The Bridal Season (3 page)

At this, Angela muffled a startled laugh. Elliot welcomed the
sound. It had been quite a while since he’d heard Angela laugh.

Lady Agatha’s eyes twinkled. “Terrible for the drink, she was.
I only realized the extent of her problem when she showed up at the station
yesterday too sozzled to board the train.” Her eyes narrowed. “Needless to say,
I left her behind.”

Eglantyne had said Lady Agatha had a reputation for eccentricity.
Apparently it was well warranted. No lady of his acquaintance would speak so
complacently about such matters. He couldn’t imagine Catherine saying the words
“like a fish”—not even in reference to a fish. Indeed, Catherine had been
unusually quiet.

Eglantyne didn’t seem to notice anything odd. But then,
Eglantyne was amazingly unworldly.

“I’m afraid our Ham is similarly afflicted,” she confided.
“But he won’t stop. So what can we do?”

“Dismiss him?” Lady Agatha suggested.

“Aye,” sighed Eglantyne. “But what would he do then? It’s not
likely anyone else would employ him.”

Elliot nearly smiled at Lady Agatha’s flummoxed expression.
Little Bidewell residents had quite strong, if unique, views on social
responsibility.

“Don’t worry, Lady Agatha,” Eglantyne said, misreading her
expression. “Ham will be right as rain come the wedding. He’ll not let the
family down on a really important occasion....” She trailed off in
embarrassment. “Not that
you ‘re
not an important occasion, Lady
Agatha!”

Lady Agatha squeezed her dog to her face. “How charming! Do
you hear that, Lambikins? We’re an ‘occasion.’ “

“Indeed, yes!” Eglantyne said, hooking her arm through Lady
Agatha’s. “Now, Paul and Catherine, I know you’ll excuse us. Lady Agatha must
be quite weary after her long journey.”

Elliot silently applauded Eglantyne. At this rate the entire
town would show up. “Of course,” murmured Paul, his gaze admiring. “It has been
an honor, Lady Agatha.”

“You are too kind, Lord Paul,” she replied. “But you’d best
all beware lest I take your professions seriously and decide to stay on
forever.”

“Ma’am?” Paul said, confused.

She laughed. “Well, within minutes of my arrival in your
quaint little village I’m declared an honor as well as an occasion. How shall I
ever hope to surpass that?” Her glance slewed toward Elliot and glinted
merrily, wickedly, and yes, provocatively.

She wasn’t at all what one might have expected. And that was
interesting—and interesting things, in Elliot’s experience, were not always
welcome ones.

She was waiting for him to answer. But before he could frame a
reply, Catherine said, in a silky smooth voice, “I wouldn’t lose any sleep over
it, Lady Agatha. I am somehow confident you will.”

There are moments on stage when

everything comes together.

Then the kid in the front row coughs.

LETTY SIMPLY COULD NOT BELIEVE HER good fortune. What with the
train ticket first and then these poor, dear saps mistaking her for this Lady
Agatha, she was having a hard time keeping herself from grinning like an idiot.
Well, if life insisted on handing her flowers, she would simply make herself a
bouquet.

A day or so spying out the lay of the land, so to speak, then
pack up Lady Agatha’s more portable precious pieces and bid a fond adieu to
Little Bidewell. She nearly rubbed her palms together. And in the meantime, the
scenery was decidedly better than one would expect in a backwater little burg
like this.

Sir Elliot March was, in the modern vernacular,
yum.
Even
breathtaking in a reserved, elegant, and utterly toothsome sort of way. Letty,
seated opposite the Bigglesworth ladies, kept having to forcibly drag her gaze
from his broad shoulders to the landmarks her hostesses kept pointing out.

Letty made appropriate noises of interest, but as she’d spent
her first eight years on a country estate, trees didn’t exactly give her
palpitations. The way Sir Elliot’s dark curls, ruthlessly combed into gleaming
order, grazed his snowy white collar—now that caused some fluttering. She’d
always been partial to the dark, courtly ones, but he... well, he raised the
bar on masculine beauty. Blue-green eyes, black hair, a sensualist’s mouth, and
an emperor’s nose.

Not that she was the sort of girl to indulge in a spot of
slap-and-tickle just because a man was good-looking. And a rude surprise that
had been to any number of stage-door Johnnies, she thought cheerfully. Besides,
Sir Elliot may not want to play slap-and-tickle with
her.

She frowned.

Not that
that
was likely, and there was nothing of
vanity in thinking it, either. To paraphrase the Bard, “A man was a man was a
man.” When all was said and done, Sir Elliot March would prove no different
from any other. They all wanted what they wanted, some just asked more
graciously. And looked better doing it.

She sighed just as the carriage hit a deep rut in the lane.

Eglantyne squelched a squeal and Angela gasped. Immediately,
Sir Elliot drew the horses to a halt and swung around, his concern evident.
“I’m sorry. Is everyone all right?”

“Yes, Elliot. Thank you.”

“Lady Agatha?”

“I’m fine.”

He turned back and flicked the reins, starting the team up
again. Good manners were so...
attractive.
And Sir Elliot had really,
really good manners.

Of course, Letty thought, forcing down her enthusiasm, there
wasn’t likely a whole lot more to do in a place like this other than practice
elegant reticence. Sir Elliot would probably stutter into silence if he ever
had to put more than a few polite phrases together.

The jump the carriage had made had jounced her into the corner
of the bench seat. From this angle she could see Sir Elliot’s profile. The
final rays of the sun refracted off irises banked between thick, silky-looking
black lashes. The firm contours of his lips were outlined against the sunset,
as was the clean angle of his jaw. But it was his nose that bespoke his
breeding.

It was a fine, bold nose. A straight, aggressive nose, flaring
at the nostrils. It was a nose that a man could proudly look down... and that’s
just what his ancestors had done. Most likely on
her
ancestors.

The thought sobered Letty. Her lips twitched in equal parts
chagrin and amusement. If she had any sense at all—besides a disastrous sense
of humor— she’d have as little to do with Sir Elliot as she could. From what
she’d seen, he was the only one not so enamored with the idea of Lady Agatha
Whyte’s sprucing up the Bigglesworth wedding that he wouldn’t take note of some
little social misstep she might make.

Another rut sent Fagin, newly christened “Lambikins,” tumbling
to the floor. Eglantyne clucked her tongue sympathetically. Fagin,
opportunistic little bugger that he was, immediately jumped into her lap and
gazed mournfully into her eyes.

Eglantyne responded with a spellbound widening of her eyes.
With a deep sigh, Fagin laid his head gently on her flat maidenly chest. The
poor old girl didn’t stand a chance. Fagin had perfected his melting gaze on
the theater’s hardest hearts. Hesitantly, Eglantyne began stroking Fagin’s
silky head.

Another mortal felled by a canine cupid’s arrow! Letty thought
before dismissing her dog’s newest conquest, and considering the plan that had
sprung full-blown to mind as soon as she’d heard Eglantyne say the words, “your
things.”

The only possible clunker in her plan would be if the real
Lady Agatha wrote a note and explained that she was on her honeymoon. Which
eventually she would.

It didn’t take a genius to see that Lady Agatha was a woman of
high principles—a characteristic that made her the perfect dupe for people like
Letty: One could count on how she would act. That being so, it would still be
three or four days before a letter arrived, and Letty would be long gone by
then.

Still, Letty was glad she wouldn’t be here to witness
Eglantyne’s disappointment. The sweet-faced woman obviously put a lot of stock
in all this wedding rigmarole.

Vehemently, Letty squashed the tiny pricks of guilt in her
ruthlessly anesthetized conscience. These folks certainly didn’t need Lady
Agatha’s things. Letty did. In the end, the Bigglesworths would be no worse off
than before they’d mistaken her for Lady Agatha, and she’d be a good deal
better.

If
she could pull it off. Which she might do if she was
careful. And stayed away from handsome “sirs” with broad shoulders, elegant
hands, and pretty eyes that held the memory of laughter in their depths.

But why just the memory? Letty wondered.

Eglantyne tapped her arm, distracting her from silly musings.
“Almost here, Lady Agatha, watch for it now,” she said. “The Hollies.”

They rode up a slight poplar-lined elevation and rounded a
heavy flowering bank of rhododendrons, and there stood The Hollies, sprawled
atop a grassy knoll. It was a broad, complacent, somehow happy-looking
accident.

Ells, projections, and porches gave evidence of years of
haphazard, if fond, enlargement schemes. Part of it was covered in ivy; the
rest bare and mellowed with age. Copper gleamed atop a set of cupolas and the
myriad windows sparkled with the deep orchid hues of the setting sun.

“I hope it is large enough for your plans,” Eglantyne said.
“We’ve opened all the rooms. Even those that have been closed since last
century. I’m sorry it’s such a hodgepodge. But it’s only a farmhouse. I do hope
the marquis’s family think it up to snuff,” she said worriedly.

“The marquis,” Letty repeated. Now this was getting
interesting.

Eglantyne looked at her with dawning inspiration. “Why, I
never thought to ask before. But how absurd of me! You probably know the
Sheffields,” Eglantyne said eagerly.

Sheffields? Not bloody likely. She knew
of
them though,
everyone did. Only thing the family had more of than money was starch.
Starchier than wallpaper paste, they were. Too good for the likes of music
halls.

“No, I’m afraid I’ve never had that honor,” Letty murmured,
her thoughts racing as she glanced at Angela. The girl’s face had pinked over
becomingly and no wonder. The pretty little puss had won herself the Marquis of
Cotton. And she looked such a naive, unprepossessing little thing.

Well, well. Who’d have thought?
Letty eyed the pretty
puss with a new respect.

“I’m sure it will do,” she said to Eglantyne.

Only a farmhouse? Letty thought. Though she’d been raised in
one of England’s grandest manor houses, she’d been a servant’s bastard,
tolerated only because of her mother’s unparalleled skill with a needle. She’d
never been allowed to venture into those parts of the house where the
Fallontrues lived. Certainly she’d never spent a night as a guest in anything
as grand as The Hollies. It was so large it could have contained the entire row
of attached houses where Letty had rented rooms.

Until Nick had burnt it down.

He’d be looking for her now. Searching. A few questions at the
right railroad station might lead him to her. And this time he might step over
the line and hurt someone in order to bring her to heel. Maybe even her.

For a while she’d been so lost in the unexpected boon of being
mistaken for Lady Agatha, and then the gorgeous Sir Elliot, that she’d
forgotten what had brought her here. Not a well-contrived confidence game, but
chance and necessity. By the time they’d circled the old-fashioned lime-lined
drive and drawn to a halt, her mood was sober.

“We generally use the east door,” Eglantyne explained. “It
leads into the oldest part of the house and, well, to be honest, we rather like
the Great Hall. That must seem rather feudal and silly to you.”

“No,” Letty said, automatically answering the anxiety in
Eglantyne’s voice. “Not at all. In fact, feudal things are the latest craze in
London.”

“Craze?” Eglantyne echoed.

“Yes, craze. You know. Rage. Fad. Too-too and all that,” Letty
explained.

“Really?” Angela piped in, wide-eyed.

Letty hesitated on the brink of recanting her claim. But the
women were regarding her so hopefully and it only took a simple fib to make
their day all the brighter, and besides, maybe feudal things
were
all
the rage in High Society. Stranger things had happened. “Oh, most definitely.”

“Hard on the heels of last year’s vogue for gladiatorial
themes, no doubt,” Sir Elliot said.

Letty’s gaze shot up to meet Sir Elliot’s. One of his dark
brows was arched inscrutably. Apparently he was capable of more than rote
phrases.

And in such a voice. Gads, it wasn’t fair that a man with such
looks should be given such a beautiful voice. If sound could caress, she’d be
purring right now. It was that silky and low, but masculine. Decidedly
masculine.

With an unfathomable quirk of his lips, Sir Elliot descended
from the carriage and came round to the side. He even moved elegantly, Letty
thought. Not like a slumming lordling, all slouching indolence and loose-limbed
hauteur, but with precise military grace.

He must have been devastating in uniform.

He opened the carriage door and lifted out the steps.

“Is it true, Lady Agatha?” Eglantyne—whom Letty was quickly
marking down as being nearly flawless in her credulity—breathed. “I mean about
the gladiator thing?”

Letty pondered. She didn’t think so. Probably not. Besides,
how would Sir Elliot know anything about anything, stuck way up here, twenty
miles from nowhere? Or could he? Blast. “Ah, mmm.”

Elliot handed Eglantyne down before extending his hand to
Letty. He looked directly into her eyes. He had lashes that would make a girl
weep with jealousy, and his gaze clearly revealed he hadn’t believed a word of
what she’d said.