Page 59 of Always the Chaperone

“Lady Charlotte!” Mrs. Holmes breathed. “I did not mean…I did not intend…”

“Charlotte, marry me.” Will’s voice echoed in the silent room. He stepped close to her and whispered in her ear so no one else could hear him. “My heart cannot continue on like this. Marry me, or I will leave Bath. I am tired of you acting as a chaperone to half the women in the county when you are the most beautiful and most spirited one among them.”

Charlotte turned to look into his eyes but could not speak. Excitement was pumping through her veins, and she wanted to hurt someone, or be held by him, or run away and never see any of them ever again, and she did not know which.

“You love me. Did you not say so?”

Her cheeks colored at asking such a question before such a crowd, but before he could reply, Miss Holmes spoke into the silence.

“Your Grace, are you in love with this chaperone?” Miss Holmes looked between them in astonishment. “Is…is that allowed?”

Charlotte’s gray eyes turned to Will. He tipped back his head and laughed. He did not defend her or protect her. He stood there, chuckling in the silence, ignoring the crowd watching her as though she was the entertainment for the day.

The pain in her heart peaked. Was she a joke to him? Had he no feelings at all? The love he was about to profess could not be real. If he cared for her at all, he would never allow her to be mocked like this in public.

“What do you have to say to that?” she whispered, not taking her eyes from him.

Will stopped laughing, and his eyes flickered from Mrs. Holmes to Miss Holmes to her.

Attempting to hold back tears and knowing she could not do so for long, Charlotte laughed bitterly. “And to think that I was about to accept—this, I think, is the perfect example of why I cannot be your wife.”

“No—no Charlotte, you have misunderstood me,” Will said, but he was still smiling, and it cut into her soul.

“I do not have to listen to this,” said Charlotte, taking a step away from him toward the door, toward freedom. “I do not have to listen to you. Good day, Your Grace.”

The tears then fell, and she let them fall as she walked in silence through the staring Pump Room. They fell the entire time it took her to reach home, and they did not cease falling until many hours later.

Chapter Sixteen

The glass slammedonto the table, dregs of ale sloshing over the lip.

“…and that,” William said impressively, “is what happened.”

His words were met with silence by the other four gentlemen around the table in the York Club. John was seated beside him and was staring into his glass, as though unsure how it had emptied so fast. The other three were shaking their heads, and William felt a surge of irritation. Did they not understand? Had they not heard how ridiculous it was?

“And did you follow her?” Charles Audley, Duke of Orrinshire, sipped at his ale with an eyebrow raised.

William shrugged. “What was the point? Charlotte had made herself perfectly clear. She does not wish to marry me, and that’s an end to it. I leave Bath tomorrow.”

There was silence around the table, though there was raucous laughter from the rest of the room. The night was late, and the ale was flowing, feeding the merriment in the place.

But not with William and his companions. The day’s events blurred through drink and irritation, but they still stung.

Pain rocketed through his body as John punched him in the arm.

“God’s teeth, that hurt!” William rubbed at the place where his brother’s fist had fallen. “What was that for?”

“You absolute fool,” John said with no sympathy whatsoever.

William was incensed to see their three friends, Orrinshire, Lord George Northmere, and Josiah Stanhope, Earl of Chester, were nodding in agreement. “Fool? I fail to see what I could have done differently, you blaggard, and you were not even there!”

“Not laughing would have been a good place to start,” said Lord George as he drained his glass and placed it on the table beside William’s. He gestured at one of the serving girls shepherded by a footman in the Club’s livery, who nodded and disappeared to find a pitcher.

William could not help but feel a twinge of shame. “I admit, it was not one of my finest moments—but Christ, it was all so ridiculous! Mrs. Holmes standing there, all agog at being shouted at, Miss Holmes thrusting her bosom at me like a wanton, and I could not have been less interested in the poor thing.”

Chester snorted. “Not really the point, though, is it, Mercia?”

“I have never seen Charlotte as a chaperone,” William persisted, “and it makes me laugh that everyone else does. ’Tis not a crime to see the funny side!”