John started. His eyes flew open, and he sat quickly, his head whipping toward her. “Lady Charlotte?” he asked, reaching for his spectacles. “What are you doing here?”
She couldn’t tell him the truth, that she was simply here to see him. That his presence last night had reignited the fascination that had lain dormant for years. That she was here to work out whether to give that old feeling breath or if she should smother it and shove it into the deep, dark recesses of her mind.
“I brought you luncheon.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“Edward joked that last night you visited for a free meal. I’m certain he was exaggerating, but just in case there was a kernel of truth to his remarks, I thought I’d bring dinner. No charge.” She gave him a bright smile and crossed the room to put the dish on the table that sat between the lounge and two armchairs.
“It’s Oxford pudding,” she said, to fill the silence. “Your favorite.” She cursed inwardly. On the rare occasion John had joined them for dinner all those years ago, he had wolfed it down, and once made an offhand comment about his mother not serving it as often as he’d like. But no normal person who didn’t have an out-of-control tendre would remember such a thing. Her ears burned hot with embarrassment.
“I mean it,” she said in an effort to distract him from her unbidden admission. “You cannot marry that woman. She is an evil, hideous, conniving witch who very nearly trapped Edward into marriage. She was in cahoots with mymother, for goodness’ sakes.”
John flinched at the mention of the Dowager Duchess of Wildeforde. Charlotte had never understood why he had spent so many hours at Wildeforde House when her mother barely acknowledged his presence and, when forced to, was acerbic at best.
At least she hadn’t understood until Edward had told her that as bad as their mother was, John’s father was worse.
John sighed. “It’s complicated.” He took off his spectacles and cleaned the glass with the end of his loosened cravat. As he dropped it, the gentle curve of his throat was exposed.
She swallowed, trying to ignore the hot flush that swept over her. She would not be distracted by a patch of skin. “And you think it’s beyond my reasoning capabilities?” she asked. “It’s too complicated for a feather-headed little girl to understand?”
He quickly straightened, two lines forming between his brows. “I don’t think you’re feather-headed.”
It was absurd, the flutter those words set off within her. It wasn’t even a proper compliment.I don’t think you’re feather-headedwas only one step up fromYou’re not objectionable.
She tented her fingers in front of her, resting the peak against her lips, giving him a look that she hoped said,I’m a serious adult.
“Try me then,” she said.
John sighed. “Your brother wasn’t exaggerating when he said I couldn’t afford dinner. The Harrow estates are in more trouble than you could know, and Luella’s dowry is…generous.”
That the previous viscount had racked up debts without it becoming common knowledge was not a complete surprise. Many a person lost their head when Lord Harrow gave them that dimple-cheeked grin. The question was exactly how much debt he had gotten into. “Her dowry is how generous?”
John’s eyes widened. She couldn’t blame him. It was entirely inappropriate for a woman to be discussing money with a man in such a manner. But she also couldn’t help herself. The thought of John—her childhood infatuation, the boy she’d pined over for years—marrying her sworn enemy was so dreadful it made her stomach churn and overrode all sense of propriety.
She pursed her lips and refused to add to her comment. It was Edward’s favorite technique to make people talk, even if they didn’t want to, and she had made herself a master of it.
“Eighty thousand pounds,” he said, once he’d realized she would not abandon the question.
Her heart and jaw both dropped. “Eighty thousand pounds?” she whispered. That was an obscene amount of money. The only women with dowries that large were uncouth Americans whose only hope of moving up in the world was to buy their way into a society that didn’t want them.
Charlotte’s dowry was respectable. She’d insisted Edward tell her what it was before she debuted, and it sat at the neat and not insignificant sum of fifty thousand pounds. “Do you need so much to pay it off?” she asked.
“At least.”
Eighty thousand pounds of debt.The previous viscount had always been perfectly kitted out and a generous host, but Eighty. Thousand. Pounds. “That’s an absurd amount. Surely the previous Lord Harrow could not have spent such a sum?”
“It appears so,” John said bitterly. “If it wasn’t spent, then it was siphoned off and I do not know where it is now.”
Charlotte sagged against the back of her chair.
“And there’s no way to obtain such an amount other than marriage? There’s no piece of land that could be sold?” That was how gentlemen tended to manage such misfortune.
He rubbed at the rim of his glasses. “All of it entailed.”
Charlotte ran a finger across her lips as she considered the situation. She could not allow this travesty to happen. Quite beside the fact that Charlotte felt green with envy at the thought of John married to anyone other than her, John was a good man. Luella was a cruel viper who would tear him to shreds with her vicious tongue.
This abhorrent union could not happen.
