Royal Bridesmaids

by Stephanie Laurens

  While he spoke, Chloe was aware of Althea’s breath coming faster and faster. She gave a small, choked cry, and let go of Chloe’s arm.

  Though she wanted to push Lord Lovedon out of a window, Chloe had to tend to her sister first. She pulled Althea toward another doorway, an open one leading to one of the back staircases. Althea was sobbing again, this time in deep, painful gulps.

  Chloe half-dragged her to the door on the other side of the landing, through the recently abandoned dining room, and into a pretty sitting room. Its lone window overlooked the splendid gardens that spread out for miles, it seemed, from the north front of the house. Thanks to the afternoon’s onslaught of rain, a grey haze shrouded the glorious vista Chloe had glimpsed this morning.

  She grasped Althea by the upper arms and gently shook her. “Those men are drunk,” she said. She was none too sober herself, she realized, as a wave of dizziness nearly toppled her. Firmly ignoring it, she went on bracingly, “I was amazed to see how much champagne Lord Lovedon could pour down his throat and still stand upright. But you know what aristocrats are like: heads of oak, and hearts even harder.”

  “It—it wasn’t a secret. Prince Louis told me he was poor—but he s-said he l-loved me.”

  “Which he does, as everyone can see—except Lord Lovedon and his dimwitted followers. But you can’t expect them to recognize a love match when they see one. Defective vision, you know, thanks to centuries of inbreeding—and the pox, too, probably. And don’t forget the gallons of champagne they’ve swilled, or the fact that they do nothing but gossip because they lack the mental capacity to carry on an intelligent conversation. My love, you can’t possibly take them seriously.”

  “But what if it’s true?” Althea said. “Only think of Prince Louis pining for the girl he loves, while having to pretend to care for me.”

  “If there was such a girl, he forgot her the instant he clapped eyes on you,” Chloe said. “I was there, recollect, on the day His Highness came into Maison Noirot with Lord Longmore.”

  Mama had patronized the French dressmakers practically from the day they opened their shop. Chloe and Althea had been waiting in the showroom for her when Prince Louis and the Earl of Longmore entered.

  “Once His Highness got his first look at you, he couldn’t see or think about anything else,” Chloe said. “He certainly didn’t know then that you were rich.”

  “H-he could have g-guessed, I wasn’t p-poor,” Althea said, “considering it’s the most expensive dressmaking shop in L-London.”

  Chloe dismissed this with a wave. “The point is, he fell over head and ears in love with you, and everybody knows it except this pack of drunken degenerates. How can you let a lot of strutting ignoramus blockheads make you wretched on your wedding day?”

  She went on in this way while she swiftly set about repairing the outward damage. Combining relentless mockery and mimicry of Lord Lovedon & Company with more practical remedies—the careful application of a handkerchief, readjustment of hairpins, and smoothing of wrinkles—she soon restored Althea to the state of glowing happiness she’d enjoyed only a short time earlier. By the time Althea returned to her prince—who lit up, by the way, at the sight of her—she was giggling.

  Bride and bridegroom disappeared into the mob of well-wishers.

  Chloe looked about her. All was in hand.

  Except for one small detail.

  She took a glass of champagne from a tray a passing footman presented to her, swallowed the contents, set the empty glass down on the nearest horizontal surface, then started back the way she’d come.

  This time when Chloe opened the door to the picture gallery, the male laughter sounded farther away.

  As she entered, she saw them gathered at the great bay window overlooking the north front.

  He was easy enough to spot.

  The Earl of Lovedon was tall and dark, yes, but not handsome. His features were too harsh and angular for classical beauty . . . although from the neck down he was all too classical, like a Greek statue. That chiseled profile and athletic physique had claimed her attention all too often this day. The view had left her much too warm and breathing too fast.

  His big shoulders propping up a corner of the window embrasure, the usual faint, superior smile curving his cynical mouth, he stood with arms folded, one long leg crossed in front of the other. The casual stance displayed the highest level of tailor’s art: His fine wool coat skimmed the contours of his broad shoulders and chest, and his black trousers hugged his muscular legs.

  If he hadn’t had something to lean on, he’d probably fall on his face, the drunken moron.

  The men were too busy gossiping and laughing to notice her approach until she was practically under their noses.

  Then Lord Lovedon’s dark gaze slanted her way.

  “Ah, Miss Sharp,” he said lazily. “Taken a wrong turn, have you? The duke’s house is something of a labyrinth. All sorts of odd corners and not-so-secret floors between floors. Happily, you needn’t fear his mad aunt’s springing out of a concealed door. She’s moved to Torquay.”

  Chloe stripped off one of her gloves and struck his cheek with it. She grabbed a glass of champagne from one of his startled companions and threw the contents in his face.

  He didn’t so much as flinch. The champagne dripped from his face onto his perfect neck cloth and down over his splendid silk waistcoat.

  Over the room’s sudden silence, the rain’s hammering sounded like drumbeats. Her heart beat a harder and faster tempo.

  “What is wrong with you?” she said. “How could you say such hurtful things? At a wedding, no less! How dare you make my sister cry on her wedding day, of all days? You brute.”

  “I say,” someone said.

  “What the devil?” someone else said.

  She ignored them. “If I were a man,” she said, “I’d draw your cork for you. I’d— No. Why do I need to be a man? Be so good as to name your second, my lord.”

  She was aware of hurried footsteps behind her, and familiar voices. Her sister Sarah had come. And Amy Renfrew, Chloe’s dearest friend after Althea.

  “Oh, Lord, I knew it,” Sarah said. “I saw that look. I know that look.”

  “Come away, Chloe,” Amy said. “Whatever it is, let it be.”

  “Name your second, Lord Lovedon,” Chloe said.

  “Second?” Amy said.

  Someone laughed.

  “I believe Miss Sharp has challenged Lord Lovedon to a . . . duel?” one of the men said.

  Chloe didn’t know or care who spoke or who laughed. The world was a red fog of rage, and she could barely see. Except for him. His lordly hulk was all too clear, and she wanted to choke him, this spoiled lout who’d upset her sweet, gentle sister on what was supposed to be the happiest day of her life.

  He stood, eyebrows aloft, still smiling his superior little smile. A drop of champagne clung to his thick black eyelashes. Another drop trickled down the hard angle of his jaw into his snow-white neck cloth.

  “Oh, no,” Sarah said. She grabbed Chloe’s arm and tried to drag her away. “You cannot make a scene, Chloe. Not here. Not now.”

  “A scene,” Chloe said, her gaze locked with Lovedon’s glittering black one. “I’ll make a scene. By Jupiter, I’ll—”

  “Come away, Chloe,” Amy said, taking hold of the other arm. “Whatever the trouble is, this is not the time.”

  “For God’s sake, come away,” Sarah said.

  “I recommend you heed the ladies’ advice, Miss Sharp,” Lord Lovedon said. “Under no circumstances could I possibly agree to meet a young lady at thirty paces.” He took out a large linen handkerchief, embroidered with an L, and calmly wiped his face. “I should be a deuced laughingstock.”

  “Yet it doesn’t trouble you to make a laughingstock of one who has done you no injury,” she said. “It’s quite all right to demean someone you know nothing about—”

  “Chloe, let it be,” Amy whispered. “Come away before any of the others come look
ing for you.”

  Chloe wasn’t done. She wanted to hurt him, the way he’d hurt Althea. But he was unreachable, the aloof, immovable aristocrat. He still wore the mocking little smile. He remained perfectly cool and collected even while he wiped his face.

  Meanwhile her hands were shaking, and it took all the willpower she had to keep her voice at an even pitch.

  “I shall expect to hear from your friends tomorrow morning,” she said. “Or I shall evermore regard you as no gentleman—and a coward as well.”

  She shook off her sister and friend, turned on her heel, and walked away.

  Lovedon watched her go.

  The two girls fluttered anxiously about her. Miss Sharp didn’t flutter. She didn’t hurry away, either, which was generous of her. She had some fifty feet to travel to the door she must have irrupted from. This gave him ample time to appreciate the rear view.

  For an inebriated female of negligible rank, she carried herself surprisingly well, tall and straight, without seeming stiff in the least. The only sign of unsteadiness was the slight undulation of her hips. The motion made her long, lacy scarf dance about her, and set the bows and ruffles of her pink dress atremble.

  Until this moment, Miss Sharp had been no more to him than one of the numerous sisters and cousins and friends of the bride garbed in gorgeously extravagant dresses. He’d been introduced to them all, and his fearsome memory retained every name.

  Beyond being able to put a name to her face—and catching Miss Sharp putting her gloved hand to her eye once or twice during the nuptials—he’d given her little thought. The girls were young and, for the most part, unsophisticated. The rites were lengthy and stupendously boring, and the fête thereafter, likewise in the tradition of the bridegroom’s forbears, featured his country’s quaint music. The music had driven Lovedon from the Gold Drawing Room to the picture gallery.

  As one of the groom’s attendants, he couldn’t flee the house. His early departure would be taken a slight, and even he knew better than to offend one of the King’s favorite cousins. Having no choice, Lovedon had remained, bored and irritated to within a hairsbreadth of insanity. He’d drunk enough champagne to float a flagship—possibly the entire Royal Navy—to no discernible effect.

  Until a moment ago.

  The last dose, the one Miss Sharp had administered externally, had brightened his mood amazingly. The eyes flashing at him had turned out be an interesting shade of green, with gold flecks. Her hair, which he’d previously dismissed as an insipid light brown, turned out to be the color of honey. Her skin was flawless, and the angry pink tingeing her cheeks had turned ordinary prettiness into something almost beautiful. Most important, she’d turned out to have a personality.

  He watched until she’d turned into the doorway halfway down the gallery.

  “Well, that was cool and refreshing,” he said as he folded his handkerchief.

  “What the devil was that about?” Hempton said.

  “No idea,” Lovedon said. He put the handkerchief away.

  “Do you think she was foxed?” Crawford said.

  Beyond a doubt. Though Lovedon hadn’t thought he’d paid her any particular attention, his memory held images of Miss Sharp taking one after another glass of champagne from the many trays making their way through the crowd in the Gold Drawing Room.

  Now he wondered what she was trying to drown.

  Not boredom, surely, in her case. After all, It wasn’t every day that a lawyer’s daughter married a prince, and her sisters and friends enjoyed the privilege of mingling with the haut ton. Perhaps Miss Sharp had simply celebrated to excess her sister’s matrimonial triumph. Or perhaps she wasn’t used to superior champagne.

  “I shouldn’t venture to say,” he said. “Women get emotional at weddings. She became overwrought.”

  “And abandoned the festivities, journeyed through two rooms and a passage where everybody takes a wrong turn and gets lost for days, then down half the length of the picture gallery—all to take it out on you?” Bates said.

  “It’s possible I said the wrong thing,” Lovedon said.

  “I should say that’s more than likely,” Bates said. “I’d better smooth the ruffled feathers before any Highnesses or Majesties get wind of it.”

  Lovedon abruptly recollected that the lady, being the bride’s sister, was the Prince of Massbeck-Holveg’s sister-in-law. A short time earlier, Lovedon had expressed certain less-than-sentimental views of the match. Prince Louis would not find those comments amusing.

  If any unpleasantness resulted from Lovedon’s little contretemps with Miss Sharp, he would receive a royal summons, a royal dressing-down (a skill at which the King, a former naval commander, excelled), and orders to make groveling apologies to about a thousand people, mostly foreigners.

  “I ought to do that,” Lovedon said. He started to push himself away from the wall.

  Bates held up a hand. “You’ve done enough damage. I’ve never before seen you deal so clumsily with a woman. You’d do well to leave this to me.”

  Insisting that she needed to calm down before she returned to the company, Amy and Sarah steered Chloe into the sitting room where she’d revived her sister’s spirits.

  Sarah commenced by berating her.

  That was so calming.

  “A lord!” Sarah cried. “And that one, of all lords! What on earth possessed you? He looked wet. You threw a drink at him, didn’t you? Oh, Chloe, tell me you didn’t.”

  “It seems she did,” Amy said. “And challenged him to a duel as well.”

  “I thought of stabbing him with one of the carving knives,” Chloe said, “but the servants had taken them all back to the kitchen.”

  “Oh, Chloe!” Sarah cried.

  “What on earth did he do?” Amy said.

  The blind rage was abating, and a conglomeration of feelings were sweeping in, including a sorrow Chloe was afraid would overwhelm her.

  “I took exception to something he said,” Chloe said. “Would you be so kind as to take Sarah back to the party? I need a moment’s peace and quiet to collect myself, and I can’t do that while she’s taking fits.”

  “I am not taking fits! And you’re a fine one to talk!”

  Amy took Sarah’s arm. “My dear, we’re all agitated. What’s a wedding without some hysteria? But Chloe’s right. She needs time to compose herself, and our making a fuss isn’t helpful.“

  She led Sarah away, but slowed once to look over her shoulder and mouth, “Later.”

  Chloe had hardly a minute’s solitude before she heard footsteps, followed swiftly by a male voice. “Ah, there you are, Miss Sharp.”

  She didn’t have to look that way to know it wasn’t his voice.

  She was on the brink of tears again—what a ninny she was, to regret her sister’s happiness and fret about brainless aristocrats!—but she blinked hard and lifted her chin.

  The gentleman—she couldn’t remember his name—smiled as he approached. “Miss Sharp, I shall not waste words,” he said. “I’ve come to beg your pardon for any offense Lord Lovedon has caused.”

  “Has he appointed you his second?” she said.

  He gave a nervous laugh. “No, no, certainly not.”

  “Then why send a proxy?” she said. “Why not make his own apology?”

  “He didn’t send me,” the gentleman said. “He’s a bit . . .” He trailed off, frowning, apparently at a loss for the right word.

  “A bit of an ass,” she said.

  “Bates thinks I’m half-seas over and not to be trusted with delicate diplomatic negotiations, Miss Sharp,” came another, deeper voice, from the doorway.

  No doubt whose drawling baritone that was.

  Mr. Bates said something under his breath. Curses, Chloe supposed. She was tempted to utter several unladylike words herself. She wasn’t nearly ready for another confrontation.

  Though her heart beat so hard she thought she’d faint, she collected what remained of her dignity and made herself regard Lord L
ovedon as coolly as he’d regarded her moments ago.

  He didn’t stagger into the room. He had too much self-control for that . . . even though they seemed to be upon a ship at sea.

  The walls and floor ought not to be moving.

  She’d been too furious before to notice but . . . maybe she oughtn’t to have taken that last glass of champagne.

  She forced herself to meet his mocking black gaze. “You needn’t be anxious, Lord Lovedon,” she said. “I shan’t create an international incident. I never tattle, and Althea is unforgivably forgiving. To calm her, I told her you were spouting nonsense because you were drunk as well as not very intelligent. By now, I daresay, she’s not only forgiven you but has even made up a reason to think kindly of you. My sister—as Prince Louis had the discernment to recognize—is angelically beautiful not only outwardly but inwardly as well. She’s incapable of thinking unkindly of anybody. She’d make excuses for Satan himself.”

  He drew nearer, blocking her view of his friend—and everything else. He loomed over her, all dark wool and blinding white linen and a gloriously embroidered—and now damp—blue silk waistcoat that must have cost as much as her dress.

  “Am I to understand that you came and challenged me to a duel and made me quake in my boots—all for nothing?” he said.

  “She has forgiven you,” Chloe said. “I am not so saintly. I have not. You haven’t apologized.”

  Nor would he, she supposed. Some men would rather be roasted on a spit and fed to wild boars than apologize, especially to a woman.

  “It seems I must kill myself,” he said. “It is impossible to continue in this world without Miss Sharp’s approbation.” He put the back of his hand to his forehead. “Farewell, all. I go to a better place.”

  “I think not,” she said. “I think it will be rather worse than this one and a good deal hotter.”

  “But all my friends will join me there eventually,” he said. “I shall hope in time to see you there as well. You did say you weren’t saintly.”