The Bridal Season (30 page)

And there was only one way out, she realized with sudden and
absolute certainty. She tore the ticket in half, adjusted her hat, and stepped
off the train platform.

Whoever she was, Letty Potts was no coward.

*

The flustered-looking clerk showed her into Elliot’s office.
He was seated behind a desk covered in papers and ledgers and such. A brawny
young man she recognized as the local constable stood on the other side of it.
On seeing her, Elliot rose immediately to his feet. The young constable
stammered a good morning before suggesting that he should be going.

Elliot came around to her side of the desk, his expression
careful and his manner, as always, impeccable. She searched his face for some
signs of the pain and betrayal she knew he had felt when Nick had introduced
himself as her fiancé. His mouth was tense, his eyes looked weary.

“Lady Agatha, won’t you be seated?”

“I prefer to stand.”

“Then would you be so kind as to wait while I show the
constable out? I shan’t be but a few minutes.”

“Of course.”

He shut the door behind him, leaving her in the office. She
moved farther into the room, looking about. It was a serviceable, impersonal
room, the furnishings undistinguished and not particularly comfortable, the
cabinets mismatched and overflowing. On his desk lay a broad fan of letters.

She glanced down and was surprised to recognize some of the
names she saw. They were from politicians and labor organizers. She stepped
back, frowning slightly. She’d no idea Elliot was so well known amongst London’s
political elite. But hadn’t his father alluded to such?

The door opened and Elliot reentered. “Please, won’t you be
seated?”

She shook her head. She couldn’t pretend this was a social
call. And of course, he could not be seated in her presence. “As you will.
Brown, would you please go down to Shrimpton’s and bring us tea?” he called to
his clerk before returning his attention to her.

He looked exactly as he had the first day she’d seen him. His
boiled white shirt could not have been crisper or whiter. Beneath the starched
collar, his gray silk tie was perfectly knotted. The dark blue coat stretched
across his broad shoulders would be a tailor’s pride. Even his hair was
immaculately neat.

Only his expression had changed. He looked cool, politely
interested, and wary. He made no effort to close the distance between them. She
might have been a client he’d only just first met, and not a woman with whom he’d
shared his bed and body.

“You have something you wished to see me about, Lady Agatha?”
he asked. She could hear the effort his placid manner caused him in his tone.

“Yes.” She took a deep, steadying breath. “I am not Lady
Agatha Whyte.”

His brows drew together. She’d expected an outburst, some
expression of outrage. None came.

“My name is Letty Potts,” she said, hurrying now, fearful that
if she stopped she would not have the courage to continue. “I am a musical
comedienne.” With difficulty she met his gaze. It was impossible to tell-what
thoughts he held behind those guarded eyes. “At least,” she said, “that is what
I do most of the time.”

He studied her for long moments. “And what do you do those
times you are not onstage?” he finally asked.

She swallowed. “I work with Nick Sparkle.”

He betrayed himself for an instant in the involuntary
tightening of his jaw. “Your fiancé?”

“No!” The word burst from her. “I never... you
know
I
have never... I
would
never—” This was one offense she
could
not
let him think her capable of. “I would never have made love with you if I had
promised to marry another.”

A muscle jumped at the angle of his jaw. “Letty—”

“Please. Let me continue.” She would not let him think she
would use their relationship to win free of her past.

“Nick and I duped people out of their money. It’s as simple as
that. I’d act the lady, luring the toffs into feeling comfortable with whatever
scam Nick had running. And then Nick would put the sting on them.”

She could not put it more clearly, nor could it sound any
uglier. That had been her intent.

“I see,” he said. “And what was the ‘scam’ in Little Bidewell
to be?”

“There wasn’t one,” she said. “This was all an accident.”

He drew back as though she’d struck him. Too late she realized
what she’d implied. A cry of distress broke from her. “My coming here was an
accident,” she said. “Nick had this plan, this con he wanted to run. I didn’t
want to do it, and when I refused to be part of it, he made it so I couldn’t
get any legit work in town. When I still wouldn’t do it, he burned down my
boarding house, thinking I wouldn’t have any choice then.”

The words tumbled out, her heartbeat racing to keep up. Her
hands were so tightly clenched together that her fingers were growing numb. But
she didn’t dare stop now. She stared fixedly at the floor because if she looked
at him she feared her courage would flag.

“So I ran away. To the train station. Only I didn’t have any
money on account of the fire, and I couldn’t afford a ticket, and then this
lady came by and she was with this French chap and he talked her into going off
with him and she dropped her ticket on her way out and I...” She glanced up. “I
just took the opportunity as it presented itself.”

He watched her steadily, his expression unreadable.

“I didn’t mean to impersonate her,” she said earnestly. “It
never even occurred to me until I stepped off that train and all those people
were there staring at me as if I were the answer to their prayers.

“And I wouldn’t have done anything even then, except that
someone said her things were all waiting for me. I didn’t have anything, you
see. It was all burnt in the fire. So that decided it, because I’m not a good
person.”

Why wouldn’t he say something?

“I tried to tell you that day in the carriage not to trust me.
But I swear, I didn’t think it would hurt anyone, except maybe this Lady
Agatha. But she wasn’t going to need her luggage. I did.”

There. The recitation she’d practiced all the long way down
the street to his offices was nearly over. “So I came to The Hollies. Only it
wasn’t as easy as I’d thought it would be. Because there was Angela with her
problem with that rotten boy, and Eglantyne who was breaking her heart over
missing her chick before she’d even left the henhouse, and Anton with his
worries about being good enough for the Sheffields, and..
.” And you.

“I knew Cabot from when from my folks were in the variety
shows. Before I knew it, he’d convinced me I could pull this wedding thingie
off and no one would get hurt. Only Nick found me.” She finished, squeezing her
eyes shut, a coward after all.

“ ‘No one would get hurt,’ “ she heard him say in a tone she
could not interpret.

She opened her eyes. His face was stark, his eyes bright with
unmasked pain. She could not stand it. She went to him, reaching out to touch
him, only he grabbed her upper arms first, trembling with the effort it cost
him not to shake her.

“Did you think I told you I loved you to get you into my bed?”
he demanded.

“No,” she denied vehemently. “No!”

“How could you think no one would be hurt when you let me love
you, let me ... How could you think
this wouldn’t hurt?”

Her face became ashen, her eyes stricken. But he’d withstood
as much as he could; he was not as strong as he needed to be. From the moment
she’d walked in and it had become clear she had come to confess he’d been lost,
unable to think clearly. At first he’d been dubious, then cautious. Finally he’d
seen that her anguish was sincere, her resignation real. And by the obvious
omissions that would have guaranteed her his sympathy, if not leniency, she’d
made him fall in love with her all over again.

She wasn’t Lady Agatha Whyte. He didn’t care. She was brave
and valiant and trying so damned hard to make it right. Honesty was easy when
it was rewarded, not so easy when it brought only the promise of punishment.
And yet, she was here, unflinchingly proclaiming her own culpability. She was
not looking for forgiveness, he realized. She wanted atonement.

But when she’d said she hadn’t thought it would hurt anyone,
his temper had flared, aggravated by sleeplessness and the jealousy that had
cut mortally deep when that man claimed her as his.

“Forgive me,” he said stiffly. “I had no right—”

“You have every right,” she said heatedly. “J
didn’t think.
I was selfish. I wanted the first time I... made love to be with someone I
loved. And who loved me.” Her mouth twisted wryly. “Or at least loved the woman
he thought me to be.”

Her answer drained the last bits of anger from him. She loved
him. Nothing else mattered. His hands slipped down her arms to her hands.

“Letty...” He turned her palms up. “Letty, I—”

He forgot whatever he’d been about to say, stunned by the
sight of the dark purple smudges that stood out like brands on her wrists. “Did
he do this?”

“It doesn’t matter.” She tried to pull away. He could see the
fear in her. This had not been the first time she’d known violence, he’d swear
it.

“Please,” she whispered. Fear for Elliot climbed in her
throat. She could see his desire for retribution in the fire of his gaze, the
tension in his neck and shoulders. He would only get hurt. Nick was strong and
merciless. He didn’t fight like a gentleman; he fought to hurt his enemy by any
means possible. “Please. It was an accident. He didn’t mean to hurt me—”

A sharp, perfunctory rap interrupted her. Elliot released her
hands and stepped away from her. “Come in.”

Nick Sparkle entered. His broad grin thinned when he saw her,
but he strode through the office with all appearances of confidence.

“Agatha, my dear,” he said. “So, here you are. The
Bigglesworths’ driver said he’d taken you into Little Bidewell for the day. I
couldn’t imagine why. Not much here to keep a body busy all of a day.” His
bright, malicious gaze flickered toward where Elliot stood coolly appraising
him. “Or is there?”

His words stank of innuendo. Color rose in Elliot’s face.
Letty moved quickly between the two men just as the clerk returned bearing a
wooden tray. With a shy smile, he placed it on Elliot’s desk.

“Tea,” Nick said. “How cozy. And how like you, Agatha, to make
such warm friends in so short a time.”

“I dislike your tone, Mr. Sparkle,” Elliot said.

“Really? I dislike your familiarity with my bride-to-be. “ Abruptly,
Letty realized that Nick had no idea why she was here. She almost laughed. Of
course not. It would never occur to him that she might give him—and, in the
course of doing so, herself—up to the law. Instead, he thought she was here on
a tryst!

“If you will excuse me a minute, Mr. Sparkle,” Elliot said. He
motioned for his clerk. “Be a lad and run down to the farrier’s. Tell Kevin I’ll
likely need his help with that gelding I told him about earlier.”

The young clerk’s eyes grew round. With a bob of his head, he
hurried out of the room.

“Didn’t want the boy to hear what you been up to, aye?” Nick
sneered. His gentlemanly mien had fallen off. He looked ugly.

“Nick, please,” Letty begged.

Elliot had moved forward, but her voice checked him. With a
sound of frustration, he turned his back on Nick and went round to the other
side of his desk, as though needing to put some obstacle between them.

“Mr. Sparkle,” Elliot said, “whatever the young lady and I
have been ‘up to’ is no concern of yours.”

“Well, that’s a right cosmopolitan view of things,” Nick said
with a bitter laugh. “Mayhaps I’m a bit old-fashioned, but I don’t like my
future wife playing fast and loose with another man.”

“I wouldn’t, either. If the lady in question was, indeed,
promised to me,” Elliot said coldly. “But this lady says that you are not now,
nor ever have been, engaged to be married.”

At this Nick shot her an uncertain look. “What does she say we
are, then?”

The sound of hurrying footsteps clattered heavily in the outer
hallway. The door swung open and the young constable, Brown, came through it
followed by a huge, powerfully built man.

“Garth, too? Very well,” Elliot said, regarding Nick with
unmistakable loathing. “And to answer you, Mr. Sparkle, she says you are
partners in confidence games. A charge I have the verification for here, in
this telegram.” He lifted a sheet of paper from his desktop.

Nick’s surprise lasted only a few seconds. He hadn’t survived
in his profession by being slow-witted. He swung around but found his path barred
by the two large and formidable-looking men, one of whom held a baton.

“You are under arrest, Mr. Sparkle, for conspiracy to commit
fraud,” Elliot said. His cool, unreadable gaze swung to Letty. “As are you,
Letty Potts.”

She knew it was coming. It was why she’d come here, after all.
To get it done and over, to mark the bill paid, once and for all. But the
breath still left her lungs in a whoosh, and her head spun dizzily.

She was so intent on Elliot that Nick nearly got to her. He
lunged at her, reaching out to take her hostage, or simply to punish her.

Elliot, caught behind the desk, shouted. Kevin, standing
closest, grabbed Nick’s arm, wrenching it savagely up behind his back and
thrusting the baton under his chin, jerking it back. At the same time, Garth
seized his other arm.

Nick didn’t fight long. He was no fool; he knew when he was
outnumbered. But the look he cast at Letty made a thousand vile promises.

“You stupid bitch!” Nick ground out. “You stupid, useless
slut. I hope it was worth it, whatever pleasure you got on him.”

“You will shut up, Mr. Sparkle,” Elliot’s voice was quiet and
low, but lethal. Even Nick must have sensed that Elliot held his fury in check
only by the slimmest thread, for though he glared at her and spat at her feet,
he remained mute.