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“Then you do prefer the sea.” He smiled as if he had gleaned some great insight into her character with the assumption.
“I have not been often enough to make a determination,” she admitted with a simple lift of her shoulder. She turned back to her examination of the trinkets with aplomb. She would not give him a moment’s regard.
“You should try the sea,” Lord Wentwell leaned against the table of baubles and Lady Charity tried not to notice how the artful cut of his clothing clung to his fit frame. He looked a bit rumpled this morning as if he slept in his clothes, and yet somehow his disheveled appearance made him all the more appealing. Charity turned abruptly away, a blush coloring her face.
Lord Wentwell began to regale her with tales of the waves and the salt spray. At one point he lay his hand, warm on her elbow and she nearly dropped the bauble she held.
“Here in Bath, the heat of summer air is heavy with moisture and the scent of the mineral waters. I find it to be somewhat cloying and I do not enjoy the taste. The sea, on the other hand, ah, the sea sends quite a different message to the senses. It is freeing and quite overwhelming.”
She turned to him startled at his passion.
“I should like to take you to the sea,” he said fervently.
To speak so ardently was not seemly, but he continued, almost as if he were not speaking for her ears, but for himself alone. “The sound of the waves as they crash against the shore is intoxicating. It fills one up, pulls one in and rolls over the skin, like an ever present heartbeat.” His voice was soft and sensual, and Charity felt a moment of unease with the conversation, though she could not quite put her finger on the reason. Goosebumps appeared on her skin although the weather was uncommonly hot.
“The clean salt of the air is quite unlike any other taste one can imagine,” Wentwell said. “It lingers over the lips and leaves an altogether delightful languidness trailing in its wake.” He looked at her then, his green eyes altogether darker in color than she had imagined earlier.
Charity pulled away from his touch, anger rising like a bright flame. She gasped thinking of the telling way that he described the coastal town. Their conversation of lips and waves and heartbeats was not inappropriate in any overt way; however his words sent strange feelings through her. He affected her sensibility in ways which made her insides twist.
Charity did not miss the Earl’s subtle context, nor his hand pressing on her elbow. She looked up and met his startlingly green eyes. They were a vivid shade of dark emerald, and he was looking at her with an interest that seemed to burn across her skin. Still Charity attempted to not take it to heart.
Instead, Charity cultivated a feeling of annoyance, for herself, and indeed for all of the young ladies who would soon begin their first season and in their innocence fall prey to Lord Wentwell’s honeyed tongue. She reminded herself that Lord Wentwell was a dangerous man. He was a flirt through and through: a rogue and a scoundrel. He used his wit and smooth speech, much like one would tread a garden path. He took the path without thought of his walking. His speech, like the traveling of said limb was altogether immaterial. He used speech without effort, without thought and without sincerity so intent was he upon the destination.
It was as if his flirtation were a reflex, a muscle that must be exercised but that took no effort or care on his part to maintain. The habit was so ingrained that Charity wondered if the gentleman could make untoward statements in his sleep and dishonor a woman with the same nonchalance.
“Lord Wentwell,” she began. “You need not play your games with me. I assure you, I have neither the time nor the inclination to participate. Walk alongside me, if you must, but you need not waste your breath on convincing me of the benefits of… of the sea.”
Lord Wentwell laughed. He threw his head back and let forth an honest bout of laughter that caught Charity off guard. “Now you are incensed,” he said. “How like a woman to get her dander up when a man would be droll. I only meant to engage in a bit of witty discourse, not to cause you emotional upset, Lady Charity.” He paused. “It is I suppose a woman’s nature to be emotional when it is a man’s to be logical.”
Charity narrowed her eyes. “That is surely a falsehood.” Certainly, he did not believe the dross he spouted. She did not understand Neville Collington, and although she told herself she should pay him no mind, the puzzle that was Lord Wentwell had engaged her interest and despite her best judgment, she found herself torn between wanting to know more and brushing him aside altogether. “And I care not for your tricks and games,” she said loftily.
“Tricks and game,” Lord Wentwell mused. “My Lady, you think me so base as to imply nothing but subterfuge to meet some foul end. Oh fie! Again you wound me.”
Still his words seemed disingenuous. It was as if he expected her to require his banter, and that he would dutifully oblige. At no point had Charity ever witnessed the gentleman let slip an inclination of true interest, in any female that she knew, Charity controlled her features and matched him, revealing little more than disinterest. She felt as if she were walking on moss covered stones and at any moment she may be plunged into the cold water of a pond, but still she kept on, excited by the conversation in some odd way.
“Quite base,” Charity spat back, though her teasing tone belayed the seriousness of her words.
“Come now. I do not think all the ladies consider me so dreadful.” As he leaned close, she could feel the power of his presence, but she refused to be cowed. She would not back down.
“Perhaps, they do not know you.”
“Perhapsyoudo not know me,” he quipped.
“Ah, but I know of you, Lord Wentwell.”
“Do you think so?” he questioned, somewhat amused. “Then tell me, what is it you think you know of me?”
“I know that you are said to be a rake, and as such, I should have nothing to do with you.”
He chuckled in a deep masculine way that put Charity on edge.
“From the look of you, I had not taken you for the pious type.”
Charity fumed at the insult, so carelessly placed he had no idea what he had done, or perhaps he did. She fluttered her fan in front of her bosom.
“Pious?” Charity scoffed. “Which do you call me, Sir, frigid or forward, and then pray tell when flattery lost its appeal so that you now seek to deliberately insult me?”
“Not at all, my dear lady.” Lord Wentwell smiled, and the action lit up his face. “It is only that I have found that there are two types of women.” Lord Wentwell leaned close to taunt her. The scent of him was fresh and filled her senses. It was not often a gentleman smelled so delightful. It was some expensive cologne, of that she was sure. “The pious sort who tremble in fear at my rakish ways…” Lord Wentwell’s voice had dropped to a whisper, his breath trailed silkily over her ear. With difficulty she brought her mind back to the conversation at hand. “…and those who have the bravery to engage in a little lighthearted flirtation; those who understand a bit of fun.”
