The Bridal Season

by Connie Brockway

  She took her seat, arranging her skirts as eight faces watched her expectantly.

  “Well?” Merry demanded in exasperation. “What’s she like?”

  “She ain’t a bit hoity-toity,” Grade said, daintily sipping her tea. Cabot wasn’t the only one with good manners. “I can see why she’s managed so well. She has a chatty way with her and is ever so common.”

  Cabot snorted with disapproval.

  “In the nicest sense of the word,” Grace went on, ignoring him. “She asked all sorts of questions.”

  “What sorts of questions?” The boot boy asked.

  “About Miss Angela and the marquis, of course, but mostly she was interested in”—Grace set down her teacup, placed her palms flat against the table, and leaned forward—“Sir Elliot.”

  “Go on,” breathed the tweenie.

  Grace settled back. “Tha’s right. And I’m thinkin’ that what with Sir Elliot bein’ recommended fer a barony and Lady Agatha bein’ a duke’s daughter, she would make him a right proper bride.”

  “You must be jesting,” Cabot said. “You can’t seriously be playing matchmaker for Sir Elliot and Lady Agatha?”

  Grace sniffed. “Wot if I am? Where’s the harm? If things don’t work out, well, Lady Agatha is going to be gone in a few weeks. And if things do work out, well, don’t you think Sir Elliot deserves a duke’s daughter?” She impaled Cabot with a glare. The others, quick to take umbrage over an imagined social slight to the local hero, followed suit.

  “It has nothing to do with what Sir Elliot does or does not deserve,” Cabot replied. “It has to do with interfering in people’s lives.”

  “Ach!” Grace flapped her hand, dismissing his conceits. “Who of us would have ended up where we are if someone hadn’t had the good sense to interfere with us?”

  And with that impeccable piece of logic effectively stifling Cabot’s protests, the conversation turned to the particulars of “interference.”

  “Elliot?” Professor Atticus March called out upon hearing the front door close. A breeze stirred the curtains covering the library’s French doors and Atticus shivered. He was an old man and the night was cold.

  Fighting the impulse to simply wait for Elliot and then request that he shut the doors, Atticus rose with difficulty and closed them himself. Elliot had come home when he’d had heart failure eighteen months ago. That was long enough.

  He’d returned to his seat and was lowering himself into it when he found his arm being supported. With his usual unobtrusive manner, Elliot eased him into the chair.

  “I was just thinking of having a whiskey and soda, Father,” Elliot said. “Can I tempt you into joining me?”

  “I’d like that,” Atticus replied.

  Elliot moved to a small credenza and busied himself with decanter and soda bottle. The problem, thought Atticus, watching his son, is that Elliot made having problems so easy. He simply shouldered any difficulties, whether or not they were his own. The result was that little was required of a person in Elliot’s care, except to graciously cede his troubles.

  Had Elliot always been so bound by duty? Atticus wondered, watching his last surviving child. He thought not. Oh, Elliot had always been attentive and conscientious, but it was only after Terry’s death that he’d acquired that genteel polish, a polish so smooth that one could not easily see past its brilliant surface to the man beneath. It was an insidious sort of thing, Elliot’s gentility.

  After Terry had died, Elliot, filled with misplaced guilt had abandoned his budding legal practice and joined the army. He’d returned wounded and covered in honors—not the least being a knighthood.

  Since then, he’d not once deviated from the course on which circumstance and fate had set him. He’d funneled all his considerable energies into judicial reformation. Then, a few weeks ago, word had arrived that the Prime Minister had recommended that Elliot be made a baron. Which meant that Elliot would be able to take a seat in the House of Lords and eventually win his way into the appeals court.

  Anxiety over the new pressures his son would face had given Atticus sleepless nights. Not that Elliot resented the burden; he considered it an honor and his duty to accept that honor. Atticus was vastly proud of his son. It made no sense, this feeling of dissatisfaction that arose when he thought of Elliot’s future.

  There was no reason for it. Elliot was well liked and respected, and though some would say he was too private and self-possessed, Elliot himself seemed content Nothing wrong with contentment. Atticus considered it a fair compensation for a long life. And perhaps that was the problem. He was seventy and Elliot was thirty-three, far too young to have abdicated passion for contentment

  Elliot’s appearance at his side postponed Atticus’s troubled musing. He handed Atticus a whiskey and took the seat opposite, stretching his long legs out before him. He scowled slightly, his expression distracted, his thoughts filled no doubt with the demands of the day.

  Atticus remembered that Elliot had fetched Eglantyne’s wedding planner from the train station. He hoped Angela understood the difficulties she’d be shouldering upon wedding a marquis, with a termagant like his mother for an in-law. She was so young, barely eighteen. At church last Sunday she’d looked pale and fatigued.

  “How is she, do you think?” Atticus broke the silence.

  Elliot looked up, his expression baffled. “Who can say?” he said slowly.

  “One could ask her, I imagine,” Atticus answered in surprise.

  “I barely know her,” Elliot muttered. His gaze fixed inward on some image he alone could see, one that amused as well as troubled him, for his mouth softened into a grudging smile.

  Atticus watched him, puzzled until he realized he was speaking of the wedding planner.

  “She’s not at all what one would expect,” Elliot said.

  “No?” Atticus asked, feeling his way.

  “She’s too young and too—” Elliot lifted his hand in a gesture of frustration, looked for a word, failed to find it, and repeated, “She’s not what one would expect.”

  “She’s young?” Atticus prompted, intrigued by the emotion this young woman who was “not what one would expect” had inspired in his son. “And…beautiful?”

  Elliot shot him a frustrated glance. “No,” he said. “Yes. No. I don’t know. Not beautiful like Catherine.”

  “But attractive.”

  “Lord, yes.”

  Atticus’s brows shot upward.

  “There’s something in her face that makes it unusual, riveting. A sort of rueful joy. And the way she moves…like a dancer. But not a ballerina. Like a Gypsy dancer.”

  “Doesn’t sound like any lady of my acquaintance,” Atticus admitted regretfully. He despised the stiff posture imposed by whatever contraption women currently wore under their garments.

  “No,” Elliot agreed slowly. “But she speaks well. Her voice is perfectly modulated and her accent is aristocratic.”

  “But…?” Atticus prompted.

  “But she uses some extremely modern cant.”

  “Vulgar?”

  “No, not exactly. But there are other things as well,” Elliot said slowly. “She doesn’t have a maid. She had no one with her except a little dog.”

  “What is this amazing woman’s name?”

  “Agatha. And I’ve never seen a less likely Agatha,” Elliot muttered discontentedly.

  “Anything else…interesting about her?”

  “Only her singular animation…” He trailed off and shut his eyes for a moment.

  His son was a handsome man, Atticus thought, and yet seemed completely unaware of it. True, Elliot paid attention to his appearance, but Atticus knew this to be a demonstration of his respect for others rather than any desire to impress.

  Suddenly Elliot shoved himself to his feet.

  “What is it, Elliot?”

  “I have completely forgotten Lady Agatha’s personal luggage.”

  “I thought a dozen trunks of hers had arrived a few d
ays ago,” Atticus said in surprise.

  Elliot smiled. “Apparently, those were but the tools of her trade. Her personal effects came with her.”

  “I see.”

  “They’ll have unloaded it by now. I promised Eglantyne I should retrieve it as soon as I deposited the ladies at The Hollies. I ought to fetch it and bring it there at once.”

  “At once, I’d imagine,” Atticus agreed.

  With a nod, Elliot rose and strode across the room, pausing before the small gilt-framed mirror on the wall. He smoothed his hair back with his palms, frowned at the shape of his tie and quickly retied it, adjusted his cuffs, and turned. He grinned—yes, a decided grin—at Atticus. “I’ll be back shortly.”

  “Take your time. It’s a very nice evening,” Atticus said. He smiled into his glass of whiskey when he heard the front door shut a moment later.

  The excitement surrounding Angela’s marriage had never particularly interested him, but in the last few minutes, he’d become positively fascinated.

  Chapter 6

  No director directs as well as a rapt audience.

  Letty studied the lighted window above. She knew it was her bedroom because she’d put her hat on the sill. She wrapped her hand around a good, thick vine snaking up the stone façade and gave it a hard yank. It held. Of course, there was only one way to be truly certain.

  She wedged the toe of her boot amongst the leaves, gripped tighter, and pulled herself up onto the stout branch. She bounced up and down experimentally.

  “Lady Agatha?” It was his voice—deep, incredulous, and wary. Of all the vile luck!

  She swung about, holding onto the vine with one hand and pivoting on her foot, a smile already plastered on her face. He was standing a short ways off, the night swallowing up his dark clothes and midnight-hued hair. No wonder she hadn’t seen him.

  He’d changed into evening attire. Only his shirt was easily visible, bleached blue-white in the moonlight.

  She, by contrast, had not changed. She still wore the lavender frock.

  “Why, Sir Elliot!” she called breezily. “Lovely evening, what?”

  “Quite.” Hard to read anything into his tone, and she had only a vague impression of his features. “May I assist you in…in whatever it is you’re doing?”

  The question was implicit; what the devil was she doing? Only the fact that he was a gentleman and therefore must eschew anything that even remotely resembled an accusation kept him from asking her flat out what she was up to.

  “As a matter of fact, you can,” she answered brightly. “What is the name of this extraordinary plant?”

  “Ivy?” His incredulity was only slightly evident Of course, he couldn’t very well say “bullroar,” as he must have longed to.

  “How interesting,” she mused. “Do you know, it cleaves so tightly to this brick that it actually bears my weight? I can scarce credit it since it looks so fragile.”

  “Hmm. Deceptive.”

  “Ivy, did you say? I simply couldn’t resist climbing up to test its strength. In the spirit of adding to my store of knowledge on natural history, you understand.”

  “Bullroar,” he said under his breath. She was quite sure of it.

  “Excuse me?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead, he came to stand below her and looked up. The light from inside gilded the planes and angles of his face. His thick lashes laid crescent-shaped shadows on his cheeks. His dark hair gleamed. He inclined his head and she had the oddest notion he was trying not to smile.

  “Perhaps you’d like to come down now that you’ve tested the vine?”

  She nodded. It was hard to act the grande dame while clinging like a bat to the side of a house. She lowered one foot, seeking the ground, and—

  His hands wrapped about her waist and he lifted her, lowering her slowly to the ground. He released her but did not step back. She did, however, warned by the little shiver of alarm that began when she looked into his eyes. Dusky and mysterious and compelling.

  She took another step back and bumped into the ivy-covered wall. Her breath came rushing out on a little whoosh of nervous laughter. His brows tipped in silent inquiry. Desperately, she sought a way to regain mastery of the situation, running through her trove of maxims until she found one that answered: A befuddled man is a malleable man.

  “Now, then,” she said in a chill tone, “what exactly brings you lurking about The Hollies after sunset, Sir Elliot?”

  His beautiful eyes narrowed. “As you may have already divined, I was ‘lurking about’ in hopes of encountering you, Lady Agatha.”

  Drat. It would take more than a few words to muddle Sir Elliot’s brain.

  “Really?”

  “Well, I may not have come with the express idea of strolling about the grounds. I had, in fact, driven in all blessed innocence to the front door.” His smile was vulpine and gentlemanly all at once. “I collected your personal effects from the train station and had just unloaded them with instructions that they were to be taken up to your room when I saw you disappear around the corner of the house.

  “In short, Lady Agatha, I came to tell you your things had arrived, not to spy on you.”

  His forthright attack left her slightly breathless. He wasn’t playing by the rules! He was cheating. A gentleman wouldn’t accuse a lady of accusing him of spying on her! Even if she was! Damnation!

  She laughed, not quite as lightly as she’d intended. “La! What a fanciful notion. You’re teasing me, of course. I’m sure you realize that I lead an entirely boring and blameless life. If you were to spy on me, you’d be bored to tears.”

  “Oh,” he said, his mouth still smiling, but his eyes hard, “I sincerely doubt that.”

  “You are too kind.” And this was too dangerous to continue.

  She moved past him, intending to lead him back into the house where others could dilute the tension between them. He fell into step beside her.

  “And you, Lady Agatha?” he said, his tone conversational and therefore doubly suspect. “You were simply taking the night air when you were overcome with this horticultural curiosity?”

  “Exactly.” If she moved any faster she’d be trotting. The realization brought her up sharply.

  Maxim number two: A person who runs away always looks like they have a reason to—Her foot caught in her hem and she tripped. Immediately, his hand was beneath her arm, setting her back on her feet. She forced her eyes forward and kept walking.

  He did not release her arm. His clasp was light and she liked it. And she disliked that she liked it.

  “I couldn’t think of dining after such a long trip and, too, the thought of being inside on such a lovely night was unconscionable,” she said, pleased with her explanation.

  “It is a most lovely night,” he agreed. Then, after a long moment’s hesitation, “Would you care to continue your walk…with me?”

  “Yes.” It popped out before she’d stopped to think. He smiled, his gaze averted. He looked disconcerted and a little flattered. Amazing. What was wrong with the women of Little Bidewell that this man was still walking about unclaimed?

  Oh, yes. It wasn’t what was wrong with Little Bidewell women, it was what was wrong with Sir Elliot: Catherine Bunting. The thought soured Letty’s mood.

  “I trust you’re finding everything to your satisfaction at The Hollies?”

  “Oh, perfectly delightful.”

  “And you have met Anton?”

  “A charming fellow.”

  They walked a ways farther, Letty fearful that any topic of conversation she brought up would lead to her unveiling and Sir Elliot, for whatever reasons, just as mute. The air had cooled since she’d come out and dew had developed on the lawn, soaking through the thin soles of her boots.

  “Your absence from London for such an extended period presented no difficulty?” His voice broke the silence.

  “No. I was actually quite eager to be off.”

  “Ah, you enjoy the country.”

  S
he could think of no reason to answer dishonestly. “I lived in the country as a child, and all in all I must say I prefer the city. I am, you see, a woman of the world.”

  “Obviously.”

  She glanced sharply at him, thinking she’d heard laughter in his voice, but he appeared quite sober.

  “Thank you. And as a woman of the world, I find that those things that most appeal to me are most often found amidst the bright lights of civilization.”

  “Yes?”

  “Oh, I grant you, rustication is very peaceful and quaint and I suppose if one were convalescing from an illness or suffering from a nervous disorder, living in the country would be…all right…but I am quite robust and not given to nerves.”

  “And here I thought all ladies, even women of the world, liked to be thought appealingly fragile.”

  Lady Fallontrue had always pleaded some malaise or another when she’d wanted something from her husband. Letty had despised her for it. It was one thing to manipulate gentlemen on a level playing field, but it was quite another to victimize a man by making use of one of the few decent qualities he might own.

  “What,” she asked, stopping, “is ‘appealing’ about weakness?”

  He studied her before answering. “You have a forthright way with words, Lady Agatha. It is most refreshing.”

  “Comes from owning my own business, I imagine,” she said. “This wedding thingie, you know.”

  She hesitated and then, encouraged by some misplaced desire to draw Sir Elliot out, she said, “My experiences have led me to believe that honesty in conversation, while not always strictly diplomatic, is the most rewarding.” As soon as she said the words, she realized how hypocritical they were. She blushed and was glad the night hid her heated cheeks.

  “I shall endeavor to remember your good advice,” he said. He’d withdrawn his hand from her arm when they’d stopped; she rather missed it.