Where's My Hero?

by Lisa Kleypas

  Charlotte groaned. It made sense. If she were in charge of doling out Rupert’s quarterly allowance, she wouldn’t give it to him a day earlier than the first of April, either.

  Her head sank into her hands as her elbows rested on her knees. This was awful. She’d always been exceedingly good at finding the bright side of a situation. Even when things looked utterly bleak, she could usually find some interesting angle, some positive avenue to pursue that could lead out of trouble.

  But not today.

  Only one thing was certain. She was going to have to help Lydia elope, as distasteful as it seemed. It wouldn’t be fair for Lydia to marry the viscount after she had already given herself to Rupert.

  But it wasn’t just about the viscount. Lydia was her sister. Charlotte wanted her to be happy. Even if that meant Rupert Marchbanks for a brother-in-law.

  But she couldn’t shake the awful feeling in the pit of her stomach as she finally lifted her head to face Lydia and said, “Tell me what I need to do.”

  Chapter 3

  “Ah-Ah-Ah-”

  “Is she ill?” came a kindly female voice, belonging to whom, Charlotte would never know, as her eyes were closed in intense concentration.

  Not to mention that they had to be closed for a convincing sneeze.

  “Ah-CHOO!”

  “I say!” Rupert Marchbanks said loudly, flicking his head so that his moppy blond locks flew out of his eyes. “I think I’m making her sneeze.”

  “Ah-CHOO!”

  “Good gracious,” Lydia said, all concern, “you don’t look right at all.”

  Charlotte wanted—more than anything—to spear her sister with a sarcastic glare, but she could hardly do that in front of such a large audience, so instead—

  “Ah-CHOO!”

  “I know I’m making her sneeze,” Rupert announced. “It has to be me. She started right when I came up next to her.”

  “Ah-CHOO!”

  “Do you see,” Rupert added, to no one in particular, “she’s sneezing.”

  “That much,” drawled a low male voice that could only belong to Ned Blydon, “is hardly disputable.”

  “Well, she can’t be my partner in the scavenger hunt,” Rupert said. “I’d probably kill the chit.”

  “Ah-CHOO!” Charlotte made that one a little softer, just for variation.

  “Did you use a strange scent?” Lydia asked Rupert. “Or maybe a new soap?”

  “A new scent!” Rupert exclaimed, his eyes flashing as if he’d just discovered, oh, say, gravity. “I am wearing a new scent! Had it sent specially from Paris, of course.”

  “Paris?” Lydia asked delightedly. “You don’t say?”

  Charlotte wondered if she could smack her sister in the ribs without anyone noticing.

  “Yes,” Rupert continued, always pleased to have an audience for a discussion of fashion or hygiene. “It’s a delightful combination of sandalwood and persimmon.”

  “Not perthimmon,” Charlotte wailed, attempting to get back to the matter at hand. “Perthimmon makes me thneeze.” She tried to make it sound like there were tears pouring forth from her eyes. Which of course there weren’t, since until the day before she hadn’t even been certain what a persimmon was.

  Lydia looked over at Ned and batted her eyes. “Oh, my lord,” she pleaded, “you must trade places with Rupert for the scavenger hunt. We can’t expect Charlotte to spend the afternoon in his company.”

  Ned looked over at Charlotte with one raised brow. She looked back up at him and sneezed.

  “No,” he said, delicately drawing a handkerchief from his pocket and wiping his face, “clearly we can’t.”

  Charlotte sneezed again, mentally sending up a short plea for forgiveness that she was certain she was going to have to expand upon in church on Sunday. What Lydia knew, and what in fact all of her sisters knew, was that no one could fake a sneeze like Charlotte. The Thornton girls had always had great fun with Charlotte’s false sneezes. Luckily, their mother had never caught on, or she surely would have been looking upon the scene with great suspicion.

  But as it was, Mrs. Thornton was busy with some guest or another, and so she’d just patted Charlotte on the back and instructed her to drink some water.

  “Then you’ll agree?” Lydia asked Ned. “We shall meet up again after the hunt, of course.”

  “Of course,” he murmured. “I should be happy to pair with your sister. I could hardly refuse a damsel in such, ah—”

  “Ah-CHOO!”

  “—distress.”

  Charlotte flashed him a grateful smile. It seemed like the right thing to do.

  “Oh, thank you, my lord,” Lydia gushed. “We’ll be off right away, then. I must remove Rupert from Charlotte’s presence immediately.”

  “Oh yes,” he said mildly, “you must.”

  Lydia and Rupert scurried off, leaving Charlotte alone with Ned. She looked up at him hesitantly. He was leaning against the wall as he stared down at her, his arms crossed.

  Charlotte sneezed again, this time for real. Maybe she was allergic to Rupert. Heaven knew, whatever scent he’d doused himself in still hung rather noxiously in the air.

  Ned raised his brows. “Perhaps,” he suggested, “you’d do well with a bit of fresh air.”

  “Oh, yes,” Charlotte said eagerly. If she were outside, there would be all sorts of logical things for her to look at. Trees, clouds, small furry animals—anything would do as long as she didn’t have to look the viscount in the eye.

  Because she had a sneaking suspicion that he knew she was faking it.

  She’d told Lydia this wasn’t going to work. Ned Blydon was clearly no milksop. He was not going to be taken in by batted eyelashes and a few false sneezes. But Lydia had insisted that she desperately needed the time alone with Rupert to plan their elopement, and thus they had to be partnered together for the scavenger hunt.

  Their mother, unfortunately, had already drawn up the list of teams, and of course she’d put Lydia with her betrothed. Since Charlotte had been paired with Rupert, Lydia had come up with the mad scheme of having Charlotte sneeze her way into a switch. But Charlotte had never thought it was going to fool Ned, and in fact, just as soon as they were outside and had taken a few deep breaths of the crisp spring air, he smiled (but only ever-so-slightly) and said, “That was quite a performance.”

  “I beg your pardon?” she said, stalling for time because really, what other choice did she have?

  He glanced at his fingernails. “My sister has always faked a rather impressive sneeze.”

  “Oh, my lord, I assure you—”

  “Don’t,” he said, his blue eyes catching hers rather directly. “Don’t lie and make me lose respect for you, Miss Thornton. It was an excellent show, and it would have convinced anyone who wasn’t related to my sister. Or you, I suppose.”

  “Fooled my mother,” Charlotte muttered.

  “It did, didn’t it?” he said, looking a little…well, heavens, could he be proud of her?

  “I would have fooled my father, too,” she added, “if he’d been there.”

  “Do you want to tell me what it was about?”

  “Not especially,” she said brightly, taking advantage of the yes-or-no phrasing of his question.

  “How is your ankle?” he asked, the sudden change of subject making her blink.

  “Much improved,” she said warily, not certain why he’d given her a reprieve. “It barely hurts now. It must have been less of a sprain than I’d thought.”

  He motioned toward the lane leading away from the house. “Shall we walk?” he murmured.

  She nodded hesitantly, because she couldn’t quite believe that he would actually let the subject drop.

  And of course, he didn’t.

  “I should tell you something about myself,” he said, glancing up at the treetops in a deceptively casual manner.

  “Er, what is that?”

  “I generally get what I want.”

  “Generally?”


  “Almost always.”

  She gulped. “I see.”

  He smiled mildly. “Do you?”

  “I just said I did,” she muttered.

  “Therefore,” he continued, neatly brushing her comment aside, “it’s probably safe to assume that before we finish this scavenger hunt that your mother has so kindly devised as entertainment, you will tell me why you were working so hard to ensure that we were partners today.”

  “Er, I see,” she said, thinking she sounded an absolute fool. But the alternative was silence, and given the tenor of the conversation, that didn’t seem much better.

  “Do you?” he asked, his voice terrifyingly silky. “Do you really?”

  She did stay quiet for that; she couldn’t imagine any right answer to that query.

  “We could make things easy,” he said, still carrying on as if he were talking about nothing less mundane than the weather, “and come clean right now. Or,” he added meaningfully, “we could make things very, very difficult indeed.”

  “We?”

  “I.”

  “I rather thought that,” she mumbled.

  “So,” he said, “are you prepared to tell all?”

  She looked him straight in the eye. “Are you always so calm and controlled?”

  “No,” he replied. “Not at all. In fact, I’ve been told that my temper is about as vicious as they come.” He turned to her and smiled. “But I generally manage to lose it only once or twice a decade.”

  She swallowed nervously. “That’s rather well done of you.”

  He continued to speak in that horribly controlled manner. “I don’t see any reason to lose my temper now, do you? You seem a reasonable young lady.”

  “Very well,” Charlotte said, since the bloody man would probably tie her to a tree (with a calm smile on his face) if she didn’t offer some sort of explanation. “As it happens, it had nothing to do with you.”

  “Really?”

  “Is that so difficult to believe?”

  He ignored her sarcasm. “Continue.”

  She thought quickly. “It’s Rupert.”

  “Marchbanks?” he queried.

  “Yes. I cannot abide him.” Which wasn’t so far from the truth, really. Charlotte had, on more than one occasion, thought she might go mad in his company. “The thought of spending the entire afternoon in his company set me into a positive panic. Although I must say, I didn’t expect Lydia to offer to trade.”

  He seemed more interested in her previous sentence. “A panic, you say?”

  She planted a level look squarely on his face. “You try spending three hours listening to him recite his poetry, and then we’ll see who’s panicking.”

  Ned winced. “He writes poetry?”

  “And talks about writing poetry.”

  He looked pained.

  “And when he’s not doing that,” Charlotte said, now getting into the spirit of the conversation, “he’s talking about the analysis of poetry and explaining why most people lack the proper intellectual capabilities to understand poetry.”

  “But he does?”

  “Of course.”

  He nodded slowly. “I should make a confession at this point. I’m not much for poetry myself.”

  Charlotte couldn’t help herself; she beamed. “You’re not?”

  “It’s not as if we speak in rhyme in our ordinary conversations,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand.

  “I feel precisely the same way!” she exclaimed. “When, I ask you, have you ever said, ‘My love is like a dove’?”

  “Good God, I hope never.”

  Charlotte burst out laughing.

  “I say!” he suddenly exclaimed, pointing up toward the canopy of leaves above them. “That tree! It’s like my knee!”

  “Oh, please,” she said, trying to sound disdainful but laughing all the while. “Even I could do better.”

  He shot her a devilish grin, and Charlotte suddenly knew why he was reputed to have broken so many hearts in London. By God, it ought to be illegal to be so handsome. One smile and she felt it down to her toes.

  “Oh, really?” he scoffed. “Better than—I saw my sister, and I…”

  “And you what?” she prompted, as he floundered for words. “Poorly done of you to pick such a difficult word to rhyme, my lord.”

  “And I wished her!” he finished triumphantly. “Wished her to…well, I don’t know where, but not to perdition.” His face took on a very cheeky expression. “That would be impolite, don’t you think?”

  Charlotte would have replied, but she was laughing too hard.

  “Right,” he said, looking very satisfied with himself. “Well, now that we’ve established that I’m the better poet, what is the first item on our list?”

  Charlotte looked down at the scrap of paper she’d forgotten she was clutching. “Oh, yes,” she said. “The scavenger hunt. Um, let’s see, it’s a feather, although I don’t think we have to find everything in order.”

  He tilted his head to the side as he tried to read her mother’s neat handwriting. “What else do we need?”

  “A red brick; a hyacinth bloom—that will be easy, I know exactly where they are in the garden; two sheets of writing paper, not from the same set; a yellow ribbon; and a piece of glass. A piece of glass?” she echoed, looking up. “Where on earth are we supposed to find that? I don’t think Mother intended us to be breaking windows.”

  “I’ll steal my sister’s spectacles,” he said offhandedly.

  “Oh. That’s quite clever.” She gave him an admiring glance. “And devious, too.”

  “Well, she is my sister,” he said modestly. “Even if I don’t wish her to perdition. But she’s quite blind without them, and one must be devious in all dealings with siblings, don’t you agree?”

  “Certainly dealings of this nature,” Charlotte said. She and her sisters generally got along well, but they were forever teasing and pulling pranks on one another. Stealing spectacles to win a scavenger hunt—now that was something she could respect.

  She watched his face as he gazed off in the distance, his mind apparently somewhere else. And she couldn’t help but reflect upon what a good sort he’d turned out to be.

  Ever since she’d agreed to help Lydia jilt him she’d felt rather guilty about it, but not until now had she felt truly horrible.

  She had a feeling that the viscount didn’t love her sister; in fact, she was quite certain he did not. But he had proposed to her, so he must have wanted Lydia as a bride for some reason or another. And like all men, he had his pride. And she, Charlotte Eleanor Thornton, who liked to think of herself as an upstanding and principled human being, was actually helping to orchestrate his downfall.

  Charlotte suspected that there were more embarrassing things in life than being left at the altar, but at that moment, she couldn’t think of a one.

  He was going to be mortified.

  And hurt.

  Not to mention furious.

  And he’d probably kill her.

  The worst part was, Charlotte had no idea how to stop it. Lydia was her sister. She had to help her, didn’t she? Didn’t she owe her first loyalties to her flesh and blood? And besides, if there was one thing this afternoon had shown her, it was that Lydia and the viscount really wouldn’t suit. Good God, Lydia expected her suitors to speak to her in poetry. Charlotte couldn’t imagine they’d make it through more than a month of marriage before trying to murder one another.

  But still…this wasn’t right. Ned—when had she begun to think of him by his Christian name?—didn’t deserve the shabby treatment he was about to receive. He might be a bit high-handed, and he certainly was arrogant, but underneath all that, he seemed to be a good man—sensible and funny and at heart a true gentleman.

  And that was when Charlotte made a solemn vow. There was no way she would allow him to wait in the church on Saturday morning. She might not be able to stop Lydia and Rupert from eloping—she might even be helping them—but she wo
uld do all in her power to save Ned from the worst sort of embarrassment.

  She gulped nervously. It meant seeking him out in the dead of night, just as soon as Lydia was safely away, but she had no other choice. Not if she wanted to live comfortably with her conscience.

  “You look rather serious of a sudden,” he remarked.

  She started in surprise at the sound of his voice. “Just woolgathering,” she said quickly, glad that about this, at least, she wasn’t lying.

  “Your sister and the poet seem to be in rather deep conversation,” he said quietly, nodding his head to the left.

  Charlotte jerked her head around. Sure enough, Lydia and Rupert were about thirty yards away, talking earnestly and quickly.

  Thank God they were too far away to be overheard.

  “They’re rather good friends,” Charlotte said, hoping that the warmth she was feeling in her cheeks did not mean that she was blushing. “We’ve known Rupert for years.”

  “Does that mean my future wife is a great fan of poetry?”

  Charlotte smiled sheepishly. “I’m afraid so, my lord.”

  When he looked at her, his eyes were twinkling. “Does that mean she will expect me to recite poetry to her?”

  “Probably,” Charlotte replied, giving him a sympathetic look that she was not faking at all.

  He sighed. “Well, I suppose no marriage can be perfect.” Then he straightened. “Come along then. We’ve feathers to pluck and spectacles to steal. If we must participate in this foolish scavenger hunt, we might as well win.”

  Charlotte set her shoulders back and stepped forward. “Indeed, my lord. My sentiments exactly.”

  And they were. It was odd, actually, how often he said something that was her sentiments exactly.

  Chapter 4

  Friday night was the occasion of a pre-wedding soirée that Ned supposed differed in some critical manner from Wednesday’s and Thursday’s pre-wedding soirées, but as he stood at the back of the room, idly holding a glass of champagne and a plate with three strawberries on it, he couldn’t for the life of him discern how.

  Same people, different food. That was really all there was to it.