The Bridal Season

by Connie Brockway

  Darkness flooded his face. His gaze sharpened. “I never expected things to be easy, Letty. Only confide in me and I swear I will make things right. As for shame, I am convinced there is nothing you have done that is unforgivable.”

  She believed him, God help her. She only needed to tell him. She held out her hand and instantly he was by her side, wrapping her hand in his and raising it to his mouth, kissing the back of her hand before turning her fist over and uncurling her stiff fingers and pressing his lips to the center of her palm.

  Without quite meaning to, she raised her free hand to his bowed head. Her fingers shivered a fraction of an inch above the dark, silky locks she longed to caress.

  “Letty,” he murmured against her open palm, “Please, trust me.”

  “I do. I want to. I—”

  “Lady Agatha!” Cabot’s voice boomed anxiously from the doorway. Letty looked about in confusion. She hadn’t even heard him knock and he stood in the open doorway, his face filled with horror.

  Elliot straightened slowly, his expression taut with anger as foreign to his face as humility was to a lord’s. “What is it, Cabot?”

  “A gentleman to see you, Lady Agatha.”

  “A gentleman? What gentleman?”

  A figure appeared behind Cabot. Of medium height, the man was barrel-chested and heavy through the shoulders. He doffed a smart bowler as he entered, and his thick blond hair shone like guineas in the late afternoon light. He spied her, and his square, bluntly handsome face bloomed with an expression of undeniable pleasure.

  “Why, Letty, my dear,” he said in an accent that had never quite lost its Cockney tang. “None other than your fiancé, Nick Sparkle.”

  Chapter 27

  If a man brings a cabbage to the theater, he is going to throw it.

  “Quite a plum setup you ’ave ’ere, Letty-me-love,” Nick said. He strolled restlessly about the library with his hands clasped lightly behind his back, gauging and evaluating the contents.

  Letty could not take her eyes from him. It was as if she’d wakened to a nightmare. She could barely breathe. Her pulse hammered thickly in her temples.

  Elliot had left within minutes of Nick’s entrance. There had been one instant when his gaze had swung on her and she had seen his betrayal and shock, and then Nick had been in front of him, pumping his hand and introducing himself. Elliot had responded in kind, every vestige of the emotion he’d revealed erased from his face as though they’d only been figments of Letty’s imagination. He’d not looked at her again, not even when he’d bid them good-bye.

  Something died within her. Something precious and fragile and essential was irretrievably lost.

  “Done well this time, Letty. Small wonder you come over all high-minded and moral. You had other plans. Better plans than mine.”

  “How did you find me?” she asked tonelessly.

  “Old Sammy here tipped your hand, love,” he said motioning toward where Cabot stood miserably.

  “I’m sorry, Letty,” Cabot said. “I didn’t realize when I wrote Ben that he’d say anything to him.”

  “Well, now, Sammy, you mustn’t blame the old bugger. He weren’t exactly forthcoming with the information. Needed a spot of encouraging, he did.”

  Cabot’s face flamed with anger and he took a step forward. The pleasant façade dropped from Nick’s handsome face like a cheap mask, revealing the pitilessness that was the true reflection of his nature. “I wouldn’t, if I was you, Sammy. You’d be heaving your guts up inside a minute.”

  “Listen to him, Cabot,” Letty cried, putting herself between the two men. “He’s right. You’ll only get hurt.”

  Nick watched Cabot hopefully. When it was clear the older man would not fight, he sneered and turned to Letty.

  “Ah, relax,” he drawled. “I didn’t touch the fool. I only told him he was gettin’ a bit long in the tooth to be blown across a stage, and a word in the manager’s ear would have him out in the streets by nightfall.”

  His expression turned offended. “Whatcha think, Letty? That I’d hurt the old codger? You oughta know I’m not that sort. Or do you think a bloke has to have a silk cravat like your gentleman friend there in order to have fine feelings?” he sneered.

  She wouldn’t discuss Elliot with him and turned her head. He grabbed her arm and she winced. Once again, Cabot tensed. “It’s all right, Cabot,” Letty said quickly. “If you would go into the hall and keep an eye out for the Bigglesworths, I’d appreciate it. I need to talk to Nick.”

  Cabot didn’t look happy about it, but he did as she asked. As soon as he was gone, Nick flopped down on the chintz-covered settee, his checked suit and gaiters as out of place in these surroundings as a…as a music hall singer, Letty thought morosely.

  Something of her thoughts must have shown on her face, for Nick’s grin widened. “There’s my girl. A little bitter to counter all that sweet.”

  “You have to leave, Nick. This isn’t what you think. I didn’t plan on this at all. I just found a ticket and arrived here and the folks thought I was—”

  “This here Lady Agatha,” Nick interrupted, nodding. “Yes. I know all about it. Ben showed me Sammy’s letter.”

  “Cabot,” Letty corrected in a low voice. “His name is Samuel Cabot.”

  “You can call him whatever you like. To me and the rest of the world, he’s Sam-Sam, The Spaniel-Faced Boy. Just like you’re Letty Potts, sometime musical artiste, but much more often an artiste of a different persuasion, eh?”

  She felt ill. Hearing it said out loud, she knew exactly what she was and always had been. She’d thought of con games as nothing more than a laugh and a wink at people who could afford it. It had never seemed wrong. It did now.

  It wasn’t the money. The Bigglesworths and their sort could afford to have a few pieces of silver nabbed from them. It was that other theft that mattered, the theft she’d never recognized before: stealing their trust and abusing it. The victims of that sort of theft always got hurt.

  Nick shook his head. “I got to hand it to you, Letty. You always did have a knack for falling into the slops and coming up smelling like roses. And you’ve done so this time, too.”

  He wagged a finger at her. “But don’t try and tell me you weren’t thinking to take advantage of your good fortune, ’cause I know you, Letty. Never let an opportunity pass without milking it for all it’s worth, and never will. So out with it. What’s the dodge?”

  She regarded him with repugnance. He was wrong this time. She couldn’t hurt these people. She wouldn’t.

  “There is no scam, Nick. I’m just helping these folks out in exchange for a soft bed and some nice meals. As soon as I’m done, I’m leaving, and that’s the gospel truth, take it or leave it.”

  The cockiness faded in his expression along with his smile. “I’ll leave it.”

  He pushed himself to his feet and came to her side. He tilted her chin up with a blunt, stubby finger. “Don’t think I don’t understand, me girl. You come ’ere, get treated like royalty, everyone all sweetness and light, and pretty soon you’re thinking what decent sorts they are and what a shame it’d be to hurt their feelings. And you like it that you’re feeling all expansive and treacly. Makes you feel good about yerself.”

  She stared at him in fascinated horror. His words came too close to the truth. What if it was all self-delusion? What if she’d only convinced herself she’d changed because it didn’t cost her anything, or anyone else, either?

  He read the confusion in her eyes and smiled. He’d always been a baffling combination of perceptiveness and brutality. It was what made him so good at his job.

  “It’s easy to be pious when you got a feather bed to sleep in. But this ain’t real, love. It’s time to wake up, Letty.” He moved closer. “How’s it go in all those fairy tales? You wake the princess with a kiss.”

  He clasped her shoulders and leaned toward her. She stood very, very still, willing herself not to cringe when his lips met hers. He’d kissed her d
ozens of times, but this time it felt awful, not only a violation, but a betrayal. And not only of Elliot, but of herself.

  He drew back. His face was ugly, his voice rough. “So that’s the way it is, eh? You and that black-haired sap. I shoulda known it would take more than a feather pillow and a butter cake to make you forget what’s what. How much more? How far has it gone between you and him, Letty?”

  “You’re talking nonsense,” she said stiffly. He’d always been jealous. Once he’d even beaten a particularly persistent admirer. She didn’t dare think what he could do to Elliot if he wanted.

  His eyes narrowed. “Lookit you. Pissed as poison that I should even sully ’is name by speaking it.”

  “You’re being silly. He’s a knight.”

  “And he thinks you’re a duke’s get. And a good thing, too. ’Cause if I thought ’e had enough red blood in him to do anything with you, I’d kill him. God! Don’t look at me like that on some other man’s account!” Real hurt flared in his bright green eyes. His skin grew mottled with blood. “Damn you, Letty. Damn you! Think you’re too good for the likes of me, do you?”

  “No, Nick,” she answered, reaching out to clasp his forearm. “No, it isn’t—”

  “Shudup!” He flung her hand away with such violence she staggered back. He reached for her as though he regretted his act, but then the ugliness flowed back into his face and his hand dropped to his side. “I loved you, Letty. No man loved a woman as much as I loved you.”

  “Nick—”

  “Treated you like a queen, I did. Like a bloomin’ lady. I never pushed to get you into bed, never asked more than you were willin’ to give, because I always figured someday we’d get wed and you’d be mine and you’d appreciate the time I took with you. Because I cared what you thought, Letty. I cared about what you wanted.”

  The rims of his eyes had grown red. “I never hurt one person you cared about. Not even when I was trying to get you to seeing things my way with that little job I’d planned. I could ’ave. I could ’ave brought you to heel, by just breaking someone’s leg or arm. But I didn’t. Because I didn’t want to hurt you, Letty.”

  He had loved her. At least, as much as Nick could love, and he really believed that stopping at burning down her house and only threatening theater managers were acts of charity on his part. And because Letty loved just as hopelessly as Nick did, she understood his pain.

  “Nick,” she said. “I am so—”

  “Don’t you say it!” he broke in violently. “No one’s sorry for Nick Sparkle. No one. ’Specially not some daft cow wearing airs. Think ’e’ll want you when ’e finds out you’re just a skirt-wearing dodge?” He laughed nastily.

  “I know,” Letty said. “I know. But it doesn’t make any difference, Nick. I still won’t help you.”

  “Listen,” he said, ignoring her. “I got my own plans and you’re part of them. You just keep these Bigglesworths happy for a few days and leave the rest to me.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “And if you don’t, well, I guess I’ll just have to leave.”

  She looked up, suddenly hopeful. “Oh, Nick!”

  He stroked the side of her cheek with his thumb. “Course, I’ll have to write a little note to this Sir Elliot and these Bigglesworths. A little note that says just what ‘Lady Agatha’ is been up to these past five years. You know. A few details about a mind-reading scam down Kensington way, and a bean-and-cups game—”

  “I get the idea, Nick. No need to continue.”

  His caress turned into a pinch. “Good. Then, like I said, you just keep on doing what you been doing and I’ll take care of the rest. That sound good to you, Letty?”

  She stared at him with disdain.

  He chucked her lightly under the chin. “I thought so.”

  Atticus’s guests had left. Outside the French doors, the garden was blanketed in warm, perfumed night. A perfect evening for courting a woman, which is exactly what Atticus had assumed Elliot was doing when he disappeared from the party. He’d thought Elliot had gone after the fleeing Lady Agatha. But perhaps he’d been wrong, because certainly Elliot hadn’t been absent long.

  When Merry had whispered in his ear that Elliot had returned, he’d fully expected his son to rejoin them. He hadn’t. So after bidding his guests good evening, he’d sought his son. He’d found him prowling the length of the library, his back and shoulders tensed as a caged tiger’s.

  “It’s a shame Lady Agatha was taken ill,” Atticus said carefully.

  Elliot stopped his stalking. “Yes.”

  “She doesn’t seem a woman in fragile health.”

  “No.”

  Atticus knew his son. Elliot was proudly self-sufficient He’d never willingly burden another with his problems, and the watch he’d kept on his emotions was ever vigilant She’d been changing it. But now…

  “Still, Eglantyne says Lady Agatha has been most assiduous in her work, quite determined to have it completed before she leaves. Undoubtedly, that accounts for her indisposition.”

  “I am sure you are correct,” Elliot murmured. He stared unseeingly out into the night.

  “Did you go to see how she was faring?” Atticus asked mildly. “I hope you found her comfortable?”

  Elliot looked up, frowning thoughtfully. “Excuse me, sir? You were saying?”

  “How did you find Lady Agatha?”

  “With her fiancé.” Elliot’s frown deepened, his expression absorbed and his voice distracted. “And, no, she does not look well.”

  Atticus’s jaw dropped. A sense of betrayal swept through him, stunning him with its force. In no manner, by either direct word or inference, had Lady Agatha suggested she was betrothed. How dare she play so fast and loose with Elliot’s affections? How dare she pretend to a freedom she did not own?

  “Dear God, Elliot,” Atticus said, aghast. “I had no idea… I…I don’t know what to say. That she was affianced never occurred to me.”

  Elliot looked up. “It didn’t occur to anyone else, either,” he said slowly. “Anyone.”

  “Elliot,” Atticus began, but his son had picked up his coat from the chair on which he’d flung it.

  “I’m going into the village,” he said. “Don’t bother waiting up for me.”

  “We can’t let him rob the Bigglesworths. Especially since he’s already announced he’s Lady Agatha’s fiancé.”

  Cabot paced back and forth in Letty’s room, his hands clasped in a white-knuckled grip behind his back. “Can you imagine the scandal? The Bigglesworths will be the laughingstock of Society, first to be duped by a feather merchant pretending to be a duke’s daughter, and then to be robbed by her associate. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Sheffields called the wedding off.”

  Guilt and remorse combined to set Letty’s hands shaking like an old woman’s. She clenched them and unclenched them, focusing on making them still so that she wouldn’t have to think. There was nothing she could do except that which she already was doing.

  Cabot stopped his incessant pacing. “Why, do you know he’s downstairs with the Bigglesworths right now? Introduced himself as smoothly as oil on flat water, registering offended surprise that you hadn’t told them about him.”

  He blew out an unhappy sigh. “He can do the gentleman act when he wants to, you know. A young flash modern, but still just enough manners to make him look authentic. You taught him that.”

  Letty twisted her hands together. “I know.”

  “He told them he ‘couldn’t stand to be separated from you for one more day’ and that he was sure they’d understand and, by the way, was there some small inn somewhere that might accommodate him while he was here?’

  “It made me cringe to hear. Miss Eglantyne did exactly what you would expect: She begged him to stay here.”

  “Oh, no,” Letty murmured, sitting heavily on the edge of the bed. “Poor Eglantyne.”

  “Yes,” Cabot avowed. “And looking guilty as sin.”

  “Guilty?” Letty as
ked in confusion. “What has she to be guilty about?”

  “Oh, Letty,” Cabot said despairingly. “Didn’t you notice…of course not, you were too occupied with him and that’s exactly how they wanted it to be.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Miss Eglantyne and the rest of the staff have been doing everything within their powers to make a match of you and Sir Elliot.”

  Dear God. The fools. The darlings. “And you allowed them to do so?”

  “I didn’t have any alternative,” Cabot defended himself. “How was I to explain that the two of you were unsuited for one another? And how was I to know that their machinations would actually bear fruit.”

  She glanced up.

  “Don’t deny it, Letty. I’ve seen how you react to one another.” The paternalistic disapproval abruptly vanished, leaving only fatherly exasperation. He sat down beside her. “What the devil were you thinking, girl?”

  “I wasn’t thinking.” I was feeling. I still am feeling, God help me. “And Miss Eglantyne was also involved?”

  “Yes. And from the look of her when she was presented with your ‘future husband,’ she is overcome with remorse at having interfered in your life. She doesn’t do that sort of thing, you know. She must have felt very strongly to act as she did.”

  “If you are trying to make me feel guilty, you’re too late,” Letty said. “I am already full up with guilt.”

  He sighed heavily. “Forgive me, Letty. I’m as much

  to blame as you are. But we mustn’t let Nick hurt them more than…well, we mustn’t!”

  Letty stood up. “He isn’t going to rob the Bigglesworths. I promise.”

  She lifted the satchel she’d packed Lady Agatha’s belongings in and dumped the contents onto her bed. She began stowing different clothes inside, warm clothing that she could wear on a packet ship across the North Sea.

  “What are you going to do?” he asked.

  “I shall write Sir Elliot a letter and tell him who Nick Sparkle is,” and who I am, “and what he plans to do.” And what I planned.