Page 39 of Bad Luck Bride (Scandal at the Savoy #3)

“Don’t get snippy with me, miss,” her mother cried.

“What would impel Wilson to do this? What did you do to him, Kay?” she added accusingly.

“Did you quarrel with him? Nag him? Lose your temper? Oh, Kay, you did, didn’t you?

And less than a month before the wedding, too. How could you be so careless?”

Kay bit back the sharp retort that hovered on her lips and turned away to retrieve the newspaper from the bed where Jo had tossed it a few minutes earlier.

“I’ve warned you about your temper,” Magdelene went on, following her as she went into the sitting room. “And how much men hate that. A lady never loses her temper.”

“I didn’t lose my temper. At least, not exactly.”

“Well, you must have done something!” her mother wailed. “Otherwise this wouldn’t have happened!”

She’d done something all right, she thought grimly. She’d allowed herself to be shamelessly ravished by a blue-eyed devil. Again.

The truth, however, was more than her mother could handle, and she was in no mood to invent lies. Instead, she crossed the sitting room to where Josephine was waiting by the door with her key.

“Thank you, darling,” she said. Taking the key, she slipped it into her skirt pocket. “Look after Mama,” she added as she opened the door. “Make sure she doesn’t get carried away with her role of humiliated mother and hurl herself off the balcony. We are on the fourth floor, after all.”

Her mother sniffed at that. “If I did such a thing, it would be no more than you deserve after this latest disgrace. And I don’t understand where you could possibly be going.”

Kay didn’t reply because her mother was hysterical enough already. If she told Magdelene she was going to put her hot temper to good use by invading Devlin Sharpe’s hotel room and throttling him within an inch of his life, Mama would probably drop dead of apoplexy on the spot.

Instead, Kay walked out without a word and shut the door behind her.

The knocking on his door woke him, but Devlin decided it was best to ignore it.

For one thing, he knew he hadn’t rung for room service.

It couldn’t be his valet, for he hadn’t gotten around to hiring one.

Nor could it be his now-former fiancée, who wouldn’t dream of coming to a man’s hotel room, and who wasn’t speaking to him anyway.

Upon hearing his apologies for what she had witnessed, his request that they dissolve their engagement, and his heartfelt hope she would one day meet a far better man than he, Pam had burst into tears, unleashed on him a torrent of scathing criticism he completely deserved, tossed his engagement ring in his face, and stalked off, declaring over her shoulder as she departed the garden that he’d pay for this insult to her and her family.

No, he decided as the clock in his sitting room struck nine; it could not be Pam.

In fact, the only person his befuddled brain could imagine being at his door this early in the day was Kay.

Granted, Kay didn’t shy at coming to his hotel room at inconvenient moments, but if her last words to him at the house party were any indication, she was not speaking to him, either.

Not that he’d made any attempt to test that theory.

He knew Kay’s temper, and he wasn’t completely sure that she wouldn’t make good on her threat to shoot him if he dared to even appear in her general vicinity.

So he’d decided his best move for now was to keep his distance and give her time to cool her fire a bit before he made any attempt to talk with her.

Sadly, keeping his distance hadn’t stopped him from thinking about her and the kiss they’d shared.

For over a week now, the feel of her in his arms and the glorious taste of her mouth had tormented him, invading his mind, arousing his body, and dominating his dreams. Worse, it was such a sweet torment, he hadn’t tried to stop it.

Instead, he’d relished it, reliving that kiss in his imagination over and over again.

Nonetheless, after ten days of this self-torture, he’d decided some relief was required, and he’d spent most of last night sampling cocktails in the Savoy’s American Bar.

After too many Manhattans, martinis, and a few oh-so-aptly named stingers, he’d come back to his room and passed out cold, only to be awakened by this annoying knocking at his door.

When the knock came again, he wondered vaguely if there might be a fire.

Not that he much cared, for he already felt like death.

A herd of elephants seemed to be pounding through his head, his mouth felt as if it were full of cotton wool, and he feared that if he tried to get out of bed, his skull would crack wide open.

If he was going to die today, it was best to do it in bed, he decided, and promptly rolled over and drifted back to sleep.

Whoever was at his door, however, proved to have no mercy whatsoever, for the knocking became a constant, relentless drumbeat, and Devlin tossed aside the pillow with the foulest oath he knew. Moving with infinite care, he got out of bed.

He started to reach for his dressing robe, but then realized hazily that he was still dressed, more or less.

His shoes and socks were missing, his white tie and collar button were undone, his jacket and pocket watch were on the floor, and his waistcoat buttons were unfastened, but other than that, he was still wearing his evening clothes from last night.

The knocking at his door had not paused. “I’m coming, I’m coming,” he called as he raked his hair with his fingers into some sort of order and crossed the sitting room. “For God’s sake,” he added as he opened the door, “is the hotel on fire? Or—”

He stopped, staring in disbelief at the figure in the corridor.

“Kay?”

He thought he must be dreaming, but almost at once, he dismissed that possibility, since in all his dreams of Kay this week, she had never been wearing this many clothes. Besides, she looked angry enough to spit nails, and she never looked that way in his dreams.

Wondering if his vague half-formed idea of dying on his feet had been prophetic, he glanced down, but thankfully, she wasn’t holding a pistol.

The only thing in her hand was a rolled-up newspaper, and that wasn’t going to do him any damage, even in his present, decidedly fragile condition.

Bolstered a bit by his observations, he decided to meet her anger with as nonchalant an air as he could muster. His masculine pride demanded it.

“You again?” he said, managing to keep his voice light, though it took a great deal of effort. “We really have to stop meeting like this, Kay, or people will talk.”

“Believe me, they already are.” With that, she unrolled the newspaper in her hand with a flick of her wrist, slapped it against his chest, and as he took it, she let it go and pushed past him into the sitting room. “Only they aren’t talking about us. Not yet, anyway.”

“How refreshing,” he said as he closed the door and turned to face her. “Not having our names spread across the scandal sheets is a nice change of pace, I must say.”

“You won’t think so when you’ve read the shocking news. Other side,” she added as he frowned down uncomprehendingly at an article about the most fashionable hats for Ascot.

He turned the paper over, read the enormous headline at the top of the page, and grimaced.

TWO BIGGEST WEDDINGS OF THE SEASON CANCELED!

“Aw, hell, Kay,” he said and looked up. “I know I’m to blame for all of this. Not that I’ll be sorry, I confess, if you and Rycroft have called it off, because he wasn’t right for you—”

He stopped as her eyes narrowed, and his hazy wits grasped for something better to say. “I know it’s going to be embarrassing and difficult for you for a while, and I truly regret that part of it—”

“Embarrassing and difficult?” she cut in, staring at him as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Is that how you’d describe this?”

He frowned in puzzlement, wondering if perhaps the aftereffects of last night’s binge were preventing him from a proper understanding of the situation.

“Well, I’m not sure how else to describe it, Kay, to be honest,” he said at last, trying to be as tactful as possible. “I don’t find this news particularly shocking, at least not from my side of things. I knew Pam would be doing this.”

That only seemed to deepen her bewilderment. “You knew?” she said, her voice rising a notch. “You knew and you didn’t tell me?”

“Well, you really can’t blame me for that, can you?” he asked, managing a weak smile. “You did threaten to shoot me the last time we spoke.”

Kay folded her arms, showing she was not amused.

He coughed and tried again. “I haven’t had the opportunity to discuss any of this with you as yet, but let me say that it’s true that Pam and I have called things off. She was outraged by what she saw that night—”

“Understandably,” Kay interrupted, her voice icy.

“Just so,” he said hastily. “I spoke with her the morning after it happened, we talked things through, and in the end, by mutual consent, we decided to dissolve our engagement.”

“Yes, but, Devlin—”

“Still,” he went on, returning to the matter at hand, “I can’t imagine how Talk of the Town got hold of the news that my wedding’s been canceled. Pam would never have told them anything. She hates being the subject of gossip.”

“Does she?” There was an odd inflection in Kay’s voice that puzzled him. “Does she, indeed?”

“Yes. Granted, she was quite hurt and angry, but even out of spite, she’d never tell the gossip rags anything.

And she certainly wouldn’t tell a soul she and Rycroft caught us kissing, if that’s worrying you.

I doubt Rycroft would, either. Both of them are far too proud to ever let it be known that we found each of them less attractive than we found each other. ”