found his way into the earl’s good graces. But the earl was not present.
“I don’t imagine any of us can say we are surprised to see you here, Lord Wesley.” Sir Duncan looked back at the gathering. “He certainly seems determined to annoy Lady Charlotte with his near-constant presence.”
“I would never presume to be your equal in that.” Julian offered the veiled insult with a perfectly pleasant tone.
Sir Duncan’s stormy expression told him the remark had been understood. The titters around the room told him it had also been overheard. Though Charlotte smiled in obvious enjoyment, she didn’t laugh, keeping the composure required of a hostess.
Mrs. Baskins, the wife of a gentleman with whom he’d attended Cambridge, offered a word of greeting, as did the lady sitting beside her.
Julian offered words of pleasure at being in company with another lady whom he knew through a mutual friend.
He was not insincere in his greetings, but he was not entirely focused, either.
All his thoughts were on Charlotte. What a change the past weeks had wrought.
Standing in front of her, at last, he bowed. “Lady Charlotte. Thank you for receiving me.”
“Thank you for calling. I fear my father is feeling a touch unwell and will not be joining the gathering.”
“I am sorry to hear that.” He indicated a chair beside hers. “Might I be so bold as to request the honor of sitting so near you?”
“You certainly may.” She smiled as he sat. “Mr. Daubney is not with you today. That is a rare thing.”
“He is calling elsewhere. Miss Selby is not with you. That is also a rare thing.”
Charlotte sighed, the sound a bit dramatic. “Alas, she is days from her wedding, and her time is consumed with the final details of that.”
“Are you pleased for your friend?” he asked.
“I am. Mr. Granville is a fine gentleman, and they are genuinely happy in each other’s company. I could not be more pleased for Louisa.”
Did she have any expectation of being happy in the company of anyone her father was likely to choose? She deserved to be happy. She deserved to build a life with someone who valued her happiness.
Mrs. Baskins spoke into the momentary silence. “Many have remarked on how pleased we all are that you are going about more in Society, Lord Wesley. You have hardly done so these past few years.”
Though he might have felt some castigation in her declaration, he chose to focus on her expression of delight at his presence.
“I confess I had been avoiding the ton. Knowing how my predecessors had too often behaved, I feared being misjudged. I ought to have shown more faith in the discernment of Society.”
Expressions of both empathy and reassurance echoed around the room.
He was touched. After a lifetime of being assumed to be a mere copy of his reprobate father and scoundrel grandfather, he’d found it easier to tuck himself away and limit his interactions to Franklin and a select few others.
Perhaps he’d been doing himself and his potential associates a disservice.
Perhaps he had been the one to misjudge them.
“I hope you will continue to be more a part of the social whirl,” Charlotte said.
He met her eye, feeling the pull to her growing with every encounter, every conversation, every glance. “I intend to be.”
Her soft smile warmed him through. The thin ice Franklin had warned him about had melted entirely. Sink or swim, he was in deep.
The ladies who had called on Charlotte were, to a one, inviting and welcoming and kind.
He didn’t know if they treated him that way out of pity or civility toward a guest in a home in which they too were guests or if they had honestly decided to think well of the current holder of a title which had for generations been attached to people who’d hardly lived worthy of it.
But he realized, sitting there, that he had some ability to determine which reason took hold.
By absenting himself from Society he had robbed himself of any ability to influence how he was perceived.
His return, however oddly brought about, gave him an opportunity.
As he was the last to arrive, he was also permitted to be the last to leave, though being a single gentleman calling on a single lady, he dared not remain for more than the briefest of moments after the last caller departed.
He offered his farewells at the door and made his way to the street.
He had walked to the earl’s fashionable home from his rented rooms and intended to return in the same manner.
But mere steps away, he realized he’d lost his case of calling cards.
It must have slipped from his pocket at some point, likely while seated in the drawing room.
His knock was answered quickly by the footman posted there.
“I believe I have lost my card case in the drawing room.”
The footman, one young for his post, motioned Julian inside and toward the drawing room. Generally servants would have undertaken the search themselves, but it wasn’t a complete breach of etiquette. And the drawing room proved empty, which simplified the situation.
Julian returned to the chair he had been occupying and found, wedged between the cushion and the frame, the case he was searching for. It had most certainly slipped from his pocket. He returned it there and made to leave.
But in that very moment, Charlotte stepped into the room, pulling the door closed. She hadn’t looked at him yet and, he suspected, didn’t know he was there. He couldn’t imagine she would close the door otherwise.
“You had likely best open that again.”
She startled a little at his voice, confirming his suspicions that he had gone unnoted. “Lord Wesley. I didn’t realize you had returned.”
“My card case fell from my pocket. I was retrieving it.”
“Thank you for calling today.” She moved to where he stood as she spoke. “Though my father wasn’t present, offering no opportunity to distract him from his purpose, I enjoyed having you here.”
He took her hand and held it gently. “I enjoyed being here. I’ve feared rejection from Society for so long that I have simply avoided nearly anything to do with the ton. Feeling welcome proved a delightful change.”
“You will always be welcome with me,” she said.
He kissed her hand, closing his eyes over the lingering gesture. “I suspect your father would not agree. Neither would your eventual husband.”
He felt her other hand brush against his cheek.
Julian opened his eyes once more. She stood very close, watching him with the same tenderness he’d seen in her eyes again and again during that afternoon’s call.
“I think my father could be brought around to seeing you as you are rather than a mere extension of your family.”
“I am far more determined that he be brought around to seeing you as a lady worthy of choosing her future and her happiness.” He tucked their entwined hands between them. “I want that for you, Charlotte. I want you to be happy.”
“In this moment, Julian, I am entirely happy.”
He bent and pressed a light kiss to her lips, his heart pounding at the tender touch.
He’d have kissed her further, longer, but knew their situation was precarious for so many reasons.
Far sooner than he would have liked, he stepped back and released her hand, then slipped silently from the house once more.
***
The day of Louisa’s wedding arrived. The ceremony was lovely. The bride was beautiful. The bride’s dearest friend was . . . distracted.
Charlotte knew her father would soon be selecting a husband for her, and that husband would undoubtedly not be Julian. She’d hardly known him a fortnight earlier, yet her heart broke again and again as she thought of building a life with anyone else.
She had long told herself that her only unwavering requirements in a future husband were that he be kind to her and not an unpleasant person.
Julian was, of course, both of those things, but he was also so much more.
He had a keen sense of humor, humility enough to admit he’d been wrong and misguided in his efforts to forestall her possible nuptials.
He had shown himself to be intelligent and quick-witted.
His long-standing friendship with Mr. Daubney indicated he was loyal and did not abandon people when it might have otherwise been convenient to do so.
Defending himself against her father’s unflattering assessment, but managing the thing without being harsh or hurtful, showed compassion and patience but mingled with an unwillingness to be run roughshod over. That was a rare combination.
And he kissed wonderfully.
Charlotte fanned herself a bit as the carriage rolled back toward home after the wedding breakfast. The memory of Julian’s lips pressed softly to hers flitted through her mind with shocking regularity, and every time it did, her cheeks heated.
It had been a fleeting kiss, so brief and light that she’d have expected to be far less impressed than she actually was.
Instead of disappointment at the briefness of the moment, she found herself longing for him to kiss her again.
“Mr. and Mrs. Selby seemed pleased,” Father said from the other side of the carriage. “And well they might be. Mr. Granville is a respected gentleman with income enough. A fine catch for their daughter.”
“And how fortunate the new Mrs. Granville is that she and her new husband are truly happy in each other’s company,” Charlotte added. “That is not always the case.”
Father shook his head slowly. “No, it is not.”
“Were you and Mother pleased with your marriage?” she asked. “I’m afraid I have very few memories of her, none of which answer that question.”
He nodded. “We were, after a time.”
After a time. It was not an enthusiastic answer, nor was it encouraging in the moment.
She could “after a time” learn to be pleased with either of the gentlemen she had been hoping her father would choose.
She could be content. It was all she had ever aimed for, all she’d felt herself able to require in a match.
But that felt utterly unsatisfying now.
She wanted someone who made her heart flutter. Someone who could, with a single kiss, make her blush for days. Someone who wanted her to be truly happy. Not merely pleased. Not merely content. Happy.
Loved.
“I hope Mr. Granville does not object to bringing his new wife back to Town for your wedding,” Father said.
Charlotte swallowed. “My wedding?”
He didn’t seem to take note of the tremor in her voice. “Wouldn’t do to wait too long. The Season is nearly over now.”
“You were kind to wait until after Louisa’s wedding.
” It had, in fact, been a kindness on Father’s part.
How could she ask for another delay? Yet, if he made his decision in the very near future, he would most certainly not choose the gentleman she could actually see herself happy with.
“Marriage is not something one ought to rush into.”
“Fortunately,” Father said, “we have had four years.”
“Does that mean you have chosen someone?”
He shook his head, and she breathed a little more easily.
“I don’t intend to propose to a gentleman on your behalf.
” He laughed a little. “But there are a couple of gentlemen who, I believe, are on the cusp of approaching me. And, should they do so, I would eagerly move forward with a match between either of them and my darling daughter.”
Should they do so. If Mr. Vernon or Mr. Travers asked for her hand, Father would accept. And she would be married almost before she knew what was happening.
Thank the heavens for Julian’s offer to continue interrupting would-be suitors. A bit of awkwardness would, she desperately hoped, go a long way toward preventing what would undoubtedly be a disaster.