Very civil and acceptable, as it should be—as it should have been from the beginning.
“Did you not go home for holidays when you were at school?”
He lowered down beside her, the springs protesting slightly as he rested his hat on his knee. Her gaze skimmed over that knee encased in his well-fitted breeches, and then darted away, up to his face—another manner of distraction there, for certain.
“I would visit my mother, yes,” he answered. “I would not say I ever went home as she was rarely ever at the same place. She moved around often. Very few places stand out in my memory. Certainly none were home.” Pause. “I’ve never known a home.”
“Oh.” She tried not to reveal how very sad Kingston’s life sounded to her.
Her heart softened as she imagined the small, adrift boy he had been, and she felt the wild urge to touch him, of all the ill-advised things to do. Pat a hand on his arm or shoulder. Ridiculous and dangerous. She should certainly stay any impulse to make physical contact.
Except she could not help thinking: He was a boy without a name or a home.
She curled her fingers into her palm until her nails cut deep. She had no doubt if she were to look at her hands she would see tiny half-moons carved into her skin. She didn’t care, though. She’d gladly take the pain. Anything was better than touching him.
Chapter 12
The proximity was too much to bear. Sitting close to him felt a precarious thing. Charlotte surged to her feet, determined to put some space between them before she bled all over her skirts from digging into her palms.
“Shall I give you a tour?” she asked abruptly, striding away from him, ahead of him.
“Very well.” He followed her up the stairs.
While keeping a safe, respectable distance, she showed him each sparsely furnished room, trying not to reveal how very nervous he made her. She supposed that was natural given their history with each other, but, again, she wanted to prove herself strong. Not a slave to her impulses. She was not under the influence of Nora’s tonic, so she could behave properly.
As she moved through the house, she witnessed everything through his eyes. She saw the shell of a house he must now see.
They’d sold off several pieces of furniture after Papa had died. Before Marian married Warrington. It had been necessary, but she was hoping she could locate some of those items and buy them back once she and William married.
“Nice light in here,” he commented as she showed him the master chamber.
The bed was still there—a lovely mahogany four-poster bed that had belonged to her grandparents before her parents. All three of her siblings and Charlotte had been born in that bed.
She realized the sight of the bed and Kingston in proximity to it should have struck a chord of alarm within her, but why should one mere bed strike her with anxiety? They’d never been near a bed before, and that had not stopped them from succumbing to lascivious behavior. No, if they had surrendered to passion in the library at Haverston Hall and out beneath the wide-open skies on a summer afternoon, then any environment could be conducive. If she so chose. If she was weak again. Which she was not.
She was in full control of herself and all impulses. She had nothing to fear.
“I’ve always thought so,” she agreed, moving past the bed to the double balcony doors. Unlocking them, she pushed them open, allowing the afternoon air inside. “It overlooks my mother’s wildflowers.”
Kingston stepped onto the balcony and peered down. “The world can’t be too bad whilst waking up to such a view.”
“Indeed not,” she agreed, feeling more relaxed.
She rather enjoyed the ease of talking to Kingston. Kingston. Did he not possess another name?
Turning from the view, she faced him. “Does everyone address you as Kingston?” She’d never heard Nathaniel or Marian call him anything else. Charlotte hadn’t the slightest clue as to his Christian name.
“Ever since I was a lad, yes. Even my own father calls me Kingston.”
“That’s rather . . . perfunctory.”
A corner of his mouth lifted. “Are you asking me for my Christian name, Charlie?”
She stiffened at the intimate moniker on his lips. She supposed digging around for his name invited that. “Yes, I expect I am.” She forced the rigidity from her frame. They were having a perfectly normal interaction and she did not wish to ruin it.
“I’m not certain anyone even remembers my name,” he mused, staring out into the trees, resting a hand on the railing.
She gazed at him a long moment, wondering if he was simply jesting. His sober expression hinted at no such thing.
“Certainly your mother,” she supplied.
A shadow fell over his face. “I would not rely on that.”
She fought against a frown. What manner of mother forgot her child’s name? The wretch. Charlotte immediately felt a keen dislike for the faceless woman. Perhaps disproportionately so. And yet she could not help envisioning, yet again, the handsome man before her as a little boy, lost and yearning for a mother’s love.
Kingston continued, “My mother is not well these days. I suspect her illness precludes her from remembering a great many things.”
“Oh.” Now Charlotte felt the wretch for thinking poorly of an ailing woman. “I’m very sorry to hear that.” She moistened her lips and pressed, “What is your name?”
He sent her a small smile. “You know my name.”
“Kingston is a surname.”
“It’s all anyone ever calls me.”
She frowned. “I’d like to call you by your name. Your true name.”
“You’d be the only one to use it.”
The only one.
At that, she hesitated. She knew she should let the matter drop. It would be far too intimate to be the only person using his Christian name. She didn’t want that intimacy to exist between them.
Still, she heard herself saying, “I don’t mind that.”
After several beats of silence, he answered. Over the chirping of birds and wind rustling in the branches, he said, “It’s Samuel. Sam.”
“Samuel. Sam.” She tested it on her tongue. “It’s a nice name . . . makes you seem more human. It’s certainly less imposing than Kingston.”
At that, he grinned. “Perhaps that is why I never tell people. A bastard is better served if he comes across as a little imposing.”
She flinched at the ease in which he called himself bastard.
“You knew that, of course?” he asked. “I am the Earl of Norfolk’s bastard.”
“Yes, I knew that.” She gave a perfunctory nod.
He smiled humorlessly. “People talk.”
Indeed. She knew that, too.
He moved from the railing with a crisp turn. “So what are the plans for this place?” he asked in what felt, to her, an obvious evasion or, at the very least, an effort to change the topic from his mother. He strode to the center of the chamber and stopped, turning idly to examine the room.
She released a sigh. “For now, Marian is holding on to the property, on the chance that one of us might choose to reside here some day.”
Charlotte chose to be deliberately vague. She did not feel inclined to speak of her future in that moment—specifically of her future here, in this house, with William.