Charlotte couldn’t help smiling. “I am,” she agreed, making him bark out a laugh.
“And modest,” he teased, after a moment.
“Does it seem boastful to agree that my nature is basically kind?”
“Not really, not when you say it,” he agreed. “I’ve seen the evidence.”
She shrugged. “It’s easy to be kind and to make people happy, especially with confectionery.”
“I suppose so. Most of the people I work with are unsmiling.”
“Something as grave as the law can drain the happiness away,” she mused. “But you are not a sad man, albeit a little serious sometimes.”
“I’ve been told that before.”
“You take after your father, perhaps,” she mused, although the earl seemed more cranky than serious. But if Charles’s lifelong role model for being a man was the grumpy earl, then she suppose he had turned out very well indeed.
“Better my father than my mother,” he quipped, then looked as though he wished he could suck the words right out of the air and swallow them back down.
“Your mother has passed away?” Charlotte asked him, fearing the worst.
He said nothing for a long moment. “If you don’t mind, I would rather not speak of her.” His tone had become reticent and off-putting.
It was probably too painful for him. “Of course. I am sorry to have pried. In any case, I have taken up too much of your time.”
Suddenly, she recollected that all this space belonged to her — and Rare Confectionery — and her joy bubbled up once more. Returning to the center of the room, she twirled in a circle.
“Can’t you just imagine it?” she crowed. “Everything appealing down to the finest detail, the floors and paint and wallpaper and furnishings. And it will smell divinely of Amity’s chocolates and Beatrice’s buttery toffee. And coffee, too. It will be grand.”
“I can imagine it. I’m sure your marzipan will be here, too,” he added.
How sweet of him to mention it.“It doesn’t have a warm, delicious scent. It is undoubtedly the least popular confectionery in the shop.”
With that, realizing she still had work to do down below, she began to walk toward the door.
“And that doesn’t bother you?” he asked, sounding surprised.
“Not at all. My marzipan is part of the success of Rare Confectionery, after all.” She glanced at him. “As a family, we fail or succeed together, I believe.”
He stopped in his tracks. “You have amazed me again, Miss Rare-Foure. What’s more, you have done so more than anyone I know.”
Charlotte didn’t know what to make of that. “Most families are similar, are they not?”
“I wish it were so,” Charles said, making her understand he had not the same experience in his life.
She recalled how Lionel had left without any indication of when he would see Viola or their parents again.Pure selfishness!But surely, Lionel was an aberration of an artistic mind! She hoped no such thing had happened to the viscount within his own family.
“May I escort you somewhere again this week?” he asked.
His question drew her out of thoughts of a man she might never see again, one she’d finally put behind her.
“Yes,” she answered. “We shall need Delia, obviously, because we cannot keep our hands off one another.”
Charlotte meant it in jest, but he stiffened. His lordship was a tad too serious for his own good. Why, she almost leaned over to kiss him just to ruffle his feathers once more, but restrained herself. That would most certainly end with him berating himself again.
“I am speaking in jest. I shall be on my best behavior,” she assured him, “and I’m certain you will, too.”
That made him smile, if only slightly. “I enjoy riding. I think I may have mentioned that before. But you work every day, do you not?”
