AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Irksome?” Charity repeated incensed for the lady. How could he deny her when he had so easily ruined her friend? She wanted to chastise him. She wanted to gain the upper hand that he had gained back from her with only a look. “Was it not you who just spurned her on the dance floor? Now you call her irksome? You are unkind, Sir.” She fluttered her fan artfully, waiting for his apology, both for his lie and for his mistreatment of the lady.
James tightened his grip on her arm. “Charity,” he began, but she just gave him a look and he was still.
“No, James. It is quite all right,” Lord Wentwell interrupted. “Lady Charity is correct. I spurned her friend, but I think, perhaps, you do not know Miss Macrum as well as you believe.”
His arrogant, superior, attitude annoyed her, and Charity wanted nothing more than to prove her point. She was after all, not blind, nor was she a liar. Just days ago she had spoken with Lord Wentwell and Miss Macrum in the same conversation. She assumed from his current lie, that lies were his routine practice. What had begun as a bit of flirtation, now was joined in earnest.
“I know that every rumor has a bit of truth in it. Now you say you do not know Miss Macrum, and I know that is not true.” He was lying plain and simple, and she would not let the lie stand. It went against her grain to do so.
“I only said I did not know her at all considering…” He broke off clenching his jaw. “Considering,” he repeated.”
Charity felt him falter and pressed her advantage. “Considering? Considering what?” Charity urged. When Wentwell did not answer at once, she continued, sure in her victory now. He would certainly apologize for his base behavior and perhaps he would do right by the Miss Danbury. The thought gave her a moment’s pause, and for just a second, she could not breathe with the thought, but she pressed on. She did not want the man for herself. She did not. Any man who could treat a lady so would never make a good husband. She took a breath and continued her attack. “Still in as much as leaving a lady on the dance floor is an ill piece…”
“I left no lady,” Lord Wentwell remarked, interrupting her in a rude fashion.
Charity fired back. “Leaving one to her own devices when the gentleman is just as much a part of the act as she, is vile beyond what I thought even a rake capable of.”
Wentwell set his penetrating green eyes upon her and in a moment spoke. “Be plain,” he said tightly, and Charity blushed to speak of it, but she pushed through regardless to her embarrassment. If she could help the poor lady, she must do so, mustn’t she?
“You know of whom I speak,” she said lowering her voice.
“Charity,” began James again, but she shook him off with a shrug.
“All of the Ton saw her in your company. Both Miss Danbury and Miss Macrum and both are covered in rumor.”
“That is not my doing.”
“Then whose?” Charity challenged him.
He turned to her, his jaw still tight, and his green eyes flashing with anger. She had felt the chill in the conversation with him and Macrum, but she had not thought how it would feel to have that cold directed her way. Something inside of her shivered at the biting rejoinder he delivered.
“Perhaps you should talk to your good friend Miss Macrum,” he said coldly. “She seems to know everything you need to know, and all the Ton believe her like gospel,” he muttered under his breath.
“Miss Macrum should know what happened to Miss Danbury. Miss Danbury is her friend.”
“That woman doesn’t know the meaning of the word friendship,” he said. “And I purport that Miss Macrum is not Miss Danbury’s friend, if she ever were, she would certainly be no longer.”
A frown crinkled Charity’s brow. Did he mean that Miss Macrum wanted a title so badly that she was willing to try her hand at Lord Wentwell even after he ruined her friend Miss Danbury? The thought gave her pause, but even if Miss Macrum was false, that still did not excuse his villainy with Miss Danbury. No. He was simply trying to confuse her to be exonerated of his crime. She would not have it.
“Still, you further the destruction of a good woman’s name. You are the cause of this rumor. Why will you not put it right?”
“I am the cause of nothing,” he insisted. “Miss Macrum is a busy body who should mind her own business.”
Gads, he still stubbornly denied the charge, Charity thought as he continued.
“Has it occurred to you that Macrum is after a title and does not care who she tramples to get it?”
She was right then, about Macrum, but that did not excuse the issue with Miss Danbury. “What of Miss Danbury?” she asked directly.
“What of her?”
Charity gritted her teeth. The man could not be so dense. He was only being stubborn. Stubborn and obnoxious and arrogant. He deserved to be castigated. She stepped into him, and looked up into his face, trying to find the measure of the man. “You speak harshly of Miss Macrum. I understand you do not like the lady, but what has that to do with Miss Danbury, and the deed done? Miss Macrum has no control over that surely, but you do, and will not speak to it. You are a coward as well as a reprobate.”
James tried to step forward at her words, but they were toe to toe now. Wentwell’s green eyes darkened in anger. He was so close she could smell his scent, and feel the solidity of him. “Upon Miss Macrum,” he said. “If she had one shred of class in her wretched body, she would not have spoken.”
“Spoken?” Charity replied. “My discourse is not of speech. My discourse is of the deed and you take no responsibility for you actions? Shame.”
“Miss Macrum had deeds enough to defend the devil. She and Miss Danbury both. He bit his lip, a tic in his jaw jumped. “As you said earlier it is not only gentlemen who have leave to act, but ladies as well, much to their folly.”
