The Bridal Season by Connie Brockway Read Free Book Online Page A

feeling vaguely
dissatisfied and unable to pinpoint the reason why, decided to have a look-see
around the outside of the house. It always paid to know the quickest way out of
a place and, as the Bigglesworths would be dining, now was as good a time as
any.
    She opened the door and peered outside. Seeing no one about,
she slipped into the hall and retraced her earlier steps. Someone, she thought,
should teach Sir Elliot a fundamental rule of the heart; there was no sense in
crying over spilt milk. Especially since once spilt it spoiled.
    She stopped. Why was she thinking about him? She should
be applauding herself on her impersonation of Lady Agatha, or thinking about
the best way to go once she left Little Bidewell, not imagining ways to
rekindle passion in the man most dangerous to her. A man who would have her in
jail if he even suspected what she was about to do.
    She started walking again.
    But, try as she might, her imagination would not shut up.
Chapter 5
    An enigmatic smile is worth
    ten pages of dialogue.
     
    “GUESS WHERE I BEEN?” GRACE COLLAPSED against the door in the
servant’s hall, her hands clasped over her heart.
    “Where?” asked Merry, pausing with her tea half raised to her
lips. The other servants seated about the table waited.
    “I been bein’ charted up by none other than Lady Agatha Whyte
herself, that’s where I been.”
    “Never!”
    “True.” Grace pointed to the steaming pot of tea. Immediately
Merry poured her out a cup and set it at the housekeeper’s place at the head of
the table. At the other end of the table Cabot, the butler, attempted to look
uninterested. Grace wasn’t having any of it.
    She took her seat, arranging her skirts as eight faces watched
her expectantly.
    “Well?” Merry demanded in exasperation. “What’s she like?”
    “She ain’t a bit hoity-toity,” Gracie said, daintily sipping
her tea. Cabot wasn’t the only one with good manners. “I can see why she’s
managed so well. She has a chatty way with her and is ever so common.”
    Cabot snorted with disapproval.
    “In the nicest sense of the word,” Grace went on, ignoring
him. “She asked all sorts of questions.”
    “What sorts of questions?” The boot boy asked.
    “About Miss Angela and the marquis, of course, but mostly she
was interested in—” Grace set down her teacup, placed her palms flat against
the table, and leaned forward “—Sir Elliot.”
    “Go on,” breathed the tweenie.
    Grace settled back. “Tha’s right. And I’m thinkin’ that what
with Sir Elliot bein’ recommended fer a barony and Lady Agatha bein’ a duke’s
daughter, she would make him a right proper bride.”
    “You must be jesting,” Cabot said. “You can’t seriously be
playing matchmaker for Sir Elliot and Lady Agatha?”
    Grace sniffed. “Wot if I am? Where’s the harm? If things don’t
work out, well, Lady Agatha is going to be gone in a few weeks. And if things do work out, well, don’t you think Sir Elliot deserves a duke’s daughter?” She
impaled Cabot with a glare. The others, quick to take umbrage over an imagined
social slight to the local hero, followed suit.
    “It has nothing to do with what Sir Elliot does or does not
deserve,” Cabot replied. “It has to do with interfering in people’s lives.”
    “Ach!” Grace flapped her hand, dismissing his conceits. “Who
of us would have ended up where we are if someone hadn’t had the good sense to
interfere with us?”
    And with that impeccable piece of logic effectively stifling
Cabot’s protests, the conversation turned to the particulars of “interference.”
     
    “Elliot?” Professor Atticus March called out upon hearing the
front door close. A breeze stirred the curtains covering the library’s French
doors and Atticus shivered. He was an old man and the night was cold.
    Fighting the impulse to simply wait for Elliot and then
request that he shut the doors, Atticus rose with difficulty and closed them
himself. Elliot had come home when he’d had heart failure eighteen months ago.
That was long