Charlotte had never thought to define friendship, but if she had, it would have been a somewhat looser definition. “How many friends do you have?” she asked.
“Five.”
“Five?” He said the number with such immediate conviction. Charlotte couldn’t count the number of friends she had if she were given a day to do it. “But you have people you work with every day. Surely, they’re friends?”
John shook his head. “We’re friendly. I like them well enough, but no; they aren’t friends.”
His reasoning was so foreign. If you spent time together and you were friendly, wouldn’t that automatically constitute a friendship?
“Goodness, then what am I?” she asked. “One of your special five?” She regretted the words as soon as she spoke them. It was difficult enough to be told he did not want to marry her. Her heart couldn’t take being told he didn’t even consider her a friend. She held her breath, waiting for the answer.
He cocked his head, his soft lips pursed in thought. “No.”
“Oh.” All breath escaped her, and she sagged under the heavy disappointment. “Well, that’s flattering, that I’m not even a friend.” She tried to keep the hurt from her voice but had little success. They should just go to the gaming room and get this night over with.
He straightened, a hand reaching out and landing in the space between them, just inches from her leg, nudging the edge of propriety. “You are not a friend. You’re something I cannot classify.”
His words electrified the space between them, as though they were a promise, implied but not made, that changed the order of things. She could classify him well enough—he was an unrequited infatuation. An impossible tendre. A man who would likely break her heart with a mallet that she, herself, put into his hands. “Well, I’m not sure that’s better,” she said, shifting uncomfortably. “You make me sound awfully like a strange bug.”
He smiled. “You are a little strange to me. Your entire world is, with its constant flitting about. Why can’t you be alone?”
No one had ever asked that of her before. Everyone knew she was a social butterfly who could be found at almost every ball, who danced with every man who asked, and who was rarely at home. It was part of what people admired about her. John was the first person to speak of it as though it were a flaw, or something unusual that had to be explained.
The truth was, being alone made her jittery. Her eyes would keep flicking toward the door, wishing that anyone would enter. She rarely allowed solitude to happen. On the occasional morning that she had no plans, she’d seek her brother or sister, or have Grace attend to her in the sitting room. The murmur of conversation would quiet her nerves.
“You know my mother,” she said. John nodded. He’d been on the receiving end of the dowager’s sharp tongue on more than one occasion. “Well, after my father’s death, she developed exceedingly high expectations of how a Wildeforde should behave. We were to be the perfect family, as though it could make up for his scandal.”
“Oh, I know,” John said. “I saw how she treated your brother. Edward spent his entire youth trying to live up to her expectations.”
“Well, whenever I didn’t meet her lofty standards, she would punish me. Not with a rod,” she said when John’s body tensed. “Not as she did with Ned and Will, although I’d have preferred that. Instead, she would stop talking to me. She would stop listening to me. She would pretend I didn’t exist. If I did not behave like the perfect lady, if I was not cherished by all, she completely withdrew her affection.”
“That’s awful,” John said. “I am sorry.” He shifted closer to her until his leg pressed against hers. The touch of him, their first actual contact that wasn’t gloved hand on sleeve, was less thrilling than it was oddly comforting. It spurred her to tell him the worst of it, the part she’d never even told her brothers for fear of them realizing how very disappointing she must have been to deserve it.
“If I failed too badly, Mother would forbid the household staff from talking to me, even my nanny. They wouldn’t look at me; they wouldn’t speak to me; they wouldn’t come when I called. I know, now, the impossible situation they were in. They had their own families to think of and any servant who showed me even a little kindness during those times disappeared the next day. But that sense of loneliness was ghastly.”
Ghastly was an understatement. It had been soul-crushing, and she had done everything in her power to avoid it, whether that meant acquiescing to her mother’s ridiculous demands, helping anyone who asked so that she would always have an invitation and somewhere to be, or asking her maid to share a bed until she fell asleep.
“That’s not right,” he said. “She was such ab— cow.” He reached over and took Charlotte’s hand, untwining it from the skirts that she’d clenched into knots without even realizing. “The thought of you hurt and alone makes my chest ache. You are too good, too kind, to be treated that way.”
He raised her hand and pressed a kiss to it, his thumb brushing against her fingers as he drew back.Thattouch was more than comforting. It made the hairs on the back of her neck stand and her heart skip a beat before working double time. For a moment, she forgot how to breathe. She swayed toward him, inhaling the clean sweet scent of citrus, her head spinning.
For the barest second, his grip on her hand strengthened, as though he, too, had experienced something unexpected, and then he pulled away.
“No.” She raised a hand to his cheek, and he stopped still. His lips were so perfect, so pink, so soft. She stroked them, and he inhaled swiftly. Even through the silk of her gloves, she could feel his warmth. Unsure of what she’d see, she looked up, meeting his gaze. His green eyes swam with the desire she knew he could see in hers. He didn’t soften, though. He sat as rigid and as beautiful as marble.
She leaned forward and the breath that proved he was living mingled with hers. Slowly, tentatively, she raised her lips to his and kissed him. It was sweet and soft and everything a first kiss should be. Her other hand lifted by its own accord, finding rest on his jacket, through which she could feel the erraticthump-th-thumpof his heartbeat.
She pulled away, head still spinning, but it was his turn to murmur “no.” He took her face in his hands, his fingers sinking into the back of her hair.Hekissedherand it was not a light embrace. There was an urgency to the press of his lips, and his fingers tightened in her curls. His tongue stroked her lips and, tentatively, she opened them, gasping as his tongue immediately sought hers out, exploring it in a way that left her unsure what was happening.
“Charlotte.” He pulled away at her hesitation, and she felt the loss deep within her.
“No.” She wrapped her hand around his neck and pulled him toward her, perhaps not sure what she was doing but certain that she wanted to keep doing it. Her lips met his. It was her turn to explore, her tongue reaching forward. His groan sent goose bumps skittering across her skin.
He scooped her up into his lap where the strength of his desire was plain and heat swirled in her belly, sending a tingle down her spine and lower. His fingers grazed across her back, leaving trails of desire across her.
He nudged her head backward, his lips trailing across her neck, finding a place beneath her jaw that made her throb. His hot breath on her ear made her shiver.
“John,” she whispered, her fingers digging into his shoulder. “Please.” She did not know what she was begging for; she simply knew that this was just the barest hint of what she could feel.
