Wedding of the Season: Abandoned at the Altar

by Laura Lee Guhrke

  “His rank isn’t the reason I’m marrying him! Do you really think I’m that shallow?”

  “I don’t know. You seemed to love my position more than you ever loved me, for you abandoned me quickly enough when I didn’t want to fulfill it.”

  “You think I abandoned you?” She stared at him in disbelief. “I’m not the one who broke an understanding that went back to our childhood. I’m not the one who decided to go off to another continent just before our wedding. All our lives—” Her voice choked up, telling him he wasn’t the only one who’d felt the pain of their separation. A reaction was what he’d wanted, but somehow it gave him no satisfaction. It just hurt him more. “All our lives, Will, you knew what was expected of us. You knew the duties and responsibilities you were to assume. You abandoned them, and me.”

  “Yes, there it was, my whole life laid out for me before I was even out of short pants. Can you blame me when a life I’d only ever dreamed of opened up? A life, I might add, you led me to believe you’d be willing to share. Remember that barrow of Roman ruins I dug up one summer? You sketched all the artifacts, you helped me research and catalog what we found. You visited the British Museum with me every time we were in London for the season. When Sir Edmund offered to take me to Egypt and look for Tut, it never occurred to me you’d balk, though in hindsight, I suppose I should have known you couldn’t leave your dear papa.”

  Too late he remembered her father was dead. He saw her chin quiver at the reminder, and he suddenly felt like a bastard. “Hell,” he muttered, and looked away.

  “You wanted me to abandon him!” she cried. “How could I? After Mama ran off to Paris all those years ago, abandoning her family and her duties as a countess? And for what? To paint and live like a bohemian?”

  “It changed your father when your mother left. He drove any sense of adventure out of you. I didn’t really realize just how tightly he had you chained until you wouldn’t go to Egypt with me.”

  “That’s not fair! How could I leave Papa and go to Egypt?”

  “You were going to be my wife! Damn me for a fool to believe you wanted to be my partner in life, no matter where it led us. But it wasn’t me you wanted.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “You wanted the trappings. You wanted to live in this house, three miles from your father, where everything was safe and familiar and approved by all. Coming with me would have meant defying all that and jumping into a whole new world, and you couldn’t do it. It wasn’t just about leaving your father. When it came down to brass tacks, you were too afraid to go.”

  “Afraid?” She blinked, staring at him as if he’d actually said something absurd. “Are you saying I’m a coward?”

  “I don’t know. Are you? Remember when we were children and Paul, Julie, and I used to dive off Angel’s Head into the sea at Pixy Cove? You wanted to do it, too, but you couldn’t work up the nerve.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” She tried to turn as if to leave, but he wouldn’t let her. Not until he’d made his point.

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about,” he said, grabbing her by the arms. “We’d all dived off, and we were down in the water below, waiting for you. You wanted to. You wanted to dive off so bad you could taste it, and you stood up there for the longest time, but in the end, you couldn’t do it. You sat down and said you’d rather look at the view.”

  “I was only ten years old! All of you were older.”

  “What about when I wanted to teach you to ride without a sidesaddle? You wouldn’t do it. You wanted to, but you were too afraid someone would see you, namely your father. You were terrified of what he would think.”

  “That’s hardly the same as packing up one’s whole life and moving to another country!” she cried, jerking free of his hold. “I wanted marriage and a home of my own. That precious excavation site of yours didn’t even include a house. I wanted children, Will. Just where was I supposed to have them? In a tent?”

  “I told you I would build a house for you!” he shouted.

  “No, Will,” she countered in a hard voice. “Not for me. It would have been an expedition house with bedrooms for your staff. I was engaged to a duke, not an archaeologist! And I had every right to continue to expect the security for me and my children that your position afforded us. As for not loving you—” She broke off and took a deep breath. “It took me five years to stop loving you. Five years. I just couldn’t believe you were gone forever. I just couldn’t accept it. I knew it was over, and yet I kept waiting for you. Waiting for you to realize you loved me, too. Waiting for you to accept your responsibilities at home. Waiting, waiting. I got over you when I finally admitted the truth.”

  “Truth? What truth?”

  “That you weren’t worth waiting for.”

  The impact of her words hit him like a slap across the face, but there was no way he would let her see it. He remained perfectly still, his gaze locked with hers, and it was she who looked away first. “If I see you anywhere near the church door on my wedding day, Aidan won’t have to kill you, because I will.”

  With that, she turned on her heel and stalked out of his study without a backward glance.

  The sound of her footsteps echoing along the corridor had not even faded away before he was reaching into his pocket to pull out her engagement announcement. He stared at the crumpled bit of newspaper for a moment, then with an oath, he ripped it savagely into pieces.

  He’d see Paul as soon as possible, he decided as he tossed the fragments into the rubbish basket. He’d get that funding, resolve any other unfinished business matters he had in this repressed, class-conscious country in which he’d had the misfortune to be born, and return to Egypt where he belonged, where there was important work to do and discoveries to be made. And when he left this time, he thought, staring resentfully down at the torn bits of newsprint, it would damned well be for good.

  Chapter Four

  He was stubborn as ever, Beatrix thought as she strode out the front door of Sunderland House. Stubborn, unchanging, and immovable—rather like the Egyptian sphinxes he adored so much. Still unable to see any point of view but his own. She wished she had opened the door herself rather than allowing Mrs. Gudgeon to do it for her. That way, she could have slammed the massive oak door behind her with a cathartic, satisfying bang. Not a very ladylike impulse, she supposed as she walked to her waiting carriage, but quite an understandable one under the circumstances.

  “Drive on, Mr. Warren,” she told the chauffeur, stepping into the open landau. She thumped down onto the leather seat and the carriage jerked into motion, but even over the rattle of the wheels and the clip-clop of the horses’ hooves, she could still hear Will’s condemnations ringing in her ears.

  She had misled him? She had abandoned him? He was saying those things to fix the blame on her and ease his own guilty conscience. And only a cad would call her a coward because she wouldn’t dive off a thirty-foot cliff into the ocean when she was ten years old.

  She remembered that day. And the day he’d tried to persuade her to ride astride. And all the other times he’d pushed her into doing things she knew she shouldn’t. Sometimes, like the diving and the saddle and Egypt, he’d failed to persuade her. But there had been other times when he’d succeeded.

  I remember how the pulse in your throat used to start hammering whenever I kissed you.

  Beatrix remembered that, too. She’d denied it, of course, but did he really believe she’d forgotten? She squeezed her eyes shut. How could he think she’d forgotten all the times when she’d gone out alone to meet him in one of their secret places? All the times she’d let him kiss her when she shouldn’t have. And he dared to accuse her of cowardice? She’d put her reputation and virtue at risk dozens of times just for the delicious thrill of his lips on hers. . .

  She could feel her face growing hot at the memory, and she opened her eyes with a sound of impatience. She was not a coward. And she wasn’t a liar, either, whate
ver he might think.

  She had sketched those artifacts for him because she liked sketching, not simply to please him. And she’d listened to him for hours as he’d told her all about the Romans and the Assyrians and the Egyptians because she had been truly interested. But she’d never thought any of it was real. She’d never thought digging up relics of those past civilizations would be their life.

  Beatrix stared at the green pastures and hedgerows that stretched for miles all around her, lands that had belonged to the Danbury and Sunderland families for hundreds of years, and her anger dissipated into an old, familiar feeling of bewilderment. He’d said this wasn’t the life he wanted, but what did that matter? This was the life they had.

  Born into English aristocratic families, she and Will had both been destined for this life from the moment of their birth. It was a life of privilege, yes, and there were elements of triviality within it, she supposed, but it was also a life of duty and responsibility, of caring for the less fortunate and securing the future of one’s children and grandchildren through land and title. To ignore it was impossible, and to shun it was unfathomable. One might just as well be a revolutionary, she thought with a shudder. Or an American.

  When the carriage arrived at Danbury House, she went back to the drawing room, in desperate need of distraction. Geoff was gone, but her aunt was still there, seated on one of the crimson velvet sofas with a large leather volume on her lap.

  “What are you reading, Auntie?” she asked as she came in.

  Eugenia looked up. “Ah, Beatrix, there you are. Sunderland all right, I hope, and not too badly maimed?”

  “A bruised knee, I’m told. He’ll be right as rain in a day or two.”

  “Excellent. I’m glad Mrs. Gudgeon was able to reassure you about the matter.”

  The housekeeper had done so, true enough, but Beatrix decided it would be best not to mention that she’d actually spoken with Will. As he had pointed out, calling upon one’s former fiancé without a chaperone wasn’t at all proper, and here in the country, where there wasn’t much to do but gossip, any little thing, however trivial, could be noticed and commented upon. A women’s reputation was a fragile thing, and easily damaged. Aunt Eugenia would no doubt point all that out, and Beatrix didn’t feel much like enduring a lecture on propriety today. The less said, the better. “Just so,” she murmured, and left it at that.

  Eugenia smiled and patted the sofa. “Come and sit with me.”

  Beatrix complied, and as she settled herself beside her aunt, she realized Eugenia was looking at an album of photographs. “Why, that’s Papa,” she exclaimed, leaning forward to study the sepia-toned image of a man with her own dark eyes and a resolute face. Looking at the image, Beatrix felt a stab of pain, for though he’d been dead over a year now, she still missed her father terribly. He’d always been strict, but she’d always been the center of his life. Looking at the photograph, she forced herself to laugh a little. “Poor Papa. He looks as if he has indigestion.”

  Eugenia laughed as well. “My brother-in-law hated photographs. He thought them so uncivilized. But your mother was dabbling in photography at the time—” She stopped and bit her lip.

  Beatrix’s mother was a subject that had not been mentioned in this house since she was nine years old. She’d never actually been told that her mother had run off to France to paint, accompanied by her lover, a man ten years her junior, or that she’d died in Paris, ill, ruined, and alone. Beatrix had found out those details on her own. Her girlhood friends had thought it all so romantic and tragic, but Beatrix had never been able to see the romantic aspect. All she’d seen was her father’s anguish.

  Will had expected her to abandon Papa and go running to the other side of the world for what might have been years? If she’d done that, her father would have died alone and abandoned, just as her mother had.

  The old resentments, ones she thought she’d conquered, began simmering up, and she shoved them back down. “Show me more of these photographs, Auntie.”

  Eugenia turned a page. “Ah, my wedding,” she said, clearly relieved that there seemed to be no more pictures taken by Beatrix’s mother.

  Beatrix leaned closer and laughed again. “Oh, Auntie, look at your dress!”

  “It does seem quite old-fashioned, doesn’t it? That enormous bustle and train. And all those roses. Still, it was a Worth gown.” She patted her niece’s knee. “Not having a daughter of my own, I’d hoped you would have it made over to wear at your wedding.”

  “Auntie . . .” she began, then let her voice trail off, for they had discussed all this before.

  “I know, dear. You want your own gown. Perfectly understandable. And you want to support your friend in her dressmaking efforts.”

  She felt a hint of impatience. “It’s not an effort, Auntie. It’s a business.”

  Eugenia gave a sniff. “Of a kind. How her brother ever allowed her to engage in it in the first place, I can’t think. But then Marlowe is rather permissive in many respects. His publishing company, his divorce from his first wife—oh, I know what you’re going to say, dear,” she added as Beatrix started to speak. “And I do appreciate that Marlowe’s second wife is a most respectable woman in every way. I adore Emma, you know I do. Nonetheless, I do feel there is a certain disregard for convention in Marlowe’s household, including the fact that he allows his sister to engage in trade.”

  “Being unconventional is not necessarily a bad thing.” Beatrix ran her finger idly along one edge of the album in her aunt’s lap. “Besides, Vivian enjoys her dressmaking business.”

  “Nonsense. Fussing with account books and bartering with tradesmen and negotiating contracts? How can that be enjoyable? And think of the burden of responsibility! Using one’s talents for purposes of commerce?”

  Something in Eugenia’s words sent a strange spark of excitement through Beatrix’s veins. “Oh, I don’t know, Auntie. It might be satisfying.”

  “I don’t see how. Oh, inventing pretty gowns for one’s friends is an agreeable pastime, I daresay. And sewing and sketching are both perfectly suitable pursuits for a lady. But to employ those talents for money? To sell the clothes one designs to one’s friends? Why, they might not pay, and then one would have to send demands. How disagreeable.”

  Beatrix forced herself not to roll her eyes. Sometimes, she thought with aggravation, Auntie could be so old-fashioned.

  “Still,” Eugenia added hastily, sensing she might have gone too far, “dear Vivian’s clothes are said to be exquisite. I must confess, I find them a bit too modern for my tastes.”

  Bizarre was the actual word her aunt had used upon first seeing the sketch of her niece’s wedding dress, with its stark, modern lines, but Beatrix was not so tactless as to remind Auntie of that description. She’d wanted something completely different from what she’d intended to wear six years ago, and Vivian, whose dressmaking business called Vivienne was known for its avant-garde style, had happily complied.

  “You don’t like my gown, Auntie?”

  “It’s a lovely gown.” Eugenia turned her head, smiling, but the smile seemed forced. “And it doesn’t matter if I like it. Besides, you’ll wear the topazes with it, so I’m quite content.”

  Beatrix thought without much enthusiasm of the opulent topaz and diamond necklace, brooch, and tiara that had been in her family for seven generations. She found yellow jewels of any type unattractive, but the topazes were de rigueur for Danbury brides, and she’d always known she’d be expected to wear them. “Yes,” she agreed, “it’s all right then. And I shall have your prayer book, of course.”

  Eugenia’s smile widened into a genuine one. “It belonged to my mother, an engagement present from her grandfather. The Duke of Tremore, you know,” she added with pride.

  One duke’s as good as another, I suppose.

  Will’s contemptuous words echoed through her mind, but she shoved them aside. He might not care about his birthright, his duty, or the security of his heirs, but she care
d about hers. And it wasn’t as if she had chosen to marry Aidan because of his rank. There were other, far more important considerations. Mutual respect, affection, a shared vision of the future.

  By accusing her of mercenary motives, Will was just trying to goad her. In fact, everything he’d said earlier had been offered with just that purpose in mind.

  She thought of the infuriating way he had spoken of her father, who had always had her best interests at heart. Why, the last words Papa had said to her before his death had been for her happiness.

  We’ve only one life, Trixie, my girl. Will’s gone, and it’s time to give up on him, and the past. Promise me you’ll make a new future.

  And that’s just what she’d done. So unfair of Will to say she’d lost her sense of adventure. She’d gone to Cornwall with Julia, and she’d thrown off black crepe mourning clothes. She’d learned to drive an automobile and she’d smoked cigarettes—not that her father would have approved of that!—and though she still couldn’t work up the courage to dive off Cornwall’s rocky cliffs into the sea, she had walked barefoot in the sand and swum in the sea at midnight with no clothes on. And during that holiday with Julia, she’d learned at last that she could be happy without Will.

  Then she’d met Aidan, and that had rather settled everything. When he’d proposed marriage to her, she had taken three days to think it over before accepting. Yes, his ducal rank had played a part, for the security of her children would be her most important duty. And no, she didn’t love him—not if love was a wild, passionate, intense insanity. Aidan didn’t love her that way, either. They were adults, mature and responsible, and they shared a bond that meant more to marital happiness than romantic love ever could. Aidan had the same vision of the future she did, a continuation of what their parents and grandparents had done before them.