A Rogue of Her Own (Windham Brides #4)(8)
She gave him a look. If he’d been eight years old, he would have produced the hairpin from his pocket, blushed, and stammered his remorse. He was past thirty and would keep that hairpin until the day he died.
“You want to discuss my failed attempt at ruin,” she said.
“My apologies for interfering with your schedule. Do you attempt ruin often, and might we sit while we don’t talk about the weather?”
She gestured to the sofa and took a place half a yard to Sherbourne’s right.
“I like you,” she said. “Somewhat. A little. I don’t dislike you.”
“My heart pounds with joy to hear it. I don’t dislike you either.”
Thank the gods of porcelain and silver, the tea cart rattled loudly as somebody pushed it along the corridor. Sherbourne thus knew to fall silent rather than expound about why he didn’t dislike Miss Charlotte Windham rather a lot.
A footman steered the tea cart into the parlor, and a maid came along to assist with setting the offerings on the low table before the sofa. The polite fussing gave Sherbourne a chance to consider possibilities and theories.
His mind, however, usually reliable during daylight hours, failed to focus on the facts as he knew them.
Charlotte Windham was seeking her own ruin. What the devil was she about?
*
Charlotte had hoped the ritual of the tea service would soothe her, but there Lucas Sherbourne sat, in morning attire that featured a waistcoat embroidered with more gold thread than some high church bishops wore at Easter services.
How could one be soothed when beholding such masculine splendor? His attire was distinctive, but so too was the sense of animal instincts prowling close to the surface of his personality. Sherbourne was alert, heedful of both danger and opportunity even in a duke’s drawing room. With him on the premises, Charlotte would never be bored, never feel invisible.
“You might not dislike me,” Charlotte said, checking the strength of the tea, “but many others find me…irksome. How do you take your tea?”
“Milk and sugar. I would have thought the shoe on the other foot. You find most of humanity irksome, if not most of creation.”
“People usually can’t help themselves when they are tiresome or ignorant. They do the best they can, that doesn’t mean they’re likeable. More sugar?”
“That’s enough, thank you. Too much sweetness destroys the pleasure of the experience. Get to the part about being ruined.”
“A lady can be ruined by flouting convention, such as by walking unescorted from the home of one family member to the home of another, traversing two entire streets on her own in broad daylight in the safest neighborhood in London. Mind you, the maids, laundresses, and shopgirls manage many times that distance without losing their virtue, but let’s not impose a foolish consistency on the rules of proper decorum.”
Sherbourne held his tea without taking a sip, which was mannerly of him, because Charlotte had yet to serve herself.
“A lady taking a short walk on her own would cause a few remarks,” he said. “I doubt she’d be ruined.”
Charlotte had planned to test her wings with a small but public gesture—a pathetically tame adventure, and yet, she’d felt daring as she’d put her hand on the door latch and prepared to negotiate the wilds of Mayfair alone.
“I was starting with a modest exercise in ruination. I doubt full-blown impropriety is within my abilities.”
“For which your parents are doubtless grateful. Aren’t you having any tea?”
“I prefer mine quite strong. Another path to ruin is to simply go mad.”
Sherbourne set down his teacup. “Charlotte Windham, you are the sanest woman I know. Who has afflicted you with this case of the blue devils?”
A hundred jealous debutantes and presuming bachelors had contributed to Charlotte’s low mood. So had a horde of happy, well-meaning, married relations.
“Viscount Neederby spoke to my papa before my parents left for Scotland. Papa’s letter arrived this morning, asking me to give the boy a chance.”
Sherbourne got to his feet. “Neederby is not a boy.”
“Nor is he a man in any sense that could merit my esteem, and yet, I was supposed to give him a chance.” The betrayal of that, and the lack of staunchly supportive sisters to commiserate with, had pushed Charlotte from a blue mood to a black mood.
What was the distance from a black mood to melancholia or some other form of mental instability?
“You are understandably upset, but why seek ruin? Windhams are nearly unruinable.”
Full-blown impropriety had no appeal, but perhaps…?
“If the right people came upon me in a torrid embrace with the right sort of man, I’d be ruined.” Charlotte took a sip of Sherbourne’s tea, which was perfectly hot, sweet, and strong.
He crossed his arms, regarding her as if she’d proposed building a bridge across the Channel. Fine idea—if daft.
“Have you ever been in a torrid embrace, Miss Charlotte?”
Charlotte rose, because that was not a question a lady answered sitting down. “I’ve never so much as said the word torrid aloud before, but the plan has merit. I thought I could put up with all the matchmaking, be the family project for a few years, then the doting aunt, but I’m alone now.”
The admission hurt as Papa’s ridiculous letter had not. Papa was simply being a papa—half blind, well-meaning, fallible.