“Emma Archer.”
Charmaine stared, just as dumbfounded as Lady Newbury, at her father-in-law. Emma was one of her best friends. Or maybe calling her a best friend was a bit too much. They had used each other, back when Charmaine needed a shield against her suitors and her stepfather. Emma had needed the attention of Charmaine’s surplus suitors. Charmaine knew she hadn’t behaved too nicely toward Emma and their other friend, Lady Victoria Knightley, but she had been too uptight, too scared over what her stepfather might be up to. And too devastated over how her own life, including the choice of Lord Dane, was out of her hands.
“What about Emma?” Lady Newbury asked, but then a memory must have come to her, as she became fiery red and all her fighting spirit disappeared. “Oh.”
“Exactly my point,” Lord Newbury said with a smug smile. “I don’t think I need to clarify myself more.”
Lady Newbury shook her head. “No, you don’t. But then again, the Emma situation was one slip. One. I will never do the same mistake twice.”
“No, you will do others, just as embarrassing for Sebastian.”
Charmaine looked from one spouse to the other, her mind racing. What had Lady Newbury done? Something embarrassing for Sebastian, she understood, but exactly what? That they had named it the Emma situation told her it had been something to talk about.
As far as Charmaine knew, Emma was still unmarried and still without a breath of scandal close to her name, so it couldn’t have been something Sebastian did. Which left Lady Newbury.
In the end, she couldn’t stand not knowing, and against her better judgment she cleared her throat and interrupted the discussion. “What happened?”
Lord and Lady Newbury stopped their arguing and looked at her blankly. “What ‘what’ happened?”
Charmaine closed her eyes briefly. “What is the Emma situation?”
“You don’t know what she did?” Lord Newbury seemed quite pleased to impart the news. “I’ll tell you what she did. My dear wife, whom most people think of as a sane and compassionate woman…”
“I am sane and compassionate.”
“No, my love, you are not. Stop interrupting me.”
“I am not interrupting you!”
Lord Newbury chuckled, shaking his head. “Maybe not, but you are certainly stalling the subject.”
Lady Newbury opened her mouth, ready to disagree, but closed it again with an unappreciative snort her husband quite wisely chose to ignore.
“My sometimes sane and compassionate wife more or less forced the poor girl to ask Sebastian to escort her to last year’s Green Park Picnic.”
Charmaine frowned. “Which is not very good…why?”
“Your dear mother-in-law, the very one who sits there blushing, made the girl think Sebastian was in love with her but too shy to do anything about it.”
“Oh.”
“Exactly.”
“And to make things even worse,” Lady Newbury interjected, not able to let her husband tell the story by himself, “our dear daughter blurted it all out to the girl during the occasion, completely destroying the poor girl’s heart.”
“Now you are exaggerating a bit much, my dear,” Lord Newbury interjected. “Emma wasn’t the one in love with Sebastian. She thought he was in love with her.”
Charmaine, who had spent most of her socializing time with Emma, knew the girl was deeply in love with Sebastian. Lady Newbury’s little white lie must have been devastating for her. She tried to remember if Emma had said anything about it, but last year was all a blur to her. Her primary concern last season had been—other than her stepfather’s unwanted attention—her feelings for Lord Dane, and the loss of him.
The thought of her loneliness then versus her happiness now brought back to her mind the real reason for her to have searched out her parents-in-law. “He’s awake!” she squealed, and at first they just looked at her, dumbfounded. But as the truth hit them, Lord Newbury took a staggering step backwards, stumbling into a sofa, on which he sat down with a thud.
Tears sprung into his gray eyes, so much like Sin’s.
“Are…are you sure?”
Lady Newbury’s fingers grasped Charmaine’s arm so hard she would probably have bruises. But she didn’t mind, as the ecstatic joy in the mother’s face was reward enough.
“He’s sleeping again, but not in a coma, I assure you,” she rushed to explain, as both parents paled visibly at the thought of losing him before having the chance of having him back. “He quickly became quite worn out, but he’s been unconscious for a month, so it’s not so strange.”
“Was he…” Lady Newbury’s voice trailed off, but Charmaine knew what she was thinking, as their earlier conversation was fresh in her mind.
“He was his usual self, although, I have to admit, a bit more smiling.”
“Good Lord,” Lord Newbury said, his eyes twinkling as he looked at his wife. “How will we ever be able to deal with this—a smiling Sinclair?”
“Oh, shush.” His loving wife scowled at him but without her usual heat, before turning to Charmaine with a relieved sigh. “Thank you for telling us. Can I see him?”
It took Charmaine a second to realize that Lady Newbury was asking for her permission to see her son.
“Of course you can. He’s sleeping, but it only takes a hard pinch to wake him up.”
Lord Newbury grinned. “You know this because you’ve tried it?”
She smiled sheepishly. “He looked as if he were unconscious again, and I just wanted to make sure… He was most understanding about it, I assure you.”
“Well, let’s go and pinch him, my dear,” Lord Newbury said to his happily smiling wife and held out his arm for her to take. Seconds later, Charmaine was alone in the library, staring absentmindedly at the door through which they’d disappeared.
He was awake.
She swallowed hard again as she sat down, unable to continue standing, as her legs kept wobbling. The truth had finally caught up with her. Her husband, who had been unconscious for a month after being shot by her stepfather, had come back to life. And so far he was without any direct changes regarding his sanity such as his mother had feared.
She knew Sin soon would forget to smile at her, again ignore her for his ledgers. She would go back to staying out of everyone’s way, desperately trying to forget how wonderful life was when he forgot to distance himself from her.
She was deeply in love with him, and she knew there was no way she would ever be able to leave him. She needed to be near him, to look into his dark eyes and maybe one day see him look back at her with at least a bit of the love which filled her heart and soul.
Oh, she knew he cared for her. He was too good a man not to. She was his wife, after all, and he knew that as a good husband he had to cherish her. But he didn’t love her, not the way she wanted him to. Not the way she needed him to.
And now she was carrying his baby. Automatically she put her hands against her belly, caressing the little life inside her. A little life which made it all worthwhile, all the sacrifices she had made until now and all the ones she would make until the day she died.
The sound of running steps woke her from her gloomy thoughts, and she had just enough time to remove her hands before Penelope came rushing through the door, looking ready to explode.
“Is it true?” she squealed when she saw Charmaine. “Did he wake up? Did he really?”
Charmaine nodded and had just time enough to brace herself before her sister threw herself around her neck and hugged her fiercely, tears streaming down her cheeks. It had always amazed her how different they were, even though they had the same parents.
Penelope lived with her heart on her sleeve and her every emotion visible. And if anyone happened to miss what she felt, she always made sure they knew anyway.
Charmaine, on the other hand, had learnt the hard way to hold all her emotions hidden and never let anyone know what really was on her mind. She had more times than she could remember said and
done things that were contrary to her will, her personality, and her better judgment, but what once had been born out of desperation had in the end become reality for her.
“What did he say? Did he remember what happened to him? Did he see the shooter?”
Charmaine laughed. “If you let me go so I can breathe, I promise you I’ll try to answer your questions.”
“Oh.” Penelope giggled, her cheeks reddening slightly. With an apologizing grimace she loosened her grip around her sister’s neck. “I’m so sorry. It’s just that, when I heard, I couldn’t think about anything else but how wonderful this must be for you—your husband has woken up!”
“It’s the best thing,” Charmaine admitted, and new tears started to fill Penelope’s eyes as she listened with a soft little smile. “He scared me half to death when he talked to me from out of nowhere, but when I understood he was awake…”
She shook her head, unable to find the words to describe her emotions, but for once Penelope was able to read between the lines and simply patted her hand with another soft smile. But the smile soon went away as her thoughts came back to what had happened.
“Did he remember anything?”
“No. I had to tell him that he had been shot. I think Lord Newbury will tell him the rest of it. I have, as you know, been staying at his side day and night and am not so sure about what has happened with the hunt for the perpetrator.”
Charmaine waited silently for her sister to enlighten her, but Penelope was too caught up in her own thoughts to notice her sister’s subtle plea for information.
“Who would want to kill Sin? He is the kindest, most unselfish person I know. And to be completely honest, there’s just one person who has anything to gain with him dead, and that is Sebastian, being next in line to the dukedom. But we all know that he doesn’t want the responsibility or the title. All he wants is his brother.”
Father wants him dead.
Oh, how she wanted to spring out her secret to her sister, share the burden with her. But she was so used to saving Penelope from it all that the mere thought of having to tell her not only that he wasn’t their father by blood but also the one who had shot Sin… It made her nauseous.
She had to tell Sin, though. There was no more escape from it. Somehow she had to tell her husband that she wasn’t the person he thought her to be and that she carried a deadly secret.
What would he think of her?
What kind of daughter made her stepfather fall in love with her? She could easily picture the disdain and the contempt which would erase any love he might have for her. It wouldn’t surprise her in the least. No, she was already expecting his change toward her.
She just had to figure out a way to handle life when he dissociated himself from her. Because he would. She had not only lied to him all through their marriage. She had also hidden her stepfather’s plans from him and by so doing had taken away his chance to defend himself.
She could never forgive herself, so how would he ever be able to?
“It’s so strange, the whole thing.” Penelope didn’t notice how absentminded Charmaine was, as she was too caught up in her own erratic thoughts. “Rake told me someone had seen a man run from Chester Park at the time of the shooting, and they think it was the bastard who shot Sin.”
“What did he look like?” Charmaine’s heart beat faster. Could she be this lucky? Could someone have seen Lord Nester?
Penelope shrugged, with a sad sigh. “Too far away for details, I’m afraid. But the guess is that it’s an older or sickly man, as he didn’t move as smoothly as a younger or stronger man does. Which, to see something good in all of it, at least leaves Sebastian out of it.”
“Leaves me out of what?”
Sebastian strolled in, his usually impish grin much tighter, without the devil-may-care air he’d had earlier. As always, he poured himself down into a chair, looking the perfectly bored dandy.
“Killing Sin.”
“Penny!” Charmaine stared angrily at her sister.
“Well, it was what we were talking about, wasn’t it?”
“You think I was the one who tried to kill Sin?” Sebastian seemed more amused than ever, but Charmaine could sense the chord of uneasiness in him.
“No, of course not,” she said and sent her sister another angry look. “We were talking about the man who was seen running away from Chester Park and came to the conclusion that it couldn’t have been you, as he wasn’t as young as you.”
“But until then you thought it was me?”
“No, of course not,” she repeated, her frustration clearly visible in her strained voice. “I’ve never heard of this until Penny told me about it minutes before you came into the room. No one thinks you killed your brother.”
“He is dead?”
“No, no…” Charmaine took a deep, calming breath. “He isn’t dead! Do you really think I would have told you about it like this if he had died?”
This time the mirth in his eyes was without a shadow, and she cursed herself silently for falling so easily for his bait.
“You are such an imp.”
“I know.” He grinned. “My mother keeps saying that, at least twenty times every day.”
The thought of Lady Newbury and her nagging motherhood brought another thought to her mind, and she blushed slightly for forgetting to tell him immediately. “He’s awake!”
Sebastian froze and stared at her with his unreadable green eyes. “Sin?”
“Yes. Your parents are there now.”
“Is it true? Is he really awake?”
She nodded, and for once she didn’t hide her emotions but let him see the compassion she felt in her heart. She saw tears glisten in his eyes, setting them to sparkling even more, like beautiful emeralds in the sun.
“Can I…”
She waved with her hand, dismissing him. “Go.”
“Oh, my.” Penelope stared at the empty doorway. “I’ve never seen anyone move that fast, especially not Sebastian, who has made it into a game to never hurry anywhere. It drives his mother insane, you know.”
“They really do love them, don’t they?”
“Who?”
“Lord and Lady Newbury. They really do love their children.”
Penelope frowned slightly. “Yes, they do, as do the duke and the duchess. It’s what parents do. Love their children.”
“Ours didn’t.”
Charmaine couldn’t believe she’d just said it out loud. Seeing the shock in Penelope’s face, she realized her sister too was just as stunned over Charmaine’s unusual straightforwardness regarding a subject they had never discussed.
“Mother loved us.”
“Did she?” Charmaine whispered, almost waiting for the earth to crack beneath her silk-clad feet. But nothing happened. Airing the truth she had avoided for years appeared not to be something affecting the ground.
Penelope took her time answering, as if she desperately didn’t want to answer the wrong thing, now, when they finally were facing their childhood.
“I like to think she loved me, that I was special to her in some way. But to be honest, she wasn’t a person who was openly affectionate, and so I can’t say I know she loved me because of things she said or did. But in my heart I know she did.”
“She never told me she loved me, either.” Charmaine felt like the worst daughter ever for admitting the truth. But this was Penelope—her sister. Who else would ever understand?
“She loved you more than anything.” Penelope’s smile was small and sad. “Definitely more than she loved me, I’d say.”
This was the perfect time to stop the openness, to once again step behind the wall and let the conversation end, burying the subject forever. But, for the first time ever, Charmaine didn’t want the walls back up. Ever since she’d heard about their mother’s death she had kept wondering the same thing over and over again. And when she’d found out she was pregnant…
She had to talk about it. Because, in the end, she didn’t
want her child to ever wonder if it was loved. She wanted her child to take her love for granted. She wanted her child to never think twice whether her mother would be there for her or not.
She wanted her child to feel loved.
“Maybe she loved me in the beginning, I don’t know. But in the end I think I was only a burden for her.”
“Of course you weren’t a burden to her. How could you have been?” Penelope snorted. “She was beyond proud of you, which you should be aware of. She was always with you, the proud mama, standing there basking in the admiration you received.”
“But she wasn’t with me because she wanted to be. She was with me because she had to be. Because she wanted to save me.”
“Save you? From what? A hefty admirer?” Penelope snorted again. “Come on, Charmaine, you can’t believe in such nonsense. She loved you.”
“No, Penny, she loved you. The sweet, uncomplicated daughter who never brought her grief or forced her to go places and do things even though her body ached.”
Penelope stood and came over to her sister, giving her a hard stare. “Now you listen to me. I was there. I saw Mother, and I tell you this—she was as proud as she could get. She loved standing there, watching you being surrounded by all those adoring men. I don’t think she ever thought of it as a burden to go with you, because she was just too bloody proud of you.”
Charmaine opened her mouth to defend herself and explain exactly why she thought of herself as a burden, but she closed it promptly as Rake came into the room, looking both relieved and exasperated.
“There you are!” He grinned as his gray eyes found his wife. “I’ve been searching for you everywhere, and everyone has had a different opinion of where you might have hidden. Not one of them thought you were here, though, which indeed is a bit strange, considering your quite open love of this room.”
“Have you heard the news?” Penelope opened her arms to her husband, and without hesitation he pulled her closer to him, not caring about the audience.
A year ago, Charmaine would have laughed out loud if anyone even had hinted that Rake would turn into this softhearted, openly affectionate husband. He had been the libertine of his time and not good husband material at all, despite his status as one of society’s most eligible bachelors. But in his and Penelope’s case, true love had changed everything, and now they were the happiest couple imaginable, even outdoing the Duke and Duchess of Hereford, which in itself was an accomplishment worth noting.
The Beauty of You Page 19