The Bridal Season (15 page)

Anyone could see that Elliot and Lady Agatha would suit. And
clearly they were interested in one another. But just how interested? She
mustn’t be a coward. Resolutely, she set Lambikins down and held out her hand.
“Merry, I would like the glasses.”

At once, Merry stepped back from the window and handed over
the binoculars. Eglantyne raised them to her eyes and after a second or two of
scanning the embankment found ... oh, my!

She would never have believed him capable of such behavior!
Decent, courteous, and chivalrous Elliot was accosting Lady Agatha!

He was kissing her, his dark head obliterating hers from
Eglantyne’s view, one arm clasped her around her waist, arching her back like a
bow, while his free hand held the back of her head. Her auburn hair spilled
down, brushing the grass, and her hands were pressed in tight fists against his
chest—though, oddly, she didn’t appear to be struggling.

Then, quite suddenly, Sir Elliot swept Lady Agatha back to an
upright position. At the same time, Lady Agatha seemed to return to her senses,
for she beat her fists once against Elliot’s chest.

To do him justice, Elliot released her at once. She looked
furious. For a second she wobbled unsteadily in place, but then jerked her chin
in regal dismissal of Elliot and began stalking off up the hill. Only she
didn’t stalk so much as stumble, first one way then the other, as if she wasn’t
exactly sure in which direction the house lay. Which seemed rather odd, but one
had to account for her undoubted shock.

Eglantyne glanced at Merry and Grace. Grace was still leaning
against the wall fanning herself. Merry was peering through the window through
a piece of paper she’d rolled into a tube. Both looked appropriately
nonplussed. So much for their matchmaking.

“Oh, Elliot,” she murmured. “How could you?”

“Could what?” Merry asked.

“I don’t think they like each other very much.”

“Huh?” Grace asked disbelievingly, but then perhaps the
housekeeper hadn’t seen Sir Elliot accost Lady Agatha. Not that Eglantyne was
going to inform her of it. It was her duty as a responsible employer to protect
her servants from such knowledge.

“They’ve parted ways and are returning to the house
separately,” she said.

“Oh?” Merry said, and Eglantyne glanced once more through the
binoculars. Lady Agatha was still weaving her way up the embankment, finally
heading in the right direction. Elliot still stood at the bottom, his arms
folded across his chest.

He must be enduring the most grievous remorse by now,
Eglantyne thought with a touch of sympathy, as appalled by his actions as Lady
Agatha. He probably considered that his sins toward Lady Agatha were
unforgivable—and rightly so. He would be in despair. He would be raking himself
over coals of remor—

Eglantyne’s eyes grew round. Sir Elliot had turned to watch
Lady Agatha disappear from view. Finally Eglantyne was afforded a look at his
face.

He was unabashedly grinning.

Some days you’re the cockroach,
some days you’re the boot
heel.

SHE HAD TO GET OUT OF HERE. NOW. TODAY. Tonight at the latest.
Tomorrow at the very, very latest. Things were getting far too complicated.

Letty pushed open the terrace doors and entered the room where
the croquet party crowded. Faces swelled and retreated, disembodied voices
surrounded. She veered off. She couldn’t concentrate on what they were saying
or what they asked. She had to get out of here before she gave herself away.

The absurdity of it bubbled up. She’d never flubbed a line in
her life, never missed a cue... until now. She couldn’t go on with the show.
Where was her understudy?

She desperately needed a moment alone. Her room. Like a
drowning rat spying a floating board, she fled toward the door opposite and
into the hallway.

Blast! A group of people milled about the bottom of the stairs
that led to the upper bedchambers. They turned to her eagerly and she returned
their smiles with a frantic gaiety, sheered off, and hastened toward a closed
door at the end of the corridor.

She opened the door and stumbled in, slamming it shut behind
her. She turned the key in the lock and heard the sweet click as the bolt slid
into place. She slumped against the door and took a deep breath, looking
around. She was in a small morning room. A settee stood before her, its back to
Letty, a pair of chairs flanking it.

She was safe for the moment. She needed to think. Plan. When
to go? What to take?

The sound of heartbroken sobs broke through her frantic
checklist. Someone else was in here. She nearly sobbed back in despair.

No. It wasn’t fair. She wasn’t up to this. She spun toward to
the door, but the idea of facing those friendly, interested faces—She couldn’t.
She turned back as a head of soft blond ringlets rose from behind the back of
the small settee.

“I’m sorry, Lady Agatha.” Angela sniffed and dashed the back
of her hands against her red-rimmed eyes. “I didn’t think anyone would come in
here. There were some people outside with whom I... I didn’t wish to speak just
at the moment.”

“Please, don’t explain,” Letty begged her. She didn’t want to
be this girl’s friend. She was an employee, not a confidante. Damnation, she
wasn’t even that! She was a fake. A fraud.

“—if you don’t mind.”

Letty refocused her gaze on the girl. “Excuse me?”

“I’d just as soon wait here until the people outside have
gone,” Angela apologized.

Try as she might, Letty couldn’t ignore Angela’s misery.

She took a few steps into the room. At least this way she
could focus on something besides
him...
and what he must think of her.
“It’s your home, Miss Angela. Besides, I’m afraid we’re both in the same
pickle. I’m rather looking to dodge the crush myself.”

“You?” Angela asked with dull curiosity. “Why should you seek
refuge?”

“You’d be surprised,” Letty murmured.

“I daresay,” Angela replied politely and then, abruptly, her
pale eyes filled with tears, her lower lip trembled, and her head dropped out
of sight.

Muffled sobs rose from the other side of the divan.

I should
just sit in this chair and leave her to it.
Gentlewomen loathe
having
witnesses to any outbursts. Chin-up and put a
brave face on it, was the English gentlewoman’s creed. Nope. She wouldn’t thank
me for asking
what’s
wrong.

Somehow Letty had crossed the room and was standing behind the
settee, her hand resting gently on the girl’s shuddering back. Angela’s sobs
only grew louder.

Letty rubbed small comforting circles between her shoulder
blades. “Angela. What is the matter?”

Angela lifted her damp, red-nosed, wholly unappealing little
face. “I can’t tell you. I daren’t tell you. You’ll think I’m... I’m...
horrible!”

“No, I won’t. Never,” Letty promised. What sort of fix had the
chit gotten herself into, anyway? What sort of fix
could
a girl get into
in a place like Little Bidewell?

“Yes, you will. And you’ll... be... right... to think it,
too!” Angela’s head plunged down between her arms again.

“Whatever you’ve done, or think you’ve done,” Letty amended,
“I’m certain it isn’t so horrible it could affect my good opinion of you.”

“Oh!” Came the smothered reply. “You don’t understand. I...
am... so ... ashamed!”

Letty cast about for some personal incident on which to draw
in order to comfort the girl. It was all too available. And from uncomfortably
recent experiences.

“Sometimes,” she began uneasily, “one does things without
first giving them proper consideration.”

“What sorts of things?” Angela asked dolefully. “I’ll wager
you’re not speaking of the sort of thing
I’ve
done!”

“Well,” Letty said, picking her way carefully. She felt as
though she were traversing a mine field laid with potentially explosive truths.
“One might do these things, these rash, ill-considered things, and never really
realize how... how shabby they might seem, or even
be.”

She struggled on, a light sweat breaking out on her brow. “And
then, one day, one looks back on them from the vantage of time and distance and
then one is... one is ashamed. And one wishes, with all one’s might, that one
hadn’t done what one has done, only there’s nothing to be done about it. It’s
done!”

There. She’d confessed—er, she’d said it. She blew out a deep
breath. She felt ever so much better. “Does this make any sense to you,
darling?”

The girl eyed her doubtfully. “A bit.”

“Of course it does. The fact of the matter is, that what’s
done is done and there’s no good stewing about it. You don’t want Marquis
What’s-’is-face going all gloomy because his little bride’s in the dumps over a
bit of a gaffe she committed years ago, do you?”

She patted Angela’s head and gave her a bracing smile, to
which Angela responded by going milk-white, throwing herself back down on the
settee, and howling brokenheartedly into the cushion of her arms.

So much for rallying Angela’s spirits. Clearly it was time for
strong-arm tactics. She grasped Angela’s shoulders and dragged her into a
sitting position.

Angela was so startled she stopped howling.

“Come now! Out with it, miss!” Letty said in her sternest
voice, the voice she’d used to such effect in her role as Marvelle Magwhite,
the strict governess in
The Saucy Miss Sally.
A minor role, but juicy.

“I mean it, Angela. Either you tell me what is causing this
waterfall or I shall be forced to think,” she cast about for something that
Angela would consider unendurable, “or I will be forced to think that
you
are enjoying yourself!”

Angela looked stricken, but after a few seconds suddenly
clasped Letty’s hands in her own and squeezed them tightly. “Swear to me that
you will try awfully hard not to think too badly of me,” she begged.

“Of course, I won’t.”

The girl pulled her narrow shoulders back. “All right, then,
here it is. I once had a... more than a sisterly regard for Kip Himplerump.”

Kip Himplerump. Kip Himplerump ... “The squire’s
sullen-looking boy?”

Angela nodded. Finally, things were getting interesting.

“And he had feelings for me. Or, I thought he had.”

“I see.” And did she! The memory of her own passionate
response to Sir Elliot came rushing back with tidal force.

“There. I can see you think the worst of me, don’t you?”

“Of course I don’t,” Letty said. She felt only profound
empathy with Angela. The poor little duck, carried away against her better
judgment, at the mercy of irresistible forces, caught on a riptide of
attraction. Why, if she and Sir Elliot hadn’t been in a field in full view of
the house, who knows what might have transpired? Thank heavens for that, at
least.

At least, she
ought
to thank heaven.

“Well, m’dear,” she said, “you’ve made a clean breast of it.
Now, forget it.”

“I would. But now—”

Letty pushed Angela gently away, holding her at arms’ length.
She studied her face gravely. “What, Angela?”

“Kip. He has a letter I wrote. A most revealing, incriminating
letter! Oh! I should die if my darling Hugh ever sees it.”

“Why should he see it?” Letty asked, but she already knew the
answer. Because Kip was threatening to reveal the letter, was blackmailing this
poor girl. Just like Nick had blackmailed all the “rich, worthless, faceless
sots” who found themselves in his power. Only now they weren’t faceless
anymore. Or worthless. They had this girl’s face. And this girl’s worth.

Even if she hadn’t been an actual party to his blackmail,
she’d known full well where the money Nick spent on her came from. She’d been
as culpable in her silence as he was. She felt an inner recoil, a deep disgust
with herself.

“How much does he want?”

“How much?” Angela echoed blankly.

“Money.”

Angela looked shocked. “He doesn’t want money.”

“What does he want then?”

“He wants me to meet him at the witch tree to say good-bye.”

The boy wasn’t looking for money? Fine, then. There was no
problem. “Well, if you don’t want to go, don’t.”

“He says he’ll mail my letter to the Sheffields if I don’t go
and then Hugh will know all.” The tears had begun to course down her face
again. “Could you...” Angela’s gaze dropped to her lap. “Would you come with
me? I’d feel ever so much braver if you were with me. I’m afraid he wants more
than to simply say farewell—”Angela broke off, blushing fiercely.

So it was blackmail after all. “There’s only one way to deal
with such a creature, Angela. Squeal him out.” At Angela’s puzzled expression,
she clarified her words. “Tell your family.”

“I couldn’t!” Angela exclaimed. “I can’t tell Papa. He’d be as
hurt as Hugh. And Aunt Eglantyne would simply curl up and die.”

Just how far had things gone between Kip and Angela?

“Angela,” Letty said, “it is very important that you answer me
directly and without euphemism. Just what have you and Kip Himplerump done? How
far had your affair gone?”

“I... I let him... kiss me!” She covered her eyes with her
hands, too mortified to face Letty. “And then I wrote to him about it! About
how it made me feel so...
womanly!”

Letty stared blankly at her. “You kissed him?”

“Yes!”

“Once?”

“Several times! Don’t speak anymore of it. I should have never
kissed any man but my darling Hughie. I,” her head dropped, “I go to my Hugh a
sullied
woman.”

Letty nearly laughed with her relief. For a moment there,
she’d thought the girl had a pressing reason to cry. But then, she’d learned
early in life that the concerns of the privileged were not the same ones as
those of her sort. Though judging from Angela’s tragic expression, they seemed
just as dire to them.