“You asked why I was here. I would like to tell you.” She set her glass down. “Five months ago my aunt, Lady Agatha Whyte, eloped to France with a Frenchman.” She waited to see if the information struck a chord. It would for most people.
“Then it’s fortunate they are in France,” Justin finally said. “At least the bloke should know some decent restaurants.” He paused. “But then, that isn’t always the case. Once, when I was traveling in Austria, I had for a guide a fellow who had the most underdeveloped palate it has ever been my misfortune to—”
She cleared her throat.
“Excuse me. You were saying?”
“My aunt eloped. That the fellow she eloped with is French is of no consequence.” Evelyn hesitated as the lack of veracity struck her. She disliked dishonesty above all things. Particularly dishonesty with oneself. “Well, actually, it is. He managed to undermine my aunt’s sound judgment and her sense of duty to her clients to a spectacular degree.”
Seeing Justin’s brow lift inquiringly, she explained. “Frankly, I can’t see any Englishman achieving a level of fascination that could so overwhelm a lady that she would forget everything, in her desire—”
She broke off. Judging from his odd expression she had misstepped, either in her use of the word “desire” or her charge that an Englishman couldn’t engender much of it.
Maybe Lotharios took pride in their—what would one call it? Conquests? Perhaps she should reassure him that she was quite certain he could give any Frenchman a run for his money? Or was he offended by her choice of the word “desire”? Though it would seem peculiar for a masher to take exception to such a simple word.
But then she’d done it before, offended people because of her unfortunate predilection for choosing an appropriate word for an inappropriate thing. Happily, Justin only looked a little dazed. That look, too, was unfortunately not an entirely unfamiliar experience for her.
“Well, the French are renowned for their, er, beguiling ways, are they not?” she asked defensively.
“Are they?”
His query sounded sincere, and as Evelyn was always happy to dispense information, she replied. “Yes.”
“Who’s have thought it? But we digress. Now,” he raised his forefinger, “let me see if I have this right. Auntie’s off having a high old time with her new beguiling French husband, and you . . . ?” he trailed off invitingly.
“And I am left in charge of her business. She seems to have gone off on her honeymoon without having made any arrangements for the tending of her business while she was away. I, of course, took action at once.”
“I say, well done. Kudos to the loving niece for jumping into the lurch when family duty calls,” he declared.
She eyed him closely but, try as she might, she couldn’t tell if he was twitting her. If he was, he did it so disarmingly she couldn’t help but smile.
“Yes, at least, kudos for the loving niece’s good intentions,” she said. “But there won’t be any medals for a job well done.”
“No? Why is that?”
“Because—” She stopped. This was the hardest part. The part she’d never admitted aloud and resisted doing so now, particularly as she still didn’t quite believe it herself. She took a deep breath. “Because I am . . .” She took another breath. “I am . . .”
“You are . . . ?” he prodded.
She closed her eyes and forced the words out. “I am no good at it.”
There. She’d said it. And because confession was good for the soul, and even more importantly because Evelyn never did anything by half-measures, she went on.
“I am not only no good at it, Mr. Powell, I am horrible at it.” The confession did nothing to ameliorate her bruised ego; she still felt like a failure.
“Damn shame, that,” he replied in properly sympathetic tones. “Might I be so bold as to ask exactly what ‘it’ is?”
“Whyte’s Wedding,” she said. “You know, Whyte’s Nuptial Celebrations?” He continued looking at her in unblinking incomprehension.
“Aunt Agatha is a wedding planner. The wedding planner. Her services are used by the most distinguished families in society. In fact, there are some who claim that the only way to properly celebrate a marriage is to have Whyte’s do it.”
Or, she thought wincing inwardly, that’s what they had said.
“So,” he said, “as I understand it, you’ve taken over this wedding planning business, but are afraid that you’re not performing your duties to your aunt’s former standards. Is that more or less right?”
“More or less,” she said forlornly.
“Come, now.” He reached out and patted her awkwardly atop her head, rather as one would a dispirited spaniel. “I’m sure you aren’t all that bad.”
“Ha!” He hadn’t seen the Nortons’ ice swan, the centerpiece of a wedding theme built around the Tchaikovsky ballet. It had been shipped to the Nortons’ house hours too early, and on an unseasonably hot day. The delivery men had set it out on a huge glass platter surrounded by painstakingly made pâté choux baby swans.
By the time the wedding party arrived, it had melted. Instead of a gallant swan sliding across a silver pool surrounded by diminutive cygnets, a headless barnyard duck listed sideways in a puddle amongst the soggy, bloated pastry bodies of its progeny.
Nor had he witnessed the debacle with the five hundred white doves she’d ordered released at the Reynolds’ wedding. She’d been so proud of herself for buying their feed at a cut rate. She should have asked why it was so cheap. It was cheap because it had gotten damp and started to ferment.
By the day of the wedding, the doves, cunningly concealed in rafters of the outdoor pavilion, were thoroughly pickled. Instead of releasing them to fly gracefully away, opening the trapdoor had simply dumped them en masse on the banquet tables, where they waddled in drunken ecstasy amongst the dessert plates, gorging themselves on wedding cake as the guests fled shrieking.
There had been other “wrinkles,” too. Small things but, when added up, condemning. She lifted her gaze to his, the remembered evidence of her own ineptitude stripping away every shred of her self-protective veneer. “Mr. Powell,” she said, “I am a disaster!”
He looked at her stricken face and made no further attempt to argue. His hand rose toward her cheek and stopped. He frowned at it, as if he wasn’t exactly sure how it had moved, and let it drop. “I’m sorry. But what has that got to do with me?”
Ashamed of such weakness, she dashed away the tear that had slipped down her cheek and readjusted her glasses. She folded her hands primly in her lap.
“First,” she said, “I want you to understand that my desire to do well by my aunt isn’t motivated by pride and self-conceit. At least,” she added honestly, “not primarily by pride and self-conceit. If it was only my vanity that was at stake, I would just go quietly away.”
He looked doubtful.
“I am a mature woman. I can accept that there are things of which I am not capable. Though,” she continued, pleased with how reasonable she sounded, “I confess I wouldn’t have suspected something which, at its core, is nothing more than a matter of simple logistics and management to prove so formidable. Would you?”
She didn’t wait for an answer. “I mean, though I dislike boasting, I have managed my parents’ estate during their absences, traveled extensively by myself, and only last year founded a school for itinerant farm laborers in our parish.”
She tried to relax but her jaw seemed to have seized up. She continued through her teeth, “I also opened a housemaid training service for the local girls, and have sat on our district’s council for three years running. Now, Mr. Powell, given these facts, don’t you find it amusing,” she tried to laugh to prove just how amusing it was and failed, “how silly and aggravating and out-and-out stupid it is that something as simple as planning a wedding reception should be the one thing I cannot seem to get right?”
She looked up at him for concurrence and found him staring at her. H
ad she shouted that last bit? She forced herself to smile brightly.
“Of course you do,” she answered. She picked up her abandoned glass and took a ladylike sip of lemonade. “Do you have any questions?”
“Well, yes.”
“And that is . . . ?”
“I suspect I missed something—happens to me all the time, so wouldn’t be surprising—but did you ever tell me how your current, er, difficulty involves me?”
“Oh, didn’t I say?” she answered, happy that her voice had regained it usual calm. “You are involved because I need you in order to once again establish Whyte’s Nuptial Celebrations as the uncontested leader in wedding planner services.”
“And how am I to do that?”
“By renting me North Cross Abbey for six weeks.”
“The Granddad General’s old place?” he said, clearly surprised. “It’s just a tumbled-down rubble heap in the middle of sheep country. Can’t imagine why you’d want to rent it.”
“I don’t. My client does. I explained to her that it likely has none of the modern conveniences. It doesn’t matter. She insists she wants to have her wedding celebration there.”
“Great sheep fancier, is she?” Justin asked, and Evelyn felt a smile slip out.
“Not that I know,” she said. “She is Mrs. Edith Vandervoort of the New York City Vandervoorts.”
“Never heard of her,” Justin said. He picked up her glass and carried it to the sink.
“She’s a very, very wealthy American widow,” Evelyn called after him. “Very high society. Her first husband was a Knickerbocker.”
The term, adopted by the ancestors of the Dutch settlers who considered themselves the aristocrats of New York society, didn’t appear to mean anything to Justin. He turned around and regarded her blankly.
She tried a different tack. “She is marrying Lord Boniface Cuthbert, one of the most celebrated economists of our day.”
This got a response. “She’s marrying old Bunny Cuthbert?” Justin exclaimed, grinning broadly. “Well, well.”
“Bunny?”
“He was one of my professors at Oxford. First-rate chap, though timid as a blind tortoise. She must be quite the effervescent creature to have lured Bunny out of his shell.”
Evelyn thought of the cool, blond American woman. Mrs. Vandervoort had more hauteur in her little finger than any European crown princess but, as for effervescence, Evelyn had seen mud more bubbly. “She’s certainly unique.”
“Why does she want to have her wedding at North Cross Abbey?”
Evelyn wasn’t sure she had the right to reveal the information Mrs. Vandervoort had given her. On the other hand, it might persuade Justin to grant her request.
“It’s a personal matter that I divulge in the strictest confidence. You see, though her first husband was a Knickerbocker, Mrs. Vandervoort herself comes from less illustrious stock. In fact, before emigrating to America, her grandmother served as the cook at North Cross Abbey.”
Justin gave a low whistle and leaned back against the sink. “I can’t say which is more surprising, that the old skinflint actually paid to keep a cook, or that Mrs. Van-whatever’s granny liked him well enough to have fond memories of the place.”
Evelyn shifted uncomfortably. “They’re not exactly ‘fond.’ Mrs. Vandervoort grew up on her grandmother’s stories about North Cross and its inhabitants, but they weren’t very nice stories, I’m afraid. She—the grandmother, that is—” Evelyn cleared her throat, “felt ill-treated.”
“Aha,” Justin said. “What happened? Was one of the footmen fresh?”
“No, no. Nothing like that. Actually, she felt a grievance against your grandfather. Thought he looked down on her and treated her contemptuously. I’m sure he didn’t,” she hastened to reassure him. “Most likely it was all in the poor woman’s mind. When some people find themselves in positions inferior to others they get to imagining all sorts of things that never—”
“Oh, no. I ’spect he did,” Justin interjected calmly. “He was frightfully bigoted, loud, and critical,” Justin went on. “Recall the first words he said to me—well, not actually to me, but to my father. Suspect he didn’t think I was worth addressing. ‘Good God, Marcus!’—that’s my father’s name—‘Good God, Marcus, I do hope you produce a soldier to carry on the family tradition before I die, something other than this dilettante.’ ‘Dilettante’ being not the worst but, I like to think, one of the more accurate terms my dear grandfather applied to me.”
Evelyn’s eyes grew wide. “How terrible for you.”
Justin gave her a wicked smile. “Not anywhere near as terrible as it was for him; I never was blessed with a little brother. But, as you can imagine, I am in full sympathy with anyone who suffered under the old tyrant’s domestic rule.”
“Then you’ll rent the abbey to me?” Evelyn asked eagerly.
He shook his head. “I didn’t say that. I only said I was in sympathy. It would take a good deal more than sympathy to incite me into allowing a bunch of Yanks to invade the familial sanctuary.”
“That’s terrible! I bet you sound just like your grandfather,” Evelyn declared hotly, drawing a startled, if appreciative, glance from Justin. “Besides, you yourself said it was a ghastly old place. Well, I will transform it.”
“I don’t want it transformed. I like ghastly old places.”
“Now you’re being arbitrary. Come, I won’t hurt your old abbey. I’ll ship in my boxes of trims and trappings and such and when we’re done, I’ll ship it all out again leaving the place cleaner, neater, and probably in a good deal better repair. All at Mrs. Vandervoort’s expense.”
An unreadable expression stole across Justin’s face. He crossed his arms over his chest. He had very nice arms, the muscles moved smoothly beneath his skin. “When would you want to be renting the place?”
“Next month.” She held her breath.
He threw up his hands in an exaggerated gesture of defeat. “Now, that is too bad. I really am sorry. Any other time and I might have been able to accommodate you.”
She stared at him. She’d almost had the abbey. Instead, what she saw was her aunt’s reputation slipping into infamy. “What’s wrong with next month?”
“Next month is April,” Justin said patiently. “I always spend April at North Cross Abbey.”
She couldn’t believe this. “And it would be too much trouble to go, say, in June? Which is a much more convivial month to spend in the country, I might point out.”
“No,” he said. “The migrations will be over by June.”
“Migrations? As in birds? You have to be teasing me!” She’d been so close to redeeming herself. “You’re not going to refuse me because of a bunch of birds?”
“I’m sure you understand.”
“No! You don’t understand. I’ll pay you. Enough so that you could spend April in some nice, cozy little cottage anywhere in England. One with porcelain facilities.”
“Sorry,” he said. “Love to oblige. Can’t.”
He had to oblige. This was her only chance to restore Whyte’s good name. After the last two debacles, she couldn’t give her services away. But if she pulled this off and impressed the international set that constantly moved with and around Mrs. Vandervoort, English society would once again be pounding down the mahogany door of Whyte’s Nuptial Celebrations.
She steeled her resolve. She was sorry it had come to this. But a woman had to do what a woman had to do.
“You have to let me rent the place.” She dug into the pocket of her knickers and produced a yellowing note card.
“I do?” His dark brows climbed again. “And why is that?”
She handed him the card. “Because I’m turning in your marker.”
Chapter 3
JUSTIN ACCEPTED THE note card and read the elegant scrawl of his own hand. “Why, of course! You’re the owlet!”
“Excuse me?”
“The owlet!” he repeated exuberantly. “Broughton’s unexpected progen
y. The little girl with the dowager’s manner. Ellie? Ivy?”
“Evelyn.”
He snapped his fingers. “That’s right. Evie.”
“Evelyn,” she corrected him. No one called her Evie, not even her family. She was the least Evie-like person in the world. Evies were demure, pretty, and shapely. She was . . . well, she wasn’t an Evie.
“Will you honor your note, Mr. Powell?” she asked, ignoring his nonsense.
He leaned back, his hands curling around the edge of the counter, and smiled cheerfully. “I say, has it occurred to you that your ‘request’ is remarkably like extortion?”
“A bit,” she admitted. “I’d hoped to be spared this—”
“You’d hoped to be spared?”
She contrived to look wounded. “You gave me no choice. You should have been gallant when you had the opportunity.”
“Forgive me.”
“Besides,” she said, “if I were you, I’d have expected something like this. I mean, a woman who would break into your house is likely at the end of her options, isn’t she?” She shook her head woefully. “Just look at what I’ve been forced to because of you.”
He laughed, surprising a grin out of her. She peeked over the top rim of her glasses in amused exasperation. Couldn’t he at least pretend to give her words credence?
“I take it you’re not filled with remorse?” she asked without much hope. “Will you help me, anyway? Please?”
For a long moment, he considered.
“All right, Evie, I’ll tell you what,” he finally said. “I’ll let your American have her party at my abbey. I’ll even allow you to transform the old place into whatever set piece you want—provided you cart away the props once the happy couple is united. But,” he added severely, pushing away from the counter and coming to stand directly over her, “there is one condition.”
Bridal Favors Page 3
