“Stupid,” he obliged. “I did something stupid.”
“Welcome to my world.” He eyed the boy. “What did you do?”
Charles lowered his dark gaze and winced, that one-and-twenty-year-old face taking on the guise of a thousand-year-old sinner. He eventually leaned in. “I fell in love with a woman I shouldn’t have. A woman so far below my station, I can’t even see the bottom.” He half nodded. “And that isn’t the worst part.” He was quiet for a moment. “I got her pregnant.”
Mark sighed. There wouldn’t be any paper grandchildren for Magdalene. She was getting the real thing whether she wanted it or not. “Ah. So this woman who ventured into the parlor and accidentally—”
“Yes. I don’t know any other women. I never wanted to know any other women prior to her.”
“Ah.” It was about all he could say in that moment.
Charles scrubbed his hair and groaned. “God, am I ever an ass. An ass who… I just…I don’t know what to do. I want to marry her and do what is right by the way I feel, but in doing so I would be ostracizing my mother and everything she wants for me. I already disappoint her at every turn.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I do. As an artist, I see it all. I see things for what they are. Sadly, sometimes seeing is a curse. Because you wait for things to happen that never do. Like you and my mother. You should have been married to one another by now.”
Mark froze. “She and I aren’t—”
Charles snorted. “Aren’t what? ’Tis obvious you are both madly in love with each other, yet neither of you is willing to step beyond your gilded little frames to admit to it. You both prefer watching as opposed to doing.”
Mark swallowed. “It would seem the artist has painted us well.” He set a hand on Charles’s back. “You need to talk to your mother about all of this. Not to me. I mean…you can always talk to me…what I meant to say is that I want you to tell your mother everything you just told me about yourself and this girl.”
Charles shook his head and kept shaking it. “She and every last person in London with half a name will shred me and Emma apart.”
“Hey, hey.” He elbowed him hard to let him know he was serious. “All of London I will agree with, Charles, yes, but not this nonsense about your mother. She loves you. Trust in that. She will always put you before all else. That is what a good mother does.”
His shadowed features remained somber. “Do you honestly think she would even support my pursuit of matrimony to a girl well below my station? Given her experience in matrimony and all that she has endured?”
Mark shifted his jaw. “I suppose you have a mild point. She can’t even swallow the word without spitting.”
The rustling of a gown behind them made him pause. “It would seem neither of you know me as well as you should,” Magdalene’s voice penetrated the silence. “And it saddens me.”
Both he and Charles scrambled up in astonishment toward her lingering frame in the shifting shadows of the terrace. Dread soaked every last inch of his body as those dark eyes met his. As if she didn’t hate him enough.
She trai
led a calculating gaze to Charles.
Charles set his shoulders. “Mother.” Striding toward her with what appeared to be newfound confidence, he announced in a strained tone, “There is something I must tell you.”
“I already know. I spoke to Miss Vance.”
Charles froze and met her gaze.
She lifted a chiding brow. “Collecting nude sketches appears to be a relatively new interest for you, I would say.”
Mark blinked. Nude sketches? Oh, now, bravo, Charles. That was real art.
Magdalene sighed with the shake of her head. “You should have told me about her. You should have told me about this entire situation well before it escalated to this.”
Charles hissed out a long breath. He squeezed his eyes shut, tapping his fingers rigidly against his forehead. “I knew nothing could ever come of it given who she was and given who I was, but I was so damn…desperate to step outside of everything relating to the ton that I—” He reopened his eyes and dropped his hand to his side. He stoically stood there, looking anguished and lost and without hope.
If it had been anyone else in the ton that boy was pleading to, his cause would have been lost with the lop of a guillotine. But Magdalene, sweet Magdalene—damn her—grabbed her son’s chin gently and rattled it. “This is but the beginning of your journey known as life.” She released him. “Do right by this girl and the child she carries. Marry her. I thought her to be utterly deserving and charming.”
Mark drew in a slow, astounded breath. She never ceased to amaze him. He knew she would have never turned against her own boy, but actually seeing it was as profound a moment as any.
Charles gaped. “I can marry her?”