The Bridal Season

by Connie Brockway

  “I’ll go. I’ll bring her back. If we’re lucky, we’ll arrive back here well ahead of the Bigglesworths.” Each minute the storm grew louder. The rain wasn’t just pouring from the skies now; sharp spears of water hurled down from the heavens.

  “But there’s no carriage,” Cabot exclaimed. “Ham went back for the Bigglesworths.”

  “I’ll ride.” She grimaced at Cabot’s skeptical expression. “Who do you think exercised the Sultan of Arabis’s Penultimate Palominos when Old Bill was seven sheets to the wind?” She ignored Grace’s quizzical look and Merry’s downright baffled one. Cabot nodded.

  “Send someone down to the stables and have a horse brought round. I’ll—”

  “Hobbs already has a saddled horse waiting out the kitchen door,” Cabot said. “I was going to send him off to the Buntings’ as soon as I wrote a note.”

  “Good.” She started down the hall toward the kitchen, Grace and Merry trotting along in her wake. “There’s no time to lose.”

  “I should go,” Cabot suddenly said. “I’m a man.”

  Oh, God. She didn’t have time for this. “Good call. But completely irrelevant. If Angela sees you, she may well ride off. I’m the only one who knows where she is and why. Besides,” her voice grew gruff, “she trusts me.”

  Cabot hesitated and stepped aside.

  “I’ll be fine, Cabot,” Letty promised. “We’ll be fine. Now, I’d appreciate something better than this cloak to wear.”

  “Here.” Cabot opened a narrow door and withdrew a heavy oiled slicker. “This’ll keep the weather off best as can be.”

  She thanked him, shrugging into the oversized coat, and then, without looking back, opened the kitchen door and dashed to where the boy waited with the horse.

  The horse was already nervous. What with whirling leaves and clashing rents of lightning, he needed no encouragement from Letty to run. She leaned over his neck, clinging like a burr as she set his head toward the witch tree road, thanking God she’d once helped exercise the trained horses in a variety act. Within minutes her heavy satin skirts were soaked and the wind had ripped the hood from her head, raking her elegant coiffure loose and sending long sodden streamers of hair whipping across her face.

  She ignored it. Ignored the cold and ignored the wet and concentrated on holding on. By the time she raced into view of the witch tree she was soaked through and shivering with each strike of lightning.

  She made the top of the rise and pulled her winded mount to a stop by the long-dead tree. She peered through the driving rain. She couldn’t see a horse anywhere. She stood up in her stirrups. Nothing.

  Fear grew like a canker inside her, spreading tendrils of panic. She wasn’t surprised not to find Kip there; only a fool would be out on a night like this, a fool or a desperate girl.

  Angela had to be here. Letty hadn’t seen a rider on the road and there was only the one between The Hollies and here. She kneed her horse forward, moving out in a wide arc. She’d gone about fifty yards when she saw a darkish mound on the ground.

  In a trice, Letty slid from the saddle and stumbled through the mire toward the figure lying so still. She fell to her knees. It was Angela. She must have fallen from her mount. Brief flickers of lightning illuminated a face as pale as alabaster, a smear of something dark seeping across her forehead.

  Please God, please let her be all right.

  Her hand trembled as she shoved it beneath the cloak, seeking a pulse. She caught back a sob when she found it. “Angela!” she shouted. “Angela, wake up!”

  The girl shifted uncomfortably. “Agatha?”

  Once more a sob escaped Letty. “Yes. Yes, dear. It’s me.”

  The girl muttered something. Letty bent nearer to hear her. “What, Angela?”

  “You were right,” the girl mumbled. “He didn’t come.”

  Letty’s sob turned to laughter. “No, he wouldn’t risk his neck. I told you he was a coward.”

  “You are a woman of the world,” Angela murmured weakly. “I endeavor…to remember.”

  “Quiet, Angela. Be still.”

  “We’ll drown if I’m…still…too long,” the girl muttered.

  “I’m afraid you’re right,” Letty said. “Can you walk?”

  “I think so.”

  Letty eased the girl to a sitting position and felt her flinch. She shifted behind Angela and wrapped her arms around her waist, bracing her feet and pulling. Angela gasped in pain but scrabbled weakly to find her footing. It was no good. With a moan, she sank silently to the ground.

  I’ll kill her at this rate, Letty thought desperately. She cast about trying to think of what to do. She didn’t dare leave her here and ride for help. Angela was already insensate, her body cold and wet. But they could not stay, either. Angela couldn’t long endure being soaked in frigid rain.

  She’d told Cabot that she would find Angela and bring her safely back. She’d fail. She should have let Hobbs ride to the Buntings.

  She sank to her knees, wrapping her arms around Angela’s unconscious body and pulling her into her lap. Her cold fingers fumbled at her slicker. As soon as it was open, she spread it as best she could over the motionless girl, and huddled over her, shielding her from the rain.

  Tears welled from Letty’s eyes, slowly at first, a mere coda to the rain, then faster until they streamed down her cheeks and her throat. A floodgate opened and a lifetime of tears coursed down her face, unexpected because they’d never been acknowledged, never been allowed. Veda had told her not to cry. Not ever.

  She’d told her not to cry when Lady Fallontrue had forbidden the tutor to read Letty’s poems. And the one time Veda had taken her to see her father, the viscount, he’d stood behind his desk, his auburn hair burnished in the sunlight, and looked at Letty’s hair with startled and pleased recognition. Until he’d caught Veda’s eye. “You can’t prove she’s mine,’’ he’d said, and Veda had told her not to cry.

  And Veda had even told Letty not to cry as she lay dying, her once robust frame reduced to a delicate frame covered with gossamer skin.

  Because tears meant weakness; tears meant they’d won.

  But while Letty could spit in anyone’s eye on her own account, she was scared to death for this girl.

  She threw her head back and shouted, “Help! Help us, please! Help!”

  And Elliot March rode out of the blackness.

  Chapter 23

  You can figure out what the villain

  fears by his choice of weapons.

  Lightning scored the sky, lighting Elliot’s face.

  It might have been better for Letty if it hadn’t.

  Because gentle Sir Elliot March didn’t look so gentle at that moment. He looked like something a watery hell had spewed up to deal with unworthy petitioners. His head was bare, the black locks curling wildly, water streaming down his face. His brows were lowered in a dark vee, his scowl thunderous, his mouth a hard, tight line.

  His horse danced beneath him, a huge black gelding snorting fumes of mist from its flaring nostrils and tossing its big, bowed neck. He held the big horse effortlessly, heeling it closer. His gloved hands gripped the reins as if he were choking them…or her.

  “I didn’t believe them when they said you’d gone out in this!” he bellowed, his voice carrying above the wind. “Good God, woman! Have you lost your bloody mind? And where is Angela?”

  Letty shielded her face from the rain, peering up at him as she gently peeled her coat from Angela. “She must have been thrown from her horse. I tried to get her up, but I think she’s fainted.”

  “Dear God,” Elliot muttered, leaping from his horse and kneeling down. His hands moved with practiced gentleness behind Angela’s head and down her neck and shoulders.

  “She might have a concussion,” he said. “My house is the closest. We’ll go there. Can you hold my horse still while I mount with Angela?”

  Letty nodded, ridiculously happy to have him take charge of the situation. They were safe now. No one w
as going to die. He wouldn’t allow it. Elliot would take care of the situation, any situation.

  She gathered the reins and stood by the horse’s head as Elliot lifted his foot into the stirrup. He balanced Angela against his hip, shifting his weight forward onto the stirrup. The movement caused Angela’s arm to swing free and slap against the gelding’s leg. The startled horse reared, pulling Elliot’s leg out and sideways, his foot still caught in the stirrup.

  His teeth flashed briefly in pain. Letty fought to bring the gelding’s head down. By the time she looked up, Elliot had swung into the saddle and was holding Angela across his lap. He looked down at her, his unwillingness to leave her written on his face.

  “Go on,” she shouted, shielding her eyes with her hand. “I have to catch my horse. I’ll follow as soon as I can. Don’t worry. I’m a very good rider!”

  “I can’t leave you!” he shouted back.

  “You have to! You have to get Angela out of this weather! Go!”

  He could not argue with her. With an unintelligible sound, he touched his heels to the gelding’s sides, riding off into the storm as Letty watched.

  The girl would be well. Elliot would do his part, and now, by God, she would do hers.

  “Wake up, Kip,” Letty said.

  “Huh?” The boy in the curtained bed flopped onto his back, dragging the sheets with him. He hadn’t even bothered to undress, Letty noted in disgust. Her nose wrinkled as the smell of stale beer erupted in a yeasty burp that penetrated the curtains surrounding the four-poster.

  “Wake up, you young idiot.”

  That opened his eyes. Bleary eyes. Red-rimmed, unfocused eyes. Good. This would play out even better if he was drunk.

  “Huh? Who’re you? What’re you doin’ in here?” He started to roll out of the bed, but she snagged the sheet twined around his legs and pulled him back.

  “Uh-uh. You just stay right where you are, m’ lad.”

  “Lady Agatha!”

  “Bright boy.”

  “What’re you doing in here?” Confusion now, extreme confusion. A tiny kernel of an idea sprang to light in his clouded eyes. “Hey. How’d you get in here? Bribe the doorman?”

  “No,” Letty said impatiently. “No one knows I’m here. I climbed up the ivy outside.”

  His disbelief was obvious. Not that she gave a fig. “It doesn’t matter how I got here, does it? Only that you may rest assured that no one knows.”

  His brow furrowed, then smoothed as a smug expression of self-satisfaction dawned on his face. He nodded, grinning and raising a finger to his lips. “I won’t tell.”

  “Oh, I know that.” She shifted and her wet shoes made a squishy sound. “As to why I’m here, I’ve come for the letter Angela wrote you, you nasty, despicable, blackmailing little toad.”

  “Hey!” His complacent smile dissolved, replaced by stunned aggrievement. “You got no right to talk to me like that!”

  “Of course I do. I’m speaking the truth. You’re a vile extortionist of the very worst type, that being the type that holds an innocent young girl’s dreams ransom for his own sordid ends.”

  Kip struggled to a sitting position. “Her dreams? What about my dreams? We were going to get married.”

  “Not that she ever knew of.”

  The boy’s lower lip thrust out sullenly. “Well, I hadn’t got ’round to asking her yet, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t going to.”

  He truly did sound hurt, and for a second she softened. “She doesn’t want to marry you, Kip.”

  He flopped back, his hands behind his head, and smirked. “Oh, yeah? Well, she wanted to ‘something’ with me, I can promise you that.”

  So much for Kip’s tender heart. She placed her hands on her hips. “You arrogant boy. Let me explain a few things to you. Like any healthy, inquisitive young girl, Angela was curious about kissing. But unlike most healthy, inquisitive young girls, because she’s a dear, naive, and proper young lady, she decided she must be in love if she wanted to kiss you.”

  He laughed. Not very nicely.

  “Yes,” Letty said. “We both know that that is a bunch of bunk, don’t we? Angela realized it pretty quickly herself. Unfortunately, not quickly enough. She wrote you a letter first. And she wants it back. She wants to marry Hugh. So give me back her letter and we’ll just chalk this attempt to victimize Angela up to a youthful lapse in judgment, eh?”

  His eyes had narrowed angrily. He crossed his arms over his chest. “I told her she could have the letter. All she had to do was come and get it. Nothing was going to happen that hadn’t happened before. Maybe a bit more.” He leered.

  “She sent me.”

  “Her mistake.”

  She had had about enough of Kip Himplerump. She was standing in a pool of rainwater, sopping wet, her satin ball gown growing heavier with each moment, cold of foot, wrinkled of hand, and with a three-mile ride in a storm still to come.

  She ripped back the bed curtain. “Your mistake. You will now fetch me that letter and this is why. If you do not, I shall ruin your reputation.”

  At his look of amazement, she smiled grimly. “Yes, you simple young male, your reputation. And when I am done, no woman in London, let alone Little Bidewell, will have you. Your friends will snicker behind your back and your parents will duck their heads in shame.” She leaned forward and jabbed him in the center of his chest. “I shall say you tried to seduce me.”

  “Really?” Kip asked eagerly. Then, masking his delight, he sank back on his elbows and examined his fingernails with studied nonchalance. “Go ahead. Tell everyone you want.” He leered up at her. “You see, I don’t care if all Little Bidewell, York, Manchester, or London thinks I’m the Marquis de Sade himself. I don’t care for my reputation at all.”

  “Oh, I think you do.” Not only was he simple, he was profoundly simple. “You aren’t listening, Kip. I said I shall tell everyone you tried to seduce me.”

  He frowned, the shadow of understanding just beginning to penetrate his thick skull.

  “I shall say you were,” she leaned forward, her lips inches from his ear, “incapable.”

  He tensed.

  “Fallow.”

  She straightened just in time to avoid being hit by him as he bolted to a sitting position.

  “Limp.”

  He stared her in the eyes, his gaze disbelieving.

  “Dormant.”

  He gasped, hurled the covers back, scrambled from the bed, and dashed across the room.

  “Quiescent.”

  He fell to his knees before a bureau and wrenched open the bottom drawer.

  “In a word: Impotent.”

  He dug his hand deep in the drawer and with a cry of triumph, withdrew an envelope. He leapt to his feet and ran back to her side and thrust it into her hand, panting heavily.

  She almost pitied him. Almost.

  She accepted the letter, pocketed it, and grinned. “Thanks, chum.” She turned around.

  “You’re a bitch,” she heard him mutter.

  She looked back over her shoulder. “Flaccid.”

  He blanched. She chuckled.

  “I was just pulling your leg, Kip. Now, off to bed with you,” she advised pleasantly. “And if I hear of you saying anything at all about Angela, if you so much as breathe her name in a disrespectful manner, well…you shouldn’t.”

  He didn’t answer, just slunk back to his bed and slipped under the covers, glowering at her over the edge of the blanket like the naughty little boy he was.

  “Good boy.”

  She opened the casement window, squinting out through the rain. It had let up some, but she still couldn’t see twenty feet in the downpour. The trees were nothing but a vague impression. She looked down. Below her the wall disappeared into darkness.

  She took a deep breath, steadying her nerves. She’d worked a rope act once, hadn’t she? What was the difference between twenty feet of living ladder and crossing an inch-thick rope thirty feet above the ground?

  A n
et, that was what.

  Well, she didn’t have a net and she didn’t dare be seen by the Himplerump servants. Without giving herself a chance to back out, she hoisted herself over the sill and, after noting Kip had had the good sense to stay abed, lowered herself cautiously. She felt for a toehold and found one, but the water had made the leather soles of her shoes slick and her foot slipped. For a half a minute she hung from her hands twenty feet above the ground, her sodden skirts dragging at her, the rain pummeling her face.

  She considered calling out to Kip for help, and discounted the idea. He’d probably pry her fingers from the sill.

  She wasn’t going to fall. She wouldn’t let herself fall. She had to see Elliot. She scrambled amidst the ivy leaves, found purchase, and carefully relinquished her weight to the vine. It held.

  The rain made it difficult, but slowly she worked her way down the ivy-covered brick facade, the cold rain pelting her face. Finally, she looked down and saw the ground directly beneath her. She dropped from the wall, hit the earth, and stumbled to her knees.

  It didn’t hurt. Nothing could hurt. She was alive. Angela was alive. And she had the letter. Now, she only needed to get the horse and off she’d be.

  She lifted her face to the pouring heavens, grinning with relief and the sheer, giddy feeling of having won. And looked straight up into Elliot March’s furious face.

  Chapter 24

  Love has no place in a love scene.

  “I trust you’re having a bloody good time,” Elliot ground out between his teeth. If he was angry before, he was livid now. The storm swallowed up the color from his eyes, leaving them pale and terrible looking.

  Letty swallowed. Before she realized what he was about, he’d bent and lifted her by her arms, pulling her roughly to him, his fingers digging into her forearms. “God. When I saw you hanging from that ledge—” He choked off whatever more he might have said.