Bridal Favors

by Connie Brockway

  “Anything! What?”

  “I’ll be at the abbey.”

  Evelyn face fell. “I can’t ask Mrs. Vandervoort to invite a stranger to her wedding!”

  “Cheer up, Evie.” He chucked her under the chin, amazing her. No one chucked young ladies under their chins. And most certainly not her chin.

  “I shouldn’t care to be invited,” he said. “Exceptionally dull affairs, weddings. Can’t see why anyone who can possibly avoid them doesn’t. No. I’m simply going to be at the abbey. Watching the migration of the,” he glanced at her, “the Bubo Formosa Plurimus.” He hesitated and added, “Minor.”

  “Bubo what?” Evelyn asked. It sounded like Latin and the most Latin she knew was amo, amas, amat.

  He pulled a professorial face. “You don’t know the Bubo Formosa Plurimus, Minor? Well, I can’t say that I’m surprised. It’s a very rare, exceptional little bird that I had the honor and great privilege of discovering when it flew into my window.”

  “You’re an ornithologist?” Evelyn blurted out.

  “An ardent enthusiast,” he said modestly. “Though I do claim some small expertise and in some circles might be regarded as an authority.” He turned his hand over and examined his nails.

  Evelyn studied him suspiciously. It never occurred to her that a masher might have other activities besides, well, mashing. But, of course, there was nothing to say they couldn’t have outside interests. Well, well, one learned something every day.

  “So you see,” he met her eye, “I’m afraid I must insist.”

  Evelyn wavered. If nothing else, he was discreet—as proved by the absolute silence surrounding his affair with Mrs. Underhill. And having him on the premises might prove a spot of good luck, say, if some problem with the plumbing should arise. On the other hand, there would be a score of lovely, sophisticated women at the party, and a bunch of birds couldn’t hold his attention indefinitely.

  “Mr. Powell. Can you promise not to—” She paused. How did one put this delicately?

  “I assure you, I won’t be the least bit underfoot.”

  She fidgeted. “That’s not exactly what I meant. You mustn’t . . .”

  “Mustn’t what?”

  She took a deep breath. “You mustn’t embark on any relationships during my tenancy.”

  He regarded her blankly. She’d been too subtle.

  “I mean you mustn’t use the abbey for any untoward purposes during the tenure of our contract.”

  He looked completely mystified. “Pardon me?”

  Gads! She stared at him in embarrassment, utterly flustered. “Tryst, rendezvous, criminal converse, liaison! Whatever you call it—don’t have one while I’m at North Cross Abbey!” she blurted out. “I mean while Mrs. Vandervoort is there. I mean either of us!”

  She’d startled him. His eyes widened and his body stiffened. Then, amazingly, he flushed. But that didn’t stop the lupine smile from curving his sensuous mouth, or the glint of unholy amusement that brightened his blue-green eyes.

  “Well, that rather takes the fun out of things, doesn’t it?” he asked.

  She felt an answering blush sweep up her throat. “You must promise.”

  He regarded her with mock solemnity. “I swear. Besides, I am quite reformed. The only female I find fascinating these days is my little Bubo.”

  She couldn’t explain why his words should give her any pleasure, but they did. If he really had reformed . . . She snatched her wayward thoughts from their present course. If he’d reformed that only meant one less possible thing about which to worry.

  “Then we have a deal?”

  “We do.”

  She quite liked Justin Powell at that moment. Very much, in fact. Which surprised her. She normally didn’t care for rakish sorts. But then, he didn’t seem all that rakish. He smiled too often, for one thing, and he didn’t seem to smolder with anger or cynicism or any other dark, subterranean passions that the penny dreadfuls assured her women found irresistible.

  In fact, he seemed arrestingly open. He reminded her more of Verity’s artless, self-assured son, Stanley, than of Lord Byron.

  But, she thought, her mood darkening, maybe he simply didn’t want to waste a perfectly good smolder on her. Maybe he saved his smoldering for sophisticated ladies. Married ladies. Beautiful ladies.

  She found the thought unaccountably disheartening, and was therefore surprised when his hand engulfed hers. Immediately, she became attuned to every aspect of him: the crisp brilliance of his rolled-up starched shirtsleeves in contrast to the tanned skin

  of his forearms; the place where his razor had rasped the side of his throat; the noble dimensions of his nose; the firm curve of his lip; the slight cleft in his chin.

  And he was large. Much larger than she. In a more forceful man, such height might even be daunting.

  “Partners, then,” he said. She could not read his expression. His hand tightened, and she felt the tentative stirrings of—

  “Mr. Powell! Sir!” A thin, dapper, middle-aged man in pinstriped trousers and a black cutaway coat burst through the swinging kitchen door. “Someone has smashed—”

  The man pulled up short. Stared. Hissed. “You!” He took a step forward. Evelyn shrank back in her chair. Justin released her hand and turned to face the furious butler.

  “Beverly,” Justin greeted him somberly. “Miss Whyte says you’ve been putting about the rumor that I’m not here. Is this true?”

  Beverly’s skin turned magenta; even his scalp beneath his formidable comb-over looked purple. “Thz mung yadee hazben mos perthitint.”

  “Are those supposed to be words you’re spitting between your teeth, Beverly, you troublemaker?” Justin asked casually. “Because if they are, I’m afraid you’ll have to go a sight better at pronunciation. I swear I didn’t make out one single clear syllable. Did you, Evie?” He looked at her inquiringly.

  Evie, wide-eyed at the spectacle of Beverly trying to regain his composure, shook her head mutely.

  Justin turned his hand in her direction and smiled triumphantly at the butler. “See, Beverly? It isn’t just me who finds your mumblings incomprehensible. Now, have you or have you not been telling folks that I’m not here?”

  Beverly shut his eyes. Took a deep breath through pinched, narrow nostrils. Released his breath in one long exhalation. Opened his eyes.

  “Yes, sir. I am afraid I have. Sir.”

  “Ah!” Justin said happily, rubbing his palms together and looking at Evelyn. “Now we’re getting somewhere. And why is that, Beverly?”

  Beverly looked determinedly at a point above Evelyn’s head. “Whim, sir,” he clipped out.

  One side of Justin’s mouth twitched irrepressibly before he looked back at Evelyn. “Told you he was a malicious dog, didn’t I?”

  He returned his attention to the butler. “Well, you must stop these pranks, Beverly. It just won’t do, having people turned away from the front door and forced to break in through rear windows. Why, poor Evie here suffered a nasty gash because of your bit of tomfoolery—”

  “It really isn’t all that bad,” Eve cut in timidly. “I can’t even feel the sting anymore.”

  Justin smiled at her kindly before turning a scowl on Beverly. Evelyn almost felt sorry for the poor man, and had it not been for the metaphorical daggers he was hurling at her, she would have.

  “You are very lucky Miss Evie is kindhearted, Beverly,” Justin said. “We shall let it pass this time. But no more of your loathsome pranks in the future. Do we understand each other?”

  “Quite well, sir.”

  “Good. Then you may go about your usual business. Oh! Drat. Nearly forgot. You may not go about your usual business—which is undoubtedly a good thing, you hooligan—you must make ready for us to go to North Cross Abbey.”

  This won a startled glance from the butler. “North Cross Abbey, sir?”

  Justin sighed. “Yes, yes. And why should you be regarding me as though I’d sprouted horns and a tail? Don’t w
e go to North Cross Abbey every year?”

  “Yes, sir. I forgot. Sir.”

  “We’ll be going a bit earlier is all. And, Beverly, make sure I have sufficient white shirts and evening attire. We’ll be having Knickerbockers at dinners. As well as Miss Evie.”

  By now, the butler had completely regained his aplomb. He replied in perfectly neutral tones, “Knickerbockers. Very well, sir. Will that be all?”

  “Yes. I think so.”

  “Very good, sir.” Beverly bowed and took his leave. Justin and Evelyn watched him depart.

  “It’s rather like having Puck as one’s butler,” Justin mused. “I never know what bit of mischief he’ll get up to.”

  “He doesn’t look like an irrepressible prankster. He doesn’t look like he has any sense of humor at all,” Evelyn replied. “He looks like the quintessential butler. Or a particularly severe church deacon.”

  “I know. That’s the devil of it. But you heard him. Brash as brass and twice as bold,” Justin said. “Honestly, I don’t know why I put up with him. Sentiment, I suppose. Beverly’s a legacy from my grandparent.”

  “The one that didn’t like you?”

  “Oh, no,” Justin said in surprise. “The one that did.”

  “Ah,” Evelyn murmured, confounded.

  Justin turned to her. “Now that you’ve accomplished your mission, I suspect you’d like to get home and out of those pants.”

  Evelyn looked down. She’d forgotten about the ruined knickers. “Yes. I suppose.”

  “Have you transportation, or should I have the carriage brought round?”

  “No, thank you. I have already made arrangements. A hansom cab is waiting for me around the corner.”

  “Foolish of me to ask. I should have realized you’d have all contingencies accounted for. Now, then . . .”

  Before she realized what he was about, he’d plucked her from the chair and was heading out the kitchen door toward the front door. He couldn’t . . . He wouldn’t . . . Hadn’t she just been thinking she could trust his discretion?

  “You can’t carry me out your front door in the middle of the day and drop me on the sidewalk!”

  “I wasn’t going to.” He sounded offended. “I was going to carry you to your cab.”

  “That’s worse!” she exclaimed, drawing a confused look from him. Good heavens, one would think he’d no idea how one got rid of a female visitor without being seen!

  “I can’t be seen in public looking like this, Mr. Powell. One leg of my pants is missing—and heaven knows, no respectable woman wears pants to begin with—”

  “You look very nice in them,” he said.

  She perked up at that. She didn’t think they looked so awfully bad, either. “Thank you. They’re ever so comfortable, too, and—” What was she thinking? They were drawing perilously near the front door and he still showed no signs of releasing her. “That’s beside the point! I shouldn’t be wearing them and you know it. Just as you know you can’t be seen carrying me out of your house, and no,” she answered his expression as clearly as if he’d spoken out loud, “it would not be better if you waited and carried me out tonight.”

  “But you’re injured,” Justin retorted, his arms tightening as though someone were about to snatch her from him. Which was a completely thrilling and unrealistic conjecture. “Surely allowances can be made?”

  How was she going to make him understand? Lord, one would mistake his manner for naïveté, if it weren’t so ludicrous. “No, no allowances can be made.”

  His jaw, just level with her eyes, bunched with irritation. “Stupid.”

  Her heart softened. “Please, don’t castigate yourself. I am sure you meant well.”

  “Not me,” he replied with some heat. “Society.”

  She should have known. Casual and relaxed he might be, but there was no lack of pride in Mr. Justin Powell.

  “Be that as it may, ‘rules is rules,’ as my grandfather used to say. Kindly meant as your impulses undoubtedly are, you will be doing me a great disservice if you refuse to allow me to sneak out the back of your house and up the alley. Alone.”

  He frowned. “But—”

  “Please put me down,” she cut him off severely.

  Reluctantly, he lowered her to her feet. She stood looking up at him. Should she offer to shake his hand again? Yes, that seemed right. She thrust out her hand.

  “Well,” she said bracingly, though whom she meant to be braced was somewhat in question. “Until next month, then. Thank you.”

  He looked down at her outstretched hand and smiled. He took hold of it but instead of shaking it, he turned it over, lifted it to his mouth, and pressed his lips to her palm. A little shiver raced down her spine, turning into a shudder by the time it found its way to her legs.

  He released her hand. It hung for a full three seconds between them before she realized it and thrust it behind her. His expression was creamy with self-satisfaction. “Sorry about that. Reformed though I am, old habits die hard.”

  He reached out again and she jumped back. He grinned, stretching his arm past her, and pushed open the door. He stepped back. “Until later.”

  Beverly was already on his hands and knees, cleaning up the broken glass, when Justin returned to the library.

  “The girl ought to be doing this,” he pronounced gloomily. As a confirmed misogynist, he considered it his special calling to point out the myriad unpleasantnesses supplied by the fairer sex, and he did so at length and in great detail. The only woman he had ever liked—and “like” did not seem an appropriate term for the regard with which he exalted her memory—was Justin’s maternal grandmother.

  “It wasn’t a girl,” Justin said. “It was a woman.”

  “Ah, no wonder she was able to cause so much mischief in such short order. She’s had practice.” Beverly paused in collecting shards from the Oriental carpet. “But why, might one ask, does it appear to please you that she’s been wreaking havoc on the population for a longer rather than shorter period?”

  Justin’s usually candid gaze slipped away with a degree too much nonchalance. Beverly, who, nearly fifteen years ago, had been charged by Justin’s grandmother—who loved her grandson as much as her husband despised him—with seeing to his well-being, felt his interest quicken.

  For all those years he had taken that charge most seriously. It had led him to a brief stint in the army as Justin’s batman, and then into his current interesting profession.

  “Sir?”

  Justin fidgeted, and now Beverly’s interest scaled quickly to all-out concern.

  “Well, blast it all, Beverly, one doesn’t like to think one is stirred by a young girl in one’s arms. It’s perverse! So, you can imagine my relief when I discovered that my, er, senses were reacting perfectly naturally to a perfectly standard—no, no, there was nothing standard about her. Acceptable? Yes, acceptable—set of stimuli.” He smiled.

  Beverly’s faced blanched with horror. “Sir, you’re not . . . ?”

  He had no idea how Justin knew what he’d been about to say, but Justin waved his hand airily. “Now, Beverly, don’t go haring after some ridiculous notion. There’s a great deal of difference between wanting and winning. Added to which, I haven’t the time, the inclination, or a hope in hell of courting such a prickly creature. So, there it is.”

  He smiled. “I shall be out for the rest of the day. And, ah, thank you, Beverly. This little chat has quite cleared my thoughts,” he said and was gone.

  Beverly stared after him. For fifteen years, he’d watched various women from various social, economic, and chronological classes angle for Justin’s attention. Not one of them had succeeded. Oh, the boy wasn’t a saint by any means, but he’d never been truly smitten, which had been fine with Beverly.

  But lately, Beverly had begun to wonder if perhaps his promise to see to Justin’s well-being might not extend beyond simple physical consideration. As easy as Justin was with his own company, as seemingly cavalier and cheerful in s
ociety, more and more often of late Beverly was aware of Justin’s isolation.

  There was only one cure for the sort of loneliness a man feels: a son.

  Unfortunately, producing one necessitated a certain close association with the manufacturing element.

  Whatever else Justin Powell’s kiss did, it banished any doubts Evelyn had as to whether or not Justin Powell was a bona fide wolf. Dazed, she limped to the end of the alley. The hansom was waiting just as they’d arranged, Merry’s fluffed red hair filling the small side window as she pressed her nose to the pane.

  As soon as Evelyn reached the door, it swung open, and a hand reached out and seized her and hauled her into the carriage. Once inside, Merry stared at her shredded knickers and undone hair. Before Evelyn realized what was happening, the Frenchwoman had pulled Evelyn into a fierce embrace, and was smothering her face in her ample bosom.

  “Mon Dieu! My poor little bird! You have been defiled! The filth. The bastard! I kill him!” she moaned, rocking back and forth. It took a minute, but Evelyn finally managed to escape. Merry was so . . . French.

  “Stop this at once, Merry,” she said severely, trying to straighten the wire bow of her glasses, which Merry, in her enthusiastic portrayal of Outraged Womanhood, had bent. “You’ve entirely misread the situation. Everything went perfectly.”

  Chapter 4

  BY LATE AFTERNOON, the sun began to dissolve as a murky coolness replaced the day’s bracing clarity. Families picnicking by the Thames gathered up their blankets and baskets and hailed cabs to take them home, leaving behind only a few of the cheerful crowd that had taken advantage of the rare March weather.

  A rising fog coalesced above the river, little filigrees threading up along the embankments. Justin, strolling along the nearly deserted promenade, stopped at a bench near Tower Bridge and took a seat. Above him cartwheeled seabirds, disappearing and appearing into the mist.

  He stretched his arm along the back of the bench and watched a reedy young man in a seersucker coat stroll by with his lady friend, a rosy-cheeked shop girl who’d forgotten to snip the tag off of her readymade coat. On the river below, a punt glided by. And then, as a church clock struck the seventh hour, a hale, middle-aged man in a dark frock coat and top hat appeared, ambling along, swinging a silver-headed cane. He came even with Justin and paused, turning to look out over the river.