The Bridal Season (23 page)

“What is it?” Letty asked at once.

“Miss Angela. She’s taken a horse and gone off riding and she
wouldn’t take any of the lads with her.”

“Oh, no,” Letty said, her worst fears realized.

“I don’t know where she’s gone!” Grace Poole said, her mouth
forming an O of despair. “I couldn’t stop her. I tried, Lady Agatha, but she
was set. More determined than I’d ever seen her. Went right out to the stables
and had the boy saddle her horse.”

“When did she leave?”

“A quarter hour. No more. I’m sending one of the lads to the
Buntings’ to tell—”

“No!” Angela would die of humiliation if anyone discovered the
reason she’d gone. Much more important was her safety. The storm was
intensifying. What she needed was to come home, and it was up to Letty to see
that she did.

“Who knows she’s gone?”

“Just Grace Poole, Merry, and myself,” Cabot said, gnawing his
lip anxiously. “Why?”

“Listen to me,” Letty said. “I know where Angela is. I know
where she’s gone but I can’t tell you why. I can say this, however, it is
imperative this goes no further. No one but us must know. Got that?” As little
as she cared for Society, Letty was not so naive as to believe an affianced
girl could ride out in a storm to meet a man other than her betrothed and not
cause a terrific scandal.

Cabot and Grace Poole nodded and Merry said “aye,” thrusting
her little chin out determinedly.

“Her happiness depends on it.”

A week ago she wouldn’t have believed she could make such a
melodramatic pronouncement and mean it. But she did. Personally, she didn’t
give a rap for Kip and his blackmail and Angela’s marquis’s tender feelings.
But she’d learned a few things in the past week, and one of those was that just
because something wasn’t important to her didn’t mean it wasn’t important.

“I’ll go. I’ll bring her back. If we’re lucky, we’ll arrive
back here well ahead of the Bigglesworths.” Each minute the storm grew louder.
The rain wasn’t just pouring from the skies now; sharp spears of water hurled
down from the heavens.

“But there’s no carriage,” Cabot exclaimed. “Ham went back for
the Bigglesworths.”

“I’ll ride.” She grimaced at Cabot’s skeptical expression.
“Who do you think exercised the Sultan of Arabis’s Penultimate Palominos when
Old Bill was seven sheets to the wind?” She ignored Grace’s quizzical look and
Merry’s downright baffled one. Cabot nodded.

“Send someone down to the stables and have a horse brought
round. I’ll—”

“Hobbs already has a saddled horse waiting out the kitchen
door,” Cabot said. “I was going to send him off to the Buntings’ as soon as I
wrote a note.”

“Good.” She started down the hall toward the kitchen, Grace
and Merry trotting along in her wake. “There’s no time to lose.”

“I should go,” Cabot suddenly said. “I’m a man.”

Oh, God. She didn’t have time for this. “Good call. But
completely irrelevant. If Angela sees you, she may well ride off. I’m the only
one who knows where she is and why. Besides,” her voice grew gruff, “she trusts
me.”

Cabot hesitated and stepped aside.

“I’ll be fine, Cabot,” Letty promised. “We’ll be fine. Now, I’d
appreciate something better than this cloak to wear.”

“Here.” Cabot opened a narrow door and withdrew a heavy oiled
slicker. “This’ll keep the weather off best as can be.”

She thanked him, shrugging into the oversized coat, and then,
without looking back, opened the kitchen door and dashed to where the boy
waited with the horse.

The horse was already nervous. What with whirling leaves and
clashing rents of lightning, he needed no encouragement from Letty to run. She
leaned over his neck, clinging like a burr as she set his head toward the witch
tree road, thanking God she’d once helped exercise the trained horses in a
variety act. Within minutes her heavy satin skirts were soaked and the wind had
ripped the hood from her head, raking her elegant coiffure loose and sending
long sodden streamers of hair whipping across her face.

She ignored it. Ignored the cold and ignored the wet and
concentrated on holding on. By the time she raced into view of the witch tree
she was soaked through and shivering with each strike of lightning.

She made the top of the rise and pulled her winded mount to a
stop by the long-dead tree. She peered through the driving rain. She couldn’t
see a horse anywhere. She stood up in her stirrups. Nothing.

Fear grew like a canker inside her, spreading tendrils of
panic. She wasn’t surprised not to find Kip there; only a fool would be out on
a night like this, a fool or a desperate girl.

Angela had to be here. Letty hadn’t seen a rider on the road
and there was only the one between The Hollies and here. She kneed her horse
forward, moving out in a wide arc. She’d gone about fifty yards when she saw a
darkish mound on the ground.

In a trice, Letty slid from the saddle and stumbled through
the mire toward the figure lying so still. She fell to her knees. It was
Angela. She must have fallen from her mount. Brief flickers of lightning
illuminated a face as pale as alabaster, a smear of something dark seeping
across her forehead.

Please God, please let her be all right

Her hand trembled as she shoved it beneath the cloak, seeking
a pulse. She caught back a sob when she found it. “Angela!” she shouted.
“Angela, wake up!”

The girl shifted uncomfortably. “Agatha?”

Once more a sob escaped Letty. “Yes. Yes, dear. It’s me.”

The girl muttered something. Letty bent nearer to hear her.
“What, Angela?”

“You were right,” the girl mumbled. “He didn’t come.”

Letty’s sob turned to laughter. “No, he wouldn’t risk his
neck. I told you he was a coward.”

“You are a woman of the world,” Angela murmured weakly. “I
endeavor... to remember.”

“Quiet, Angela. Be still.”

“We’ll drown if I’m... still.. .too long,” the girl muttered.

“I’m afraid you’re right,” Letty said. “Can you walk?”

“I think so.”

Letty eased the girl to a sitting position and felt her
flinch. She shifted behind Angela and wrapped her arms around her waist,
bracing her feet and pulling. Angela gasped in pain but scrabbled weakly to
find her footing. It was no good. With a moan, she sank silently to the ground.

I’ll kill her at this rate,
Letty thought desperately.
She cast about trying to think of what to do. She didn’t dare leave her here and
ride for help. Angela was already insensate, her body cold and wet. But they
could not stay, either. Angela couldn’t long endure being soaked in frigid
rain.

She’d told Cabot that she would find Angela and bring her
safely back. She’d fail. She should have let Hobbs ride to the Buntings.

She sank to her knees, wrapping her arms around Angela’s
unconscious body and pulling her into her lap. Her cold fingers fumbled at her
slicker. As soon as it was open, she spread it as best she could over the
motionless girl, and huddled over her, shielding her from the rain.

Tears welled from Letty’s eyes, slowly at first, a mere coda
to the rain, then faster until they streamed down her cheeks and her throat. A
floodgate opened and a lifetime of tears coursed down her face, unexpected
because they’d never been acknowledged, never been allowed. Veda had told her
not to cry. Not ever.

She’d told her not to cry when Lady Fallontrue had forbidden
the tutor to read Letty’s poems. And the one time Veda had taken her to see her
father, the viscount, he’d stood behind his desk, his auburn hair burnished in
the sunlight, and looked at Letty’s hair with startled and pleased recognition.
Until he’d caught Veda’s eye. “You can’t prove she’s mine,” he’d said, and Veda
had told her not to cry.

And Veda had even told Letty not to cry as she lay dying, her
once robust frame reduced to a delicate frame covered with gossamer skin.

Because tears meant weakness; tears meant
they’d
won.

But while Letty could spit in anyone’s eye on her own account,
she was scared to death for this girl.

She threw her head back and shouted, “Help! Help us, please!
Help!”

And Elliot March rode out of the blackness.

You can figure out what the
villain fears

by his choice of weapons.

LIGHTNING SCORED THE SKY, LIGHTING Elliot’s face.

It might have been better for Letty if it hadn’t.

Because gentle Sir Elliot March didn’t look so gentle at that
moment. He looked like something a watery hell had spewed up to deal with
unworthy petitioners. His head was bare, the black locks curling wildly, water
streaming down his face. His brows were lowered in a dark vee, his scowl
thunderous, his mouth a hard, tight line.

His horse danced beneath him, a huge black gelding snorting
fumes of mist from its flaring nostrils and tossing its big, bowed neck. He
held the big horse effortlessly, heeling it closer. His gloved hands gripped
the reins as if he were choking them... or her.

“I didn’t believe them when they said you’d gone out in this!”
he bellowed, his voice carrying above the wind. “Good God, woman! Have you lost
your bloody mind? And where is Angela?”

Letty shielded her face from the rain, peering up at him as
she gently peeled her coat from Angela. “She must have been thrown from her
horse. I tried to get her up, but I think she’s fainted.”

“Dear God,” Elliot muttered, leaping from his horse and
kneeling down. His hands moved with practiced gentleness behind Angela’s head
and down her neck and shoulders.

“She might have a concussion,” he said. “My house is the closest.
We’ll go there. Can you hold my horse still while I mount with Angela?”

Letty nodded, ridiculously happy to have him take charge of
the situation. They were safe now. No one was going to die. He wouldn’t allow
it. Elliot would take care of the situation,
any
situation.

She gathered the reins and stood by the horse’s head as Elliot
lifted his foot into the stirrup. He balanced Angela against his hip, shifting
his weight forward onto the stirrup. The movement caused Angela’s arm to swing
free and slap against the gelding’s leg. The startled horse reared, pulling
Elliot’s leg out and sideways, his foot still caught in the stirrup.

His teeth flashed briefly in pain. Letty fought to bring the
gelding’s head down. By the time she looked up, Elliot had swung into the
saddle and was holding Angela across his lap. He looked down at her, his
unwillingness to leave her written on his face.

“Go on,” she shouted, shielding her eyes with her hand. “I
have to catch my horse. I’ll follow as soon as I can. Don’t worry. I’m a very
good rider!”

“I can’t leave you!” he shouted back.

“You have to! You have to get Angela out of this weather! Go!”

He could not argue with her. With an unintelligible sound, he
touched his heels to the gelding’s sides, riding off into the storm as Letty
watched.

The girl would be well. Elliot would do his part, and now, by
God, she would do hers.

“Wake up, Kip,” Letty said.

“Huh?” The boy in the curtained bed flopped onto his back,
dragging the sheets with him. He hadn’t even bothered to undress, Letty noted
in disgust. Her nose wrinkled as the smell of stale beer erupted in a yeasty
burp that penetrated the curtains surrounding the four-poster.

“Wake up, you young idiot.”

That opened his eyes. Bleary eyes. Red-rimmed, unfocused eyes.
Good. This would play out even better if he was drunk.

“Huh? Who’re you? What’re you doin’ in here?” He started to
roll out of the bed, but she snagged the sheet twined around his legs and
pulled him back.

“Uh-uh. You just stay right where you are, m’ lad.”

“Lady Agatha!”

“Bright boy.”

“What’re you doing in here?” Confusion now, extreme confusion.
A tiny kernel of an idea sprang to light in his clouded eyes. “Hey. How’d you
get in here? Bribe the doorman?”

“No,” Letty said impatiently. “No one knows I’m here. I
climbed up the ivy outside.”

His disbelief was obvious. Not that she gave a fig. “It doesn’t
matter how I got here, does it? Only that you may rest assured that no
one
knows.”

His brow furrowed, then smoothed as a smug expression of
self-satisfaction dawned on his face. He nodded, grinning and raising a finger
to his lips. “I won’t tell.”

“Oh, I know that.” She shifted and her wet shoes made a
squishy sound. “As to why I’m here, I’ve come for the letter Angela wrote you,
you nasty, despicable, blackmailing little toad.”

“Hey!” His complacent smile dissolved, replaced by stunned
aggrievement. “You got no right to talk to me like that!”

“Of course I do. I’m speaking the truth. You’re a vile
extortionist of the very worst type, that being the type that holds an innocent
young girl’s dreams ransom for his own sordid ends.”

Kip struggled to a sitting position. “Her dreams? What about
my
dreams? We were going to get married.”

“Not that she ever knew of.”

The boy’s lower lip thrust out sullenly. “Well, I hadn’t got ‘round
to asking her yet, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t going to.”

He truly did sound hurt, and for a second she softened. “She
doesn’t want to marry you, Kip.”

He flopped back, his hands behind his head, and smirked. “Oh,
yeah? Well, she wanted to ‘something’ with me, I can promise you that.”

So much for Kip’s tender heart. She placed her hands on her
hips. “You arrogant boy. Let me explain a few things to you. Like any healthy,
inquisitive young girl, Angela was curious about kissing. But unlike most
healthy, inquisitive young girls, because she’s a dear, naive, and proper young
lady, she decided she must be in love if she wanted to kiss you.”

He laughed. Not very nicely.