He raised his eyes from the little blue box and looked at himself in the mirror of his dressing table. Being born an Earl had not made Edmund arrogant in any way. If anything, it had humbled him, the knowledge that he had so much responsibility but lacked the business skill to run his estates profitably. Nor was he arrogant about his looks.
I’m just an average sort of chap, he thought, considering his reflection. He was tall enough – six feet – with nice regular features. At least I have a decent jawline. It might be a cliché that many of the British aristocracy were chinless wonders, but it didn’t make it any less true. His light brown hair, his grey eyes, his square forehead and straight mouth were all Respers features, seen in many of the family portraits. The men were attractive in a traditionally manly way, but the solid features, wide shoulders and strong jawlines were harder on the women. Respers females tended to be described, charitably, as ‘a little on the masculine side’.
Well, Brianna Jade will definitely raise the Respers aesthetics considerably, Edmund thought, picking up the tie that was draped over his valet stand and placing it around his upturned shirt collar. He had never really believed that women as beautiful as her existed outside films and magazines. Or that, even if they did, one of them would conceivably want to marry him. He was the envy of the entire county. Brianna Jade looked like the model for Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, she was the sweetest-natured girl Edmund had ever met, and she was bringing him a dowry that would literally transform Stanclere.
And what did he have to give her in return? A title, a big delapidated house and – he looked at himself again in the mirror as he straightened his tie – an average-looking man who just happened to be an Earl.
He really was the luckiest chap in the world.
Chapter Two
As Edmund St Aubrey contemplated his good luck, Brianna Jade Maloney sat quietly in the corner of one of the tatty chintz sofas in the morning room of Stanclere Hall, waiting for its owner to come with his sure light tread down the creaky central oak staircase and stride across the tatty old carpets in the Great Hall. Tamra, Brianna Jade’s mom, said that as soon as Edmund and her daughter were officially engaged, there would be major, major renovations on the Hall, and you’d better believe all the ancient rugs would be the first thing to go, before the moths in them got to her Italian cashmere.
Brianna Jade’s hands were folded in her lap, her expression perfectly composed as she pictured Edmund appearing in the doorway of the morning room, smiling at her with his polite, English-gentleman smile, about to say –
But Brianna Jade made herself stop right there, before she actually heard the words in her head. She wanted them to be lovely and new when Edmund said them to her, to have her own reaction be completely spontaneous. This was a luxury she had barely ever enjoyed in her adult life to date: from the age of fifteen, she had competed in one pageant after another for four straight years, and pageant competitors were programmed like computers. Even though those days were behind her, had ended when Tamra married vast amounts of money in the shape of Ken Maloney, the Fracking King of America, Brianna Jade had still needed to learn how to behave in her new life, to follow another set of rules. She was very much looking forward to a marriage in which her own vast dowry would allow her, hopefully, just to be herself.
It’s the start of a new life now, she thought with great relief. I’m settling down. Finally, she knew where she belonged: in this lovely house in the country with farmland all around it. She had always wanted to live on a farm. And England was so pretty and green, so much prettier than Illinois. Brianna Jade loved it here.
She had totally earned this. All those years of walking onto pageant stages, smiling till her mouth cramped and saying what the judges wanted to hear without any idea of what she actually thought about the questions they were asking. And then, after her mother had married Ken, catapulting them into the lap of luxury, they both swiftly realized that they had to learn how to talk right and know how to act classy enough for Florida high society, which had turned out to be just as exhausting.
Being the Countess of Respers, by contrast, seemed like it would be a walk in the park. The London upper crust had been hugely welcoming to the Fracking Queen and Princess: no one in Britain cared about what kind of an American accent you had. US class distinctions were meaningless over here.
Brianna Jade might not have been the brightest bulb in the chandelier intellectually, but she was richly gifted with common sense. She was perfectly aware that almost everyone in London society had been so very friendly because she and her mother Tamra had swept in on a glittering tide of money, as if their dollars had been golden coins that her mother scattered from her carriage, like she pictured people doing in the olden days. Of course, some of the younger women hadn’t been quite so nice to her, but that was only to be expected. Brianna Jade knew all about mean-girls’ cliques and how they didn’t like a new girl at the best of times, let alone one who was pretty enough to be on the pageant circuit.
And the rich, titled, twenty-something British women, led by some girl called the Honourable Araminta, were complete pushovers compared to the hardcore bitches from back home in Illinois, all scrabbling to win the titles of Kewanee Pork Queen or Watseka Corn Queen. Those were girls who’d rub baby oil into your false lashes so they wouldn’t stick on, doctor your shampoo with Kool-Aid to streak your hair, glue up the nozzle of your hairspray can and refuse to let you use theirs, even push you into a stinging-nettle patch or rub poison ivy into the inside of your dress.
Nope, the Honourable Araminta, aka ‘Minty’, and her girlfriends had no idea how to catfight as dirty as the Kendras, Taylors and Kymbers on the pageant circuit. In the US, Tamra had done plenty of battling for her daughter, but here Brianna Jade was more than equal to the task. What had these Honourables and Ladies ever lacked in their life? Had they ever had to shop at Goodwill or the Salvation Army, make a packet of ready-made grits last a couple of days between two of them, or hitch to school because they had two tyres bald as eagles and no money for gas? No way.
Brianna Jade didn’t understand half of what they said, anyway, because of their sharp clipped accents which made their words like stabby little knives thrown too short to reach the target. And she wouldn’t have answered even if she had, because she’d figured out early on that what drove them really crazy was if she just smiled back at them with her perfect teeth, her best ‘I’m a Christian and I forgive you’ pageant smile. For some reason she couldn’t work out, they hated that smile. They actually recoiled when they saw it, like she had a full water pitcher in her hand and they were the Wicked Witches from every compass point going.
The Honourable Minty and her crew did have one thing in common with the girls back home, though: they were equally wary of Brianna Jade’s mom. Tamra provoked that reaction in women. It wasn’t her fault; her God-given looks meant that she was catnip to every dad, male teacher and, frankly, a lot of those girls’ teenage boyfriends. That had been Tamra’s ultimate threat to the really bad mean girls, that she’d flirt with their boyfriends and turn their heads around so they literally couldn’t even see their girlfriends any more, they were too dazzled by Tamra Krantz.
Because Tamra was the ultimate MILF. She’d had her only daughter at sixteen: when, at fifteen years old, Brianna Jade won the title of Pork Queen of Kewanee (a fact Tamra never wanted mentioned in later life), Tamra was thirty-one and looked twenty-four. She was the perfected version of what Brianna Jade would hopefully become, with her thick mane of strawberry-blonde hair, her big luminous eyes, her skin lightly tanned and so smooth that even the haters couldn’t help calling her ‘Barbie’ as a grudging compliment.
Brianna Jade regularly heard girls at school bitching that Tamra had better legs than they did, a flatter stomach and, for a while, bigger boobs: however, on marrying Ken, which took them up in the world like an express penthouse elevator to Classy Town, Tamra had taken a good look around her, realized that D cups didn’t fit into the Armani o
r Carolina Herrera dresses worn to fundraising Florida balls, and had the implants removed. Ken had bitched and moaned about it, but, as always, he went along with what Tamra wanted.
Like we all do, Brianna Jade thought now, smoothing down the pleated silk skirt of her Balenciaga dress with its exquisite chiffon pintucked sleeves. It was totally gorgeous, but she still couldn’t pronounce most designer names right. She suspected Minty of guessing that fact and trying to catch out Brianna Jade by repeatedly asking her who had made her clothes, but Brianna Jade just smiled seraphically in return, flicked her glossy, perfectly blow-dried hair from one shoulder to the other, and said:
‘Oh, I couldn’t tell you. Mom and I have so many pretty things.’
Foiled, Minty had sneered again, tossed her own hair – the British society girls were all proud of their hair, though Brianna Jade’s was lusher than any of theirs – and slinked away. Brianna Jade had heard that Minty had nicknamed her BJ, but that was water off Brianna Jade’s back, rain off her bouncing, lacquered, hairsprayed locks. It sure wasn’t the first time she’d been teased about that. Tamra had apologized years ago for not realizing the consequences of naming her daughter after Brianna Jade’s dead father – Brian Schladdenhouffer, who had done the decent thing and proposed when Tamra got knocked up, only to die in a combine-harvester accident before he could either get married or see his daughter born – and after the stone in the engagement ring, a jade he’d given Tamra till he could afford a Kay’s diamond from the local mall. (‘Every kiss begins with Kay!’)
Tamra had suggested that Brianna Jade change her name: Brianna Jade had promptly burst into tears, said that she wouldn’t dream of it, that her name had not one, but two lovely references to her dad, and that her mom should never raise the idea again. Being called BJ really wasn’t such a big deal, she had insisted bravely. Tamra had burst into tears as well, and they’d hugged and cried for a long time before deciding to hitch into Kewanee and go spend some money they didn’t really have on Bananas Foster ice-cream sundaes at Carvel, their favourite treat.
And look at me now! I’m going to be Brianna Jade, Countess of Respers, with the Honourable Araminta and her friends dancing at my wedding!
An ecstatic smile spread over Brianna Jade’s face at the prospect of their sour expressions as they saw her walking up the aisle of the Respers family chapel in a couture gown, her train a mile long, her diamonds sparkling and her head held high and triumphant. Edmund walked into the morning room to see her big hazel eyes wide, her glossed lips curving ecstatically, her strawberry-blonde hair tumbling around her face, and her cheeks pink with sheer pleasure at her imminent engagement: she looked so stunning that he almost dropped to one knee there and then.
‘You look like a Sienese icon,’ he blurted out, unable to take his eyes off her.
‘I do?’ Brianna Jade directed the full wattage of her smile at him. ‘That’s a good thing, right?’
Brianna Jade was quite unfazed by her lack of cultural knowledge. Rich, upper-crust people didn’t talk about opera or ballet or paintings, not back in Florida and not here in Britain either. When she and Tamra were invited to the Royal Opera House, no one in the private box they sat in would ever say a word about the singing or dancing: they just gossiped about whose husband was looking to upgrade to a trophy wife, or whose wife was taking ‘extra sessions’ with her personal trainer. She’d worked out long ago that, for these people, culture was either an excuse to dress up, go out and spend money, or a stick to beat the peasants with because they didn’t know about . . . well, that Siamese icon thing Edmund had just mentioned.
Her eyes softened even more sweetly as she gazed at him. He’d meant to be nice, and now he was going to explain to her what he’d been talking about. Plus, it was sweet of him to assume that she might know what the Siamese thing was . . .
‘Icons are paintings of saints,’ Edmund said. ‘Mostly done on a gold background, because they were so special – they were supposed to be worshipped. The ones from the Siena School are all pale-skinned like you, with hazel eyes and blonde curls. I’ll find some to show you.’
‘I’d love to see them,’ Brianna Jade said politely.
‘So, um, anyway—’ Edmund had planned out where he thought the proposal should take place – ‘I was wondering if you’d like to go for a stroll with me in the grounds before dinner? The lake always looks lovely at this time of day.’
Brianna Jade was already rising to her feet, which she had sensibly clad in two-inch Lanvin slingbacks with a square heel. She and Tamra had learnt early that British aristocrats thought it was really ‘common’ for women to wear high heels when any kind of walking on lawns was involved: that was for what they called ‘plebs’, which seemed to mean anyone but them. Brianna Jade remembered polo matches where Minty and her crew had audibly mocked young women digging divots in the grass with the heels of their Jimmy Choos. Instead, the posh girls (although Tamra and Brianna Jade avoided saying that word, as posh people loathed it) showed off their skinny bare legs in Le Chameau or Hunter wellies and miniskirts that barely covered their tiny bottoms.
As Edmund held out his hand to her, Brianna Jade noticed his eyes flickering down for a second to assess her footwear, and his almost imperceptible nod of approval that she wasn’t wearing stilettos.
Hey, I may not be Ivy League material, but I’m a quick learner, she thought proudly. I’ll do fine as a Countess. He’ll never have to be embarrassed by me.
‘Shall we?’ he said, the little phrase that posh men used to mean ‘Let’s go’, and he tucked her arm through his so that she was resting on him just a tad. It was very gentlemanly; she loved it. They proceeded out through the French windows, onto the terrace, and down the stone steps to the gravel path that looped scenically around the gardens. They had been designed by someone with the weird name of Capability Brown, who Tamra assured Brianna Jade was like the biggest deal ever in gardening, and they needed a whole lot of maintenance. Edmund had apologized on their first visit because what he called the ‘vistas’ weren’t what they should be; trees and bushes needed to be pruned away so that you could really see the views.
Well, that’s what he’s got me for, isn’t it? she thought now, tripping along happily next to Edmund; after years of stepping elegantly up and down pageant stairs in killer heels, a stroll along a gravel path in two-inch slingbacks was nothing. Gardeners cost money, and that’s what she was bringing to the table. Soon this place would have vistas up the wazoo. Stanclere would be vista heaven. They could invite magazines just to take photos of the vistas . . .
She giggled a little at her own silliness, and Edmund, looking down at her pretty face for a moment, smiled at how charming she was. They rounded some overgrown shrubbery and the lake appeared, a soft green grassy slope dropping away to the oval expanse of water below, which shimmered gently in the light of the afternoon sun even with the green algae at its shoreline.
‘It’s supposed to be much more dramatic a sight,’ Edmund said apologetically. ‘The rhododendrons should really frame the first approach to the lake, and the stand of silver birches has been awfully neglected . . .’
‘It’s a great vista,’ Brianna Jade reassured him, and he burst out laughing.
‘You have truly lovely manners,’ he said, patting her hand.
‘Let’s walk over the bridge,’ she said eagerly, looking at the low pale stone bridge that arched so elegantly over the water. Secretly she was thinking how very romantic it would be to be proposed to there, the sun behind her making her hair glow rosy with its golden light, Edmund on one knee . . .
‘Ah, I’m so sorry,’ Edmund said, grimacing, ‘but the groundskeeper told me this morning that he’s worried about the foundations. It needs shoring up, apparently. He was supposed to put a plank across each side to stop people walking over it, just in case, but he clearly hasn’t got round to it yet. I’ll have to have a word with him tomorrow. Can’t blame him too much though, I suppose – there’s just so much to do around her
e . . .’
I am totally getting that fixed first thing! Brianna Jade thought, staring at the beautiful picture – vista – before her, the white bridge standing out in front of a background of soft greens, a gentle slope rising beyond, planted with foliage in which mauve and white flowers flashed out here and there in the emerald bushes, the pewter lake like the base of a bowl. Now I’m seeing myself in my wedding dress standing there, Edmund beside me, with flowers floating in the lake . . . white roses . . . and white ribbons all wrapped around the bridge, maybe some lavender ones too . . .
‘I thought we might walk up to the gazebo?’ Edmund was saying. He led her up the short stretch of path to the open stone building that looked like a small temple, with pillars in front of lots of statues of Greek gods and goddesses in stone drapery.
‘I love the statues,’ she said enthusiastically. ‘Mom does too.’
Edmund had extracted the Tiffany box and was holding it behind his back now. ‘All from Greece,’ he informed her. ‘An Earl of Respers brought the statuary back after his Grand Tour in the late eighteenth century.’ He coughed. ‘Not that the Greek government knows they’re here. I’m afraid he bribed a lot of people to be able to take them out of the country. We should probably give them back.’
‘Hell, no!’ Brianna Jade shook her head decisively. ‘That was ages ago, and they look great here. Finders keepers. Plus,’ she added, ‘I saw on the news that Greece is totally bankrupt, so they’d just sell them to someone else anyway, and they could never look as nice as they do right here.’
‘I’m very glad you’ve taken that position,’ Edmund said. ‘Because I’m hoping, more than I can say, that you will agree to, um, take up a permanent position—’
Bad Brides Page 2