But she also knew there’d be a certain relief if she weren’t pregnant, because there was also a part of her that loved him so desperately that she was willing to do what was best for him no matter how painful it was for her. And she still believed in the depths of her heart that he was better off without her. If she hadn’t believed it, she’d never have jilted him.
England needed men like William in positions of leadership, living their lives in the service of king and country. In a way, she was glad, really, that he hadn’t fallen in love with her, because if she thought she’d captured his heart, she could never have denied her own.
But he’d never spoken words of love, and so far he’d respected her wishes not to come after her. It had been four days since she’d bolted. She was fairly certain that if he’d intended to come, he would have done so by now.
That he hadn’t convinced her that her course of action had been the right one.
She’d been surprised though that her brother hadn’t followed her to Chartwell. Even though, just as she’d done with William, she’d instructed him not to, and like William, he’d honored her wishes. She didn’t fault him for not coming, but she’d have welcomed his familiar presence, even if he would have been woefully out of his depth dealing with this tearful version of her.
She felt a fresh bout of tears coming on, so she hurried to a secluded bench tucked well back among the greenery where it was unlikely she’d be observed either from the house or by anyone working about the grounds. She set the pouch containing her garden shears, pruners, and spade beside her on the cold stone seat of the bench, took off the old gloves she wore, and pulled a large handkerchief from the pocket of the apron she’d put on to protect her clothing, and cried until she was, for the moment, all cried out.
Naturally that was where William found her. Eyes undoubtedly red from all her crying, her face probably splotchy, not to mention streaked with dirt from her work in the garden, wearing an old housedress covered up with the shapeless apron. She had to look a fright.
While he…he looked marvelous. Her eyes greedily drank in the sight of his broad shoulders encased in a finely tailored navy jacket, that dear, handsome face, studying her gravely as he stood before her, looking more haggard and drawn than she liked.
She wasn’t sure who moved first, but the next thing she knew, she was crushed in his embrace, his face buried between one side of her neck and her shoulder.
“You can’t know how fiercely I’ve missed you,” he said. Then he was kissing her with urgency—her neck, her throat, her jaw, her cheek. And finally, with a groan, he took her mouth in a hungry kiss, and she kissed him back with a desperate passion.
It wasn’t until some time later that William drew back, still holding on to her in a loose embrace. “I meant to do this right,” he said, giving her a rueful grin. “I promised myself I wasn’t going to kiss you until we got a few things straight between us.”
“William,” she began, “there’s something you should know—”
“Shhh,” he said, placing a finger against her lips. “Before that, there’s something I have to tell you. Something I should have told you earlier. I love you, Charlotte. Madly. Deeply. Desperately. I love you so much that I can’t live without you, and I’m willing to do whatever it takes to persuade you to become my wife. Because nothing means anything to me, if I can’t have you by my side.”
It was the loveliest, dearest declaration, and her heart felt as if it might burst right out of her chest, so great was her happiness at hearing him speak the words. But mingling with that joy was the conviction that she had to confess all to him before she let him say another word. He deserved to know the reasons behind her actions, even if it caused him to take back everything he’d just said. When he released her and started to go down on one knee, she grasped his arms, preventing him from doing so.
“You…you don’t know how precious those words are to me,” she blurted out, “but before you go any further, there’s something you have to know, something I should have told you before, but…but I’d no idea how you felt…not that that should make any difference, really, because I thought I was acting for the best…and I also thought I was the only one who…who was in love.”
As she spoke, his blue eyes deepened to the color of dark sapphires. “If you love me, Charlotte, then that’s confession enough for me. I already know about Pemberton. I know what he tried to do, and I think I know why you did what you did, and also why you didn’t share your reasons for doing it. Do I wish you’d confided in me? Yes, because I’ve never been so miserable in my life as I was after you left. But all that is behind us now.”
“You ought to hate me. It was cowardly the way I jilted you and quit London, leaving you to deal with the aftermath. I’ll completely understand if you wish to heap wrath and censure upon my head.”
“Shall I make you don a hair shirt as well? Really, Charlotte, give me more credit than that. How can I not forgive you when you were willing to sacrifice yourself to try to save me?”
“But did I manage to? Or were your chances for the post ruined anyway?”
One corner of his mouth quirked up in a rueful grin. “Let’s just say I doubt I’m the front-runner any longer, although Liverpool has yet to make any formal announcement. But if it makes you feel any better, I have it on good authority that Pemberton has no chance of getting it either.”
“Oh, William. I’m sorry. Everything was for naught then.”
“No it wasn’t.” He cupped her cheek with his hand. “Because I’ve got you.”
She began to tear up again, but this time they were happy tears. “I’m not at all the sort of girl you should marry, but I love you, and I’m not noble enough to give you up again,” she said, dabbing at her eyes with her handkerchief.
“Thank God,” he said fervently as his hand slid into her hair and his other arm tightened around her. He leaned in for another kiss that silenced all conversation for the next several minutes. “As delightful as all this kissing is,” he said at last, “there is an important matter I wish to attend to.”
He dropped to one knee before her, and now that the moment had finally come, her mind, perhaps too long refusing to hope against hope that he would ever propose, inanely thought the gravel of the garden path must make his position incredibly uncomfortable. He pulled something from the inner pocket of his jacket and held it out to her. “Charlotte, I want to offer this betrothal ring to you again, in the hope that you’ve revised your first opinion of me, the one in which you so justly declared that I was the last man you’d ever choose to marry. I love you, Charlotte. I think I started falling in love with you that morning when you didn’t like me at all, because I knew even then, I’d found a woman whose good opinion was worth having. I hope I’ve been fortunate enough to earn it. Please, Charlotte. Make me the happiest of men, and say you’ll marry me.”
She couldn’t say anything, couldn’t give him an answer because emotion, like a cork in a bottle, kept the words from escaping her throat.
He reached out and took her left hand in one of his, and held the ring in his other hand, poised to slip it over her finger. “Well, my darling? What do you say? Will you promise to marry me and wear my ring again?”
“Yes,” she choked out at last. “Yes, yes, and yes! I love you, William. So very, very much!”
And with that he slipped the ring on her finger. Coming to his feet, he reached for her hand, and their fingers twined together. Hand in hand, they slowly made their way through the garden and back to the house.
“I brought the special license with me. We could be married today, if we wished.” He gave her a hopeful glance.
“While that sounds lovely, I wouldn’t want to marry without our families present.”
He sighed. “I thought you might say that.”
“You know you wouldn’t be happy if your sisters missed our wedding.” She giggled. “And we both know Elizabeth would be most put out to be excluded from the wedding celebrations.
So what’s another week or two?”
“Don’t underestimate my eagerness to be a bridegroom. However, I guess we could put it off until tomorrow. You know, to give everybody a chance to arrive.”
“What? You can’t be serious. How did you…?” He was grinning from ear to ear, looking so supremely pleased with himself that she couldn’t help giving his arm a light swat. “You were very sure of yourself, weren’t you?”
“Not entirely,” he admitted. “I could only hope you were as miserable apart from me as I was from you, and that no matter what objections you might still harbor, I could convince you being together would always be preferable to being apart.”
“I still don’t know about tomorrow,” she said.
One of his brows shot up. “So I still have some convincing to do?” he murmured as his face slowly descended toward hers.
“I don’t have anything appropriate to wear, and I refuse to be married in a simple day dress. I only get to be a bride once, you know.”
“Then set your mind at ease,” he said, his lips a hair’s breadth away from hers. “Libby is bringing one of your new gowns with her.”
‘You’ve thought of everything then,” she whispered against his mouth.
“I’ve certainly tried to,” he whispered back, following the words with a kiss to seal the deal.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Three weeks later…
I enjoy breakfast in bed, but it feels so decadent,” Charlotte said as she dropped a spoonful of black currant jelly onto a piece of toast. They’d indulged in the habit of leisurely breakfasts in bed most mornings since their wedding the day after she and William had reconciled in the garden at Chartwell. Two days after that, William had taken her to his family estate for a short honeymoon. They’d just returned to London yesterday.
“I concur. Very decadent.” William dropped a kiss on her shoulder. “Especially when you’re wearing one of Madame Rochelle’s creations.”
“I only wanted to order a few flannel nightgowns, but she insisted she knew best what sort of nightwear you’d like me to wear.” Charlotte giggled as he kissed the ticklish spot on her neck.
“And for that she has my eternal gratitude.” He nipped her earlobe.
“Aren’t you hungry?” she asked, trying to lean out of his reach as she took a bite of her toast.
“Only for you,” he replied, his voice husky with desire. He scooted himself closer, reaching a hand around her back, and slipping it into the barely-there bodice of her night rail to caress her breast.
Halfheartedly she tried to swat his hand away with her free one. “I thought you had a meeting this morning. You don’t want to be late, do you?”
“I’m considering skipping it altogether,” he murmured. “After all, things appear to have hummed along well enough in my absence.”
“I’m sure you were missed,” she said, her own voice husky now in response to his knowing caresses. Her resistance was flagging and he had to know it.
His response was an indistinct “mmmm” as the hand not occupied with her breast began working its way beneath the hem of her night rail. She might as well admit defeat. Her appetite for food had vanished anyway, replaced with a more immediate need for him.
“You win,” she said. “But you’ll have to move the breakfast tray first.”
“With pleasure,” William murmured in her ear, before climbing from the bed to attend to the task.
Charlotte lay back with a happy sigh awaiting her new husband’s attentions. Feeling lazy, she was content to let him take the lead, which he did with a concentrated enthusiasm that soon had them reaching a mutually satisfying conclusion.
* * *
A short time later Charlotte, more decently clad in a dressing gown, sat in bed with a plate of buttered muffins and fruit. William had already left after a whirlwind effort to get dressed and out of the house, because despite his words earlier, he was eager to get back to work. The reforms commission was scheduled to have its first meeting tomorrow.
To her regret, William had not been named chairman. During his audience with Lord Liverpool when he’d related the truth about their engagement’s beginnings, the prime minister had expressed his sympathy that Pemberton had entangled them in his scheme to secure the post. But in the end, Liverpool had been unwilling to go against his advisers who were now reluctant to name William to the chairmanship.
However, Lord Huntington had used his considerable influence to see that a relatively benign candidate had been given the post, and that William was named as a commission member. So he’d still have a role in shaping the commission’s recommendations.
During their time in Sussex, a single copy of Tattles and Rattles About Town had arrived by messenger along with a note that said simply all others were destroyed prior to distribution. Charlotte had been mystified by it until William explained Pemberton’s hand in it—both in leaking the information of her visit to The Golden Pineapple and then, apparently, in seeing that all copies were destroyed rather than sold. Charlotte had then tossed that last copy into the fireplace.
It was not, all things considered, a bad outcome, and Pemberton was surely gnashing his teeth, because he was now effectively banished from the prime minister’s circle. Liverpool had pronounced Pemberton’s plans to undermine William’s chance as “most unsporting and beneath contempt” and had given the man the cut direct the next time their paths crossed.
Sally came into the room. “Here’s your correspondence,” she said, laying a prodigious quantity of cards and notes onto the bed beside Charlotte.
“Thank you, I suppose,” Charlotte said with a little sigh.
Sally grinned at her and fetched her lap desk from where it sat on a table across the room. “The water is being heated for your bath. I’ll let you know when it’s ready.”
“Thank you, Sally.” Charlotte sifted through the pile, not quite sure where to start. A large square envelope with Open Immediately written on the front caught her attention. She recognized Serena’s handwriting.
Opening it, she withdrew an invitation and a small folded note. Written on the creamy card stock in Edwina’s elegant script was the following:
Please join us for the inaugural meeting of the Wednesday Afternoon Social Club
at half past one on the sixteenth of this month at 12 Upper Grosvenor Street.
No RSVP necessary
She opened the note, which like the envelope, was written in Serena’s hand.
We’re pleased to hear you’ve returned. You were certainly missed, but our work continued while you were gone. We’d be delighted if you can join us today, but if not, we’ll be meeting again next Wednesday!
Welcome back, dear Charlotte. We have much to catch up on.
Serena
Today was the thirtieth; she’d missed the first two meetings of the Wednesday Afternoon Social Club. A sharp pang of disappointment dampened her mood, but she shook it off. She wouldn’t miss the third one, and it was already a quarter to eleven. Charlotte hopped out of bed.
Though she’d been absent from London less than a month, life here had moved forward without her, and now she was ready to find out what she’d missed, who she’d missed at the first meetings, since the point of creating a more formal group was to grow their numbers of like-minded ladies.
Had there been brandy? Had the duchess worn breeches? She couldn’t wait to see for herself.
“Sally,” she called, hoping her maid was readying her clothes in the adjacent bedroom, which functioned as Charlotte’s dressing room for now. They intended to have a proper one built soon, but for the present the bedroom was sufficient.
Sally poked her head around the doorjamb. “Yes?”
“As soon as some water is ready, have it sent up. It will have to be a quick bath this morning. I need to be somewhere at half past one.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll see to it.”
Being addressed as ma’am still sounded foreign to her ears, but she was a married lady n
ow. A very happily married lady, and for that reason alone she couldn’t entirely hate Pemberton’s intrigues concerning William.
As he’d told her when they’d met at Hatchards, he’d been their accidental matchmaker. And frankly, her happiness at becoming William’s wife was the most satisfying revenge to Pemberton’s troublesome efforts.
She smiled to herself and, since Sally wasn’t about to witness it, did a little jig about the room. It was good to be back.
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About the Author
KATE PEMBROOKE is a lifelong reader whose path to becoming an author of Regency romance was forged when she first read Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Kate lives with her family in the Midwest. She loves puttering around in her flower beds, taking beach vacations, and adding to her already extensive collection of cookbooks.
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