by Joan Smith
“Then what can have happened?” she asked.
“I thought he would have done it. I can’t imagine why he didn’t. Well, perhaps I can imagine, for he was looking daggers at me, but I have no proof, and I wouldn’t like to traduce the poor fellow.”
“He did it to make me look like a jilt,” Miranda said.
“And to make any other engagement difficult,” Bolton added, peering to see if she understood him.
“That, too,” she agreed through thin lips. “You should see the horrid note he sent me.”
Bolton was delighted to see this romance was dead and buried. “Shall I call him out?” he suggested facetiously.
She gave a tsk of annoyance. “That is how all this trouble arose, if you recall.”
“That is not exactly my recollection. The trouble arose because you didn’t tell Hume the truth when he said he was engaged to you. But I take your point. So, what is to be done?”
“What can I do? He has put me at point non plus.”
He gazed at her a long moment, then said gently, “Don’t worry, Miranda, love will find a way.”
A dozen friends rushed up to compliment Miranda on her match with Hume. She was embarrassed and uncomfortable trying to explain the error. When the stares and whispers behind raised fans became intolerable, she decided it had been a mistake to come out that evening and called the carriage to take her back to Berkeley Square.
And when the Hazards arrived home later, she was glad she had left, because it seemed Hume had stopped in at the party with the Bolton ladies and Jeremy after attending a play.
“Helen was chirping merry to have wrested Hume away from you,” Mrs. Hazard said. “You should have seen her hanging on to his arm like a blood-sucking leech. Jeremy was there wearing a hang-dog face. I am proud of my Dotty. She refused to stand up with him. Fancy him having the gall to ask her!”
“Did Lord Bolton remain there long?” Miranda asked, in a casual-seeming manner.
“He hung around until he realized you had left,” Mrs. Hazard replied. “I thought he might have come back here.”
Miranda had rather thought he might have done the same, although she had not told him she leaving the party early. “No, he didn’t.”
“I expect he’ll come tomorrow, dear,” Mrs. Hazard said, and called to Samson for cocoa as she sat down and pulled off her slippers to massage her aching toes.
Chapter Sixteen
The retraction of the engagement was published in all the morning papers. Not the simple retraction Miranda had sent in, but a large one, edged in black like a funeral announcement, sent in by Hume. “The editor regrets any embarrassment to Lady Wetherby by the inadvertent announcement that she was engaged to Mr. Alfred Hume. Mr. Hume wishes to make clear that while no engagement ever existed, he in no way blames Lady Wetherby for the misunderstanding.”
Miranda read it once with satisfaction. Then as she read it again more slowly, she felt the blood begin to pound in her ears. The wretch! He made it sound as if she had claimed to be engaged to him without his knowledge or approval! Stating publicly that he did not blame her only inferred that she was, in fact, responsible, but he pitied her in her disappointment and wished to exonerate her. Really it was too bad of him.
She rushed the journal to Mrs. Hazard without saying how she interpreted it. Perhaps she was imagining the slur against her.
Mrs. Hazard ran her sharp eye over it and said, “The scoundrel! And not a word in it that could let you turn the lawyers on him. It is an insult, Miranda. It is nothing less than a slap in the face.”
“Then you have read it as I have, to mean I published the announcement without his knowledge.”
“That’s the way it looks to me. It’s what he wants folks to think, why else would he talk about blame? I shall ask Lord Peter what we ought to do. I’ll tell you what Lyle would have done, and he had a deal of experience with lawyers. He would have waylaid the villain under cover of darkness when there were no witnesses and darkened his daylights. I wager Beazly could hire a couple of ruffians to do it and no one would be the wiser. You have only to say the word, my dear.”
It was a tempting idea, but a dean’s daughter was not quite ready for such rough justice as that. She wanted to discuss it with Bolton, and waited eagerly for his call. He had still not come when Samson announced luncheon. The ladies had several callers that afternoon, all full to bursting with curiosity about Hume’ s announcement, and sly innuendoes that Miranda’s stunt of trying to get him to the alter by announcing a nonexistent engagement had failed. They were shown short shrift.
Late in the afternoon, Lord Peter brought his sister, Lady Anscombe, to call. She was of that long, lean build that earned her the description, “a ladder.” Her face was of an equine cast. These disadvantages were overcome by her lively nature, her birth and breeding, and of course her success in getting an earl to the altar.
“You should see Helen swanning down New Bond Street on Hume’s arm,” the countess said. “She is chirping merry, whatever of anyone else. She will get the old bleater to the altar now, see if she don’t.”
“The reason we arrive so late, I stopped for a word with my solicitor, Lady Wetherby,” Lord Peter said. “Nothing can be done in law about his low stunt. It is all insinuation, you see. He didn’t actually come out and say you sent in the notice without his approval. Your only recourse would be to send in your own notice saying that you did not send in the initial announcement. But that only makes a circus of it. Best to let it die a natural death. A nine day’s wonder, it will soon be forgotten.”
“What do you think of hiring a couple of thugs to beat him up?” Mrs. Hazard suggested. “After dark, I mean, when no one can see them.”
Lord Peter considered this atrocious idea with interest. “I could put you on to a couple of fellows,” he said.
Lady Anscombe had no objection either, but Miranda vetoed this solution, which was no real solution. It did nothing to clear the cloud from her reputation.
“What would put old Hume’s nose out of joint,” Lady Anscombe suggested, “is if you could marry someone else pretty quickly, Lady Wetherby. That would show the ton you ain’t so desperate you have to invent a betrothal to that old crook, Hume. You know how he got his blunt, of course?”
“No, how?” Mrs. Hazard asked eagerly, for she never ignored any means of adding to her pile.
“It was a great scandal twenty years ago. He bought up for an old song a row of rat-infested shacks in Long Acre that were condemned, slipped some gold into the proper pockets to keep them from being torn down, got them reinstated as habitable without so much as touching a hammer to them. He rents them out to prostitutes and thieves and fences and worse. And buys some of the stolen goods as well, or so I’ve heard. A regular twister. Despite all his money, he can’t buy a title from Prinny. That shows you what sort of creature he is, when Prinny won’t be bribed.”
Miranda was appalled. Even Mrs. Hazard was not so keen for gold that she was ready to become a slum landlord. “And he looking down his pointy beak at me as if he were a duke, because I’m in trade!” she cried.
As the afternoon wore on, Miranda wondered that Bolton did not come to commiserate with her and help in her time of distress. He must know how Hume’s stunt galled her. She was free of any other romantic entanglement now. There was nothing to prevent him from making his offer. Lady Anscombe had suggested that an engagement would go a long way toward renewing her dignity.
But he did not come. Lord Peter and Lady Anscombe insisted that she accompany them and the Hazards to a party that evening.
“The last thing you want to do, Lady Wetherby, is behave as if you are hiding your head in shame,” Lady Anscombe informed her. “It would suit Hume right down to the heels for you to tuck your tail between your legs and skulk away out of sight. He would have the field to himself to propagate his version of what happened. You must go out with your head high and look as if you’re enjoying yourself.”
“That wou
ld be excellent advice if I planned to remain in London, and cared what the ton thought,” she replied. “I plan to return to Hornby very soon.”
“I’d be demmed if I’d let Hume get away with thinking he had got the best of me,” Lady Anscombe replied. “Where’s your gumption, gel?”
Her gumption, she feared, had melted away when Bolton did not come to call. He would have read Hume’s announcement. Perhaps he even believed it. The Bolton ladies were living at his house. No doubt Hume spent a deal of time there as well. Between them, they had convinced him she was not worthy of being his wife.
“Of course she’ll go with us,” Mrs. Hazard said. “Miranda never lacked gumption. You should have seen how she took hold of the reins and ran Hornby when her John went and died on her.”
This word of praise did much to give Miranda heart. She realized then that it was not only Hume and the ton she had to prove herself to. It was the Hazards, and even herself.
“Where did you plan to go this evening?” she asked. “Lady Everett’s assembly, I expect?”
“The duke is having a few friends in this evening,” Lord Peter said. “Only a hundred or so. You’ll be quite comfortable there at a small party.”
“Very well.” She felt Bolton was more likely to be at Everett’s, but she could not go there alone. And in any case she wouldn’t run after him. She went to the duke’s party, and put on a smiling face while she wished with all her heart she were at home. Bolton was not there.
The morning brought new trials. She was alone at the breakfast table at eight-thirty. Mrs. Hazard and Dotty usually came down at nine. Samson, who had his finger on the pulse of all the doings in the house, brought her the Morning Observer as she ate breakfast.
She found it strange he had the journal open at the social page when he handed it to her. He tacitly tapped the paper and she glanced to see his finger pointed at the engagement announcements. The words Lord Bolton leapt out at her. Bolton was engaged to someone! The shock of it left her giddy. For a moment, she felt she was going to faint dead away. Samson discreetly averted his eyes from her ashen face, bowed and vanished.
She read the notice with a shaking heart. Then read it again, and sat blinking her eyes and breathing hard. “Lord Bolton is pleased to announce the engagement of his sister-in-law, Lady Bolton (nee Helen Otter by), to Alfred Hume, of the Briars, Hampshire, and Grosvenor Square, London. The private wedding ceremony is to take place on Saturday, at St. George’s, Hanover Square, with a reception at Bolton House. Honeymoon in France to follow.
Hume was marrying Helen — tomorrow! He had bested her once again. He had got in first with not only an engagement but a wedding. This would confirm in society’s eyes that he had never proposed to herself, that she had announced the engagement without his knowledge or consent. And Bolton must have connived at it. It was he who made the announcement, he who was giving the reception at his house. They had won him over to their side by some misrepresentation of the facts.
She could fight Hume, she could fight Helen and Adelaide and Jeremy, she could fight the whole of London society, but she found she had not the heart to fight Bolton. If he had turned against her, then there was no reason to remain here. She would go home to Hornby and settle into unrelieved widowhood.
But first she had to face the wrath of the Hazards when they came down to breakfast and read the announcement, and soon of Lord Peter, who was making a great play for Mrs. Hazard, and of his sister, who had an eye on Dotty for her son. They both came running as soon as they read the notice.
“I wonder Bolton didn’t give us a warning of this,” Mrs. Hazard said, as she pondered the announcement. “Has he gone over to their side?” It was a battle royal as far as she was concerned. She observed no niceties of language. If you weren’t with her, you were against her, and it seemed Bolton had chosen the enemy’s camp.
“I own I am disa—surprised,” Miranda murmured.
“I wouldn’t have thought it of him. But there, he was always a bit of a twister, first legging it after my Dotty as hard as he could, while making up to you on the sly, Miranda. You’re better off without the likes of that.”
“We should not be too hard on him. It was the war that destroyed his character,” Dotty reminded them. No one paid her any heed.
Lady Anscombe combed her mind for an impecunious relative who would be happy to marry the pretty mistress of Hornby Hall and an income of two thousand pounds per annum, but none came immediately to mind. Unless they were actually in danger of debtors’ prison, her kin never married an income of less than five thousand no matter how pretty its owner.
The visit and the talk dragged on. There was a discussion of where they should go that evening to show the world how little Miranda cared about any of this. After an hour, it all sounded to her as pointless as the cackling of geese or the gobbling of turkeys. Her head pounded from the racket.
No one even noticed when she slipped away. As she went toward the staircase, the door knocker sounded. She froze with her hand on the pineapple bannister post, hoping against hope that it was Bolton. She heard a man’s deep voice and turned to look. But it was only Lord Anscombe, come to court Dotty.
“Oh, Lady Wetherby!” he exclaimed, when he caught sight of her. “I have a message for you from Max. I just ran into him. He is hopping about like a headless chicken arranging Helen’s wedding. Quite a surprise, eh?”
Her heart thumped in excitement. “What is the message?” she asked.
He handed her a folded copy of the Morning Observer, opened again at the social page. He gave her a conspiratorial smile and said, “He said you would understand.”
“Thank you. “ She took the journal up to her room, thinking there would be a note concealed in the folded pages. But as she thumbed quickly through it, she found no note. Nothing was written in the margin. Hume’s wedding announcement was outlined in red, followed by three exclamation marks. Was that the message? Anscombe said Bolton was running around like a headless chicken helping to arrange the wedding. He was too busy to come in person to explain anything to her.
It was nothing but another insult. He had not only gone over to Hume’s s side, he sent her this announcement to rub salt in the wound. What had happened to change his mind? What wretched lies had Hume told him? And why had he believed Hume, whom he must know to be a scoundrel?
Was it possible that simple Dotty was right, and the war had wrought some awful damage to his brain? She felt if only she could see him, talk to him!... But he didn’t come, and she had enough self respect not to go chasing after him. She didn’t think Bolton would be at any do this evening when Hume and Helen were being married the next day. He would very likely be holding a private dinner party for them at Hanover Square.
Lord Peter and Lord Anscombe took Mrs. Hazard and Dotty to a concert that evening. Miranda stayed at home, ostensibly reading The Vicar of Wakefield that she had found in Lord Croft’s library. The book sat open but unread on her knee as her mind roamed over the recent past, looking for a clue to Bolton’s behavior.
Hope died hard. She had a lingering feeling that he would come, that he would at least write and explain these inexplicable goings on. But at eleven o’ clock there was no message from him, and she went up to bed. Her eyes were dry, but her throat ached with holding back the tears. She wouldn’t cry over Bolton. It would be unworthy of her, and disrespectful to John’s memory.
Chapter Seventeen
It was Lady Anscombe who came up with the idea of going to Hume’s and Helen’s wedding. She, her son and her brother called at Berkeley Square the next morning.
“I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction,” Mrs. Hazard declared, when the suggestion was put forward.
“I don’t mean right into the church,” Lady Anscombe explained. “Just linger about outside in the carriage to have a look. They’d recognize my rig, or yours.”
“We’ll hire a carriage or a hansom cab,” she countered. “There will be such a crush we’ll never be noticed. Har
dly anyone is actually invited to the wedding, but after all the talk, half of London plans to go to the church to gawp.”
“I own I would like to see what she wears, and who they invited,” Mrs. Hazard allowed. “We could wear dark veils over our faces. Who have they chosen for best man and bridesmaid?”
They looked to Anscombe, Bolton’s friend, for an answer.
“Bolton and Adelaide,” he replied. “It is very much a family affair.”
As far as Miranda was concerned, this put the final nail in Bolton’s coffin. It was traditionally the groom’s best friend who had the honor of being best man at his wedding. If Bolton was Hume’s best friend, then he was certainly no friend of hers. The more she thought about it, the less sense she could make of it. It was as if she had got caught in a living nightmare, where her world was turned topsy-turvy.
The wedding was to take place at two in the afternoon. Mrs. Hazard and Dotty were talked into going with Lord Peter and the Anscombes, but Miranda drew the line at spying on the party.
Anscombe dallied behind for a private word with Miranda on his way out. “You’re sure you wouldn’t like to come, Lady Wetherby?” he asked. He seemed surprised at her refusal.
“Quite sure,” she said firmly.
“Have you any message for Bolton? He is so busy he hasn’t time to come in person. I could make a quick visit to Hanover Square on my way home.”
“I have nothing to say to Lord Bolton,” she said, and left with her chin high and her lips clenched.
The Hazards entered into the trip with all the excitement of attending a masquerade party. They were careful to wear pelisses and bonnets that no one would recognize, and draped their faces in such a quantity of veiling that vision would be difficult if not impossible. When the unmarked carriage drew up to the door, they darted out like a couple of thieves with their pockets full of silver spoons and climbed in.