The Bridemaker

by Rexanne Becnel

“Where are they?”

  Hester didn’t wait for an answer. The parlor was empty, as was Verna’s little sitting room. But a man’s hat rested upon a side table, so she searched on. Not the dining room nor the flagged terrace. But Hester spied them at the back of the garden, standing beside an arch of pink roses and a bed of mingled cream and red ones.

  They looked up as she burst out of the house, as if she were the intruder, not him, and something in Hester’s chest tightened to the point of pain. They looked so… so comfortable together. But that was all wrong, she told herself as she clutched her skirts higher and strode down the narrow garden path.

  Verna gave her a quizzical smile. “Hester?”

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded of her father.

  “Why, I was looking for you—or rather, for my son. I called at your home earlier—”

  “Yes. I know.” Hester broke off, unsure how to proceed. Every emotion she’d ever had swelled inside her until she hurt, until she couldn’t bear it. Like poison in a wound festering far too long, it demanded release.

  Verna held a rose in her hand and all around them the heavy scent of rose essence wafted. Her mother had preferred rose-based perfumes above all others. Hester had assumed that was the reason she preferred the scent of lilies. But right now, right here, the deep fragrance of the roses was a comfort. It was as if her mother were there with her, urging her to confront the man who hadn’t been the man any of them needed, neither as a husband nor a father.

  She lifted her chin and glared at him. “I can tell you where Horace is, so you needn’t bother Mrs. DeLisle any longer.”

  “He’s no bother,” Verna began.

  “You know where my son is?”

  Hester gave him an arch smile. “I do. And I’ll explain everything to you. But not here,” she added, giving Verna an admonishing look.

  She should have known, however, that she could never intimidate her old friend. For Verna met her stare for stare. “Actually, Hester, I believe now is the perfect time to explain everything to Mr. Vasterling.”

  “Yes. I beg you, Mrs. Poitevant. Tell me what is going on.”

  Hester’s eyes narrowed in anger. “Very well, then. Your son has eloped.”

  “I gathered as much.”

  “He left last night for Gretna Green with Dulcie Bennett.”

  “Dulcie Bennett?” Verna said, looking far more shocked than Edgar Vasterling did. “I had no idea the two of them—But you knew,” she said, eyeing Hester.

  “I knew he was partial to her, and her to him. But not until they showed up on my doorstep last night begging my help, did I know about them eloping.”

  “Does her family know?” Verna asked.

  “They know she’s gone,” Hester answered her friend, but she kept her gaze fixed on her father. “George Bennett has already been summoned from the country and was banging on my door this morning. I don’t know whether or not they’ve guessed where she’s gone—or with whom.”

  Edgar Vasterling turned away from them, shook his head as if bedeviled, then turned back to face the two women. “Why would he do such a shameful thing? Why didn’t he approach her family as a gentleman should, with a proper offer?”

  “He did. But her vainglorious mother turned him away. Her family wants a grander title for Dulcie, and a greater fortune. In short, they want someone better than Horace. The fools. They’re too short-sighted to see that there is no one better.”

  “We agree on that,” he muttered. “But surely since she was amenable to his suit, if she’d remained adamant her family would have come around.”

  “Her family doesn’t give a fig about her feelings. They never have.” She went on, in a sharp, sarcastic tone. “It’s a far too common trait these days, parents who completely disregard the feelings of their children.”

  He squinted at her. “Are you angry at them, or at me?”

  “I’m angry at anyone who can be so unfeeling about the very people they are supposed to love and protect.”

  He drew himself up. “If you mean to imply I am of that ilk, I assure you I am not. Yes, I want a good marriage for my son. Yes, I hoped to secure him a wife with a decent dowry. Is that so dreadful? I think not. I love my son, Mrs. Poitevant. Even though he has done his family and hers a terrible disservice, I will support him in his choice. I love him,” he repeated.

  “What of your daughter?” she practically shouted. “Do you love her too?”

  “My daughter?” He stared at her in confusion. Around them the air seemed to tremble, turning chill and threatening, like a storm about to break.

  “My daughter?” he repeated, but this time in a voice barely loud enough to hear. He blinked and she saw his eyes grow dark and wide when comprehension dawned. He shook his head as if he didn’t want to believe it. But when she stood her ground, his doubt must have crumbled for he said, “Hester? You are… You are that Hester?”

  It was her moment of triumph, her moment to accuse him and see him shamed and humbled by the magnitude of his failings, as a father and a man. But the triumphant expression, the arch smile that had served Hester so well would not come. Instead tears burned in her eyes, and her throat clogged with emotion. More than twenty years of anguish, of loneliness, of longing and anger too. But anger was failing her now, leaving only those other debilitating emotions.

  She wrapped her arms around her waist and took a step back from him. But he took a step forward, one, then another and another until he was close enough to embrace her. Close enough, but he didn’t touch her. “You are my Hester? My little Hester Pester-me-not?”

  That’s when the dam broke. Hester burst into tears and he enveloped her in his arms. She’d completely forgotten the pet name he’d given her so very long ago. But hearing it now…

  “My little Hester,” he choked out, squeezing her tight as she sobbed in his arms.

  But she didn’t want to sob in his arms. She didn’t want this to be a sweet reunion of long-parted relatives. He never should have let her go and he never should have stopped looking for her.

  She wrenched herself free and stumbled back from him. With her sleeve she rubbed off the tears that wet her cheeks. “You have no right to act the bereaved parent—” She broke off with a sob. “It’s far… far too late for that.”

  “Hester.” He spread his hands in supplication. “I know you don’t want to believe it, but I’ve never stopped thinking of you. Never. Won’t you let me explain what happened? I’m sure your mother has made me out to be an ogre, but can’t you hear my side of the story?”

  “Why should I listen to you when I know it will be nothing but lies? Lies and feeble justifications.”

  Verna moved nearer and placed a comforting hand on Hester’s arm. “There are usually two sides to every story, Hester.”

  Hester shrugged off her touch. “But he lied to Horace too. He told him his mother was dead, and he never told him about me. Not once did he tell my brother about me!”

  To that Verna had no reply. Nor, it became apparent, did Edgar Vasterling. Hester’s chest heaved with emotion, but over the rest of her a cold sort of numbness fell. Sniffling back the last of her tears, she squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. “Horace has gone to Gretna Green and plans afterward to return to Winwood Manor. Whether or not you can expect any more warmth from him than from me, I cannot say. You deprived him of a sister just as you deprived me of a brother. But we have found each other now, and nothing you do can change that.”

  “I want you to know one another,” he cried. “I want him to know you as I wish also to know you. You’re my daughter. My Hester Pester.”

  “And I’ll pester you no more.” She started to leave but his words followed her.

  “ ”Twas your mother gave you that name, you know. Not I. I only took it up to entertain you.“

  Indeed, Hester recalled her mother using that phrase occasionally even after they’d moved to London.

  Oh, Hester, don’t be a pest. Stop pestering me, Hester.
Must you pester me so, Hester?

  She turned to him, eyes blazing, wanting to burst any niggling doubts she might have about his guilt. “My mother may not have been the most nurturing of parents. But since she was all I ever had, you’ll understand why your belated declarations of dedicated fatherhood fall on deaf ears. At least she wanted me.”

  “Hester, Hester. I wanted you, too. I wanted you there with Horace and me.”

  “Then why didn’t you come for me? Why did you forget about me and never search for me?”

  “I did search. I tried.” He let his arms, extended in supplication, collapse heavily to his sides. “I sent a man to find her. And you. But… She took a ship to Ireland and from there she disappeared. After that I didn’t know where to look, how to find you.”

  Hester didn’t want to hear any of this, and yet she needed to know. “Why did you ever let her go? Why couldn’t you have made her more content?”

  “Do you think I didn’t try? God’s bones but I loved Isabelle. I gave her everything she wanted. Only it was never enough. It broke my heart when she left.” He shuddered. “Better to ask why she left us, her husband and her son.” His hands knotted into fists. “Have you ever asked her that?”

  He was shaking. Inside Hester was trembling, but his trembling was visible for anyone to see. She said, “Mama died six years ago.”

  She saw him sag, as if the starch had gone out of his bones. But he had no right to be affected by that news, Hester told herself. He’d forfeited that right twenty-four years ago.

  Slowly he drew himself up. He was an old man, she saw. She could hardly imagine her beautiful, vivacious mother with a man as old as him.

  He should have married a woman his own age, someone quiet and easygoing. Like Horace had done with Dulcie.

  But he had married the wrong woman, just as her mother had married the wrong man. Was one more at fault than the other?

  Hester had never explored this territory before, and she didn’t want to now. But she had so many questions going back over twenty years. “Why did you marry her?”

  He grimaced and shook his head. “Isabelle was beautiful, so beautiful and full of life. Like you,” he added with a sad smile. “She had a way of making you believe you deserved a woman like her. I was a confirmed bachelor and content in that state. But when my elder brother died without an heir, it became my duty to wed.”

  “Why not do like Horace has, come to London for the season and select an appropriate wife?”

  “That’s for young men, Hester. Dandies. Besides, I had an estate to manage. Isabelle was only a baker’s daughter. But she had a lady’s manner, and a lady’s bearing. Good enough for the simple life I envisioned for us. We met and I—” He broke off and averted his eyes. In a lower voice he continued. “It soon became necessary for us to wed.”

  Necessary? Hester frowned. Had he compromised her? But that was not likely to have bothered her mother. It was more likely that Isabelle seduced him. Especially if it meant marriage and a title and big house for her to live in. A baker’s daughter wed to a brand-new lord? It sounded exactly like something her ambitious mother would have plotted.

  Oh, Mama, how could you?

  Hester had been around long enough to know that more than one hurried wedding was the result of a man succumbing to the charms of a willing woman who was overanxious to wed.

  It didn’t always work, though. Not every man fell for that trap, and not every woman who succumbed to a man had marriage on her mind. Certainly she hadn’t. Indeed, Adrian’s belated, businesslike proposal to her had sounded more like an insult than a marriage offer.

  But Hester refused to think about that, for Adrian was out of her life. Soon enough her father would be too.

  “I’m sorry your marriage was such a failure, but I don’t want to argue whose fault it was. All I know is that I grew up without a father, and Horace had no mother. I’ve managed to build a decent life for myself without any help from you. A very good life, I might add. And while I intend to keep Horace a part of my life, you can never be anything to me but… but someone who was once married to my mother.”

  She tugged at her bodice and smoothed the ends of her fichu, fighting a wave of unwonted tears. “I’ll give you credit for having raised a fine son. He is a credit to you. But as for me…” She shook her head. “It’s too late for us ever to be anything to one another.”

  Struggling to maintain her composure, Hester turned her gaze on Verna, who still stood beside her father, Verna who had silently observed these most arduous minutes of Hester’s life. At that moment she wasn’t certain she and Verna could remain friends, not if Verna had decided to befriend Edgar Vasterling.

  As if she sensed Hester’s mood, Verna smiled and said, “I’ll call on you tomorrow, dear. We’ll talk more then.”

  Slowly Hester nodded. “Very well.”

  Neither of them spoke as she turned and made her way through the garden. Up the terrace steps she went. Into the dining room. Step by step, barely holding her fragile emotions together, and only by the strictest act of will.

  She could collapse once she reached her carriage, not before. Through the parlor. Into the foyer.

  Then a knock sounded on the front door, startling her to a halt. She stared at the heavy door. Was no one going to answer it? Where was the housekeeper? Or even a maid. Certainly she couldn’t answer the door. She couldn’t do anything right now but escape to her own carriage and her own house. But how could she do that if someone was at the door?

  Then that someone knocked again, hard and demanding entrance at once. Hester fell back a step, a cry of alarm on her lips.

  Not just someone. That was a man’s knock. An arrogant, impatient man…

  The door flew open, but she already knew who it was. Not just any someone, but Adrian Hawke. Adrian who’d gone to Scotland but was here instead, facing her across the tiny span of Verna DeLisle’s foyer.

  CHAPTER 25

  He’d found her!

  Adrian’s first impulse was to sweep Hester into his arms and kiss her until she agreed to marry him. Just kiss her, please her, seduce her into doing what he knew she would eventually be happy she’d agreed to do. One look at her shattered expression, however, convinced him that might not be appropriate.

  He closed the door behind him. “Are you all right?”

  She stared at him with eyes round with shock. “I… No… What are you doing here?”

  “What do you think I’m doing, Hester? Searching for you. I couldn’t go to Scotland without you—”

  “I won’t go. I—”

  “—so I knew I couldn’t go on to America without you,” he continued as if she hadn’t just interrupted him.

  Her face began to crumple and she shook her head back and forth. “I can’t marry you. I can’t.”

  “The thing is,” he went on, determined to ignore all her protests. “The thing is, if you won’t go with me, then I suppose I have to stay here with you.”

  “No.” She started to cry. “I can’t talk about this anymore. I’m too…”

  “Why not?” Then he saw why not. For beyond her, Edgar Vasterling came through the crowded parlor, hesitating when he saw the two of them in the foyer. Adrian sensed at once that something had happened between them. “Does your father know?” he asked her in a low voice.

  She stiffened and he thought she would not answer. But with a sniff she raised her head and drew a steadying breath. “I told him about Horace and Dulcie.” She took the handkerchief he held out to her, and wiped her face. “Thank you. And I told him… I told him who I was.”

  “Ah. But did you tell him everything?”

  “Everything?” Her eyes swam with tears but within them he saw a little flicker of alarm. Sweet, foolish girl, she thought he meant about their tryst. She raised her chin, stubborn and proud even with tears glistening in her eyelashes. “I told him everything he needs to know about me and nothing more,” she stated.

  It occurred to Adrian that he might
never fully understand Hester Poitevant, soon to be Hester Hawke. She would be a continuing surprise to him, never reacting as women of her sort were supposed to act. A dour widow who was neither a widow nor dour. An untried maiden who gave herself to him with no ulterior motive, especially not marriage. A woman alone who knew exactly how to take care of herself. But was she happy?

  More to the point, could he make her happy? All he knew was that he had to try.

  He had taken a huge risk coming back here and he was about to take an even bigger one, the biggest risk of his risk-taking life. It was all or none for him, winner take all.

  “You told him everything, you say.” He stepped right up to her and took hold of her, running his palms up and down her arms. His voice grew tender. “You couldn’t have told him everything he needs to know about you, Hester, because even you don’t know everything. For instance, did you tell him how lovable you are? How soft-hearted? How unpredictable and brave?” He leaned closer so that their faces were but inches apart. “And did you tell him what you did to me?”

  Beyond Hester, Adrian saw her friend Verna DeLisle begin to smile. She knew what he was going to say. And despite his haggard features, old Mr. Vasterling had the beginnings of comprehension on his face. Only Hester, his stubborn, dense, darling Hester did not know what he was talking about. But then, who had been denser about it than he?

  “Did you tell him that you made me fall in love with you?” He stared into her beautiful, shocked face, willing her to believe the intensity of his feelings, the depths of his emotions. Words were not enough to express how he felt, but he had nothing else to use.

  “I love you, Hester. I don’t want to be anyplace but where you are. Scotland. America. London. They’re all just places. A geography lesson. I love you and I need you in my life. I want you to marry—” He broke off. “It’s beyond simply wanting. I need you to marry me. I’m begging you to marry me.”

  He went down on one knee and looked up at her, a half-grin on his face, but with fear thudding a terrifying rhythm in his heart. “Will you marry me? Please?”