Lord Bachelor

by Tammy L. Bailey

  “Don’t be absurd,” Edmund said. “I have talked to her several times, and she understands the choice I have made. She may not agree with it, but she trusts me to make the right decision.”

  “Nonsense, she has locked herself in her room and refuses to come out until you fix this abomination you’ve subjected yourself to.” Sir Richard’s voice pitched up an octave higher.

  “This abomination, as you call it, helped me satisfy the proclamation put in place by my father.”

  “The bloody hell it did!” The man paused to thrust a finger in Abby’s direction. “Who is she, Edmund? A shopkeeper’s daughter? From what I’ve heard, her roots are rotted with dishonor and lawlessness. Believe me, I’ve done the research. The Duke of Dangleon, indeed.”

  Edmund felt Abby stiffen behind him, a strangling noise coming from deep in her throat. He held her back, although the sight of her impaling the man with her phone did tempt Edmund to let go.

  “She has more honor and legitimacy in her little pinky than you have in your entire being.”

  Like most Rushwoods, Sir Richard was a petty man who believed wealth and status were interchangeable. Even if the title and everything associated with it passed to him, he’d still have to explain Abby’s tainted bloodline and its association with a Rushwood. It was a burden Edmund was certain the man would not choose easily.

  “I foresaw your irresponsible ways long before you did and have taken the liberty to announce the wedding of you to our cousin, Blaire. It is to take place in two weeks. This way, you retain your wealth, land and title, exactly what your father wanted for you.”

  Abby’s hand began to shake inside Edmund’s. He’d forgotten about Blaire. He liked the woman, but he’d be damned if he’d marry her. Infuriated at the circumstance, he stared at Sir Richard. He was the devil. Whatever fake concern he showed for Edmund’s mother was due to obtaining the Rushwood title and Danwick Manor all to himself.

  In the charged lull, Kendra chose that moment to wiggle in between the two of them.

  “Please allow me to introduce myself, sir,” she said toward Sir Richard. Edmund thought he saw the man’s long nose draw in a half centimeter.

  “I am Kendra Pendleton and my daughter”—she reached back to shove Zella in front of her—“Zella Pendleton possesses the lineage you seek. Edmund can marry her.”

  “Mrs. Pendleton, we’ve been looking for you.”

  Everyone, the cameras along with them, turned to find three officers standing to the side. One of them Edmund recognized as Jay-Rome from the night of the break-in. He sent Edmund a cordial nod before the producer waved them onto the stage.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Through the ashes of this tragic day rose a beacon of hope inside Abby’s tender heart.

  As the short, stocky officer ambled toward her, a subtle smile softened his face. “Ms. Forester,” he said, “I tried to reach you on your cell, but my wife, a big fan of yours, said you’d be here.”

  “You found the paintings?” Abby said, grasping for some good news.

  He sent her a curt nod. “They were in a warehouse a short distance from here. Apparently the thief sold them for fifteen thousand dollars each and was just waiting for the buyer to come pick them up.”

  Abby let out a calming breath. She wanted to cry, but she didn’t think she had any tears left. Instead, she just stood there, nodding her head. “Did you catch who did it?”

  Jay-Rome sliced an annoyed glance toward Kendra, motioning for the other officers to do what they needed to do. As one reached for his handcuffs, Kendra began to draw back, shoving her daughter in front of her.

  “You can’t prove anything.”

  “You and your accomplice, Norman Weatherby, who ratted you out about thirty minutes ago, can tell that to the jury.” There was a silent pause. “You have the right to remain silent…”

  Abby watched Jay-Rome walk toward the miserable woman, continuing to read her the Miranda rights. As Abby expected, Zella did not take the news well.

  “Tell me you didn’t do this, Mother,” Zella said, her face changing from denial to astonishment to disgust, the longer she stood glaring at her mother. “Tell me you didn’t have Uncle Norman steal Abby’s paintings?”

  Abby now realized where she’d seen the man. It was at her father’s funeral, when he’d escorted Kendra and consoled her as she shed fake tears over the closed casket.

  With bile rising in Abby’s throat, Jay-Rome and his much taller and much thinner partner stopped to allow Kendra to give her daughter an answer. Unfortunately, the woman was only able to bend her head and do as they instructed her to do, remain silent.

  “How could you?” Zella asked her mother, her voice dejected. “You’re the one who talks about dignity, always reminding everyone of a crime Abby’s relative committed over one hundred years ago. Then, here you are. God, I can’t even bear to look at you.”

  After a long moment, Zella rotated in Abby’s direction, her face a canvas of disbelief and disappointment. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

  Despite their differences, Abby felt the need to comfort the woman, reaching over to give her a hug. “I’m sorry, too.”

  Zella exhaled and shook her head, but remained on stage, turning her back when they escorted her mother out of the studio. As the cameras continued to roll, Abby felt the warmth of Edmund’s hand fold around hers.

  ****

  Edmund was elated that they’d found Abby’s mother’s paintings and satisfied Kendra received the justice she deserved. “Are you all right?”

  Abby never had the chance to respond. Sir Richard cut in, his annoying voice projected to a dull echo. “Now, where were we? Ah, your marriage to Blaire.”

  Edmund brought Abby closer to his side. “I’m so very happy to disappoint you, but I’ve already proposed to Miss Forester.” He only hoped he could talk to his mother before the papers picked up the story, and she was left with trying to explain something she knew nothing about.

  Sir Richard’s eyelids now drooped with boredom. “And is your Miss Forester aware that you will be as poor as she, without a title, without a pound between the two of you? You will hate her one year from now, and leave her alone, destitute with less than she has now. Is that what you want for her, Edmund?”

  Edmund flinched as Abby’s hand fell away from his, slow and tragic. He glanced down at her face, tears streaming so fast, she shuddered.

  “Abby, don’t listen to him. I won’t leave you. Take my hand.” The words ripped out of his chest, knowing quite well she’d separated from him for a reason, perhaps forever.

  Without turning in his direction, she managed to whisper. “I love you, but regret is a permanent burden, Edmund. I cannot do that to you or your mother.”

  “Abby, please,” he said, his voice breaking. She tried to smile as she turned, waving to the audience, who sat open-mouthed and shocked at what they’d just witnessed.

  “No,” he said, but the word was barely audible as a knot lodged in his throat. He tried to swallow, but it remained, growing larger the more distance she put between them.

  At the end of the stage, she stopped. He willed her to turn, to face him one last time. He thought about rushing after her; however, whatever decision she’d made, she would not change it. He knew her all too well.

  As if she’d materialized out of thin air, Raify D’Gothomer slid from the shadows to stand beside her. The woman said nothing, but acknowledged Edmund with a gracious nod of her atrociously decorated head.

  Paralyzed, Edmund watched as Abby disappeared out of his life. Will, having little or no prudence, drew up beside him. “This whole thing sort of reminds me of the Titanic. It just makes me wonder, out of all of this, which of you has been saved.”

  Edmund stood in place. “I believe that’s quite obvious.” Despite his heart shattering into a hundred pieces, Edmund relented that Abby had plucked him up from his own demise. He thought if he hadn’t spoken of the need to maintain his privileged
life so often, she wouldn’t have walked away so easily. However, he’d not give up on them until he knew not one shred of hope existed of them belonging together. What if did not belong in his vocabulary.

  “Here.”

  Edmund glanced down to find an envelope shoved toward his abdomen. “What’s this?”

  Will shrugged. “The audience’s choice.”

  Edmund opened the flap and slipped out the card. There, in bold letters, was the woman he belonged with, the woman with whom he was meant to spend the rest of his life. With blurry eyes, he gazed up at the stunned audience and crew. With the cameras still rolling, he forced a smile and lifted the card for everyone to see.

  “Abby,” he said, and walked off the set.

  ****

  Abby wrapped the black apron around her waist and picked up the empty tray from the bar. She avoided glancing at Tommy since accepting the position two weeks ago. She had no desire to gaze into his dark eyes and see remnants of a thousand I-told-you-so’s.

  She’d not heard from Edmund since leaving him at the studio. Within twenty-four hours, she’d gone through an array of emotions. From shock to despair, to anger, to loneliness; she’d endured them all. While both Raify and Tommy tried to console her, she’d chosen to turn off her cell phone and sit in her dry bathtub, staring at her hideous refrigerator.

  When she’d stopped feeling sorry for herself, she turned her phone back on, and waited. After twenty-one straight days of silence, she changed her number and concluded she had been right about him. He was just an illusion.

  Although she didn’t regret her decision to turn away from his offer, she lingered in heartbreaking misery. Well, at least she’d graduated, receiving an A on her nineteenth-century Women’s Lit paper that had more tear stains than punctuation marks.

  As Ms. Fairchild requested, Abby had tried to parallel her life to one of the characters Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte had created. In Jane and Elizabeth, Abby found a similar reflection. She was simple, but stubborn, and aspired to be accepted for whom she was, and where she came from. As well, neither Lizzy nor Jane were damsels, but strong women who fell in love with men who admired and adored them for who they were, despite other people’s objections.

  Unfortunately, their happy endings set unrealistic expectations for women like Abby. Raify had said that love was a rescue, in one form or another. Abby didn’t feel rescued. She felt like she was drowning. Edmund had once asked her what she wanted to be. Abby didn’t know if she wanted to be anyone. However, what she did want more than anything in the world was to have someone to share a song that was lasting enough to endure the fading of time. She supposed women’s choices had evolved and increased, but their wants had stayed the same regarding love.

  Only Abby didn’t know if she ever wanted to fall in love again. It was a cruel emotion at times, so much so that she wondered if her father had placed her on the safe and narrow path to keep her from suffering as he did when he’d lost her mom.

  Despite how much she loved her father’s shop, she decided to turn it over to the bank. She also sold off most of his records, closing the doors to What Goes Around forever. She realized living someone else’s dreams didn’t bring them back, no matter how hard one clung to them. She also moved out from upstairs—with some urging from both Raify and Tommy—into a studio apartment.

  Her life had returned to semi-normal, accepting the job Tommy gave her and volunteering at Lilly Ridge where his grandmother resided. With money from an anonymous donor, the facility allowed Abby to organize holistic activities for the patients and decorate it using more natural light and items from various time periods.

  She planned to take some more classes, so that one day she would be able to host her own assisted living facility, dedicated to the comfort of Alzheimer’s and dementia patients. She thought if she hadn’t sold most of the records to an antique buyer named Carl overseas, she would have donated them to Lilly Ridge.

  She’d begun to accept her new life when Will dropped by to say Holly had been hired and that she was now his boss. They talked over a beer—not Weaver’s—saying how he wished things had turned out differently. Then, with a shrug, he handed her a lovely mint-tinted announcement written in elegant handwriting. “Edmund asked me to give you this since your mail came back undeliverable.”

  “What is it?” she’d asked, wishing she’d learn to stop asking questions she really didn’t want the answer to.

  “My guess would be a wedding invitation.”

  Since then, Abby, unable to open or burn it, kept it crammed in her purse.

  “Abby, phone,” Tommy called across the empty bar. It was only two in the afternoon, still too early for the after-work crowd and too late for those with nothing to do.

  “Who is it?”

  “Someone calling about the bank loan, I think?” he said, pulling the cord as taut as it would go toward her.

  She put the cold, stale-smelling receiver to her ear. “Hello?”

  “Hi, Ms. Forester, my name is David Thomas from the Armitedge Bank.”

  Abby lifted onto one of the bar seats and dropped her head into her hand. “Are you calling to tell me that someone bought the store?”

  “It’s extraordinary, actually. Yes, someone has purchased the store as well as the building, and has put it entirely in your name.”

  Abby shook her head, not sure if she heard the man correctly. “What?”

  David Thomas laughed excitedly. “Yes, it appears you have a benefactor.”

  “No. That’s not possible. Who?”

  “A Lord Edmund Rushwood.”

  Abby dropped the phone, the taut cord snapping the black receiver back across the bar. In a state of shock, she just sat there blinking at the flashing beer sign twenty feet away. Out of habit, she brought a hand to her throat, forgetting her mother’s locket had been lost since that fateful day at the studio.

  She’d gone back several times to try and find it until she was informed, not so gently, that it was probably thrown in the garbage, and trash day had come and gone.

  With the knowledge of Edmund’s interference, her heart, that had suffered enough already, began to hammer in her chest. Funny, she actually thought it was broken, worthless, a pile of shattered promises and forced decisions, never to respond with such prevailing force again.

  “Abby, are you all right?” Tommy’s voice yanked her gaze to him.

  “Uhm, I…I think I need a vacation.”

  “We can take a trip to California.”

  “No,” she stopped him before he started going down that road again. “I think I’m going to need to go farther than across state lines, Tommy.”

  He sent her a curious look before realizing just how far. Like with Tommy, Abby knew she had to put an end to this. She had to tell Edmund how she felt in order to move on. As well, she’d be damned if she’d accept one farthing, or pound, or whatever it was they used these days, from Lord Edmund Rushwood or his wife. She had no doubt they were married by now.

  She groaned inwardly. Yes, she’d practically thrown the two of them together with her decision, but he could have at least come to tell her good-bye, called to say…something…anything.

  “Oh, Abby. I almost forgot. This came for you.” Tommy handed her a small puffy envelope. She stared at the address for a few moments, her hands beginning to shake.

  “It’s from England,” she whispered.

  Tommy quirked an eyebrow before he returned to drying a few glasses and putting them away.

  With reluctant hands, Abby opened the package and sucked in her breath at what she saw tucked inside: her locket. She clutched the gold chain inside the palm of one hand. She’d been so attached to it, clinging to it for strength at times, believing she needed it for direction and purpose. When she thought she’d lost it, it didn’t take her long to realize the locket was not a device to make her brave, but a reminder of what to do with her life, to follow her heart.

  When she lifted to replace it around her neck,
a card slipped out onto the floor. Her pulse quickened as she bent to see what it said, knowing it was from Edmund. It simply read: I could not hold onto this any longer. Forgive me for not returning it sooner. Edmund.

  That’s it. Forgive me? She thought she deserved more than a passive two-liner that dismissed her until he had less important things to do. Even Mr. Darcy’s letter to Lizzy was at least two small pages.

  Her mind a storm of furious thoughts, Abby arranged for the bank, with Raify’s unusual influence, of course, to give her a check in the amount Edmund spent to purchase the building. In her friend’s dark apartment, a fake fire dancing in the fireplace, Abby sat drinking a cup of Earl Grey tea. “Am I doing the right thing by going to see him, Raify?”

  Her friend sent Abby a sad smile. “What does your heart say, dear?”

  Abby lifted her hand to the necklace Edmund had returned to her. “I’m so afraid to ask or even trust it anymore.”

  Raify pulled the delicate cup to her lips and sipped slow before setting the cup onto the saucer with a gentle clank. “I believe you know what you have to do.”

  No, Abby didn’t.

  If she flew all the way to England and Edmund feigned indifference to what they shared, or worse, introduced her to his new bride, Abby thought she’d never be able to forgive herself. After all, she really only had herself to blame. She’d been the one so willing to go to him when she’d been warned to stay clear. She’d also been the one to walk away from what he’d offered. She hiccupped on a sob.

  When Raify handed her a white monogrammed handkerchief, she dried her tears and swiped back her blonde hair. “Raify, do you remember when you said that love is a rescue in one form or another?” she asked, although she couldn’t remember Edmund ever saying he even loved her once.

  Raify nodded. “I do.”

  “Do you still believe this?” Abby turned toward the woman who sat without her hat, her hair pinned back in an old-fashioned bun. “I love Edmund, but I don’t feel at all like I was rescued.”

  “Did you ever stop to consider you were not the one who needed rescuing?”