The Bridal Season

by Connie Brockway

  Her hands froze. He covered them with his own, enveloping them in warmth. She could see the slight abrasions that covered his knuckles. The dusting of dark hairs on the back of his hands.

  Careful, she cautioned herself, though her heart was racing and her knees felt weak. This was to be expected; it was simply all of a piece.

  They’d made love; she’d been a virgin. It wouldn’t matter to him that she was a bastard and a criminal. He would see marrying her as an obligation, a matter of honor. And he would even do it without ever, by inference or action, showing regret, because that was not his nature. He was a gentleman.

  “Letty, please. Do me the honor of being my wife.”

  The paralysis gripping her broke and she pulled her hands free. “No, no,” she said, struggling to keep her voice light. “That isn’t necessary. I swear it. Nick would never hurt me. Really. He’s a bully, but not a killer. And I suspect that after the trial, even if he is freed, which I cannot believe for an instant he will be, his influence in London will be greatly reduced.”

  He followed her retreat, his face grave and intent. “I said that badly. I don’t want to marry you to protect you. Or yes, I do, but that isn’t the—” He broke of abruptly and reached up, caressing her cheek with the back of his scraped knuckles. Involuntarily, she closed her eyes.

  “I love you, Letty.”

  “Elliot.” His name came out on a sigh of hopeless longing.

  “It’s the truth. I love you. I’ve loved you from the moment I saw you smile. Please, Letty, look at me.” She opened her eyes and saw his sincerity. He cupped the side of her face.

  “I love you, Letty. I don’t want to live without you.”

  “How can you love me?” she asked, forcing herself to say the words that would kill the tenderness in his eyes. “You don’t even know me. You know ‘Lady Agatha,’ a composite, a character, a role I played.”

  He shook his head, his negation gentle but certain. “I didn’t fall in love with a character, a title, or an occupation. I didn’t fall in love with you because of your past or despite it.

  “I love you because of your intensity and passion, because you make me want to be better than I am, because seeing my reflection in your eyes makes me better than I am. I love you because you laugh easily and honestly. I love you because you carried an ugly mutt into a drawing room as though it were a prince and because you gave an old soldier a strawberry trifle. I love you, Letty.’’

  “No.” The more she wanted to believe him, the more strongly she denied him. He should choose someone of his class, someone who was as much a lady as he was a gentleman. And he would. “You’ll go to London and become a baron and meet some fine, beautiful lady whom you will be proud to introduce, who will be your equal in birth and in nobility.”

  “No,” he said gravely. “I won’t.”

  She laughed, a horrible fake sound. “Yes, you will. You’ll see. It just feels like you won’t now. But you reconciled yourself to Catherine’s marriage. Why, you live in the same town! And it’s not as if we’ll be forced into each other’s company to remind us. London is so big.”

  His eyes were like fire pits, burning with intensity. “You are not Catherine. This is not the same. I can promise you that no city in the world is large enough to hold the both of us if you refuse me. The entire damn island will be too small.”

  “Elliot—”

  “Please, stop.” His tone was harsh. “If you don’t feel you can marry me, you needn’t come up with excuses.”

  A mask of imperturbability was falling over his features, but not before she saw the bone-deep wound she’d caused. She couldn’t let him think that he loved and was not loved in return, not to save her soul she couldn’t.

  “Elliot, I love you.”

  The mask fell from his face. His eyes were fierce. “Then marry me. Or tell me you don’t love me.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Listen to me, Letty. I don’t want a courteous, lukewarm relationship. I don’t want to greet a paragon every morning and say good evening at her bedroom door each night. I don’t want a polite, civilized union.”

  Abruptly, he seized her and pulled her close. Silver pins fell from her hair and scattered across the dark red carpet, pinpricks catching the light like stars on a wine-red sky. His eyes grew dark and lambent, as sensual and caressing as his touch. “I want you, Letty, in every way imaginable. Fresh from your bath with your hair still wet, coiling about my wrist and dripping on my chest.

  “I want you cool and regal, earthy and impertinent, spoiling for a fight and abashed by your own temper. I want you flushed with exertion and rosy with sleep. I want you teasing and provocative, somber and thoughtful. I want every emotion, every mood, every year in a lifetime to come. I want you beside me, Letty, to encourage and argue with me, to help me and to let me help you. I want to be your companion and lover, your mentor and student.”

  “And when you are made a baron, will you want me to wear a coronet?” she asked breathlessly.

  “Of course,” he said. But she’d seen it, the flicker of hesitance, the little mote of darkness in his eyes. She understood. She knew him so well. It was not that he wouldn’t be proud to give her a coronet. It was that there would be no coronet to give.

  The Queen would never grant a barony to a man who’d wed a music hall actress.

  She’d known. Atticus had told her. From that moment on, none of her wildest dreams had found a way past that irresolvable point.

  She forced herself to confront head-on everything that stood between them, not only their pasts, but also their futures. It wasn’t just that she was a near felon and he a magistrate, it was also what he would be: a baron, a member of the House of Lords, “a powerful proponent for good.”

  If she married him she wouldn’t only be robbing him of his barony; she would be hurting all the people for whom he could someday speak. She gazed long and sadly into his eyes and gently touched his cheek.

  “I love you, Elliot. I swear I did not know the meaning of the word before I came here. Nothing in the world would give me greater joy than being your wife. But I can’t.”

  “For God’s sake, Letty, why not?” he ground out.

  “The Queen will never make you a baron if you wed me.”

  He did not deny it. Instead, he caught her hand and pressed an ardent kiss against her knuckles. “I have lived thirty-three years without being a baron; I assure you I can survive without the honor,” he said, his voice a warm caress against her skin. “I don’t know that I cannot survive without you, but I do know that I don’t want to.”

  She brushed his cool, silky hair with a feather’s touch. “It’s not just you, my most… It’s not just for your sake.”

  “For whose, then?” His turned his head, his brilliant gaze locking with hers, demanding an answer.

  “For those who need you to speak for them. For the soldiers and the children and the women in the factories and the men in the mines. Justice needs you, Elliot. The poor dear is already blind; she mustn’t be mute as well.”

  He dropped her hand and backed away with a muttered curse. “You can’t do this. You can’t rob us of our future for the sake of nameless people.” But she saw the torment, the agony of conscience it cost him to say the words.

  “Elliot, you said I made you better. That you saw yourself through my eyes and was a better man for it. It’s the same for me, Elliot. Don’t rob me of my nobility. Don’t see me as less than what you want me to be, what I can be.

  “How could I realize a moment’s honest joy knowing I’d purchased my happiness with the silence of a thousand people, or bought my joy with their loss? How could I be happy knowing that because you married me, I diminished you?”

  His expression was desperate; his face ravaged by an inner torment she’d unleashed.

  “What of me, Letty?” he demanded. “What of what I am willing to purchase for joy? What have I ever had of it, except your love? Is that all the heavens have allotted me? A tast
e, to carry me through for the rest of my life? A taste to let me know what I am missing each and every hour of my existence?” he ended in a rasp of pain and outrage so intense the tears sprang to Letty’s eyes.

  “I don’t believe that!” He grasped her arms, shaking her slightly. “There is some way. There must be. I won’t accept this!”

  “What do you want me to say, Elliot?” she asked.

  “Give me something, Letty. Anything. Some reason to hope.”

  She could give him hope. It would hurt her more, because she knew it would be an illusion. But by the time he realized it, his pain would have faded. She couldn’t refuse him. She couldn’t let him hurt one bit more than she had to.

  “Come to me after you’re a baron. After you’ve taken your seat in the House of Lords, find me. If you still want to marry me then, I’ll be your wife.”

  His gaze scoured her face intently. His hands tightened around her upper arms. “You swear it? You promise that once I have sat in the House of Lords you will marry me?”

  “Yes.”

  Abruptly he released her. He stepped back, with that precise military grace she so admired. Formally, as though accepting a commission or a sentence, he bowed, his manner grave, his face wiped of emotion.

  “I shall hold you to your word.”

  Chapter 32

  Happily-ever-afters happen only at matinees.

  Appearing in the London Herald’s Society pages:

  The wedding of Miss Angela Frances Bigglesworth to Lord Hugh Denton Sheffield, Marquis of Cotton, took place Saturday at The Hollies, country home of Miss Bigglesworth’s father, Mr. Anton Bartholomew Bigglesworth of Little Bidewell, Northumberland. The extensive guest list included Society’s most notable lights as well as many of the bride’s friends and acquaintances from neighboring estates.

  (Omitted here: three paragraphs citing the names of those participating in the ceremony and two columns devoted to an intricate analysis of the wedding party’s apparel.)

  The postnuptial celebration was not only wonderfully festive but highly original, as could only be expected having been orchestrated by Whyte’s Nuptial Celebrations, although in this instance it surpassed all expectations for novelty and élan.

  * * *

  After the wedding the bride and her groom were driven from the church in a victoria of striking beauty, the vehicle painted in ebony lacquer and having real orange blossoms pressed into the paint, achieving the artful effect of japanned papier-mâché inlaid with mother-of-pearl. This pretty and frolicsome Oriental flavor established the tone and tempo of the subsequent festivities.

  * * *

  Arriving at The Hollies, the guests were greeted by servants dressed in Oriental garb, the women clad in kimonos and the men in loose trousers and blouses of silk, bowing silently.

  * * *

  From the front of the manor, the guests were escorted to a gently uncoiling path strewn with fragrant jasmine blossoms that led beneath arches twined in flowers and topped with fluttering silk kites in the various and wonderful shapes of goldfish, swallows, and butterflies.

  * * *

  At the back of the venerable Bigglesworth estate, the guests were greeted by the sight of a little colony of pagodas atop a grassy knoll. Brilliantly colored striped silk pavilions had been set beneath the lofty branches of beech and flowering rowan. Below, on the mirrorlike expanse of a picturesque lake, male servants poled miniature sampans, while from within the exotic boats a sextet of singers, so diminutive in stature one suspected they were children, sang popular ballads in consummately beautiful three-part harmony.

  * * *

  Under the pavilions sat long tables resplendent with exquisite blue-willow china and silver place settings. At each setting were small favors, the gentlemen receiving red silk smoking caps with black tassels and the women exquisitely painted silk fans depicting scenes taken from the surrounding countryside.

  (Omitted here, a lengthy discourse on the various food items served, including a full column devoted to the wedding cake prepared by one of England’s hitherto undiscovered treasures of the culinary arts, Mrs. Grace Poole.)

  Incense in cunning little ceramic bowls placed discreetly amidst the pavilions scented the air nearly as sweetly as the singers’ voices, while a flock of swans foraged along the lake’s bank. As dusk fell, little paper lanterns bobbed in the light breeze, casting playful shadows upon the Oriental wonderland.

  * * *

  Yet, the festivities were not finished, for once darkness had fully enveloped the landscape, fairy lights appeared amongst the rhododendrons and deep within the pine copses bordering the knoll. These heralded the arrival of a troupe of Oriental acrobats, dancing and somersaulting and brilliantly displaying the athleticism of their kind in a variety of amazing maneuvers. After which the festivities were brought to a spectacular close by a display of fireworks set off across the lake that spangled the night sky with glitter.

  * * *

  The unanimous opinion of those fortunate enough to be counted amongst the guests at this exclusive, enchanting, and startlingly original fete was that, much to Society’s regret, the Season will not see its like again this year.

  The following excerpt from the London Sentinel’s review of The Bohemian Girl appeared approximately six months after the preceding article:

  …Miss Letty Potts in the role of Arline is a revelation. Miss Potts may be remembered for her roles last year in a series of curtain raisers, when she was lauded as a contralto soprano of fine voice and delightful comedic timing, but thought to be generally lacking the depth of emotion necessary to inspire an audience. Clearly such criticisms have been premature, for in the character of the Gypsy-girl-cum-aristocrat, Miss Potts sings with an ardor and sincerity that is astounding.

  * * *

  One song in particular, “I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls,” continued to bring audiences to their feet. Though the song is a standard sentimental favorite, Miss Potts has imbued the ethereal aria with such delicacy of feeling and poignancy of phrasing that not one eye in the house remained dry. Brava, Miss Potts, brava!

  One month later, the London Sentinel carried this notice on the bottom of a page devoted to politics:

  Lord Elliot March, lately created Baron March of Bidewell, having received his writ of summons, will take his seat in the House of Lords in the opening session of Parliament this afternoon.

  Letty folded the newspaper and handed it to the boot boy. “Thank you for going out in the rain for this, Vinny. Put it in my room, there’s a duck, and don’t set it on the makeup. I want to keep it nice and clean, right?”

  “Right, Miss Potts,” the boy said, and nipped off to do her bidding. Letty’s gaze followed him, her determined cheerfulness dimming.

  This afternoon had been the day, then. Elliot had taken his seat in the House of Lords and the world would be a better place. She pulled back the curtains and looked out across the audience. Good house tonight in spite of the storm outside.

  Good for both of them, then. Elliot had his barony and she had the career she’d always wanted. She ought to be glad. And she was.

  After all, it wasn’t as though she’d expected to hear from him again. She’d always known he’d come to his senses. And he had come to his senses. Not once, in any manner or form, had he attempted to contact her. Not once had he come to see her perform.

  She knew; she’d asked the manager to keep an eye out for him. And no one, least of all the manager of a theater looking to draw the swell crowd, would have overlooked the presence of one of London’s rising politicians. No, he hadn’t come to her, but he’d gone other places. The newspapers loved him.

  He’d been seen shopping in Mayfair with a wealthy philanthropist’s daughter. He’d dined with the widow of a socially prominent politician. He had been to the opera and the legitimate theater, but he’d never gone slumming down in the West End. It was as if he didn’t want to risk the embarrassment of accidentally running into her.

  Aye, th
e newspapers loved the new Lord March. And what’s not to love, Letty asked herself with a little laugh. The illustrations didn’t do him justice, but even those were handsome in a severe sort of way.

  When he smiled, he probably bowled them over in droves. Not that he seemed to smile much. Words like sober, serious-minded, and stern appended themselves to his name in newspaper articles. He took his duty seriously. He took life seriously.

  And that she regretted. For his sake. Because he’d laughed easily once. With her. It seemed a pity that he should lose that.

  “Two minutes, Miss Potts,’’ the stage manager whispered as the end of the first act drew near. She watched the scene rise to a climactic conclusion, with the little girl who played Arline as a child swept into the Gypsy’s arms to be carried away from her father’s court.

  At the audience’s gasp, the stage crew hauled down on the ropes, snapping the curtains shut. Silently the workers swarmed the stage, positioning the new set. Letty twitched the ragged paisley shawl into place over her breasts and shook out her Gypsy mane of hair so that it tumbled loose about her shoulders.

  She hurried onstage and dropped to the floor, lying curled on her side. The second act opened twelve years later. She closed her eyes, willing herself into the role. She was Arline, stolen daughter of an aristocrat, beloved fosterling of a Gypsy tribe, well versed in guile and connivance yet still dimly remembering another life, another time.

  She felt the rush of air as the curtains swept open, and heard the murmurs from the audience. She waited for her cue and then opened her eyes. The footlights blinded her, and a blaze of color surrounded her as the Gypsy dancers gathered around.