Chapter 13 #2
She led them into the drawing room, instructing Anthony and his brothers to move the few chairs while two servants were summoned to roll up the rug.
Aunt Eugenia spread out her skirts as she took a seat at the piano, Mrs. Mandeville standing beside her.
“Now,” Aunt Eugenia said, “what shall we dance to?” Her smile grew. “Ah, I know just the thing.” She rifled through the sheets in the mahogany cabinet beside the piano as Anthony moved the final chair out of the way. “A waltz. It is becoming all the rage, you know.”
Anthony paused with the chair legs hovering over the floorboards. His gaze darted to Charlotte, whose face was full of chagrin. This was as unwelcome a development to her as it was to him.
It was just like Aunt Eugenia to make a choice that would force all the young people in the room into intimacy. She positively delighted in helping others tiptoe along the line of propriety.
Aunt Eugenia ordered Lillian and William to be partners, and Tabitha and Frederick to be partners, and the six of them took their places in the middle of the floor.
By then, Charlotte seemed to have resigned herself to the task at hand.
Across the set, she smiled at Anthony in a way that made him narrow his eyes in suspicion.
Before the music began, she walked over to him, went on her tiptoes, and whispered in his ear, “I just wished to remind you that you are madly in love with me.” The words tickled his ear and made something strange course through him.
“A needed but not entirely welcome reminder,” he whispered right back.
She wore the same smile as she stepped back to her place in the small set, but he was beginning to recognize that Charlotte carried her mischief in her eyes.
Anthony bowed, and she curtsied, and before he knew it—or was prepared for it—they were pressed together in a way that made it all but impossible to look anywhere but those mischievous brown eyes.
“I wanted to give my personal thanks,” she said, “for that gripping story you recounted at the dinner table.”
Pain shot through his toes as she crushed his shoe with the heel of her slipper.
“Oh dear,” she said, eyes wide as an innocent babe’s. She was anything but that. “Forgive me.”
He smiled through gritted teeth. “I couldn’t allow their ignorance of your heroics to continue when you were so kind to inform them of the depth of my feelings for you.”
“And yet you fashioned yourself the hero of the cat story in the end, as well, didn’t you? Saving the poor creature and me from all those carriages.”
He slipped his arm around her waist, and she followed suit as they began twirling, their faces a matter of inches apart.
“What can I say?” Anthony said. “I was as moved by your helplessness as you were by that of the cat. Much about your description felt . . . familiar. What did you say? About the cat being entirely ungrateful and leaving you with scratches? A mean creature, intent on doing you harm? Something like that, was it not?”
She struggled against a smile, making victory flash through him like lightning.
“I still possess evidence of my run-in with those claws,” he said, pulling back his sleeve enough to show the faint marks which remained from her nails.
Her cheeks tinged with pink. “Perhaps you should take more care. You nearly undid us with that story,” she said, though there was no rancor in her voice. “My sisters are well-aware, as you heard, that I have no liking for cats.”
“As are my brothers well-aware that I am not the type of man to throw himself at the feet of a woman and stalk her like prey.”
“Perhaps not motivated by love, but you did appear at my door unannounced and unwanted, threatening me unless I conceded to your demands, all of which made me feel very much like prey.”
“I was desperate,” he said, annoyance pricking him at the reminder of how little good any of it had done him.
“Speaking of which,” she said, drawing even nearer. “I need your help.”
He tried to ignore the sweet scent that enveloped him with every movement she made. “And what, precisely, do you call the service I rendered you last night?”
She pulled back. “You mean claiming we were engaged?”
Through the corner of his eye, Anthony glanced at the others to see whether they were watching. “You are in love with me, remember?”
Her nostrils flared, but she regained control of her expression, smiling without humor. “You truly do fancy yourself a hero. And I your little kitten.”
“With the claws of a tiger,” Anthony replied.
She gave a scoffing laugh. “Very well. If you are such a hero, you will help me with the subject of my next caricature.”
Anthony’s face screwed up.
“Madly in love, remember?” she said.
With a sigh, he adjusted his expression to something more pleasant. “Why do you need my help?” They began to spin about the room again, each with a hand around the other’s waist, one hand held above their heads. “You have done well enough without me before now.”
Charlotte took a moment before responding. “I need your help because I only wish to target those who deserve it.”
Anthony searched her face. Did she think he merited the caricature she had drawn? He could only assume so. She made no secret of how little she thought of him.
“Surely,” she said, “you can think of someone who deserves that their dealings or foibles should be made more widely known.”
Anthony’s mind went immediately to Drayton.
No one deserved to be publicly flogged more than that man.
Of course, Anthony wanted a great deal more than for the man to simply be humiliated.
He wanted Silas’s freedom. But that was not within reach—nor was he certain it was even possible anymore.
Why not use the resources he had to hit back at the devil?
But no. Anthony couldn’t settle for such a paltry victory. Neither did he wish to alert Drayton to the fact that he was being watched.
“Give me a moment to think,” he said.
Charlotte nodded as they finished the last figures of the dance.
Aunt Eugenia insisted on another song, and another one after that. Before she could command a fourth, Frederick insisted he must say goodnight on account of wishing to be present to watch the proceedings in Parliament first thing in the morning.
Charlotte capitalized on the opportunity to plead their excuses, as well, pointing to their journey back to Stoneleigh in the morning.
They all bid farewell to one another and safe travels to the Mandevilles, and Anthony walked them to their awaiting carriage.
“Well?” Charlotte said to him as her sisters climbed in. There was no stated question, but Anthony knew what she was asking.
He hadn’t yet given her any information for her caricature.
“I will write to you,” he said, pushing the matter off until some later time.
Feeling the gazes of his aunt and Miss Mandeville upon him, he took her gloved hand and brought it to his lips.
He pressed a kiss there, then straightened and looked at it with a small smile, brushing his thumb along the covered nails. “My little kitten.”
Charlotte tried and failed to suppress a smile as she pulled her hand away. “Goodnight, Tony.”
He chuckled softly as she stepped into the carriage, and soon, she was gone.
Good riddance, he thought. But he didn’t truly feel it.
“I mislike her returning home,” Aunt Eugenia said as they watched the carriage turn and disappear at the end of the street.
“Why?” Anthony asked. Misgiving suddenly crept into his stomach. What would be expected of an engaged couple, madly in love? Stoneleigh was not so far that Anthony had an excuse to go a fortnight without seeing his betrothed. Should they be spending a great deal of time together?
“I want her near so I can keep an eye on things. It would be like you to make a muddle of things somehow, and I like Charlotte.”
Anthony’s brows pulled together. “Do you?”
She gave a definitive nod as she availed herself of his arm to help her up the steps. “Almost better than I like you.”
“Well, that is not saying much, is it?”
But it was. Aunt Eugenia could be both exacting and eccentric in her taste, for clothing, food, and people.
And yet she liked Charlotte.
That made one of them, at least.