Four Weddings and a Sixpence
Page 34
Bea beamed.
Then Calpurnia Heywood did the most un–Calpurnia Heywood thing Bea had ever seen.
She swooned.
“Aunt Callie!” Bea shrieked. She rushed forward to steady her, but Frederick was faster, catching her before she hit the ground.
“Oh my,” Aunt Callie said in a wavering voice. “I can’t imagine what . . .”
“We have been standing for quite some time,” Frederick said. “You look very pale.”
No paler than normal, Bea thought, but then again, Aunt Callie had always prided herself on her milky complexion.
“Thank you, my dear boy,” she said. “I would surely have toppled if you had not come to my aid.”
Except she wouldn’t have toppled. Aunt Callie had definitely swayed, and she’d flung a hand to her brow, but it had all happened close enough to Frederick that she would never have hit the ground. It was, Bea was coming to realize, the most carefully choreographed swoon in the history of carefully choreographed swoons.
And Bea had a feeling that carefully choreographed swoons had a long history indeed.
“It is all so overwhelming,” Aunt Callie said, fanning herself in a most uncharacteristic manner.
“Are you certain you’re all right?”
“I will be,” Aunt Callie said. “I just need to sit down.”
“Here,” Bea said, “let me escort you—”
“No!”
Bea blinked.
“I mean no, you mustn’t. This is your dream, Beatrice. I could not ask you to give up even a moment of your allotted time.”
“But—”
“I believe I’ll go back to the library,” her aunt said, sounding ever so slightly more robust. “I quite liked the chair I used earlier.”
“Downstairs?” Bea murmured. Because it was becoming increasingly obvious what was going on here.
“Quite right. That’s where I’ll be.” Aunt Callie looked over at Frederick. “Don’t mind me. I shall be just fine. Please, take all the time you need.”
And then she turned back to Bea and winked.
Well. That cleared up the matter of what sort of encouragement Aunt Callie thought she should give to Frederick.
Before either of them could offer again to escort her out, Aunt Callie hurried down the stairs, repeating, “All the time you need!”
“Should I have seen her out?” Frederick asked with a thoughtful frown. “She seems to have made a near complete recovery.”
“Oh, indeed.”
He looked at her, his eyes lighting with . . . something.
Bea decided to take a chance.
“She didn’t swoon,” she said.
“No?”
She shook her head. “She never swoons.”
Frederick’s lips began to curve, and Bea’s heart began to flutter.
“In fact,” Bea said, “she has quite the most sturdy constitution of anyone I know.”
It was, in Bea’s opinion, as close to yelling, Kiss me as she could possibly manage.
He took a step toward her. “Did you want to look at the telescope again?”
She shook her head. “It can wait.”
“Really?” His brows rose. “You’d ignore the stars?”
“Just this once.”
“Why, Miss Heywood, I think you might be flirting with me.”
And because love made Bea feel very bold, she touched her finger to his cheek and said, “We’re engaged to be married. Surely I’m allowed.”
“Encouraged, even.”
Aunt Callie’s face flashed in Bea’s mind, reminding her to offer Frederick encouragement. An unladylike snort burst from her lips.
“What is it?” he murmured, smiling down at her.
She shook her head. Her aunt had been more than obvious this evening. Bea didn’t need to compound it by admitting that she’d been plotting all along.
“I could torture it out of you,” he teased.
“Or you could kiss me.”
“Or I could kiss you,” he agreed, and his mouth swooped down to capture hers again.
“Wait,” she said, and when he pulled back, a confused expression on his face, she whispered. “Or I could kiss you.” With gentle hands, she guided his face toward her lips, gently kissing him at the corner of his eye.
And she realized that whatever his eye had lost, it did not include tears.
She kissed those away, too.
Epilogue
One month later
A guest bedroom at Farringdon Hall
Home of the Marquess of Pendlethorpe
“What do you think we should do with it?”
The Countess of Thornton—Cordelia to her friends—held out her hand, the sixpence in her palm.
The Duchess of Dorset looked up from the bed, where she was trying to make herself comfortable. Anne wasn’t that far along in her pregnancy, but she seemed to be tired all the time. “We should wait for Bea,” she said. “It wouldn’t be right to make a decision without her.”
Cordelia looked over at Lady Elinor Blackthorne, who stood by the window, pensively gazing out. “Ellie?” And when she didn’t answer: “Ellie!”
Ellie startled and turned. “Sorry?”
“What do you think we should do with the sixpence?”
Ellie frowned. “Where is Bea?”
“That seems to be the question of the hour,” Anne said in an exceedingly dry tone.
“I told you,” Cordelia said, “I saw her sneaking away with Lord Frederick.”
“Bea would never do that,” Anne said.
“I believe we’ve all done things we would previously have said we’d never do,” Cordelia commented, tipping her head toward Ellie.
“Why are you looking at me?” Ellie protested, thrusting her arm toward Anne. “She’s the one with child.”
“I’ve been married over a year!” Anne retorted.
“And Bea’s been married over an hour,” Cordelia said smoothly. “Have you seen the way he looks at her?”
“It’s very sweet,” Ellie said.
“There’s nothing sweet about it,” Anne said tartly.
Ellie gave her a peevish look. “Says the pregnant woman lounging on the bed.”
“The married pregnant woman,” Anne reminded her.
Ellie smiled. “I tease.”
Anne smiled back. “I know.”
Ellie glanced to each of her friends, eyes widening with excitement. “Do you think they anticipated their vows?”
“They’re already married,” Cordelia reminded her.
Ellie rolled her eyes. “I meant before this.”
Anne thought about this for a moment. “Not Bea.”
Cordelia shook her head with perhaps more vigor than one might have expected. “Not Bea.”
She looked at Ellie.
Anne looked at Ellie.
Ellie’s lips parted in consternation. “What?”
“Did you?” Cordelia asked.
“What a question,” Ellie muttered, her face going into an immediate flush.
“You did!” Cordelia gasped.
“Did you?” Ellie demanded.
Cordelia’s cheeks took less than a second to reach the same shade of pink as Ellie’s.
“Oh ho ho!” Ellie crowed. “Pot meet kettle.”
And then, as if by telepathic agreement, both ladies turned to the bed, where Anne lay, watching the exchange with interest.
“You’re awfully quiet,” Cordelia said.
Anne pretended to look at her nails. “I haven’t anything to say.”
Ellie crossed her arms.
Cordelia planted her hands on her hips.
“Oh, fine,” Anne capitulated. “We did, too.”
“All three of us,” Ellie said, shaking her head.
“But not Bea,” Anne said firmly. “Bea would never.”
As if on cue, the door opened, and Bea slid inside, the smile on her face matched only by the high color of her cheeks.
“Sorry
I’m late,” she said, clearly attempting to regulate her expression. “Have you been waiting long?”
“Not too long,” Ellie said, biting her lip.
“Probably not long enough,” Cordelia said devilishly.
“What?” Bea asked. She looked from friend to friend. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
“We’re just happy you’re happy,” Anne said, her words more of an announcement than anything else. “We were just talking about how much we all like Lord Frederick.”
“Oh.” Bea beamed, gazing at her three closest friends with love. “I’m so happy you do. I’m so happy I . . . well, I’m just so happy!”
“He’s very dashing,” Ellie said.
“I know. He has beautiful eyes, doesn’t he?”
Her friends blinked.
“Well, the one you can see,” Bea amended. “You’ll have to take my word on it for the other.”
“Does he always wear the patch?” Anne asked.
“Most of the—”
“We don’t have time for this,” Cordelia cut in. She looked at Bea apologetically. “Not that his injury isn’t of the utmost importance.”
Bea gave an acknowledging nod. She knew her friend meant no offense.
“We have to decide what to do about this.” Cordelia held forth the sixpence.
Bea took it from her, allowing its familiar weight to settle in her palm. “I don’t know. We don’t really need it anymore, do we?”
“We all got our money’s worth,” Anne said.
Bea looked over at her. “Oh, that’s terrible.”
Anne shrugged. “I’m so tired these days, all I can do is make bad puns.”
“Perhaps we should save it for our daughters,” Ellie suggested.
Bea thought about that. “It seems rather calculated.”
“And we weren’t?” Cordelia countered.
“I don’t think it’s right for us to leave it for so many years,” Anne said. “It seems unfair.”
“To whom?” Bea asked.
She shrugged. “The rest of humanity, I suppose.”
“So what do we do?” Ellie asked. “Hide it again?”
Cordelia’s eyes widened. “Why not?”
“But where?” Bea asked.
“Back in a mattress,” Cordelia said firmly.
They all looked at the bed.
Bea’s eyes bugged out. “Here?”
“Who knows when we’ll next be together,” Cordelia said.
“But at my father-in-law’s house . . .” Bea said. “Surely no one sleeping here will need such luck.”
“We did,” Anne said baldly. She scooted off the bed and yanked at the sheets, exposing the side of the mattress.
“I agree,” Ellie said. “It would be wonderful if we could take it to a school like Madame Rochambeaux’s, but we can’t. So let’s make do.”
“Does anyone have a knife?” Anne asked.
Bea jumped forward. “You can’t cut into my father-in-law’s mattress!”
“No need,” Anne said. “There’s a tiny hole right here.”
Ellie leaned down to look. “It’s as if it was predestined.”
“You know I don’t believe in any of this,” Bea said, but she handed over the coin.
“Apparently you don’t have to believe,” Anne said, shoving the sixpence into the mattress. “You found Lord Frederick anyway.”
“I did,” Bea said softly. “Or maybe he found me.”
“You found each other,” Ellie said.
“Help me tuck the sheets back in,” Anne said.
They all knew how. No matter how high they’d risen in the world, they’d started out at Madame Rochambeaux’s, where all girls had to make their own beds.
“Who knows how long it will take for someone to find it?” Ellie wondered.
“Maybe a hundred years,” Anne said.
“Maybe longer,” Cordelia said.
Bea’s lips parted. “Do you think . . .” She looked at her friends, so incredibly dear to her. “Do you think someone hid the sixpence for us to find?”
“There’s no way to know,” Ellie said.
“No,” Bea murmured. “But I think they did. I think there were four girls—”
“I thought you were the skeptic among us,” Ellie said.
“I am.” Bea shrugged helplessly. She thought of Frederick, waiting for her downstairs. “Or maybe I was.”
She looked at the mattress and laughed out loud, startling all her friends. “I have to go,” she announced. She blew a kiss to the sixpence, nestled in its new home, and called out, “To love!”
She had a marriage to begin.
About the Authors
JULIA QUINN started writing one month after finishing college and has been tapping away at her keyboard ever since. This #1 New York Times bestseller is a graduate of Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges and one of only sixteen authors ever to be inducted into the Romance Writers of America Hall of Fame. She lives in Seattle and can be found on the web at www.juliaquinn.com.
ELIZABETH BOYLE has always loved romance and now lives it each and every day by writing adventurous and passionate stories that readers from all around the world have described as “page-turners.” She resides in Seattle with her family, her garden, and her always-growing collection of yarn. Readers can visit her at www.elizabethboyle.com.
LAURA LEE GUHRKE spent seven years in advertising, had a catering business, and managed a construction company before she decided writing novels was more fun. A New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, Laura lives in the Northwest, with her husband, two diva cats, and a golden retriever. Readers can contact her via her website, www.lauraleeguhrke.com.
A childhood spent lost in the pages of countless novels led STEFANIE SLOANE to college, where she majored in English. Since then, she’s happily supported herself via many bookish endeavors, including editing, book reviewing, and writing. Stefanie currently resides with her family in Seattle. You can contact her on the web at www.stefaniesloane.com.
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Copyright
This is a collection of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
“Something Old” copyright © 2017 by Julie Cotler Pottinger.
“Something New” copyright © 2017 by Stefanie Sloane.
“Something Borrowed” copyright © 2017 by Elizabeth Boyle.
“Something Blue” copyright © 2017 Laura Lee Guhrke.
“. . . and a Sixpence in Her Shoe” copyright © 2017 by Julie Cotler Pottinger.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
Digital Editio
n JANUARY 2017 ISBN: 978-0-06-242849-3
Print Edition ISBN: 978-0-06-242842-4
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