Holiday Gone

by Beth Byers

After he stepped on her toes and elbowed her twice, she didn’t object when he escorted her to the balcony.

  “Hettie, dear,” he started.

  She winced. That was how her father began every disciplinary conversation with her.

  “Cecil,” Hettie interrupted flatly.

  Her lack of welcome didn’t slow him in the least. But, the purple on the tips of his ears deepened as he cut in. “We’ve been friends for a long time, haven’t we?”

  When she was seven years old, he’d cut off her braids. When she was eleven years old, he broke her beloved china doll. When she was thirteen years old, he cataloged every spot that appeared. She’d never forgiven him. She wasn’t quite sure why he’d thought they were friends. They were distantly related and their fathers worked together. But, of course, there was all that money behind her name.

  “We’ve certainly known each other since our early days.” That was all the agreement that Hettie could give him and even that she said with half a hiss.

  The purply-red on his ears started to move to his cheeks. Hettie lifted a brow of silent command and he added, “You must allow me to tell you how much I ardently love and adore you.”

  Hettie gaped at him. “Did you actually use a Jane Austen quote to attempt to convince me to believe you love me? Were you trying to find a favorite book to soften me or did you think you could pretend that you were witty enough to combine words in such a compelling way?”

  He squeaked as he fought his rage.

  Hettie, however, didn’t see the need to stop. “Do you really intend to propose to me?”

  “Your mother said that was your favorite book.” The words were ground out.

  Hettie bit down on her thumb before she asked him, “You do know how that proposal ended, don’t you?”

  Her question was so unexpected his jaw dropped and he shook his head.

  “She said no, Cecil. And I will stop you before you bother to propose. I would also say no.”

  “But your mother—”

  “Does not know my heart, control my actions, or have the capacity to tell me to marry you.”

  “Our families have been friends for our whole lives!”

  “Which was true the last time I said no. Those facts are not connected,” Hettie said scathingly. Her gaze flicked over him. He had the unhealthy pallor of a man who drank too much, smoked too much, and hadn’t seen the sun in years. She might have been able to see past that if he were witty or kind. What bothered her, however, was the way he grabbed her arm, eyes narrowing threateningly.

  “Your family wants this. My family wants this. This is happening, Hettie. So put on a pretty face and sign on the dotted line.”

  “No.” She twisted away from him. Snarling she said, “Lay hands on me again and see what I’m capable of.”

  He laughed coldly and reached for her again.

  “I wouldn’t,” Ro said from behind him. “That was the most pathetic proposal I’ve ever heard. Bloody hell man, surely you know better. Even the most complacent mouse would have said no to that.”

  The purply-red had moved down the back of his neck, across his cheekbones, and over the whole of his ears. “Perhaps,” he ground out, “I phrased that poorly.”

  “You think so?” Ro mocked and then laughed.

  “Allow me to do better,” Cecil snapped.

  “No,” Hettie said quietly, tired of the entire episode. “You could ask with the most beautiful turn of phrase possible or a simple question and the answer remains the same. No. No, I will not marry you. No, despite the wishes of your family and mine. No and no and no again.”

  “Hettie!” She began to twist away from him, but he grabbed her wrist with bruising force.

  She ignored the punishing grip to scowl at him. “I heard your father invested poorly. I can see it’s true.”

  “Let go of her,” Ro said. “Or I swear to you I will throw my drink in your face, find a tray, full or empty, and beat you while calling you a fiend at the top of my lungs.”

  He snorted.

  “Try me,” Ro said, low and even. “I have little care of what scenes I may cause.”

  Cecil threw Hettie’s arm aside and clenched his fists as though barely holding himself in check.

  Hettie was beyond ready to end this. “I’m not your safety net, Cecil. I don’t love you. You don’t love me. I’ve walked the road of a loveless marriage before and I prefer the one of a widow. Find yourself another heiress and maybe try to butter her up a little more before you go for the ball and chain.”

  “There’s no reason this can’t be a business relationship,” Cecil started.

  “Yes, there is,” Ro inserted dryly.

  “Stay out of this!”

  “I am her safety net,” Ro told him. “It’s my job as her best friend to point out that you have nothing to offer.”

  The noise that came out of Cecil was a combination of squawk, snarl, and high-pitched gasp.

  “She has the money. She doesn’t love you. She doesn’t need anything you can offer. All you are is a liability. In business terms, you’re a bad bet. You aren’t even handsome. Her sister seems to think you’re charming, but my guess is that her circle is too confined.”

  The next sound from Cecil was inhuman and his entire complexion went ruddy.

  Hettie stepped away and hooked arms with Ro. “I think you’ve given him an apoplectic fit.”

  “Let’s get away before we’re standing over another body,” Ro said, increasing her speed.

  Chapter 3

  Ro was finding special purpose in blocking Cecil Cavanaugh’s advances. Of course she enjoyed protecting Hettie, not that it was necessary. Hettie might have been indulging her memories of being a good child, but Ro would have bet her fortune that her friend had always been at least internally rebellious. It just took being miserable to stop caring what others thought.

  Harvey might have been the destroyer of marriage vows, but the man—like Ro’s own Leonard—had also destroyed Hettie’s ability to comply with others’ expectations. She might get pulled into the gossip sessions and shopping like she worried she might, and Ro hoped she kept all the jewels meant to lure her in.

  Hettie was fierce and the right amount of haughty, which prevented only the most obtuse of men from getting too close. Cecil was proving impervious to Hettie’s irritated and distant responses to his attempts at courtship. It was amusing to watch him descend into barely controlled frustration. Ro’s favorite, however, was the rainbow of purples that decorated Cecil’s face every time either she or Hettie insulted him.

  “How lovely you look today, Hettie.” Cecil glanced at Ro, his feeble attempt at niceness fading when he met her gaze. He smiled that smarmy little twist of his mouth that made her want to punch him hard.

  She lifted a brow at him, smirking in return.

  “Ro.”

  “Cecil.”

  “Oh, coffee,” Hettie said, grinning at Ro as she crossed toward the sideboard. “How lovely.”

  “So nice to see the snow. I was wondering how you’d enjoy a sleigh ride?” Cecil followed Hettie to the coffee pot, stepping far too close, for even a married couple. A woman needed the use of her elbows to pour her coffee and add the cream.

  Ro ignored his blathering and set about crafting insults in advance. It really was a lovely thing to set a fool of a man in his place. This fellow could be endless entertainment during their visit. Ro was waiting for the now very familiar look that Hettie gave Ro indicating, ‘I’ve had enough. Save me.’

  As soon as Hettie signaled that she was ready to make her escape, Ro skipped over to them in a manner entirely inappropriate for the message she was about to deliver and slid in between them.

  “Cecil pup, you are embarrassing yourself. She said no last night and she’ll say it again every day. If you haven’t noticed, she doesn’t care for you. Surely you want to spare your manhood the ignominy of pursuing a woman you cannot have? Your best argument to convince her is that you knew each other when you were
in your short pants.” Ro looked him over and said, “Certainly your knobby knees are already seared onto her memory.”

  The purple moved across his face in a flash and she grinned in utter satisfaction. Linking her arm through Hettie’s, Ro suggested, “Let’s go shopping. If we run out of stores in Montreal, there’s always Paris.”

  Hettie let herself be tugged from the room, and Ro caught her beginning to glance back.

  “Don’t look apologetic,” Ro hissed, not certain if Hettie were going to stick out her tongue or wince and apologize.

  “I didn’t!” Hettie caught the butler’s eye. “An auto. Now, please. My mother is still upstairs?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Don’t tell her we’ve gone unless she asks.”

  Ro winked at the butler as Hettie faced her. “I almost hope Cecil doesn’t give up for a bit. He really is quite fun to toy with, isn’t he?”

  Ro nodded, pleased that Hettie wasn’t going to give in to the pressure her family and Cecil were putting on her. “Quite fun.”

  If Ro were honest with herself, she would admit that the insults she was using on Cecil were from the many things she wished she could have had the courage to say to her own, now dead, worthless excuse for a husband. There was no shortage of insults poised on the tip of her tongue, ready to cut Cecil and any other male she deemed worthy of eternal, public suffering—which was most of them. She didn’t like to think that so many men were as fiendish as her husband, but her encounters weren’t doing much to convince her she was mistaken.

  “Mother wants me to entertain Cecil today,” Hettie said in annoyance. “Can you believe she ordered me to after having her maid drag me into her bedroom? I was still sleeping!”

  “Yes. You woke me up afterward,” Ro told Hettie dryly, “so I have a pretty good idea of what that feels like.”

  “In sickness and in death,” Hettie shot back. She shuddered as she led Ro towards the porte cochere where the family’s driver would pick them up. “I have no desire to spend the entirety of this stupid visit fighting him off. I’ve said no twice now. Is the third time the charm?”

  “He wants your money,” Ro said. “Of course it isn’t.”

  “Mother is going to pout.” Hettie’s mouth twisted sourly. “We’re only rescued for the moment. They’re going to attack again.”

  “Of course they will,” Ro agreed with a yawn, pulling her coat tighter against the morning chill. “Given enough time, however, any man will reveal their true motives.”

  Hettie laughed.

  “Those motives are rarely laudable and quite often buried under pleasant manners and too much money like that idiot timber man at the ball.”

  “Or too little, like Cecil,” Hettie added.

  “That fool! He has so little regard for women he didn’t even try to pretend it wasn’t a business arrangement.”

  “He didn’t even pretend his father hadn’t ruined their fortune since the last time he tried for my inheritance.” The auto pulled up to the house. Ro checked that her handbag had her lipstick, powder, and money. The company that she and Hettie had funded, Artemis, had given them the first prototypes of the new enameled powder case. They were hand-painted and carefully created. Hettie’s had a pink rose and Ro’s had a red dragon. As soon as they sent an approval for the design, Artemis would begin producing them.

  “I would say he doesn’t have any self-respect, but I rather think he doesn’t have any respect for you.” Ro grinned evilly. “It is rather the opposite of courting a woman successfully, don’t you think?”

  Hettie grunted an unintelligible response as she slipped into the posh leather backseat of the Ford Model T.

  “Rue St. Catherine, please, Ralph. I need to build up my resistance to Mother,” Hettie told Ro, “but I’ve decided I’m keeping the pink diamonds.”

  “And so you should,” Ro said triumphantly. Sensing Hettie was desperate for a change in subject as much as a change in location, Ro obliged. “Let’s take a few days and sneak away from the pressure of your family and Cecil to go to Prince Edward Island. It’s meant to be, you know. We don’t want our life to be a perfect graveyard of buried hopes, now do we?”

  “It annoys me when Cecil quotes from books, but when you do it, it’s sweet. Buried hopes, eh? Are you being dramatic, Ro?”

  “Was Anne of Green Gables ever dramatic? Don’t answer that.” Ro laughed as Hettie immediately nodded. “Let’s shop in preparation for our diversion to PEI. I’m dying to see the setting of the book that encapsulates our friendship.”

  “Yes. I think we need an outfit with puffed sleeves!”

  “Yes! Though I prefer no sleeves. I suppose—this once.”

  “Perhaps in a lacy robe, so we could wear it and not feel ridiculous.”

  “I like that idea,” Ro added. “We might need to special order it.”

  Hettie laughed. “I couldn’t imagine stepping into a shop and finding puffed sleeves on anything unless they still carried Edwardian fashions.”

  “Edwardian fashions for Prince Edward Island!”

  They both laughed until they lost the ability to breathe. Ro gasped until she could speak again. “I think if we carry on with Cecil without a break, he might kill us or we him.”

  “I think our previous adventures have led us to believe that murder is a normal response.” Hettie shuddered. “I should like to discover a way of revenge that leads up to death but not quite.”

  “It won’t be us who dies,” Ro said. “Can you imagine? Death by Cecil. I’d rather be pecked to death by chickens.”

  Hettie chuckled. “Let’s go then. Mother will hate that we are leaving early, but it’s her own fault. If she’d listened to me at all instead of encouraging Cecil—” Hettie growled. “It’s hard to believe she has any goodwill toward me at all. What could she be thinking trying to pair me with him? What possible reason would she sacrifice my happiness for his comfort?”

  Ro shivered from the cold that permeated her woolen coat. She should have worn the furs again even if they were ridiculous for shopping. “Enough about Cecil and your mother. What do we need to buy to get ready for our excursion? Winter in Montreal is quite different from winter in London.”

  “Yes,” Hettie replied dryly, “I know.”

  “I’m not complaining. I think I prefer the snow to the rain, but I saw a coat made of velvet with a fur collar on one of your cousins and have decided that I must have it. One in cranberry red, one in green, and one in crackle blue. Those colors should suit me.”

  “You’re going to buy three more winter coats for a winter that we probably won’t repeat?”

  “Maybe we’ll go to St. Petersburg and I’ll need them.”

  “Or Austria?”

  “There we go. I also need a coordinating hat with a feather. And boots. My feet are so cold all the time. I want boots and—don’t tell—that sleigh ride Cecil was offering but only us. I must have a sleigh ride when we are tracing our beloved Anne’s footsteps.”

  Chapter 4

  By the time they’d arrived at the Bon Marche in Montreal’s historic shopping district, Hettie had stopped trying to hold Ro back and was making her own plans to purchase enough winter clothing to last them long beyond their Montreal trip.

  “We’ll donate our purchases, except our favorites obviously, to the women’s shelter before we leave for London,” Hettie told Ro, who agreed enthusiastically and purchased even more clothing.

  While changing, Ro heard a particularly nasally voice coming from the next changing room over. “She thinks she’s so much better than my brother, but our last name carries quite a bit of prestige. She could do worse than marrying Cecil. And her poor friend. I’m sure she’s simply a charity case.”

  Ro’s mouth dropped. A charity case? When she was wearing perfectly matching, excessively long strands of pearls? When she had diamond earbobs? When her clothing was the height of fashion? Ro Lavender, a charity case? Ro wanted to hiss that she had more money than Hettie, but reall
y—after a certain point it was only a high score in a pointless game, wasn’t it?

  The snide voice continued, “It’s like Hettie to befriend the poor child and treat her own kind—like my brother—as though they are second-class citizens.”

  Noisy giggles followed their gossipy words and another voice said, “Hettie puts on airs as though Cecil actually loves her, but everyone knows he’s been carrying on an affair with Janet.”

  Ro flinched. She’d met a Janet the night before. The woman was lovely and her husband was quite a bit older, but surely Janet could do better than Cecil?

  “Hettie! Red hair! Spots on her chin! Too thick in the hips, and Cecil offering her the pretense of romance when no one else would bother.”

  “She is too ugly for him.”

  Ro growled low in her throat.

  “And she’s so gullible. She’s like those idiot girls in plays who decline good marriage offers for the idea of romance. I told my brother to give the fool the trappings of it. Pretend she isn’t a duck in a nest full of swans.”

  “Poor Amy,” one voice said as Hettie stepped behind the curtain with Ro. The look on her face reflected she’d heard it all. “Her sister was always awkward. It must have been hard to stand next to her and put on a charming face.”

  Ro studied Hettie with curiosity. How would her friend handle this?

  The mischievous look in Hettie’s sparkling eyes made Ro’s glint with humor. Oh, good. This was going to be fun. Hettie was the lioness who’d found her prey.

  “Oh, dear,” Hettie said loudly. “Ro, have I mentioned how devastating the Cavanaughs’ most recent failed business transaction was?”

  “You did. Fools. How hard is it to not invest with criminals?”

  The women in the next dressing room gasped as Hettie added, “I’m surprised that any of them have the audacity to show their faces in public. According to my mother, Cecil’s father destroyed the entirety of the family fortune on this one investment.”

  “I would ask if you were joking,” Ro said evilly, “but honestly, I met Cecil and his family. They seem dim.”