The Bridal Season

by Connie Brockway

  He released her and went around to unhitch the horse. He climbed up onto the bench, gathered the reins, and clucked. The horse moved forward, tossing its head anxiously as it sensed the coming weather.

  They went a mile and then two. The air carried the ionized scent of the sea with it, while overhead, the black-hooded gulls cut through the cloud-heavy sky, buoyed on a high sea-born wind.

  His horse fidgeted as the road narrowed, leading them through an apple orchard where the wind whipped up again, pulling the blossoms from the heavy flowering branches and showering them in blushing petals. Lady Agatha laughed, lifting her face and closing her eyes like a child waiting for a kiss.

  Elliot watched, as captivated as he was alarmed by the power of her fascination. A swaying apple bough caught the brim of her hat, knocking it off. Her hair tumbled down and was seized by the wind’s spectral fingers and sent rippling behind her.

  “I love storms!” she called out, catching her hat.

  “The feeling looks mutual,” he replied, and her brows flew up at his spontaneous bit of nonsense. But she laughed again, and sweeping her hat to her chest in an impromptu bow lost her grip. The wind tore her hat from her hand and blew it from the carriage into the field.

  She stood up, heedless of the danger, making an involuntary sound of dismay. Elliot reached up, clasping her wrist and pulling her down beside him.

  “Stay seated!” he shouted, wrestling the recalcitrant horse off the road and into the field. With a touch of his whip, he sent the gelding racing after the tumbling hat.

  It was hardly the stuff of a maiden’s dream. Within a hundred yards, her hat got caught up on a patch of gorse. It was a simple enough matter to lean out of the carriage and snatch it up.

  He straightened, the prize in hand, and pulled the gelding to a halt. He dusted the twigs and grass from the hat, presenting it to her with a rueful smile.

  “Thank you,” Lady Agatha whispered, her eyes shining. He stared at her, the blood rising in his face. She bemused and confused and confounded him. One minute she was a cheeky vixen, the next she smiled at him as though no one had ever done anything so gallant for her before.

  “Not at all,” he said, horribly self-conscious. He passed a hand over his hair. ‘It would be a crime to lose such a fetching hat.”

  She stared at him a second more and then threw her arms around his neck and kissed him on the cheek. “My hero!”

  His arms ached to return her embrace, but he didn’t dare. He was afraid he’d scare her off. For the first time since he’d met her she seemed completely relaxed and carefree and happy. She pushed him lightly away, grinning broadly as she fussed with the bedraggled hat, twitching the ribbons back in place and blowing at the crushed silk flowers.

  This had gone on long enough.

  “Lady Agatha, we need to talk.”

  “No, we don’t,” said Letty, looking up sharply.

  He knew. He’d found out that she wasn’t Lady Agatha. Her throat closed in panic.

  The disarming and oddly appealing vulnerability Letty had glimpsed was gone. An austere and determined—though still utterly gorgeous—man sat beside her, his gaze so concentrated she felt he was reading her thoughts.

  “We can’t talk here properly, anyway,” she said in what she hoped was a reasonable voice. “Let’s just—”

  “I am sorry to insist, but I have waited too long as it is.”

  Letty stared at the rear quarters of the suddenly placid horse. Why couldn’t the drat thing bolt or rear or something? Why couldn’t Fagin wake up and jump out of the carriage? She nudged him with her foot. He grumbled sleepily, rolled over to his back, and began snoring.

  “I owe you my deepest apologies.”

  She went still. “What?”

  “I wish to apologize.”

  Of course. He was a gentleman. How could she have forgotten? She closed her eyes, savoring her relief. “Ho,” she breathed. “The kiss! Think nothing of it. I accept your—”

  “No.” The wind ruffled his dark hair, coaxing loose the deep waves he kept so severely under control. It made him look younger, almost boyish. Especially when he smiled like that. “I am sorry if you were distressed, but I am not sorry I kissed you.”

  A little thread of pleasure coursed through her.

  “No. I apologize for being suspicious of you.”

  Again, she froze. The wind rose again and fluttered her skirts. The gelding fidgeted and was checked by a slight movement of Sir Elliot’s strong, tanned hands. “Oh?”

  “When you arrived, you…well, you were not what I expected. So I telegraphed your offices in London and asked them to verify your whereabouts as well as send me a brief physical description of you.”

  “And?”

  His look was sardonic. “You know quite well the answer. ‘Lady Agatha currently in Northumberland. Stop. Description. Stop. Red-haired, late twenties. Full stop.’”

  Late twenties? Letty thought incredulously. Lady Agatha? The woman was thirty-five, if a day. But God bless her for her vanity. If she’d admitted to her real age, Letty couldn’t possibly have passed for her… In the blink of an eye, Letty’s amusement turned to pique. Lady Agatha may well be satisfied to pass as twenty-nine, but she was only twenty-five.

  Good gads. What was wrong with Sir Elliot that he couldn’t recognize her youth? Perhaps he wasn’t so perfect after all. Clearly, he wanted spectacles.

  “Is something wrong?” Bronze color filled his lean cheeks. “Of course, something is wrong. I checked up on you as I would have some vagrant who’d arrived in town with a line of patter and empty pockets.”

  Letty swallowed, disagreeably conscious that a satchel stuffed with Lady Agatha’s things leaned against her legs. Guilt reared its ugly, and hitherto happily unfamiliar, head. “Don’t feel bad. I’m sure you had good reasons.” Though what they might be, she couldn’t imagine. Her impersonation had been spot on. “Just what were your reasons?”

  “They hardly bear comment,” he answered uncomfortably.

  “I imagine I’ve more flash than you’d expected from a duke’s daughter.”

  “Yes.” He leapt on her suggestion. “That’s it.”

  She settled back. “Ah, well, then. In that case your caution was perfectly understandable. You are the local magistrate, after all.”

  “You’re kind as well as generous. But my actions are nonetheless inexcusable.”

  “I beg to differ. I excuse them.” She waved away his gravity. “So, see? No harm done.”

  “But there is,” he insisted. “Suspicion and caution have been my talismans, Lady Agatha, and I have obeyed their dictates because I have learned it is better to err on the side of distrust than to put people at risk through blind acceptance.”

  The rising wind blew the lapels of his jacket against his throat. He didn’t even notice. He was speaking of some specific incident, she was certain of it.

  Alarm bells jangled along her nerves. She didn’t want to know more about him— No, that wasn’t true.

  She wanted to know everything about him and that scared her. She’d never met a man like him. She probably never would again.

  “Where did you learn such a thing?”

  For a moment, she thought he would evade her query. He was too much of a gentleman to tell her it was none of her affair.

  “In the army. In the Sudan. I was under the command of a…an officer known for his tactical genius. I was so proud to be his subaltern.” His bearing had become stiff.

  “He betrayed you.”

  “I was idealistic. So young.” He glanced at her and his smile was apologetic. “My brother Terence had died in the Zulu Wars and upon hearing of his death I enlisted immediately, itching to take up the banner. I was sent to the Middle East.

  “You’ve met my father.” His gaze softened with affection. “You might imagine the sort of upbringing we had. We’d been taught since the cradle that England is the greatest nation in the world and that her greatness rests firmly on a foun
dation of justice for all her citizens.”

  “Yes. Justice.”

  “The officer of whom I spoke drank heavily, but never in the field. Except for one time.”

  She waited.

  “It was late and my troop was ten miles inland, on point duty. We didn’t expect any action. Things had been quiet for days, but that night one of my scouts returned with some information that the enemy was amassing to the east of our main encampment. I sent a messenger with the information at once.”

  “To the commanding officer.”

  “Yes. There was no reply. The next day, as was expected, the enemy attacked his forces. We arrived too late for the fighting. It was…a disaster. So many dead and maimed.” His eyes were filled with remembered horror. “I sought out the commanding officer to find out what had gone wrong. He claimed he had never received my message.”

  This time when he looked at her there was a savage bitterness in his face. “I then found the messenger, a man I’d trusted implicitly. He was in a field hospital. He’d been horribly wounded in the battle and must have been in terrible agony, but it was the slur on his honor that consumed his final thoughts.

  “He swore to me he had delivered my message, but that the commander had been too sotted to read it so my man had read the message aloud. He also swore that he thought the information had sobered the commander sufficiently for him to act or at least call upon those who would act in his stead. He was wrong. But that’s the devil of it. There weren’t any witnesses. The commander was alone.”

  “How terrible,” Letty breathed.

  “Yes. It was a betrayal, not only of a soldier this officer was responsible for, but of all the principles for which we fought. And the commander got away with it. Do you know, he actually was in the process of bringing a court-martial against the messenger when the poor man died?” A deep mystification and ineffable sense of personal failure suffused his tone.

  “What did you do?”

  “I confronted him. He was…most disturbed that I believed my man’s word over his and at first kept to his story. But I would not stop. I knew there was no chance he would ever confess publicly to his lie, but I would have the truth.”

  The look in his eye made her shiver. “And did you get it?”

  “Yes. He admitted to me that he had ‘perhaps been incapable of adequately performing his duties,’ but insisted he had no memory of a message having been delivered. Of course, my note had vanished. He also said, and I remember this most of all, that the English army could not afford to lose his tactical genius and that the soldier’s sacrifice had, in the long run, been worth it. Wasn’t it happy, he asked me, that he’d died before things had gotten ugly? And what more glorious death than to die in the service of one’s country?”

  “You disagreed.”

  He flung her a grateful look. “Fervently. The man died fighting for a nation that promised him justice and honor, and in the end he was betrayed by promises we did not keep.

  “I have made it my life’s work to make certain justice is more than a chimera. In order for justice to be served, we must in turn serve her. She can never be taken for granted.”

  Silence fell between them. Even the wind died down. Only the slight rustle of the grasses disturbed the stillness.

  “What happened to the commander?”

  “He was investigated.” He didn’t need to say under whose insistence. “But no evidence of any wrongdoing was ever established. The case never came to court. A few years later he died of natural causes.”

  He looked at her gravely. “I did not tell you this story to win your pity. I told it by means of explaining my actions toward you. But explanation does not serve as an excuse. It is I who am sorry.”

  “Please, there is no need.”

  “There is, though,” he disagreed. He paused, his gaze lingering wonderingly on her face. His voice softened. “It is ridiculous to distrust that a vibrant, uninhibited woman is just exactly what she appears to be simply because I have never met her like before.”

  No. Oh, no. Letty shifted uncomfortably. “To be wary is no crime, Sir Elliot.”

  “No, but unwarranted scrutiny can too easily become persecution,” he said. “I thank you for reminding me of that before I could do unforgivable harm to an innocent person.”

  She was struck mute with guilt. He should be wary. He should heed the lesson he’d learned at such terrible cost. He shouldn’t trust anyone. Especially not her. Worst of all, when he finally did discover how she’d duped him—and he would—he’d never trust again. Not anyone. But how could she tell him without putting herself in danger? To even consider it was madness—

  “I think you were right to send a query about me,” she blurted out. There. She’d said it. Good enough.

  “Pardon me?”

  “You can’t trust appearances. Believe me. I know.”

  Why in God’s name was she still talking? “You should always make certain you know what cards you’ve been dealt. Take a good, hard look at anything fishy.”

  Good God, she was going mad!

  “Be careful. The world is filled with tricksters, liars, and thieves. And they don’t go around wearing placards announcing themselves. You were right to check up on me. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about.” He regarded her gently. “I wish you didn’t.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Clearly from the ardency of your voice you, or someone close to you, was betrayed. I am sorry.”

  She remembered just in time to keep her jaw from going slack. Good heavens, he meant it. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t say a word. She could only stare at him and wish that she was the woman he thought she was, that she deserved his tenderness, his concern.

  She was a sham, a compilation of second-rate characters from abbreviated farces. The stage directors had all been right. She’d never be a star. She couldn’t tap into the deeper emotions because she didn’t have any. She was the consummate understudy. An empty vessel waiting to be filled with other people’s emotions.

  “I am sorry, Agatha.”

  “Letty,” she murmured miserably.

  “Excuse me?”

  She started. She couldn’t believe her blunder. If she insisted on acting like an idiot she might as well just turn herself in here and now. But she wasn’t going to turn herself in. She was overwrought. That was all.

  She must snap out of this self-destructive frame of mind. She plastered a smile on her face. “My friends call me Letty.”

  “Letty,” he repeated, testing the syllables and seeming to like them. “It suits you. A pet name?”

  “My middle name.” It was difficult to cling to hard practicality when he smiled at her like that. His eyes were so beautiful, his smile so tender.

  He reached out and swept a tress of hair from her brow. His finger stayed, lingered, following the shallow indent at her temple, the outer curve of her cheek, the line of her jaw. Scintillating, devastating desire began to spill liquid heat through her limbs. She forgot her unpleasant introspection. She forgot her fear. She inclined her head a little, leaning in to his caress.

  “I fear I am doomed to spend most of my time with you apologizing,” he said. But he didn’t look in the least remorseful.

  “Why is that?”

  “Because I can’t seem to keep my hands off you.”

  Her heart thudded in her chest “Oh.”

  His hand circled to the back of her neck. She closed her eyes. Gently, he brushed a kiss across her mouth, a sweet, honeyed kiss, a whetting of passion. Her lips parted a sliver, her head tilted back in anticipation of more.

  None came.

  She opened her eyes. He’d settled back in his seat, regarding her with a hungry, amused, and heated intensity. One side of his mouth lifted sardonically.

  Was he playing her for a fool, or teasing her, or was she—unbelievable as it seemed—simply out of her depth?

  “Just what is this game?” she demanded. “What exactly are you doing?”

 
“Why, Letty,” he answered. “I’m courting you.”

  Chapter 17

  Nothing seduces vanity like the word “help.”

  “You can’t leave,” Cabot said. He stood inside her bedroom door, his jowls even droopier than usual.

  “Now, Cabot-me-love, who’d have thought that you’d go sweet on me.” Letty bit through the thread and dropped the spool back into Lady Agatha’s workbasket.

  “Please refrain from levity, Letty. I mean this. You can’t leave The Hollies.”

  Letty held the needle up to the light and squinted as she slipped the threaded end neatly through the eye. “I’m not leaving. I’m sewing. And I won’t be able to finish sewing and get this dress done for dinner unless you let me get on with it.”

  She picked up a fold of the deep green-and-lilac-striped muslin. She wished Cabot would leave. Her head was crowded with unnerving thoughts, ridiculous thoughts.

  What had Sir Elliot meant, saying that he was “courting her?” He couldn’t mean it. There had to be some explanation. “Courting” probably didn’t have the same meaning to his class as it did for her sort. He couldn’t really mean what she thought he meant…because then she… Well, he just couldn’t mean it, is all!

  “—In order to protect you, I burned it.”

  Cabot’s last words penetrated Letty’s thoughts. “Burned what?”

  “Lady Agatha’s letter to Miss Bigglesworth.”

  “What?” The dress slipped from Letty’s fingers. “What letter?”

  “The letter Miss Bigglesworth received from Lady Agatha while you were in Little Bidewell yesterday afternoon. For heaven’s sake, Letty, this is important. You really must make every effort to attend,” he said.

  Letty ignored his peeved tone. If she intended to bolt, she’d need to know how much time she had to do it in. “What was in the letter, Cabot?”

  Cabot sniffed. “It was a private correspondence, Miss Potts. I would never—”

  Letty wasn’t having it. “If you’d burn it, I don’t think you’d have any compunction about reading it. So what did she say? This is important, Cabot.”