Wedding of the Season: Abandoned at the Altar

by Laura Lee Guhrke

  Her happiness didn’t stem merely from reliving their childhood experiences of midnight adventures. She’d also enjoyed the work they’d done together yesterday. She’d enjoyed sketching those artifacts. In fact, she mused as she stirred sugar into her tea, she’d enjoyed the sketching she’d done for him yesterday more than she had when they were children and he’d excavated that Roman barrow. Perhaps that was because this time, she was choosing to do it not for the boy she’d loved, but for herself.

  The big grandfather clock in the foyer began to chime the hour, and she came out of her reverie with a start. Nine o’clock? And she’d told Will she wouldn’t be late. Quickly she gulped down her tea and raced for the door. “I’m joining Will in the gazebo,” she called back over her shoulder. “We’ll be working all day.”

  “Beatrix,” her aunt called back to her, “wait for me, if you please.”

  “Can’t, Auntie. I’m already late.”

  “Beatrix!” Eugenia’s voice rose, shrill and firm. “You cannot be alone with him. Wait for me while I fetch my needlework, and I shall come with you.”

  She stopped in the doorway with a sigh of impatience. “For heaven’s sake, Auntie, we shall be outside in broad daylight. What on earth could we do that would be improper? We are working, not courting!”

  “Yes, I know, dear. Of course you are. But I am your chaperone.”

  “I could come with you,” Emma offered. “I’ve nearly finished breakfast. Although my bringing Ruthie with me might be a distraction if you wish to accomplish any work. She’s been such a fussbudget of late.”

  “I’ll be your chaperone today, darling,” Julia offered, standing up. “I’m finished with breakfast.” Picking up her teacup in its saucer, she started for the door, adding carelessly over her shoulder, “Don’t worry, Auntie. I’ll see that Will doesn’t ravish her over the artifacts.”

  Julia followed Beatrix out of the dining room, adding in a murmur that only she could hear, “At least not until after lunch.”

  Both of them burst into giggles as they crossed the corridor and entered the drawing room.

  “You really are a most inappropriate chaperone,” Beatrix told her as they paused by a bookshelf near the French doors. “You’re the one who taught me to smoke cigarettes and drive a motorcar and dance the can-can. Poor Auntie. If only she knew just how wayward I became in Cornwall.”

  “It would give her heart failure, I’m sure,” Julia agreed cheerfully. She pulled out a book from the shelf, and the two of them left the house. “Is that true, by the way?” Julia asked as they walked down to the gazebo. “What you said in the dining room?”

  “What I said?”

  “That you and Will are not courting?”

  Beatrix felt defensive all of a sudden. “I told you already that he proposed and I refused him. I agreed to do these drawings for him, but it’s all . . .” She paused as memories of the previous night flashed through her mind. When she spoke again, she strove to sound convincing. “It’s all perfectly innocent.”

  “Is it?” Julia stopped walking. When Beatrix stopped also, her cousin gave her a fleeting smile that had a hint of concern in it. “Be careful, darling,” she said gently. “You might fall in love with him all over again. And this time,” she added, overriding Beatrix’s protest, “I fear even Cornwall and the Daimler won’t save you.”

  Julia walked on, but Beatrix didn’t move. Instead, she stared after the other woman in dismay, rooted to the spot, her momentary happiness eclipsed by panic. Julia was right. She could fall back in love with Will again, easy as winking, and if that happened, even six years, another man, and a Daimler motorcar might not be enough to help her recover.

  When she and Julia arrived at the gazebo, Will was already there, immersed in work. His valet had replaced the artifacts they’d finished working on yesterday with a fresh lot, and he was studying a turquoise ring beneath a magnifying glass as she and Julia approached.

  He set it aside and rose to his feet as they came up the steps. “Good morning, Julie.” He turned to Beatrix, and there was a smile in his eyes that told her he was thinking of last night. “Trix.”

  She gave a quick nod and looked away, her panic deepening into outright fear—fear of being hurt again, being jilted, living without him—and the simple pleasure and happiness of yesterday began sliding away.

  “Now remember, you two,” Julia said in a droll mimicry of Eugenia, “I’m watching you from down below.” With that, she continued on down the path to the beach, leaving them to work.

  Beatrix took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and leaned over the table, pretending to study the various pieces of jewelry in the velvet-lined boxes before her as she worked to tamp down her fears. She was working for him and nothing more, he was leaving in a few short weeks for Egypt, and she was making a new life for herself as an illustrator. Even as she reminded herself of these facts, she had the sinking feeling her efforts would prove as futile as her efforts to forget him had been.

  She could feel his gaze watching her across the table, and she forced herself to say something. “Did you want all these pieces sketched today?”

  “Only if it’s possible.”

  “I don’t know if it is.” She bent closer to study a splendid scarab of lapis and gold. “Some of them are very intricate.”

  “I understand. The gentlemen at the British Museum are excited about our findings, and want to see the artifacts as soon as possible. And I am scheduled to give a speech to the Archaeological Society on September tenth. But there isn’t a set date by which I have to show them the sketches.”

  She touched her fingertip delicately to the beaded chain of an elaborate jeweled collar. “I thought you wanted to be on your way back to Thebes straightaway after your speech.”

  “That was my intention originally. The journey to Thebes takes about two weeks, and the excavation season officially begins at the start of October. During that first fortnight things are a bit chaotic with everyone returning to Thebes at various times. Since I have been living in Cairo during the summer months, I’m usually one of the first to arrive at the site, and with Marlowe sending a journalist and photographer, I had thought to make the journey back ahead of them, but I might postpone my departure a little longer.” He paused, then added, “If you want me to.”

  She looked at him and found him watching her with a tenderness in his face that seemed unbearable. “Why should it matter to me?” she asked fiercely, and tore her gaze away. “We’re not courting. Go back to Egypt whenever you please.”

  “I can stretch my journey out a little, stay a couple weeks longer, if that’s what it takes.”

  “If that’s what it takes to do what?” she asked, and jerked to her feet, prickly and defensive. She was angry at him because he wasn’t offering to stay, he was only offering to put off his inevitable departure. And she was also angry at herself because she was already missing him and he hadn’t even left yet. “Do you think a couple more weeks will change my mind and persuade me to go to Egypt? If so, you’re wasting your time.”

  “It’s my time, Trix,” he said gently. “And I wouldn’t think it a waste.”

  She opened her mouth to reply, but at that moment, Will glanced past her and stood up. When she looked over her shoulder she saw Emma coming across the lawn toward them with Ruthie in her arms, and Eugenia walking beside her, and she gave a sigh of relief. In their presence, Will couldn’t talk to her of the impossible things he wanted from her.

  “Ladies,” he greeted them and circled the table to walk down the steps. “Hullo, Ruthie.”

  The baby, who recognized her name, looked toward him as he approached, and her face lit up, bringing back Will’s words of a few days ago.

  As far back as I can remember, whenever you used to look at me, your face would light up as if someone had lit a candle inside you.

  She studied little Ruthie’s expression, and somehow, she found it a bit comforting that she wasn’t the only one susceptible to Will’s
charm, even if his other conquest was only one year old.

  She watched him kneel on the grass and hold out his hands to the baby, and when Emma set her on the grass, she stretched out her arms toward Will with a joyous gurgle, but when she started toward him, she only managed to take three steps before she went down on her bottom.

  She’d landed in the soft grass, but for some unaccountable reason, her face puckered up and she began to cry. Emma started to reach for her, but Will was quicker, scooping her up and settling her into the crook of his arm, her pale blue dress and her chestnut hair a beautiful contrast to his dark green waistcoat and white shirt. When he smiled at her, she stopped crying, and when he began to talk to her, making silly faces, she laughed and patted at his cheeks with her chubby hands.

  Watching them, Beatrix felt a strange, awful sensation—as if the world were crumbling and breaking up and re-forming into a place she hadn’t dared to dream about for years.

  She’d asked Will the other day how she could rely on him to be a good father to his children, and though his reply—a rather disparaging assurance that he wouldn’t be like her father—had angered her, when she saw him now, holding little Ruthie and making her laugh, Beatrix knew she had an answer to her question. He would be a good father, if only . . .

  She stopped smiling, and the hard reality set in as the qualification passed through her mind.

  If only he would change.

  He looked up and caught her eye. He pointed straight at her, murmuring something to the baby, and Ruthie looked at her, too, smiling.

  Watching the two of them hurt her eyes, as if she was staring into bright sunlight, and she turned away, blinking rapidly as she returned her attention to her work and picked up her drawing pencil.

  He wasn’t going to change, she reminded herself, trying to harden her heart and shore up her defenses. For him, life was all fun and play and adventures in Egypt. He wasn’t ever going to want to live in the world she lived in, and he wasn’t ever going to live up to his responsibilities at home. And that was what truly made her afraid and proved her a fool. He wasn’t going to change, and no matter how much time passed, no matter the evidence to the contrary, she kept hoping he would.

  Will had thought working together might renew the excitement Trix had felt all those years ago when they’d dug up the barrow, spark her interest in Egypt and the work he was doing there, and bring the two of them closer together. But during the two weeks that followed, he appreciated that it wasn’t going to be that simple.

  She drew sketches of the artifacts, but she did not ask him any questions about them. He tried to engage her in conversation, discussing the various pieces, describing the excavation work, telling her about the ancient Egyptians. But though she listened politely, she expressed no further interest, returning to her work without seeming inclined to explore the topic further. She made any modifications he requested—a different angle of a particular piece, or a closer view—without any discussion. If she had ideas of her own, she did not express them. She was as businesslike as any employee could be toward her employer, and nothing more.

  In the evenings she stayed close to Eugenia and Emma, giving him no opportunity to draw her out, bring her closer, show her his point of view. And his frustration grew, because he knew he couldn’t force her to meet him halfway. She had to come there on her own.

  As the days passed, he often took the opportunity to observe her as they worked together, trying to determine what more he could do to win her over. His chance to rectify his past mistakes was slipping away, and time became more and more his enemy with each day that went by.

  Instead of coming closer to him, she was pulling away. He could sense it, but he didn’t know what to do about it. As he worked to find a way to bring them closer together, one thing she’d said kept echoing through his mind.

  You would not be a reliable partner in life. I knew I couldn’t trust you or count on you.

  Trust was the crux of it all, really. She didn’t trust him, and if he were honest with himself, he’d have to concede that he didn’t quite trust her, either. He, too, had felt the pain of a broken heart. But he still wanted her, and he was willing to take another chance because he had a gambler’s heart. She didn’t.

  The problem was that trust, especially once it had been broken, took time to develop, and time was not on his side. As August gave way to September and the time to leave Pixy Cove drew closer, he could feel a sense of desperation and despair setting in. Upon their return to Stafford St. Mary, he would have to depart almost immediately for London to give that speech to the Archaeological Society on the tenth. Upon his return to Devonshire, he’d have two weeks, maybe three, before he had to leave, for he had to be in Thebes by the fifteenth of October. He couldn’t stretch things out any longer than that. And even then, two weeks in Stafford St. Mary didn’t seem nearly enough time to change Trix’s mind. In addition, it would be much harder to find time alone with her than it was now, for they wouldn’t even be in the same house. It could be done, of course—they’d snuck out plenty of times in the days before he went away. But it was trickier to arrange, there was more risk of being caught, and with the way she was pulling away from him, the chance she’d take those risks seemed less and less likely.

  He kept watching her, listening, waiting, hoping like hell for something—an opening, an opportunity, an idea—anything that would show him what to do next, but it wasn’t until the afternoon before they were ready to leave Pixy Cove that he found the opportunity he’d been waiting for.

  He’d finished his descriptions for the catalog and was putting them in order with the sketches she’d done, waiting for her to complete her last drawing, but when he glanced at her across the table, he saw that she wasn’t working. Instead, she was staring out toward the other side of Pixy Cove, lost in thought.

  “Penny,” he said.

  She gave a start at the sound of his voice and looked at him. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I said penny, as in penny for your thoughts.”

  “Oh, sorry.” She shook her head. “I was just thinking of that day on Angel’s Head.”

  That surprised him. “Really?”

  She nodded, and turned her head to look back out at the cove. “You were right, you know.”

  Will was becoming more surprised by the moment. “In what respect?”

  “I wanted to take that dive,” she confessed.

  “I know you did.”

  She gave him a rueful smile. “But you can’t know just how many times I’ve berated myself since then because I didn’t do it. You were right to say I was afraid.”

  “Everybody’s afraid sometimes, Trix. And it’s not as if it was anything important. It was just a silly dare.”

  “I know, but I’ve always regretted it.”

  He glanced at the sky, thought about the moon, and calculated the time of the next high tide. “If that’s true, why don’t you do something about it?” he suggested as he gathered the papers before him into a stack and worked to sound as if their future didn’t hinge on what she decided. “Instead of regretting it, why not change it instead?”

  “Change it?”

  “Yes.” He held out the stack of pages to her. “Other than that drawing you’re working on, the catalog is finished and I can cross that off my list of duties to fulfill. I’ve done my part, I’ve been responsible, and that means that tonight, it’s time for another adventure.”

  The moment he smiled at her, she realized what he had in mind and she began shaking her head. “Oh no,” she said, laughing a little. “No, no, no.”

  “Angel’s Head,” he told her, opening his dispatch case to put the catalog inside. “One o’clock. Wear your bathing dress.”

  “You’re off your trolley if you think I’m diving off that cliff at Angel’s Head with you.”

  “It’ll be your only chance until next year.”

  “It’ll be the middle of the night!”

  “There’s a full moon tonight
. It’ll be almost as bright as day. C’mon, Trix,” he coaxed as she continued to shake her head. “It’ll be fun.”

  “You always say that.”

  “And I’m always right. Admit it. Every adventure you and I have ever had has been fun.” He closed his dispatch case and stood up, slinging the case over his shoulder. “I’ll bring food, and after you take that dive, I’ll make a fire in the pixy cave there, and we’ll have a picnic. Maybe I’ll even read you some Poe.” He circled the table, and as he passed her, he added, “Don’t forget to bring a pin for the pixy.”

  She tossed down her pencil and stood up. “Diving off of Angel’s Head in the middle of the night is crazy!” she said to his back as he started down the steps of the gazebo.

  He paused to look back at her over his shoulder. “You say you’ve regretted not doing that dive ever since you were ten years old. This is your opportunity for a second chance.” He grinned. “I don’t know about you, but I’ve become a firm believer in second chances.”

  Beatrix knew she must believe in second chances, too. Either that or Will’s particular form of madness was contagious. Because at one o’clock in the morning, by the light of a full moon, she was sneaking out of the house to meet Will at Angel’s Head so she could dive off a cliff. She’d have told him again how crazy this was, except that right after dinner, he’d unaccountably disappeared, not joining them in the drawing room.

  For over two weeks, she’d propped up defenses and kept him at bay. She’d played the part of the businesslike, indifferent employee, but underneath the mask she’d put on, she’d spent the past fortnight feeling miserable and afraid, and the effort to keep those defenses up was exhausting her. She didn’t want to be hurt again, and yet sitting with him this afternoon, staring out at Angel’s Head, she’d realized that all her efforts to avoid hurt were an utter waste of time because she’d start hurting the moment he left for Egypt, and she was meeting him at Angel’s Head for this adventure because she didn’t want to waste any more time hurting while he was still here. Because there was no point in anticipating the future by sacrificing the present. And because life was short and sweet and meant to be lived, and that was the lesson she’d been trying to learn for six years.