Page 55 of In Need of a Duke
“Can I come in?” asked Kate.
With a sigh, Charlotte crossed the room and gestured for her friend to come in. After Kate’s scandal two years prior, she had livedwith Charlotte and acted as her secretary. When she left for Scotland, Charlotte had so desperately missed having female companionship.
The rest of the ladies in thetonalways seemed to look down upon Charlotte, or worse, gossip about her as if she couldn’t hear. Worse still, they pretended to enjoy her company, only trading her title for attention. Since she was seldom in London, having her attend a ball or dinner was a social currency in its own right.
“Did he hurt you?” Kate walked around the room, surveying stacks of books, botanical sketches, and plants scattered around.
Charlotte had the odd compulsion to run and hide things. It wasn’t as if she were keeping secrets.
“It was a riding accident. I tried to have my horse jump a wall that I knew wasn’t safe.”
Why she decided to hold back the complete truth was also odd. She had been fleeing to Scotland, and she would have made it if he hadn’t ridden so hard at her, determined to do… well, she didn’t allow herself to think what he would have done. He wouldn’t have hurt her. But remaining at Stonehurst when he was as cruel as he had been, would have hurt her in an entirely different way.
“That’s what he wrote me. But I’m asking you for the truth.”
“He wrote to you?”
Kate sighed as she turned and spun toward Charlotte. “Yes, as much as it pains me to say it. I think he was worried he would lose you.”
“He still might.”
That wasn’t the full truth anymore. Not entirely. She found herself warming up to the man, craving to know him more, wishing that instead of being stuck with only the memories of how he left, they could make more memories together.
“Why’s that?”
“I’ve asked for a divorce.”
Kate barely contained her shock, her large green eyes wide and her mouth agape. “You didn’t.”
“I don’t want to be his duchess after he left me…”
She stopped there, a voice niggling in the back of her mind that hehadreturned.
I’ve missed you.
It was as if her heart followed the same course of the moon, slivers of light pouring over the darkness each day. Always changing yet remaining wholly the same.
She had hated him when he arrived, and now, each day, she found it not to be the whole truth.
“Never mind the fact that a divorce would be near impossible, it would be horribly public, Lottie. Do you wish that after everything?”
“People will say what they will about me. It won’t change… what a lovely band of scandalous brides we are, Kate.”
“Does Monty still want to marry you?”
Charlotte scoffed, wiping at her face. She wasn’t certain why she was crying. It was only that everything felt overwhelming suddenly.
“Yes, Monty still… well.”
“He does love you.”
Like a child loved a puppy. Or a debutante loved a new dress. He adored Charlotte, and it wasn’t as if she didn’t find him attractive or kind, he just wasn’t Ian.
“He is not the solution to the problem.”
“Oh, now you sound like Lily.”
“I miss her.”
