Page 41 of Charming Sir Charles
“If Meg isn’t back by dawn, I’ll set out for Upton.” He still spoke in that distant voice. “It’s ten miles away, but I should find help there.”
Sally made herself stand up straight. “I want to box the chit’s ears,” she said bitterly. Although she couldn’t blame her niece for this almighty mess. It was all her fault.
“No doubt.” Charles gave her a chilly bow. “Then I’ll wish you good night.”
“Thank you.”
She watched him go through to the hall, then return with her pelisse which he dropped over the back of a chair. “In case it gets cold later.”
“Thank you,” she said again, and crossed the room to look out the window at the moon. After a moment’s bristling silence, she heard him leave again.
She didn’t look around. She couldn’t bear for him to see her tears.
Chapter Thirteen
Charles stirred from his uneasy doze to hear the outside door opening behind him. He shifted and groaned. He was too tall to sleep in a chair – and a hard chair at that.
“Sir Charles?” Meg stood on the threshold, carrying one of the lanterns from his curricle. She looked windswept and tired, but unharmed, thank God.
“Miss Meg,” he said, standing up, buttoning his coat.
“Where’s Aunt Sally?”
“Asleep in the next room.” He checked his watch. It was nearly eleven o’clock. “Where the devil have you been?”
“I got… Oh, there you are, Aunt Sally.”
“Are you all right, Meg?” she asked, coming through from the room where she and Charles had made love.
After all that had happened between them, seeing Sally felt like a punch to the solar plexus. On a wave of bitter misery, the events of the night rushed toward him. The wonder of having her in his arms, the sweetness of her surrender, followed by those devastating words that pulverized his every hope.
His hungry eyes ate up the sight of her. She’d put on her pelisse and found enough pins to tidy her hair. She looked almost respectable. But her lovely face was pallid and drawn, and the thickness in her voice revealed that she’d been crying.
Hell, he hated that he’d made her cry. His hands clenched into useless fists at his sides as if he prepared to fight some unnamed foe. Although the tragic truth was that when it came to his battle to win this exquisite woman, the dragons had emerged victorious.
“Yes, I’m fine,” the girl said, coming fully inside and shutting the heavy door behind her.
“Then you have no excuse for not coming back to get us,” Sally said coldly. “Leaving us here was wicked and irresponsible, but to stay away long enough to threaten to bring a scandal down on our heads is unforgivable.”
The rebuke clearly startled Meg. “I only intended to be a little while.”
“Even that was reprehensible enough. So why were you so long?”
“I…I got lost.” Meg, who became less chirpy with every second, placed the lantern on a side table. The hand carrying it had shown an increasing tendency to shake.
Charles couldn’t find the heart to be angry with her. “Meg, I warned you that the estate was isolated and hard to find.”
She cast him an apologetic glance. “I know you did. I meant to call on Perdita, then come back. But the lanes around here are a maze. I couldn’t find Perdita’s house, and it’s only good luck that I found my way back here at all.”
“We should be thankful for small mercies, then,” Sally said. “I’ve been worried sick that you’d been attacked or injured.”
“I’m sorry, Aunt,” Meg said in a subdued voice. She cast a glance at Charles, but he shook his head, wishing to heaven that her tricks had resulted in a different outcome. “I’d hoped if you had a chance to be alone, you’d reach an understanding.”
He waited for Sally to flare up, but her voice remained calm. Unnaturally calm, he couldn’t help thinking. “The only understanding we’ve come to is that I have a rattle-pate niece, unfit for polite society.”
“I thought…”
Sally didn’t let her finish. “You’ll have plenty of time for thinking back under your father’s roof, my girl.”
