Read Online The Bridal Season by Connie Brockway - Free Book Online

be introduced.
Charming woman.
    “At any rate, the other day Mrs. Dodgson was lamenting the
fate of her son Charles.” She leaned closer to him. He smelled nice. Soapy and
male. “I tell you this in the strictest confidence, of course.”
    “Of course.”
    “Well, Charles had developed a tendresse for a young lady,
feelings he had every reason to believe were reciprocated and that he’d hoped
would end in...” She searched about the imaginary Charles’s ultimate goal.
    “A wedding thingie?” Sir Elliot suggested helpfully.
    “Exactly! But then, just as their relationship was popping
along smoothly, her father required that she go abroad for a long while. When
she returned, he discovered her feelings had changed.” She fixed him with a
telling stare. “Charles has been moping about ever since.”
    “Poor fellow.”
    Once more she stopped walking. Once more he followed suit. She
met his gaze squarely.
    “Poor fellow, nothing,” she said. “Self-pitying fellow.
Foolish, self-indulgent fellow.
Uselessly-pining-after-a-floozy-who’d-proven-herself-both-shallow-and-immature
fellow.”
    He strangled a sound in his throat. Ah. So, he’d not missed
her veiled reference, then.
    “You don’t believe that po—pitiful Charles’s lengthy mourning
for his lost love indicates the, er, depth of his feelings?” he asked.
    “Pining after what can never be for months—or years—doesn’t
testify to the depth of a man’s love, it testifies to his predisposition toward
melodrama. The stage already has enough cheap histrionics without amateurs
adding their voices. Believe me. And that is precisely what I told Mrs.
Dodgson.”
    She’d been perhaps a trifle obvious in her little fiction and
prepared herself to meet stony silence in return for her charitable hints.
Instead, he burst out laughing. It was a deep, rich laugh, warm and full.
    “My dear Lady Agatha,” he said, “I daresay no one ever accuses
you of rank sentimentality. Wherever did you learn to take such a hard view of
life?”
    Hard? He thought her hard? The idea hurt. She
considered herself practical, tough, a bit of an opportunist, but an optimistic
one. She’d never thought of herself as “hard.” Nick was hard.
    She disliked the word applied to her. Immensely. And since she
disliked it, she answered without stopping to think.
    “I’ve had to be,” she said, and then too late realized that
Lady Agatha had probably never “had” to do anything in her life. “I mean, in my
years of planning nuptial ceremonies I’ve seen many couples wed. They are
seldom fairy-tale unions. No matter how very much one wants them to be. Perhaps
if one sees disillusionment often enough, after a while one becomes inured to
it.”
    He moved close to her, his brow furrowed. He gazed out into
the darkness and after a moment said, “You’ll do your best for Miss Angela’s
particular fairy tale though, won’t you?”
    “Of course.” She began walking forward. His hand stayed her.
She turned. His hand dropped to his side. “Excuse me.”
    But she’d seen the question in his eyes. “I promise I will do
everything in my power to make this wedding go as smoothly and uneventfully as
possible.”
    And in her case, her best efforts meant vacating The Hollies
as soon as possible. But since she’d promised, she decided that when she
slipped off she’d leave the Bigglesworths a note advising them to find another
wedding planner. That should satisfy him. Certainly she’d be doing more than
the real Lady Agatha to assure the “smooth uneventfulness” of the Bigglesworth nuptials.
She hadn’t even written. Yet.
    Sir Elliot offered her his arm and she took it, feeling
somehow that he’d won concessions from her she’d not intended to give. “You
must be in some way related to the Bigglesworths to be so concerned.”
    “Not by blood, but certainly by association,” he said. “I grew
up on the estate between here and the Himplerumps. My mother died when I was
very young. The Bigglesworths more or less adopted my brother and me while my
father