The Beauty of You

by Jennifer Wenn

  “Maybe things will change now,” James said with a small but unbelievably tender smile, and she stared breathlessly at his handsome face, welcoming this unusual show of affection from him. “Surviving a lethal wound does something to a man, and one tends to look differently at life.” James never showed his emotions. This was unprecedented. Penelope had once told Charmaine he had been a different man before his time in France, more open and easygoing. War changed men forever, and both James and Sin’s cousin Raleigh were living evidence of this, two quiet, sad men withdrawing themselves from the rest of the family’s fun-loving high spirits most of the time.

  “I hope so,” Sebastian breathed, sounding like a little child wishing for a star, and they all laughed lightly.

  Oh, they were such a strange family, Charmaine thought as she looked at the four men surrounding her. Before she had married Sin, she had always looked upon the Darling family with envy, as they seemed to care so deeply for each other. Most men of her acquaintance were prone to look down at women, patronizing them, almost treating female relatives as if they were enemies and not family members.

  But not the Darlings.

  When Penelope with light steps used to leave Harveyfield for Chester Park, Charmaine would sit in her bedroom window, watching how eagerly her sister almost ran toward the castle. More times than she could count had she wished she too would be included in the invitations to join the colorful family, but it never happened.

  Oh, she had been to Chester Park many times, but always on public occasions and with her parents. And, as always when her parents were with her, she closed herself from anyone trying to befriend her, knowing her father disliked it when she gave her attention to anyone but him.

  No wonder everyone found her cold and uninteresting. If it hadn’t been for her looks, she probably would be a social pariah by now, not wanted by anyone but Lord Nester.

  But now she was a part of the Darling family, as they, without any remorse, had taken her into their midst and promptly treated her like one of their own. No one seemed to think twice about how bad her marriage was or how it had started.

  Even Sin, though filled with anger and resentment, had treated her as one of them, not once mentioning she didn’t belong.

  All he had wanted to know was why.

  “Why didn’t you tell us?”

  She stared at Sebastian in confusion at first, not able to grasp what he asked her, as she had been too lost in her own thoughts. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Why didn’t you tell us?” he repeated with a hint of exaggeration, and she blushed in response.

  Indeed, why. It seemed to be the one most important question.

  “You could have told us about your stepfather. We would have understood.” Drake’s voice was alluring, softer than velvet. “Or at least we would have tried to.”

  She gazed dizzily at him. Why, indeed. Why hadn’t she told them the truth from the beginning? It would probably not have made things easier for her, but at least she wouldn’t have felt so alone and incapable of handling the situation.

  And she wouldn’t have alienated Sin.

  Rake snorted and gave Charmaine a chance to gather her composure. “And what would that have gained her? It’s not as easy for everyone to open up as you seem to think it is. If you are used to keeping things to yourself, it soon becomes hard even to admit you need a nap. Something I thought you knew all about, my dear nephew, who has more secrets than anyone else.”

  “Maybe,” Drake admitted slowly. “But that’s different, you know. Me working in secret for Basil is not the same as her being used by her stepfather.”

  “I beg your pardon!” Charmaine gasped, not knowing which was more startling, that he would think her stepfather had used her or that Drake so lightly revealed working for the War Ministry.

  “You do say that a lot.” Drake grinned and looked as dandyish as ever despite the worn and dirty sailor clothes he still wore instead of one of his colorful and fashionable ensembles that had made him and his friends infamous.

  “I know,” she admitted, and he grinned even more mischievously at her, almost as impish as his cousin Sebastian.

  “I don’t mind, though. You may keep on saying it as much as you want.”

  “Oh, I may, may I?”

  “Uh-hum.” He held his hand in front of his face and pretended to be interested in his perfectly cut nails. “I’m a gentleman, and a gentleman never fights lost causes.”

  “She does say that a lot.” Sebastian flashed his impish grin. “I’m in complete agreement, dear cousin. Better let it be and dive deeper into the more delicate subjects. Did the sick bastard ever come to your bedroom?”

  “Ian!”

  “What?” Sebastian looked innocently at James. “I just asked. She doesn’t have to answer if she doesn’t want to. No pressure.”

  “No pressure, indeed.”

  “Uncle Rake, you don’t have to sound so disdainful. I’m only curious. Aren’t you?”

  All four men turned their heads, and Charmaine bit back a smile. Oh, yes, they were. But she wasn’t about to give in to them. Not yet at least. Instead, she looked straight at Drake, who met her gaze innocently.

  “So you’re a spy?”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Yes, Drake is a spy,” Sin admitted as they strolled through the Chester Park maze, enjoying the warmth of the early spring sun this crisp day in March. “He said as much to you?”

  “Not really. He blurted it out when talking about something else, and when I asked him directly he denied it completely.”

  “He’s a handful.”

  She laughed lightly, so at ease walking with him through the narrow path which branched out now and then to confuse the wanderer about where to turn next. “I have to agree with you there. It’s so strange no one in the ton sees through his disguise, that the slender, exquisitely fashionable dandy, who seems he might break in two if you breathe too hard upon him, in fact is a hard-hearted, intelligent spy.”

  Sin’s dark eyes were serious as he stopped and looked down at her. “You should know better than anybody how little the people of the ton really see.”

  “True.” She blushed. “Most people of our acquaintance only see what they want to see, and it doesn’t matter if it is a spy dressed up as a dandy or…or a beauty trying to cover a dark secret.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Sin echoed Drake’s question as he started to walk again, and she groaned inwardly, too used to feeling uncomfortable with the answer to that. But then it dawned upon her he already knew all there was to know. Her secret was set free. “I…I didn’t…know…how to,” she admitted, still almost fearful to tell him too much too early. But then again, maybe it was better to just say everything straight out for once and deal with his reactions then and there and have it done with.

  “Do you find me that hard to talk to?”

  There was a definite tone of hurt in his voice, and she silently cursed herself for causing it. “Of course not. I was just so used to keeping everything to myself that I just didn’t know how to start.”

  He nodded and patted her hand on his arm absentmindedly as he left the path they had been on, instead moving down another path, and then another. As he seemed to know where they were heading, she allowed herself to be led, staring down at her feet while wishing he would turn and kiss her.

  It had been a week since he woke from his coma and she went on her little trip to Southampton. One endless week, during which she’d had her whole life turned upside down and finally been freed of her darkest nightmare—her stepfather. They had all been there, all the Darlings, asking her questions and more questions until she was ready to burst from having to explain herself over and over again. They were just too genuinely interested in what had occurred right under their noses to be able to stop inquiring.

  It wasn’t as if they held her actions against her. No, their fascination circled mostly around how she had managed to endure the sick infatuation that had kept her na
iled to the wall. Penelope sat patiently beside her, stoically supporting her as she re-lived the horror of their stepfather in telling it over and over again.

  Charmaine knew Penelope was hurt by how she had been excluded from what had happened, but there was nothing she could do about that now. It had, after all, been their mother’s choice.

  But Sin hadn’t said one word when she told him the truth, the day after their return from Southampton. She had told him everything about her childhood, how obsessively proud her stepfather had been of her, and how he had slowly built walls around her until she was unreachable by others.

  She had not softened anything when she came to the part when Lord Nester had realized she was a grown woman and fallen desperately in love with her. The possessiveness from her youth had turned into a jealousy that had made it impossible for her to say or do anything without him watching her.

  Not even when she came to the end of her story, telling him about why she’d tripped him into marriage, why she’d left him to save him and why she'd lied about not being pregnant, did he flinch. He just watched her face with his dark, unreadable eyes as he listened, not once taking his attention from her. In the end it had felt as if she were crawling in front of him, silently begging him to accept her for what she was.

  But he never said a word.

  When she had finished, he turned his back to her and fell asleep, or pretended to at least. And the next day he had acted as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened, and she knew she had lost him. Whatever it was they’d had was gone.

  The lump in her throat had ached and ached, so much she thought her neck would break. But she was unable to get rid of that lump.

  As they entered the clearing in the midst of the maze, she at first didn’t notice the small gazebo standing in the middle of a small pond. Not until Sin walked over the bridge and held open the small door for her to enter did she realize it was there.

  “What an enchanted place,” she breathed, impressed, and Sin sent her a slow grin over his shoulder as he closed the door behind them.

  “It is. It was my great-great-grandfather who had the maze built, to trick the woman he loved into marrying him.”

  She sat down on the bench that followed the circular walls, and he joined her, stretching his long legs out in front of him. He was such a large, handsome man, and she knew half the young women of the ton were in love with him.

  She had never considered him as a possible husband, but then again, she had never considered anyone else, either. The only one who had ever made her think about a joint future was Lord Dane, and look what a mess he had turned out to be.

  Sin wasn’t as fashionably blasé or arrogantly witty as most of the men of the ton, including his own relatives. Instead, he preferred the quiet life in Berkshire, managing the family estate rather than dancing his nights away in London.

  She adored him for it.

  He was the most unselfish man she knew. To him, heritage and family were all that mattered, and she knew he would do anything he could to make sure his family had a smooth, worry-free life. She found his serious approach to life refreshing, and his willingness to bow to the heavy machinery of an estate as large as theirs was impressive.

  He wasn’t afraid of responsibilities, and to her, who had grown up in a house where no one really cared about anything but themselves, it was highly attractive.

  Sinclair Darling, the Earl of Chilton, was a man you could trust with your life, and she loved him more than she had ever thought she could love anyone. Somehow he had dug a hole in her wall and succeeded with something no one else had done—he had found the way to her heart.

  “My ancestor, whose name was Dominic, was secretly in love with a young woman and wanted nothing more than to marry her.”

  Sin’s soft voice interrupted her thoughts, and she looked at his strong, manly profile as he stared out through a small window toward the entrance to the maze.

  “What was her name?”

  “Maria, but everyone called her Merry, as she was born with the sun in her heart and a smile which I’ve heard was to die for.”

  “But there was no sun in her heart for Dominic?”

  Sin shook his head. “No. He had once, quite by mistake, offended her publicly, and she couldn’t find it in her heart to forgive him.”

  “She must have loved him very much.”

  “Probably.” Sin grinned. “She was a woman, and women do tend to act in mysterious ways when it’s a matter of the heart.”

  “Oh, shush.” Charmaine put on her best offended look and slapped him lightly on the arm. He chuckled softly in response as he took her slender hand in his big, warm ones.

  All the giddiness left her with a pouf, and she felt almost breathless as she stared into his dark eyes. Slowly he lifted her hand and placed a chaste kiss in the palm before softly closing her fingers around it, savoring the kiss for her.

  “Dominic was a man of action,” Sin continued softly, without letting go of her hand, and Charmaine almost couldn’t hear what he said as her heart pounded so hard, so loudly. “And when he couldn’t persuade Merry into marrying him, he instead went to her father and asked for her hand.”

  “The cur!” Charmaine gasped. “How could he go over her head like that when she already had refused him?”

  “That was exactly what Merry thought, and when her father proudly announced to her that he had promised Dominic her hand in marriage, she was furious.”

  Sin absentmindedly stroked the soft skin on the inside of her wrist with his thumb, and she had an almost undeniable urge to kiss him.

  To prevent herself from doing something she would regret, she released her hand from his and stood, pretending to look out the window. She felt his gaze, but she didn’t care if he wondered what was the matter. She just couldn’t stand being that close to him and not be able to show him exactly how much she cared for him.

  Somehow she couldn’t help but feel sorry for the young woman, Merry, who was put in such an awkward position, married to a man she secretly loved but didn’t know if he loved her back. The likeness to her own situation was quite strong, and she had no problem understanding the frustration Merry must have felt.

  “Why didn’t he just tell her that he loved her? I’m sure she would have felt it much easier to forgive him if she had only known her feelings for him were returned in full.”

  “Who knows? Maybe he didn’t think it would help, that there was no possible chance for her to love him back. Or maybe he just didn’t know how to tell her.”

  Charmaine snorted with disbelief. “How could he not know how to tell her? How hard can it be to say those three small words?”

  “I love you.”

  Her heart skipped a beat as she turned to stare at his serious face.

  “I beg your pardon?” she whispered hoarsely, not believing what she had just heard him say, and he looked back at her, arching an amused eyebrow in that very Darling way which she suddenly decided she disliked immensely.

  “Weren’t those the three small words Dominic should have told Merry? I love you?”

  Her heart sank like a stone as a wave of disappointment hit her. For one small moment she had thought he had acknowledged his love for her, and although she was quite aware he was not in love with her, her heart had leapt with joy.

  “Y-yes,” she stuttered and sat on the bench across from him, her old lump in the throat growing unmercifully again.

  “Anyway,” Sin continued, stretching his legs even farther across the small floor until his feet almost touched hers and looking deliciously comfortable and huggable, “Merry wasn’t too pleased about the engagement, and during the time leading up to the wedding she did absolutely everything she could think of that would make him want to end the engagement. It was rumored, though never confirmed, that she even dressed in men’s clothes and stopped his carriage to rob him and some friends of his.”

  “She did?” Charmaine was impressed. That was a young woman she would have loved
to meet. Such spirit and gumption was worth admiring, because it was something she had never possessed herself. She was a survivor, but she would rather follow the stream than fight it.

  “It is said so. Dominic was furious with her, not for robbing them but for putting herself in a position where she could have been killed.”

  “Poor Dominic.”

  “Indeed. But in the end everything turned out well, and they lived happily until they both died of old age.”

  She looked at his feet so close to hers, and she touched one of them lightly with her own foot, in an awkward show of affection. “Do you think we will live happily until we die?”

  “I hope so.”

  She smiled nervously toward him. “I hope we will be happy.”

  “Well, then, I guess I can guarantee you we will, because if we both want to be happy there is no way we cannot be, is there?” he asked with a wry smile, and she sank back, feeling oddly sad.

  Who was she fooling?

  There was no way she ever would be happy if Sin didn’t love her. She would again be caught pretending to be something she wasn’t, and in this case it meant she would have to spend the rest of her life repressing her feelings for him.

  She couldn’t do that. Not anymore. She was free now, free from her stepfather and his almighty shadow. This was about the rest of her life, so why should she sit back and pretend she wouldn’t mind a loveless marriage?

  Merry wouldn’t have stayed quiet, she thought with a mental smile. She would have fought for what she believed in, and Charmaine wanted to believe in a marriage filled with love. But if she declared her love for him, could she take it if he rejected her, or even pitied her?

  Probably not. But then again, she didn’t want to live the rest of her life in a loveless marriage, pretending to be satisfied. She harrumphed nervously, and he looked at her with an inquiring eyebrow raised.

  “Yes?”

  She took a deep breath. “I love you.”

  His smile faded away as he stared at her, his eyes dark in a face frozen in silent shock, and she knew this was her one and only moment to ever be able to persuade him into loving her back.