“Oh, Tripp!” she wailed, reaching for the tissues again. “If I only thought you would be happy....”
“I will.” He patted Bridget’s knee fondly, and she closed her eyes, asking God to forgive her for this travesty. “We both will. Won’t we, honey?”
She swallowed. “Of course, um, honey,” she managed.
Tripp had never called anyone “honey” in his life. Surely Kitty Belle would notice how phony it sounded. Surely she would call the betrothal police and have them both carted away for impersonating an engaged couple.
“I’m so ill,” Kitty Belle whimpered. She leaned back into the sofa, took several deep breaths and mopped her damp brow. “I simply don’t have the will to fight you, Tripp. I just want to be sure that you’re happy before I have to leave you.”
She did look pale and tired, and Bridget was suddenly struck with a wave of empathy. She was almost sorry for all the years she’d disliked Tripp’s mother. Even if the woman was a royal pain, Bridget would never have wished illness on her.
“Please don’t worry, Mrs. Ashby. I love Tripp with all my heart,” she said in all honesty. “We’ve known each other for so many years that there certainly won’t be any surprises between the two of us. And I promise you, he’ll be very safe with me.”
Safe? She wasn’t even sure she was safe with herself these days.
“All right,” her prospective mother-in-law said, sighing. “I will accept her as your wife, Tripp. If I must.” She shook her head, which, for the first time in Bridget’s memory, did not have a perfect coiffure. As a matter of fact, there were several moist tendrils escaping the swept-back sides. More evidence of her illness, Bridget supposed. Kitty Belle prided herself on looking just so, no matter what was going on—appearance being everything in her real world—and it must really be torture for her to lose her fierce grip on her hairdo. “I still feel she isn’t the most suitable choice, to be the wife of an Ashby, after all. The disparity in your backgrounds and in your breeding... Well, I can’t pretend to be satisfied. But better her than no one, I suppose.”
“What a ringing endorsement,” Bridget murmured.
Tripp rose from the sofa, looming over his small mother. “I am trying to do the best I can for you, Mother. But that is the last time I ever want to hear anything about anybody’s breeding, do you hear? I want nothing disparaging about Bridget coming from your lips. Ever.”
He was very cold, and quite furious. Bridget sat up straighter. There was something to be said for hearing a man defend her so aggressively. She kind of liked the idea that Tripp would spring to her defense.
“I love Bridget,” he continued. “I respect her. I love you, too, Mother, but I will not accept your belittling comments about the woman I intend to marry.”
“Why couldn’t you have liked one of the others?” Kitty Belle grumbled. “Why not the Chipton girl, or Nina Sherrard? Both lovely, smart, rich girls. They would’ve been such an asset to the Ashby family.”
Tripp’s blue eyes were steely, unmoved. “I’m not looking to pad the family assets. I’m looking for someone I get along with. No more of this, Mother.”
“All right, all right.” Kitty Belle waved them away. “I’m feeling unwell, and I think we’ve discussed this quite enough for one night. I said you had my approval. Isn’t that enough?”
Tripp nodded, and Bridget tried to find a smile. Step one of the Great Fake Engagement Plot was apparently complete.
“I’d like to go back to my hotel now,” Kitty Belle said in a small, quavery voice. “Will you call Powell in from my car and tell him I’m ready to leave, please?”
“You’re staying at a hotel? But there’s plenty of room here, Mother,” Tripp offered.
Please let her turn him down, Bridget silently prayed. The idea of sharing a roof with Kitty Belle’s prying, disapproving eyes was more than she could handle.
“Oh, heavens, no,” Kitty Belle returned, and Bridget allowed herself a sigh of relief. “I’ve never slept in a cabin in my life and I don’t intend to now. I’m sure I’ll be much more comfortable in a hotel. Also more privacy, of course. I find it difficult to keep up appearances as I used to.”
“If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure. Leave me now, will you? Powell will see me out.”
But as Tripp and Bridget made their exit from the living room, hand in hand, still hiding behind their young-couple-in-love guise, his mother took a parting shot. She muttered it under her breath, but Bridget heard it plainly, and she was pretty sure Tripp did, too.
“There was nothing wrong with any of those women, except that I approved of them. Ever since he was a little boy, he’s always chosen whatever it was I didn’t want him to have.”
Bridget winced. Even though she hated buying into anything Kitty Belle said, she detected the ring of truth this time. No matter what he’d told her, Tripp wanted her as his partner in this fake engagement for one reason only—because choosing her would annoy his mother. Who better to pick than the one woman he already knew his mother despised?
She was being used as a weapon in his lifelong battle with Kitty Belle.
She felt like slapping him. She felt like running from the damned Studs cabin and never speaking to Tripp again.
How many times had she sworn him off? And how many times had she found herself right back at his side?
“I think I need therapy,” she whispered.
“You?” Tripp laughed. “You’re the sanest woman I know.”
Coming from him, it wasn’t all that comforting a thought.
* * *
“PLANS MUST BE MADE,” Kitty Belle announced over the breakfast table.
Although there were still traces of her illness in her less-than-flawless hair and ashen coloring, she had clearly made an effort to get herself together this morning. As she held court in her palatial suite at Harrah’s Lake Tahoe, she was rather heavily made up, and exquisitely dressed.
Tripp supposed she was trying to hide her pallor under all the makeup, although it didn’t really work. Poor Kitty Belle. As vain as she was, a devastating illness really hit her where she lived.
“Plans?” Tripp set his fork down next to the Belgian waffles he was toying with. He hated fancy breakfast food, but his mother had taken the liberty of ordering before he and Bridget arrived. Waffles for everyone. Neither he nor Bridgie had taken more than a bite. Just one more thing they had in common, he supposed. “What kind of plans?”
“Your wedding plans, of course.”
“Surely we have time for that later.”
“Time, my dear child, is the one thing I do not have.” His mother pulled two plane tickets out of a folder and slapped them down on the table next to the silver coffeepot. “We’ll need to get you both back to Chicago right away. A romantic proposal out of town is one thing, but we must do the formal announcement at home.”
“Formal announcement?” Bridgie’s face took on a pinched look.
“Of course. When an Ashby marries, all the right people want to know.” Frowning, Kitty Belle flipped open a small leather notebook. “Let’s see. We’ll need photos for the Tribune and perhaps Town and Country. Of course, the Ashbyville Gazette will want to do a bigger write-up than the others. It’s been years since the last Ashby wedding, and we’re practically royalty in that town. They’ll want to make a big splash, I’m sure.”
“Isn’t this moving a little quickly?” he asked.
“Not at all. There’s not a moment to lose.”
Bridget began to fidget. “Tripp, may I speak to you for a moment, please?” She slipped away from the table, walking briskly over to the other side of the suite.
He saw the panic in her eyes, and he knew he was going to have to do some damage control. Joining her, approximately a football field away from the breakfast table, he said, “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.”
“But all these announcements? What about Jay? What about the people at my firm? If they see announcements—”
“They won’t. I promise.”
“Tripp, we have to tell her the truth now. If she gets the gossip mills going, or worse yet, starts sending out press releases, it will be too late.”
“Don’t worry.” He glanced over at his mother, busily making notes while she waited for them, and then back at Bridgie. With a confidence he wasn’t sure he felt, he said, “I can handle my mother.”
“Oh, right,” Bridgie shot back in a heated whisper. “That’s why you’re engaged at the moment, right?”
“I can handle her,” he repeated steadily. “I promise you there won’t be any wedding announcements in the paper, and the only people who will know are a small circle of Mother’s best pals. Philpott doesn’t know any of them and they don’t know him. So don’t worry, okay?”
“But how—”
“I’ll just tell her that we’re keeping a low profile on this, that we’re both private people, so we’re going to have a small, quiet wedding, and all this fuss isn’t appropriate. That sounds good, doesn’t it?”
“It sounds good,” Bridget muttered, “but I don’t believe for one minute it will ever work.”
“Do you two have any thoughts about where to have the engagement party?” Kitty Belle called out. She fluttered her lashes at them. “Who’s going to stand up for you, dear? I’m thinking, oh, ten or twelve bridesmaids. Be sure to choose someone for your maid of honor whose family home has a ballroom. It will make things so much easier if we can count on the maid of honor for one of the parties.”
“A ballroom?” Bridget echoed in evident horror. “Ten or twelve bridesmaids?”
“Hold on,” Tripp started, but his mother was already rolling right along.
“And of course you’ll use Henri. He’s catered all my affairs for years. He’s expensive, but worth every penny.”
“A caterer?” Her fingers dug into Tripp’s arm. “We have to call it off,” she whispered anxiously. “Your mother is going to have us contracted for services to most of greater Chicagoland before we turn around. And no matter whether we have a wedding or not, we’ll still have to pay for all that stuff!”
“Mother, we need to discuss this—” he began.
“I think green would be nice for the color scheme,” Kitty Belle mused. “Those miniature topiary trees, festooned with pink roses, are lovely. Then a soft green for the bridesmaids, with lots of green and white and just a hint of pink in the ballroom. Don’t you just love green, Bridget?”
Kitty Belle beamed, while Bridgie began to make little choking noises at the back of her throat.
His so-called engagement was less than twenty-four hours old, and already Tripp was caught between a rock and a hard place.
Chapter Seven
“Hellooooo,” Kitty Belle called, trailing her mink and her chauffeur behind her. “Tripp, dear, where are you?”
Home sweet home. He hadn’t actually lived in the big house in Ashbyville since high school, but there was something about the lemony smell of its polished wood floors, the deep bong of the grandfather clock in the downstairs hall, the long, tempting curve of the front stairway banister, that still spelled home to him.
Feeling a tad cynical, he idled in the front hall, his hands in his pockets, as he waited to greet his mother. Just like old times. He might’ve been in high school again, waiting for Mom to get back from her garden club, waiting for Dad to come home after a long day trying to make something out of nothing at the Ashby Carriage Company.
“There you are, darling. It’s so lovely to have you at home, even if it’s only for a few days.” She stretched way up to kiss him on the cheek, and then she wafted into the drawing room, leaving behind a trail of expensive perfume.
He had given up and closed his town house, as well as his business, for the duration of his “engagement.” Things hadn’t been going all that well anyway—he never had been much of a salesman—and trying to keep Kitty Belle from driving Bridgie crazy was a full-time job. This way, moving back to the house in Ashbyville, he could take the brunt of the wedding plans himself, as well as spend some time with his mother.
Supposedly. So far, he’d seen her for a total of about ten minutes, and they’d spent the whole time wrangling over wedding plans. He’d never seen Kitty Belle so animated, so excited. She still tired easily, but while she was up, she was very up.
Once she found out what Kitty Belle was up to, Bridgie was going to be pretty excited herself. So excited she’d blow a gasket.
He followed his mother into the drawing room, where she was stripping off her gloves and poking into her purse. “Voilà!” she said brightly. “My list.”
“What list is it this time?” he asked, with a sense of foreboding. He’d already had to dissuade her from sending out engraved engagement announcements to three hundred of her closest friends, and from sending his picture to the society columns of every major newspaper in the country.
“Floral designers, caterers, couturiers,” she said, ticking them off on her fingers. “I’m only considering the absolute best of the best. I’m going to make it all spectacular. For you, darling.”
“But I don’t want ‘spectacular.’”
She dismissed him with a wave of one hand. “I know you want the wedding to be very small and private. I understand that your fiancée is not wealthy, and isn’t able to afford anything lavish.”
That was the cover story so far. “Exactly.”
“You said hands-off, and hands-off it shall be. For the wedding itself. But the engagement party is something I can do,” she said sweetly. “I’m having Mariata Francatta design Bridget’s dress. Something simple. I’m thinking ivory or maybe navy blue slipper satin, cut on the bias. Navy has really become the evening color.”
He had no idea what any of that meant, but he knew Bridgie wasn’t going to like it.
“Mother, just this morning, you promised you would not be broadcasting this wedding to the seven-state area. We came up with an acceptable list of the people you were going to tell, and that was it. Remember?”
“Well, yes. So?”
“So having an elaborate engagement party is going to be a major clue that there’s a wedding going on, don’t you think?”
“I want to have this party,” she said stubbornly. “What’s the point of being engaged if you can’t tell anybody?”
“We’ve already been through this,” he argued. “Bridget wants it all kept private. Besides, Mother, I don’t think you should be spending all your money on things like this. Your medical care has to be expensive, and we don’t need—or want—that kind of party.”
Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t have brought up her financial situation. He knew she was very sensitive about the fact that she felt obligated to keep up appearances, while she had precious little funds to do it with.
The once-famous Ashby Carriage Company had creaked to a near-standstill a long time ago, eking out just enough with its line of bicycles to keep Kitty Belle supplied with the bare necessities of a fashionable life. Certainly not enough for the kind of fabulous party she was planning.
“Tripp, you know I never discuss anything as vulgar as money with you.” She gave him a reproving glance. “But I do need to speak with you about a few other things. Please sit down for a moment, will you?”
Making a mental note not to forget to quench her party-giving spirit before their conversation was over, Tripp stretched out in a chintz chair. “Okay. What’s up?”
“It’s you and Bridget, dear.”
He waited for the other shoe to drop. “What about us?”
“You just don’t seem all that enamored of each other.”
“Mother—” he sighed “—we’ve been through all this—”
“No,” she said pointedly, “we haven’t.”
“If you’re going to disparage Bridgie again—”
“But I’m not,” she swore. “I’ve given that up completely. You were very forceful on that issue and I told you I would accept her gracefully.”
“So what’s the problem now?”
With a very motherly tone, something that was new to Kitty Belle, she informed him, “This marriage is never going to work when you two show such a lack of amorousness with each other.”
“Amorousness?” What the hell did that mean?
“Why, you’ve never even kissed her as far as I can tell.”
This was downright embarrassing. He couldn’t believe his mother was angling for more public displays of affection. That wasn’t her sort of thing at all.
“Trust me,” he muttered, “we’ve kissed.”
“Well, you ought to do it more often.”
“Mother, please.”
“You are a very virile young man.”
He groaned out loud. The word virile and his mother didn’t belong in the same hemisphere, let alone the same room.
“And I want grandchildren!” she snapped. “That’s very important. The Ashby name must go on. But how are you going to beget sons if you never touch each other?”
“We touch each other, just...not around you,” he finished lamely.
“I saw you at the airport, when we flew back from Tahoe,” Kitty Belle put in. “You stuck her in a cab with her luggage and off she went. No kiss, no tender goodbye. I was appalled.”
“We were tired. It was late.”
“Hmph. Why, anyone would think you weren’t in love at all, but merely pretending.”
He sat up straighter. “That’s crazy.”
“Well, this love affair of yours certainly popped up out of nowhere, didn’t it?” Kitty Belle’s gaze was shrewd. “I would hate to think you were trying to fool me. It would be a terrible thing to lie to a dying woman, Thomas Michael Trippett Ashby.”
“Don’t call yourself that,” he mumbled.
“Well, I am dying, and we might as well admit it.”
“But I’m not lying to you.” He stood and shoved his hands in his pockets. “I wouldn’t do that. Bridget and I are a perfectly normal couple, in every way. Including...well, that way.”
“I certainly hope so. But if that’s true, this is the most peculiar love match I’ve ever seen,” she huffed. “You’re here in Ashbyville, and your bride-to-be is in the city, fifty miles away.”
Once Upon a Honeymoon (Harlequin American Romance) Page 9