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“After all I’ve done to help you, I didn’t think you’d deny me this one pleasure.” She was being far more petulant than she’d even been before. And where had the idea for a ball suddenly come from?
“Standing up to dance with me is a pleasure for no one in the room.”
Charlotte pursed her lips. “Don’t tell me you’re scared to stand up with a woman at a ball.”
“I, your ladyship, am scared of nothing. Not society, not whispering matrons, not even gun-holding highwaymen, need I remind you.”
Charlotte could think of one thing that scaredher. Seth leaving. Seth stepping out of her life for good.
“Then prove it,” Charlotte pressed. “I will promise you the midnight dance.”
Seth only shook his head. “I can’t stay another three weeks. It’s time I returned home and began figuring out my next steps in life.”
Perhaps it was the night air or the aftereffects of knowing Dinah was safe once more, but Charlotte felt she simply could not allow him to leave London just yet.
She opened her mouth to say something—what exactly, she wasn’t sure—but Seth spoke first.
“I’m sorry, Charlotte, I truly cannot stay.”
It had been years—decades, actually—since a man had spoken her name, and hearing it now made her stomach flip and her cheeks heat.
“Then,” she said, willing her face to return to its normal shade, “promise me you’ll return for my ball.”
“Come all the way back to London for a ball?”
“Not for aball.” She drew the word out with derision as he had. “For me.”
She hadn’t meant to put herself out there quite like that. But the words were spoken now, and there was nothing left but to take whatever response he gave her.
Silence is what he gave her, several minutes of it.
Then, finally, he spoke. “Very well. Let me know the exact day, and I will be back in London as you desire.”
Charlotte felt her lips tingle with the desire to smile, but she kept them at a demure upward turn. “I believe that will be acceptable.”
The carriage rolled to a stop, and Seth opened the door before the footman could get to it. He hopped down and then turned and faced her.
“Then I guess this is farewell until your ball.”
Could she not see him before he left? Then again, now that he had no daughters at home, she couldn’t very well call on him. And apparently, he had no designs to call upon her. Three weeks suddenly felt frightfully far away.
How thankful she was now that she’d at least thought of hosting a ball.
She could only hope the three weeks flew by.
Charlotte inclined her head. “Until the ball.”
The End
The romance continues in
The Tenacious Lady Blackmore
