“What have you done?” he demanded in lieu of a greeting, obviously prepared to berate her.
She took a step back at his intensity, and then realized his words were born from pain, dredged up from the past. Moreover, just as she was losing her heart’s desire, he feared he was losing his son, and by her actions.
“It was a terrible misunderstanding,” she began.
Charles’s father waved her words away. “That’s what my wife said at first, until there could be no misunderstanding anymore. Then there was only the sickening truth.”
“I am not that woman!” Charlotte declared, feeling her mother bristle at her side. Felicity had been clear she would not interfere, but Charlotte also knew her mother would not stay silent if her daughter were unjustly attacked.
“No, and you shall not be my son’s wife, either. He saw through you in time.”
“Please, my lord, there was nothing to see through. I love your son.”
“Do you?” he asked, his tone bitter.
“The question is, does your son love my daughter?” her mother asked, drawing the earl’s attention. “I think it rather unbecoming of him to turn tail at the first bump in the road.”
“Mother, please,” Charlotte began, but the earl drew himself up even taller than he already was.
“Are you disparaging my son?”
Felicity sniffed in a way she had that managed to convey a “take it as you will” message. Charlotte didn’t think it would go over well.
“Madam, how dare you?”
“How dare you to point fingers at my daughter without even knowing the facts. These young people should work it out for themselves without the ghost of your own past interfering. But they cannot do that when one of them has run away.”
“Run away!” the earl looked as though he were going to pop a button. “I’ll have you know, madam, that my son has worked hard all his life, even though he didn’t need to, while his peers were lazing about doing very little with their God-given talents. Charlie has earned the right to spend a year traipsing about the Continent.”
Charlotte gasped.A year!First Lionel and now Charles. She was beginning to think she drove men to cross the blasted Channel!
“He should be doing that on his wedding trip,” her mother pointed out.
The earl sighed as if he were deflating along with his anger. “It’s true that I do not know the details of their falling out,” he glanced at Charlotte with less anger, “but something severe occurred.”
“Honestly, my lord,” Charlotte spoke up before her mother could rile him again, “Charles misinterpreted something he saw because ... because — oh dear!” she didn’t want to say it.
“Because?” the earl prompted.
“Because he was so hurt by your countess — by his mother’s departure.”
Charles’s father paled, and he shook his head, looking lost in his own painful thoughts.
Charlotte reminded him, “Think of how hurt that young boy was, with a mother who didn’t want him.”
“Of course she wanted him!” the earl exclaimed. “But I wouldn’t let her have him. She would have taken him from me, and I had to punish her.”
Felicity grabbed hold of Charlotte’s hand as if someone were trying to separate them, so fierce was the older man’s tone.
“You punished your son along with your wife?” The words were in Charlotte’s heart, but they were spoken by her mother. “I understand you were the victim of a terrible betrayal,” Felicity continued. “And I can tell you loved the countess a great deal. However, when one becomes a parent, one must put the child first. You would have done better, sir, to make sure your son knew his mother was not a monster.”
The earl backed up a step at the notion, making it plain he hadn’t been able to be so generous.
“Did she try to contact him?” Charlotte asked, wishing her tone didn’t sound so small and sad, but her heart was breaking all over again.
The earl nodded. “I stopped her,” he admitted. “I blocked her every attempt and destroyed every letter.”
“Surely, when he was older you could have allowed it without fear of losing him,” Felicity said.
