A Lady's Perfect Match: A Historical Regency Romance Book

by Bridget Barton

  Hannah put her hand up, pointing at Emelia. The finger was shaking with her fury. "You made me feel so foolish, but more than that you ruined my trust."

  "You don't understand," Emelia said stiffly. "Not any of it. Hannah, that little pact that you're making so much of was the sort of light-hearted, foolish thing that Brody and I have joked about since we were children. It meant nothing, not to me and not to him."

  "That's just it." Hannah sighed, all the anger rushing out of her body. Suddenly she looked very small and tired and shy, more like the old Hannah than the sharp-tongued wild woman who'd inhabited her body the last few days. "It's not a joke to me. It never was."

  She turned to go, but Emelia stopped her, putting a hand on her arm. "Hannah, no. Hear me out. I should have told you the truth. I'm sorry I didn't. It actually crossed my mind when you were telling me all about your crush on Brody, but I thought it would confuse the situation even more and give you the wrong idea, so I foolishly kept it to myself. I'm very sorry about that."

  Hannah stared back at her with a stoic expression on her face. Emelia swallowed hard.

  "But you're being unkind and unfair. This is not like you. Making a scene at a public gathering; holding me at arm's length over the slightest of transgressions—giving over to the bitterness in your own heart. You're better than this."

  Hannah's face softened ever so slightly, but then she turned and disappeared out the front of the bookstore, the conversation once again sealed.

  ***

  "Emelia, darling."

  Her father's voice stopped her as she slipped into the house later that evening. She'd ridden all day over the countryside, trying to sort out the confusion that seemed to overwhelm her from all sides, but she'd found no answers. She had tried not to look at the home of the Shaws as she made her way home; there were too many memories there.

  Now, slipping upstairs, she'd miscalculated and chosen to walk by the study door, where her father had apparently been waiting.

  "Come in, my daughter."

  She slipped inside, her slippers whisper soft against the carpeting. "I can't stay long, Father," she said quickly, "I'm weary and wish to go to bed."

  "Yes, that's what your sister said too." He was puffing on a pipe, a little habit that Emelia's mother had always detested. When she was alive, he had never done it but had complained about it interminably. After she died, he seemed to have lost the taste for it entirely. Now, the old familiar sight of him puffing away in abstract contemplation warmed Emelia. "I know that it's none of my business to referee between sisterly quarrels," he went on, motioning her further into the room, "but I wish to remind you of a little story from when you were both children."

  Emelia tried to keep her voice light. "I'm sorry, Father, but I don't know that I have the energy for a parable this evening. I want to mend things with Hannah. I really do. But she is unwilling to see past the supposed wrong that believes I levied against her. How am I to move forward if she will not also?"

  "That is just the story," he said. "When you were both very young—you could scarcely have been five years of age—she stole your doll and buried it outside in the garden. You wanted it back, desperately, and you vacillated between imploring for its return and threatening that she tell you where it was hidden or else."

  "Yes, I remember." Emelia had tucked the memory somewhere far away, but there it returned, the twinge of annoyance accompanying it. "It was inexplicable." Then, after a musing pause. "I don't think she actually ever gave me the location of the doll."

  "No," he said thoughtfully. "You never found it. Don't you think it is interesting that she didn't take the doll for herself, but she wanted to take it away from you? Later she confessed to me that she just wanted to have you all to yourself, and you'd been insisting on quiet play time with the doll instead of her. I of course scolded her thieving behaviour, but I also told her that even if you never found the doll you wouldn't harbor bitterness forever. You're sisters, and you love each other. Nothing can come between you." He sighed. "Hannah's had to share you with Brody and Brody with you for a long time. Whatever the truth of your feelings for the boy, she's had to imagine the worst."

  Emelia looked at her father in silence. "You think she was justified in stealing my doll?"

  "I think it doesn't matter where the doll's hidden. One day you'll wake up and realise you didn't need it at all, but your sister, on the other hand, is indispensable."

  Chapter 34

  Brody frowned when he passed Montgomery's room and saw his older brother already laying out clothes on his bed for the valet to pack.

  "You are really going," he said stiffly.

  "Within the next few days," Montgomery said. "Perhaps tomorrow."

  Brody sighed. "There's a need for you here at the local clinic, you know. And there are friends—a real community. Why won't you—"

  "There's nothing for me here," Montgomery answered stiffly.

  "I'm going over to the Wells' now," Brody said. "I'm going to spend some time with the sisters this afternoon. Perhaps you would take care to join me?"

  "No, I don't think there's any need."

  Brody sighed inwardly. Montgomery had been like this since Hannah's outburst at the dinner party. Brody couldn't help wondering if Montgomery's gloom had something to do with the assumptions all the county had made about Emelia and Brody. He wanted to explain the truth, but every time he did Montgomery made some excuse and slipped away. Brody was tired of trying.

  ***

  At the Shaws, he walked in as he always did, in a cloud of charm and light-hearted attitude. Brody could tell he was forcing it, but he hoped that Emelia and Hannah would not see through him. It was the first time he'd seen either of the girls since Hannah's outburst. He waited in the parlour for them to come down, hoping against hope that things would be as they'd always been. They were very much not. Emelia came to the room, but when she stepped inside she looked strained and stiff. She was dressed in a plain blue gown and had her hair simple and straight again.

  "Brody. I wondered when we'd see you again."

  He looked behind her. "Hannah?"

  She shook her head.

  "Are things still bad between you?" he asked, coming forward and setting his hat upon the table. "I'm dearly sorry to hear it. I never wanted to come between you both, even if it was over that silly marriage pact."

  "That's the thing," she said quietly. "It wasn't so silly to Hannah. I should have told her. I should have never encouraged you—especially now that I know you're in love with another. Let us hope she is more forgiving than my sister."

  Brody hoped his face was impassive at that last comment. He shifted a moment and then took a seat when Emelia pointed one out to him.

  "How is your brother?" she asked, ringing for tea. Brody wondered if it was his imagination, or if he detected a note of sadness in her voice.

  "He's leaving for London, I don't know if you heard."

  "Yes, he mentioned it at our last meeting."

  This was news to Brody. He hadn't been aware that the two were in contact at all following the scandalous party, much less the kind of contact where Montgomery might be convinced to reveal such personal information to Emelia.

  "Well, then. You might be able to tell me why it is that he chose to focus on the dull passing pleasures of packing rather than come here and see you."

  There it was: undeniably. Emelia's face blanched ever so slightly with a look of pain. Ah. So Brody hadn't imagined it all after all. He leaned forward ever so slightly, holding his longest friend and confidant's gaze.

  "Come now, Emelia, you never were a very good liar."

  "I don't know what you mean," she said through cold lips.

  "You love him. My brother, I mean."

  "You've accused me of this before. Don't you remember how that ended?"

  "Yes, I do remember how that ended, and it wasn't with a denial." Brody shrugged. "We said we would be honest with each other from here on out, and I have seen a bou
ntiful array of signs that point to a surprising, although not altogether unlikely, union between you and my brother."

  She looked askance, but he could see the same acknowledgement in her eyes that he had seen there the last time they discussed Montgomery. "I wouldn't say 'union’," she said at last.

  "Then what would you say?"

  "I would say that you're right; that I love him. I have loved him for some time, I think, although I only recently admitted it to myself." She moved to a chair by the window and sat down, curling her knees up to her chin as though she were a little girl again dreaming out the casement. "Are you happy? Now that you've dragged it out of me at last?"

  Brody looked at Emelia for a long moment in silence. He wasn't happy, exactly, but he was satisfied to hear the truth.

  "I am glad to hear you're being honest with yourself."

  "You must think me so foolish." She dropped her head against her knees and put her hands up like blinders on either side of her face. It had been a long time since Brody had seen her like this, blocking out the world's troubles physically with her body. His heart went out to her.

  "Why would I think you were foolish?"

  "Because you know your brother better than anyone does, and surely you can see what I can—that he doesn't return my feelings. I thought he did…once…but I was wrong."

  Brody wasn't so certain of Montgomery's ambivalence, but he also knew better than to get Emelia's hopes up without confirmation from his stalwart older brother. Instead, he hedged her question with a less direct answer.

  "You're not foolish for loving someone, even if you are sure they can't return your affections." He thought of Hannah. Beautiful, pale little Hannah with her flashing eyes at his party—her fists clenched at her sides and her words slicing through the air like knives. "Sometimes hearts just don't line up like you want them too."

  Emelia looked up at him soberly. "I've never felt like this before, Brody. I don't know what to do with these emotions when he leaves."

  Brody sighed and came to join her on the window seat, putting his own back against the window sash and pulling one leg up while let the other fall to the ground.

  "I know it's selfish to always bring the conversation back to me, but I can say that I know in part how you feel. At least your lost love is going away and taking his daily presence from your life. Mine will stay here, close at hand, and as each day passes not in her company I will feel the strain of her lost love."

  Emelia frowned. "The woman you like—she's not from London? I thought on your last visit…"

  "No, she's from right here in the valley."

  Brody looked outside at the garden. The sunshine had come out over the fields and was dappling the hillsides around the shade of a few sparse clouds. It was beautiful; so serene and familiar, and yet he felt he was a stranger in the sphere.

  Everything that had made him feel at home as of late—Hannah and her laughter and the hope of something more—was fading away. All the drama and confusion between the Wells sisters and the Shaw brothers had twisted the foursome off their mark, somehow. He wasn't sure how to get back on it again.

  Emelia tipped her head up from her knees and over against the window. She looked tired, but a light of mischief sparkled in her dark eyes.

  "You pulled it out of me," she said, "the truth about Montgomery. I think the least you can do is give me the name of this elusive girl in the valley."

  Brody looked back at her and knew the truth. "I think you already know."

  "I've suspected for some time, yes, but I'd like to hear you say it."

  Brody smiled. "Alright then, Emelia. I love your sister. I have been fascinated with her since the night of my ball, and now all our interactions in retrospect feel even sweeter. She's so tender and kind and compassionate—" Brody paused, seeing Emelia's eyebrows raised, "—except, of course, when she's ripping you and I a new one in a public place. Although I think we have our own behaviour to blame for her outburst. I had hoped, when she seemed so perturbed, that she had feelings for me too. I sent her a few letters asking to meet, but she hasn't responded to any of them. I guess I was mistaken."

  "You do not well understand the paths of the human heart," Emelia said softly.

  "What do you mean?"

  "She means that you assume disinterest from actions that in fact show the most painfully acute interest," came a soft voice from the doorway. Brody turned and saw Hannah standing there, one hand on the handle of the door; dressed in a cream gown with a bright blue shawl hanging around her shoulders and nearly touching the ground. Her eyes were fixed on him. "My sister knows me better than anyone else."

  Brody could feel Emelia's interest in the scene that was unfolding, but he couldn't bring himself to pull his eyes away from Hannah.

  "What did you overhear?" he asked softly.

  "Here's the thing, Brody," she said, walking into the room on slipper-ed feet. "I've always had a bad habit of listening at doors, ever since we were children. I especially engaged in this particular skill when you were visiting Emelia. I thought it was just childish folly worthy of a brief scolding and nothing more, but as I grew older I began to admit to myself just why it was that I found myself so interested in your conversations."

  Brody stood at last, a little late for propriety's sake, but not too late for Hannah, who had crossed the room and was now standing only an arm's length away. She kept talking, her voice low, her eyes fastened on his.

  "You say that you love me, and that you've known since the night of the ball. I say that I've loved you since before I knew what love was, and if there's any chance in the world that we might spend eternity sharing that love, I want to be bold for once in my life and tell you I'm ready to take that chance."

  Brody stepped forward, feeling the soft silk of her sleeves under his touch; looking down into her bright eyes. "You will do it, then?" he asked, surprised to hear his own voice breaking with emotion. He had known that he wanted her, but here and now, feeling her so near and seeing the hope in her eyes, he knew it with a certainty. "You will marry me?"

  She nodded, and a sheen of tears came into her eyes. "I never imagined I could feel this happy; I certainly never imagined I would be the Wells sister that ended up with Brody Shaw." Then, as though suddenly coming to herself, she dashed the tears away and looked in earnest towards Emelia, who was still sitting perched in the window seat. "Emelia."

  Emelia was on guard, Brody could see as much, but she released her knees and stood quietly in front of her little sister. Hannah went to her then, throwing her arms around Emelia in a paroxysm of embrace and tears, like they were little girls again. "I'm so sorry, Em," she sobbed into her sister's neck. "I was so angry at you, and I didn't understand. I thought to the bitter end that you and Brody had secret feelings for one another, and I couldn't get over my own wounded pride to make up with you."

  Emelia stood frozen for a moment, and then slowly; gently, her arms reached out and folded her sister in close. "I forgive you, of course I forgive you—if you can only forgive Brody and I for our foolish little pact and our lack of maturity to tell you and Montgomery about it sooner."

  Hannah nodded, drawing back and kissing her sister's cheeks lightly. "Can you believe it's all worked out in the end? When I first talked to you about Brody, I thought there was no chance at all."

  Brody reached out and took Hannah back under his arm, loving the way she leaned against him with confidence and that shining look in her eyes. Then he looked up at met Emelia's gase. She was smiling, and he could see that the weight of a broken sister relationship had fallen at last form her shoulders, but deep in her eyes was that same sadness he'd seen earlier.