The Bridal Season

by Connie Brockway

  At once, Merry stepped back from the window and handed over the binoculars. Eglantyne raised them to her eyes and after a second or two of scanning the embankment found…oh, my!

  She would never have believed him capable of such behavior! Decent, courteous, and chivalrous Elliot was accosting Lady Agatha!

  He was kissing her, his dark head obliterating hers from Eglantyne’s view, one arm clasped around her waist, arching her back like a bow, while his free hand held the back of her head. Her auburn hair spilled down, brushing the grass, and her hands were pressed in tight fists against his chest—though, oddly, she didn’t appear to be struggling.

  Then, quite suddenly, Sir Elliot swept Lady Agatha back to an upright position. At the same time, Lady Agatha seemed to return to her senses, for she beat her fists once against Elliot’s chest.

  To do him justice, Elliot released her at once. She looked furious. For a second she wobbled unsteadily in place, but then jerked her chin in regal dismissal of Elliot and began stalking off up the hill. Only she didn’t stalk so much as stumble, first one way then the other, as if she wasn’t exactly sure in which direction the house lay. Which seemed rather odd, but one had to account for her undoubted shock.

  Eglantyne glanced at Merry and Grace. Grace was still leaning against the wall fanning herself. Merry was peering through the window through a piece of paper she’d rolled into a tube. Both looked appropriately nonplussed. So much for their matchmaking.

  “Oh, Elliot,” she murmured. “How could you?”

  “Could what?” Merry asked.

  “I don’t think they like each other very much.”

  “Huh?” Grace asked disbelievingly, but then perhaps the housekeeper hadn’t seen Sir Elliot accost Lady Agatha. Not that Eglantyne was going to inform her of it. It was her duty as a responsible employer to protect her servants from such knowledge.

  “They’ve parted ways and are returning to the house separately,” she said.

  “Oh?” Merry said, and Eglantyne glanced once more through the binoculars. Lady Agatha was still weaving her way up the embankment, finally heading in the right direction. Elliot still stood at the bottom, his arms folded across his chest.

  He must be enduring the most grievous remorse by now, Eglantyne thought with a touch of sympathy, as appalled by his actions as Lady Agatha. He probably considered that his sins toward Lady Agatha were unforgivable—and rightly so. He would be in despair. He would be raking himself over coals of remor—

  Eglantyne’s eyes grew round. Sir Elliot had turned to watch Lady Agatha disappear from view. Finally, Eglantyne was afforded a look at his face.

  He was unabashedly grinning.

  Chapter 14

  Some days you’re the cockroach,

  some days you’re the boot heel.

  She had to get out of here. Now. Today. Tonight at the latest. Tomorrow at the very, very latest. Things were getting far too complicated.

  Letty pushed open the terrace doors and entered the room where the croquet party crowded. Faces swelled and retreated, disembodied voices surrounded. She veered off. She couldn’t concentrate on what they were saying or what they asked. She had to get out of here before she gave herself away.

  The absurdity of it bubbled up. She’d never flubbed a line in her life, never missed a cue…until now. She couldn’t go on with the show. Where was her understudy?

  She desperately needed a moment alone. Her room. Like a drowning rat spying a floating board, she fled toward the door opposite and into the hallway.

  Blast! A group of people milled about the bottom of the stairs that led to the upper bedchambers. They turned to her eagerly and she returned their smiles with a frantic gaiety, sheared off, and hastened toward a closed door at the end of the corridor.

  She opened the door and stumbled in, slamming it shut behind her. She turned the key in the lock and heard the sweet click as the bolt slid into place. She slumped against the door and took a deep breath, looking around. She was in a small morning room. A settee stood before her, its back to Letty, a pair of chairs flanking it.

  She was safe for the moment She needed to think. Plan. When to go? What to take?

  The sound of heartbroken sobs broke through her frantic checklist. Someone else was in here. She nearly sobbed back in despair.

  No. It wasn’t fair. She wasn’t up to this. She spun toward to the door, but the idea of facing those friendly, interested faces— She couldn’t. She turned back as a head of soft blond ringlets rose from behind the back of the small settee.

  “I’m sorry, Lady Agatha.” Angela sniffed and dashed the back of her hands against her red-rimmed eyes. “I didn’t think anyone would come in here. There were some people outside with whom I…I didn’t wish to speak just at the moment.”

  “Please, don’t explain,” Letty begged her. She didn’t want to be this girl’s friend. She was an employee, not a confidante. Damnation, she wasn’t even that! She was a fake. A fraud.

  “—if you don’t mind.”

  Letty refocused her gaze on the girl. “Excuse me?”

  “I’d just as soon wait here until the people outside have gone,” Angela apologized.

  Try as she might Letty couldn’t ignore Angela’s misery.

  She took a few steps into the room. At least this way she could focus on something besides him…and what he must think of her. “It’s your home, Miss Angela. Besides, I’m afraid we’re both in the same pickle. I’m rather looking to dodge the crush myself.”

  “You?” Angela asked with dull curiosity. “Why should you seek refuge?”

  “You’d be surprised,” Letty murmured.

  “I daresay,” Angela replied politely and then, abruptly, her pale eyes filled with tears, her lower lip trembled, and her head dropped out of sight.

  Muffled sobs rose from the other side of the divan.

  I should just sit in this chair and leave her to it. Gentlewomen loathe having witnesses to any outbursts. Chin-up and put a brave face on it, was the English gentlewoman’s creed. Nope. She wouldn’t thank me for asking what’s wrong.

  Somehow Letty had crossed the room and was standing behind the settee, her hand resting gently on the girl’s shuddering back. Angela’s sobs only grew louder.

  Letty rubbed small comforting circles between her shoulder blades. “Angela. What is the matter?”

  Angela lifted her damp, red-nosed, wholly unappealing little face. “I can’t tell you. I daren’t tell you. You’ll think I’m…I’m…horrible!”

  “No, I won’t. Never,” Letty promised. What sort of fix had the chit gotten herself into, anyway? What sort of fix could a girl get into in a place like Little Bidewell?

  “Yes, you will. And you’ll…be…right…to think it, too!” Angela’s head plunged down between her arms again.

  “Whatever you’ve done, or think you’ve done,” Letty amended, “I’m certain it isn’t so horrible it could affect my good opinion of you.”

  “Oh!” Came the smothered reply. “You don’t understand. I…am…so…ashamed!”

  Letty cast about for some personal incident on which to draw in order to comfort the girl. It was all too available. And from uncomfortably recent experiences.

  “Sometimes,” she began uneasily, “one does things without first giving them proper consideration.”

  “What sorts of things?” Angela asked dolefully. “I’ll wager you’re not speaking of the sort of thing I’ve done!”

  “Well,” Letty said, picking her way carefully. She felt as though she were traversing a mine field laid with potentially explosive truths. “One might do these things, these rash, ill-considered things, and never really realize how…how shabby they might seem, or even be.”

  She struggled on, a light sweat breaking out on her brow. “And then, one day, one looks back on them from the vantage of time and distance and then one is…one is ashamed. And one wishes, with all one’s might, that one hadn’t done what one has done, only there’s nothing to be done
about it. It’s done!”

  There. She’d confessed—er, she’d said it. She blew out a deep breath. She felt ever so much better. “Does this make any sense to you, darling?”

  The girl eyed her doubtfully. “A bit.”

  “Of course it does. The fact of the matter is, that what’s done is done and there’s no good stewing about it. You don’t want Marquis What’s-’is-face going all gloomy because his little bride’s in the dumps over a bit of a gaffe she committed years ago, do you?”

  She patted Angela’s head and gave her a bracing smile, to which Angela responded by going milk-white, throwing herself back down on the settee, and howling brokenheartedly into the cushion of her arms.

  So much for rallying Angela’s spirits. Clearly it was time for strong-arm tactics. She grasped Angela’s shoulders and dragged her into a sitting position.

  Angela was so startled she stopped howling.

  “Come now! Out with it, miss!” Letty said in her sternest voice, the voice she’d used to such effect in her role as Marvelle Magwhite, the strict governess in The Saucy Miss Sally. A minor role, but juicy.

  “I mean it, Angela. Either you tell me what is causing this waterfall or I shall be forced to think,” she cast about for something that Angela would consider unendurable, “or I will be forced to think that you are enjoying yourself!”

  Angela looked stricken, but after a few seconds suddenly clasped Letty’s hands in her own and squeezed them tightly. “Swear to me that you will try awfully hard not to think too badly of me,” she begged.

  “Of course, I won’t.”

  The girl pulled her narrow shoulders back. “All right, then, here it is. I once had a…more than a sisterly regard for Kip Himplerump.”

  Kip Himplerump. Kip Himplerump… “The squire’s sullen-looking boy?”

  Angela nodded. Finally, things were getting interesting.

  “And he had feelings for me. Or, I thought he had.”

  “I see.” And did she! The memory of her own passionate response to Sir Elliot came rushing back with tidal force.

  “There. I can see you think the worst of me, don’t you?”

  “Of course I don’t,” Letty said. She felt only profound empathy with Angela. The poor little duck, carried away against her better judgment, at the mercy of irresistible forces, caught on a riptide of attraction. Why, if she and Sir Elliot hadn’t been in a field in full view of the house, who knows what might have transpired? Thank heavens for that, at least.

  At least, she ought to thank heaven.

  “Well, m’dear,” she said, “you’ve made a clean breast of it. Now, forget it.”

  “I would. But now—”

  Letty pushed Angela gently away, holding her at arms’ length. She studied her face gravely. “What, Angela?”

  “Kip. He has a letter I wrote. A most revealing, incriminating letter! Oh! I should die if my darling Hugh ever sees it.”

  “Why should he see it?” Letty asked, but she already knew the answer. Because Kip was threatening to reveal the letter, was blackmailing this poor girl. Just like Nick had blackmailed all the “rich, worthless, faceless sots” who found themselves in his power. Only now they weren’t faceless anymore. Or worthless. They had this girl’s face. And this girl’s worth.

  Even if she hadn’t been an actual party to his blackmail, she’d known full well where the money Nick spent on her came from. She’d been as culpable in her silence as he was. She felt an inner recoil, a deep disgust with herself.

  “How much does he want?”

  “How much?” Angela echoed blankly.

  “Money.”

  Angela looked shocked. “He doesn’t want money.”

  “What does he want then?”

  “He wants me to meet him at the witch tree to say good-bye.”

  The boy wasn’t looking for money? Fine, then. There was no problem. “Well, if you don’t want to go, don’t.”

  “He says he’ll mail my letter to the Sheffields if I don’t go and then Hugh will know all.” The tears had begun to course down her face again. “Could you…?” Angela’s gaze dropped to her lap. “Would you come with me? I’d feel ever so much braver if you were with me. I’m afraid he wants more than to simply say farewell—” Angela broke off, blushing fiercely.

  So it was blackmail after all. “There’s only one way to deal with such a creature, Angela. Squeal him out. At Angela’s puzzled expression, she clarified her words. “Tell your family.”

  “I couldn’t!” Angela exclaimed. “I can’t tell Papa. He’d be as hurt as Hugh. And Aunt Eglantyne would simply curl up and die.”

  Just how far had things gone between Kip and Angela?

  “Angela,” Letty said, “it is very important that you answer me directly and without euphemism. Just what have you and Kip Himplerump done? How far had your affair gone?”

  “I…I let him…kiss me!” She covered her eyes with her hands, too mortified to face Letty. “And then I wrote to him about it! About how it made me feel so…womanly!”

  Letty stared blankly at her. “You kissed him?”

  “Yes!”

  “Once?”

  “Several times! Don’t speak anymore of it. I should have never kissed any man but my darling Hughie. I,” her head dropped, “I go to my Hugh a sullied woman.”

  Letty nearly laughed with her relief. For a moment there, she’d thought the girl had a pressing reason to cry. But then, she’d learned early in life that the concerns of the privileged were not the same ones as those of her sort. Though judging from Angela’s tragic expression, they seemed just as dire to them.

  “Oh, come on, ducks,” Letty said, chucking her under the chin. “You must admit you’ve piled it up a mite high, eh? I’m sure that even if your Hughie does read your little note—”

  “He mustn’t! Really, he’ll be so…so hurt!”

  “Oh, Angela.” Letty shook her head. “He won’t. Believe me. As a woman of the world—”

  “But that’s just it. He isn’t a man of the world. He’s sweet and honest and trusting. He isn’t like you at all!”

  The unintentional slap instantly sobered Letty. Why, even now, the poor girl was so distraught over her marquis’s potential disillusionment that she didn’t realize what she’d said. But the condemning words chimed loudly in Letty’s mind. And it wasn’t a faulty judgment, either. She deserved that. Far more than Angela knew.

  But Lord, it hurt.

  She rose to her feet still holding Angela’s hands. “You may be right, ducks,” she said softly. “But even kind, cloistered, unworldly men aren’t going to condemn a girl for being human.”

  “You don’t understand!”

  Letty released the girl’s hands and stepped back. Once more, the girl was spot on. And that was the problem, wasn’t it? For Angela and everyone else in Little Bidewell, this was all real. The emotions, the loyalties, the trust, and even the betrayals.

  But for Letty, it was play-acting.

  And as long as she was pretending to be someone she wasn’t, it always would be.

  “But I do understand,” she replied softly. “Because of the sort of woman I am. I’ve known men like Kip Himplerump. Don’t encourage him by running to do his bidding as soon as he snaps his fingers. You’re only setting yourself a pattern.” She placed her hand on the doorknob, eager to be gone.

  “Won’t you help me?” Angela asked tragically.

  She stopped. “I thought I did.” What more could she say? Why was she even giving advice? Angela wasn’t the one who’d had to run away from her home and her life because of her own stupid choices.

  Still, she disliked this sense that she was failing the girl. She cast about trying to buy some time. “I’ll consider what you might do. But you must promise to think about what I’ve said.”

  Without waiting for Angela’s response, she unlocked the door, pulled it open, and hastened out into the corridor, hurrying down the hall, feeling breathless and undone.

  The pl
ay had gone on too long; the plot was spinning out of control. The secondary juvenile lead was playing a far greater role than Letty had intended for her to play, and the part of Agatha Whyte wasn’t as pat as she’d thought it would be. And the more involved with the Bigglesworths she became, the more dangerous it grew. Too many traps yawned before her, too many ways she could reveal herself as an imposter.

  She didn’t know what the next act would be or what lines she should speak, but one thing she did know: She had damn well better bring down the curtain soon, or she’d be playing out the last act from a jail cell.

  Chapter 15

  If you’re in doubt about the reception

  your performance will receive,

  leave the stage before the final curtain.

  “Merry, dear,” Eglantyne said as the maid appeared from behind the green baize door, “have you seen Lady Agatha this morning?” Since the croquet party yesterday, Eglantyne hadn’t seen their august guest-cum-employee.

  “Aye,” Merry said, wielding her feather duster like a baton. “She was upstairs packing one of her satchels when I went in to make her room up an hour or so back.”

  “Packing? That’s curious. Did she say why?”

  Merry regarded her as if she had made a very poor joke. “Well, I dinna speak to her,” she said in exactly the tones one might use if asked if they’d sworn in church. “I popped in, saw she was still occupyin’ the premises, if you will, ‘n popped out.”

  “I see.” A movement near the top of the stairs caught her eye and she looked up to see the silhouette of a crouched figure clad in a long duster. “Lady Agatha!” she called.

  The figure slowly straightened. Merry, seeing that it was indeed Lady Agatha, promptly bolted back into the kitchen.

  “Yes, Miss Bigglesworth?” Lady Agatha called down the stairs. “How can I help you?”