The Bridal Season

by Connie Brockway

  “But, Letty—”

  “I’ll go into Little Bidewell at first light. The passenger train departs the station at ten. I’ll be on it.” She folded a shirtwaist. “If you could just hold off sending the letter to Sir Elliot until noon, I’d be much obliged.”

  Cabot frowned. “What about Nick? What if he comes looking for you?”

  “He won’t. Nick Sparkle never met a morning he didn’t despise. If he asks after me, tell him I’m sick in bed. He ought to believe that readily enough.”

  Cabot nodded. “All right. You’ll stop Nick from stealing from the Bigglesworths, but what about the scandal? What about Miss Angela?”

  Was there no end to the skein she must unravel? Letty closed her eyes briefly. Her head throbbed. She had to concentrate on Angela. She mustn’t think about Elliot. About what his expression would be when he read her letter, about the repugnance he would feel, about how disgusted he would be at having told her he loved her.

  “Tell the Bigglesworths that I once worked for Lady Agatha. They’ll believe you.” She held up her hand forestalling him. “As you once pointed out, it’s in Lady Agatha’s best interest to support me if she returns to England.

  “And if she doesn’t return, who’s to refute my claim that I was once her assistant? Nick? We only met five years ago. You’ve known me longer. You can support me.

  “Tell the Bigglesworths that I only fell into bad company after my mother died. Tell them I know what I’m doing, and that everything will be fine as long as they don’t mention me to the Sheffields.”

  “You don’t think anyone in Little Bidewell will tell the Sheffields?” Cabot asked, unconvinced.

  “With whom in Little Bidewell is the Marquis of Cotton’s mama going to be exchanging tattle?” Letty asked flatly. She snapped the satchel shut. “No. You need only get the wedding over and done with. Later, if something should leak out, well, it will only make the Sheffield’s dinner parties more interesting. Scandal is always more palatable if it’s anecdotal.”

  It didn’t matter that it was her life, her heart, that would be discussed, then abandoned along with the fish course.

  Cabot’s gaze met hers and slid away. “Is there any reason the Bigglesworths shouldn’t follow the plan you made for the wedding party?”

  She flushed. “Everything is nearly done,” she said quietly. “Grace Poole and the caterer are taking care of the food and the service. I’ve ordered in all the decorations. The favors and garlands are complete.

  “Angela, Eglantyne, and you, for that matter, know how things are to be arranged, and I have no doubt the servants can set things up. I’ve left sketches. Merry does my room; I’ve no doubt she knows where all the bills, receipts and correspondence are kept.

  “Don’t worry. Everyone I’ve contracted with in London is trustworthy and utterly dependable.”

  She realized how amusing that must sound coming from someone who was running away, and smiled. “I mean it, Cabot. It will not be a walk in the park, but it’s doable.”

  Chapter 28

  A professional knows when the performance is over.

  The dawn crept in moist and gravid, the air condensing on the backs of the dray horses standing before the greengrocers. The peony at the front of the teashop bowed under the weight of dew and the lace café curtains drooped.

  Letty stood on the platform outside the train station with her ticket in her hand. Ham had dropped her off in town a half-hour ago. It would be another hour before her train left.

  Only a few people were on the streets, the dampness being uncomfortable. Letty didn’t mind. The air smelled freshly washed and fertile, green with spring’s promise and dark with earth’s wealth.

  The scent awoke memories of walking hand in hand with her mother down a country lane. She’d thought she belonged there, until Vernice Fallontrue had told her she didn’t. Just like she’d thought her father would love her if only he had the chance. And that the music hall was her home and the performers her family…until her mother died and Alf had been too grief-stricken to work. Then she’d discovered that her “home” held no place for a girl who wouldn’t wear tights and who spoke with a high-class accent. So she’d found work in the musical productions and been told she didn’t have the emotional range necessary to make it big.

  All her life she’d made the best of bad situations. Then one night, soon after her mother had died, the same night Nick Sparkle had introduced her to champagne, one cold, sleepless night when a girl from the chorus had thrown herself into the Thames because she was pregnant, Letty decided to make things happen for her and not to her.

  She’d stood by that creed. No softness, because the world wasn’t soft; lots of laughter, because if you were in on the joke, the joke couldn’t be on you; no wanting what you couldn’t take, because the world never gave.

  Or so she thought.

  But here she was again, standing with a packed bag, waiting for the next act. She was just a journeyman after all.

  But life still hadn’t brought her to bay. She smiled. She was still on her feet, still running strong. She looked down. Fagin, on the other hand, didn’t appear to have any desire to run, walk or, for that matter, stand. He huddled in a miserable little pile at her feet, staring up at her disconsolately.

  He hadn’t wanted to come with her. She’d had to lure him with a bit of sausage and lead him after her with a braided length of satin. Something tightened in her throat.

  Fagin had never worn a collar in his life. He’d never needed any encouragement to get him to follow her. He’d always been her shadow, because if she disappeared he’d be on his own. Poor little blighter. In the whole world she was the only thing he could depend on, and that had been more through his vigilance than hers. She’d taken him for granted.

  “Come on, Fay,” she coaxed. “We’ve had an adventure is all. And we’ll have others, you’ll see. We’ll go to Norway. You think kippers are tasty? Wait until you taste salmon.”

  He looked off in the direction of The Hollies and Eglantyne. Eglantyne, who’d never taken his affection for granted.

  “It’s a chance to start all over again and, by God, if that isn’t a lark, what is?”

  Fagin stood up to walk to the end of his tether. She felt her smile freeze.

  “G’day, Lady Agatha.” Mrs. Jepson’s nursemaid bobbed her head, hurrying by pushing the perambulator in which the youngest Jepson wailed enthusiastically. The gulls wheeled overhead, crying plaintively. A cat slunk from under the platform and darted across the street. Fagin watched it listlessly.

  “All right,” Letty whispered, untying the satin ribbon from around Fagin’s neck. “You just take care of Eglantyne, you hear?”

  Fagin cocked his foolish, furry face, his gaze as somber and impenetrable as ever. He didn’t lick her face. He wasn’t a licking sort of dog. But he wagged his tail once, tentatively, and then trotted off down the street, dodging the farrier’s cart as he headed back to Eglantyne, back home.

  She watched him go with tears in her eyes, wanting to follow him so much that it felt as if her spirit were pulling free of her flesh to do so. But she couldn’t. She didn’t belong. She wasn’t Lady Agatha Whyte. She was Letty Potts, whoever that was. She sniffed, trying to find a caustic smile for the thought and failing.

  There was only one possible way she could ever discover how much of Lady Agatha was Letty Potts and how much of Letty Potts was Lady Agatha. And that was ridiculous. She looked overhead. The spiraling flock of gulls was fading back to the horizon, returning to the sea. In the distance, Fagin was a small dark blotch, running now. “Get,’’ she whispered hoarsely. “Run faster, Fay.”

  She clutched the train ticket tighter and waited for the sense of escape to come over her as it had a dozen times before, that heady sensation of having just scooted through the clanging gate, of eluding the thrown net. It didn’t come. She was running again, but she wasn’t escaping. She’d been chased to ground a long, long time ago.

  And there
was only one way out, she realized with sudden and absolute certainty. She tore the ticket in half, adjusted her hat, and stepped off the train platform.

  Whoever she was, Letty Potts was no coward.

  The flustered-looking clerk showed her into Elliot’s office. He was seated behind a desk covered in papers and ledgers and such. A brawny young man she recognized as the local constable stood on the other side of it. On seeing her, Elliot rose immediately to his feet. The young constable stammered a good morning before suggesting that he should be going.

  Elliot came around to her side of the desk, his expression careful and his manner, as always, impeccable. She searched his face for some signs of the pain and betrayal she knew he had felt when Nick had introduced himself as her fiancé. His mouth was tense, his eyes looked weary.

  “Lady Agatha, won’t you be seated?”

  “I prefer to stand.”

  “Then would you be so kind as to wait while I show the constable out? I shan’t be but a few minutes.”

  “Of course.”

  He shut the door behind him, leaving her in the office. She moved farther into the room, looking about. It was a serviceable, impersonal room, the furnishings undistinguished and not particularly comfortable, the cabinets mismatched and overflowing. On his desk lay a broad fan of letters.

  She glanced down and was surprised to recognize some of the names she saw. They were from politicians and labor organizers. She stepped back, frowning slightly. She’d no idea Elliot was so well known amongst London’s political elite. But hadn’t his father alluded to such?

  The door opened and Elliot reentered. “Please, won’t you be seated?”

  She shook her head. She couldn’t pretend this was a social call. And of course, he could not be seated in her presence. “As you will. Brown, would you please go down to Shrimpton’s and bring us tea?” he called to his clerk before returning his attention to her.

  He looked exactly as he had the first day she’d seen him. His boiled white shirt could not have been crisper or whiter. Beneath the starched collar, his gray silk tie was perfectly knotted. The dark blue coat stretched across his broad shoulders would be a tailor’s pride. Even his hair was immaculately neat. Only his expression had changed. He looked cool, politely interested, and wary. He made no effort to close the distance between them. She might have been a client he’d only just first met, and not a woman with whom he’d shared his bed and body.

  “You have something you wished to see me about, Lady Agatha?” he asked. She could hear the effort his placid manner cost him in his tone.

  “Yes.” She took a deep, steadying breath. “I am not Lady Agatha Whyte.”

  His brows drew together. She’d expected an outburst, some expression of outrage. None came.

  “My name is Letty Potts,” she said, hurrying now, fearful that if she stopped she would not have the courage to continue. “I am a musical comedienne.” With difficulty she met his gaze. It was impossible to tell what thoughts he held behind those guarded eyes. “At least,” she said, “that is what I do most of the time.”

  He studied her for long moments. “And what do you do those times you are not onstage?” he finally asked.

  She swallowed. “I work with Nick Sparkle.”

  He betrayed himself for an instant in the involuntary tightening of his jaw. “Your fiancé?”

  “No!” The word burst from her. “I never…you know I have never… I would never—” This was one offense she could not let him think her capable of. “I would never have made love with you if I had promised to marry another.”

  A muscle jumped at the angle of his jaw. “Letty—”

  “Please. Let me continue.” She would not let him think she would use their relationship to win free of her past.

  “Nick and I duped people out of their money. It’s as simple as that. I’d act the lady, luring the toffs into feeling comfortable with whatever scam Nick had running. And then Nick would put the sting on them.”

  She could not put it more clearly, nor could it sound any uglier. That had been her intent.

  “I see,” he said. “And what was the ‘scam’ in Little Bidewell to be?”

  “There wasn’t one,” she said. “This was all an accident.”

  He drew back as though she’d struck him. Too late she realized what she’d implied. A cry of distress broke from her. “My coming here was an accident,” she said. “Nick had this plan, this con he wanted to run. I didn’t want to do it, and when I refused to be part of it he made it so I couldn’t get any legit work in town. When I still wouldn’t do it, he burned down my boarding house, thinking I wouldn’t have any choice then.”

  The words tumbled out, her heartbeat racing to keep up. Her hands were so tightly clenched together that her fingers were growing numb. But she didn’t dare stop now. She stared fixedly at the floor because if she looked at him she feared her courage would flag.

  “So I ran away. To the train station. Only I didn’t have any money on account of the fire, and I couldn’t afford a ticket, and then this lady came by and she was with this French chap and he talked her into going off with him and she dropped her ticket on her way out and I…” She glanced up. “I just took the opportunity as it presented itself.”

  He watched her steadily, his expression unreadable.

  “I didn’t mean to impersonate her,” she said earnestly. “It never even occurred to me until I stepped off that train and all those people were there staring at me as if I were the answer to their prayers.

  “And I wouldn’t have done anything even then, except that someone said her things were all waiting for me. I didn’t have anything, you see. It was all burnt in the fire. So that decided it, because I’m not a good person.”

  Why wouldn’t he say something?

  “I tried to tell you that day in the carriage not to trust me. But I swear, I didn’t think it would hurt anyone, except maybe this Lady Agatha. But she wasn’t going to need her luggage. I did.”

  There. The recitation she’d practiced all the long way down the street to his offices was nearly over. “So I came to The Hollies. Only it wasn’t as easy as I’d thought it would be. Because there was Angela with her problem with that rotten boy, and Eglantyne who was breaking her heart over missing her chick before she’d even left the henhouse, and Anton with his worries about being good enough for the Sheffields, and…” And you.

  “I knew Cabot from when my folks were in the variety shows. Before I knew it, he’d convinced me I could pull this wedding thingie off and no one would get hurt. Only Nick found me.” She finished, squeezing her eyes shut, a coward after all.

  “‘No one would get hurt,’” she heard him say in a tone she could not interpret.

  She opened her eyes. His face was stark, his eyes bright with unmasked pain. She could not stand it. She went to him, reaching out to touch him, only he grabbed her upper arms first, trembling with the effort it cost him not to shake her.

  “Did you think I told you I loved you to get you into my bed?” he demanded.

  “No,” she denied vehemently. “No!”

  “How could you think no one would be hurt when you let me love you, let me… How could you think this wouldn’t hurt?”

  Her face became ashen, her eyes stricken. But he’d withstood as much as he could; he was not as strong as he needed to be. From the moment she’d walked in and it had become clear she had come to confess he’d been lost, unable to think clearly. At first he’d been dubious, then cautious. Finally, he’d seen that her anguish was sincere, her resignation real. And by the obvious omissions that would have guaranteed her his sympathy, if not leniency, she’d made him fall in love with her all over again.

  She wasn’t Lady Agatha Whyte. He didn’t care. She was brave and valiant and trying so damned hard to make it right. Honesty was easy when it was rewarded, not so easy when it brought only the promise of punishment. And yet she was here, unflinchingly proclaiming her own culpability. She was not looking for f
orgiveness, he realized. She wanted atonement.

  But when she’d said she hadn’t thought it would hurt anyone, his temper had flared, aggravated by sleeplessness and the jealousy that had cut mortally deep when that man claimed her as his.

  “Forgive me,” he said stiffly. “I had no right—”

  “You have every right,” she said heatedly. “I didn’t think. I was selfish. I wanted the first time I…made love to be with someone I loved. And who loved me.” Her mouth twisted wryly. “Or at least loved the woman he thought me to be.”

  Her answer drained the last bits of anger from him. She loved him. Nothing else mattered. His hands slipped down her arms to her hands.

  “Letty…” He turned her palms up. “Letty, I—”

  He forgot whatever he’d been about to say, stunned by the sight of the dark purple smudges that stood out like brands on her wrists. “Did he do this?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” She tried to pull away. He could see the fear in her. This had not been the first time she’d known violence, he’d swear it.

  “Please,” she whispered. Fear for Elliot climbed in her throat. She could see his desire for retribution in the fire of his gaze, the tension in his neck and shoulders. He would only get hurt. Nick was strong and merciless. He didn’t fight like a gentleman; he fought to hurt his enemy by any means possible. “Please. It was an accident. He didn’t mean to hurt me—”

  A sharp, perfunctory rap interrupted her. Elliot released her hands and stepped away from her. “Come in.”

  Nick Sparkle entered. His broad grin thinned when he saw her, but he strode through the office with all appearances of confidence.

  “Agatha, my dear,” he said. “So, here you are. The Bigglesworths’ driver said he’d taken you into Little Bidewell for the day. I couldn’t imagine why. Not much here to keep a body busy all of a day.” His bright, malicious gaze flickered toward where Elliot stood coolly appraising him. “Or is there?”