Page 44 of Bad Luck Bride (Scandal at the Savoy #3)
Magdelene heard the acerbic note of her voice and bristled in response.
“Well, someone has to think of the future,” she cried.
“After all,” she added, rising to her feet as Kay groaned, “it’s not as if there’s anyone else for you waiting in the wings, is there?
Not now that you’ve ruined things with Wilson and dashed all our hopes. ”
With a sob, she left the table and flounced off to her room.
“Well,” Kay said, wincing as her mother slammed the bedroom door behind her, “at least he’s not ‘dear Wilson’ anymore.”
Josephine giggled, then sobered, looking suddenly thoughtful. “Kay?”
“Please don’t tell me you think I should have accepted Devlin Sharpe’s proposal,” she said, holding up her hand, palm outward as if stopping traffic. “Mama’s lectures are difficult enough. I couldn’t bear one from you.”
“I wasn’t going to lecture you. And if you don’t want to marry Sharpe, of course you shouldn’t. Though it amazes me he’d dare to ask you, given your history and everything that’s happened since.”
“That man would dare anything,” she said, and grimaced as she realized she almost admired him for that. “What did you want to say?” she asked hastily, happy to divert the conversation if possible.
“I haven’t wanted to cause you any pain, so I haven’t brought up the subject, but this whole thing is so strange.
I can’t believe Wilson cast you off, just like that.
” She paused and snapped her fingers. “And then Pam doing the same to Sharpe? And the two of them going off together? It doesn’t make sense. Why would they do such a thing?”
With an effort, Kay kept her face expressionless. “I have no idea.”
As the words came out of her mouth, Devlin’s words rattled through her brain.
You lie to others, you even lie to yourself.
Just the memory of it made her wince, because it was true.
She’d been lying to so many people for so long, it had almost become second nature to her.
Pasting on smiles when she didn’t feel happy, pretending to be fine with things she disliked, accepting things she didn’t want in order to please others, all because she’d never felt as if she had a choice or because she wanted their approval or their love or to avoid the pain of being hurt.
And in spite of all that mendacity, she’d lost everything anyway. More than once.
Perhaps, she thought, it was time to find a better way to be, one that enabled her to be true to herself. But what way was that? She wanted to be herself, but who was she? What did she want from life?
“You look terribly serious all of a sudden, Kay.” Jo’s voice broke in on her thoughts. “What are you thinking?”
She was saved from a reply by a knock on the door. “Heavens,” she said and rose to her feet. “I wonder who that could be. I hope it isn’t more flowers. Where would we put them?”
“It’s probably a reporter,” Jo said as Kay walked to the door. “I wouldn’t put it past them to come up unannounced. They accosted me and Mama right outside Harrods yesterday, bold as brass. Thankfully, I was able to send them scurrying off before Mama could invent some dramatic tale for them.”
“You’re a darling,” she replied with heartfelt gratitude as she opened the door.
A Savoy footman stood in the corridor with a card. “For you, Lady Kay,” he said, presenting the card with a bow. “The gentleman wishes to know if he may come up?”
She hesitated, taking the card even though she didn’t see the point, since it was sure to be Devlin, and she really didn’t want to give him ideas. “Thank you,” she said as she looked down. “And please tell him—”
She stopped, unable to quite believe the name printed on the calling card in her hand.
“Who is it?” Jo asked. “Sharpe, I suppose?”
“Actually, it isn’t.” Kay looked over her shoulder, shaking her head. “It’s Wilson.”
“What?” Josephine cried with lively scorn. “Send the blackguard off with a flea in his ear, that’s what I say. He deserves that and so much more.”
Kay, who knew there was plenty of blame to go around, did not bother to reply.
“Jilting you,” Jo went on. “The cad. And for Pamela, who is one of the most useless ornamental nitwits in London!”
“Well, if that’s true,” Kay replied, smiling a little at her sister’s choice of words, “then being chained to her for life is him getting what he deserves, don’t you think?”
Josephine laughed. “Rather,” she agreed, and nodded to the card. “What are you going to do?”
“I daresay you’re right. I should refuse to see him. But I confess, I am curious why he’s here. And,” she added, considering, “it might be best to not end all this on an ugly note.” Kay turned to the waiting footman. “Send him up.”
When Wilson arrived, Kay was surprised to discover that her only thought at the sight of him was relief.
No hurt pride, no guilt, and oddly enough, no regrets.
Despite everything, as she looked into Wilson’s ice-gray eyes, she knew one thing with absolute certainty, one thing that made regret impossible.
She knew she had been saved from making an irrevocable mistake.
Not that she’d ever admit that to Devlin, of course. And if he—
“Thank you for seeing me.”
Wilson’s voice recalled her to the present moment. “Not at all,” she answered and opened the door wide to let him enter.
He came in and took a quick glance around. “Did someone die?”
Kay gave him a rueful look, but she saw no need to tell him who’d sent all the flowers. It would only confirm his jealous suspicions and validate his decision to marry someone else.
“No,” she said and waved a hand vaguely in the air. “It’s just that it’s the season. Jo’s debut and… and everything.”
It was a ridiculous explanation, of course, for no one sent a debutante twelve dozen flowers, but being an American, he might believe it.
Thankfully, he gave a nod, accepting her reply at face value. “Is your mother here?”
“She’s resting in her room.” Kay gestured to the tea things spread across the table. “Would you care for tea?”
“No.” Even he must have sensed the abruptness of that reply. “No, thank you,” he amended and nodded to her sister. “Miss Josephine.”
Jo gave him a hostile answering stare and didn’t reply, and he returned his attention to Kay. “I was hoping we could speak privately.”
“I’m not leaving.” Jo folded her arms, looking decidedly mulish, and Kay wanted to hug her. “At least,” she amended with a glance at Kay, “not because you say so. I’ll only go if Kay wants me to.”
Kay smiled at that. “Why don’t you go down to the restaurant and make us a dinner reservation for tonight? That will take about… fifteen minutes, I imagine.”
Jo gave a nod of understanding, and with one last hostile glance at Wilson, she departed. As the door closed behind her, Kay moved to sit on one of the room’s settees, gesturing for Wilson to take a seat opposite her.
“I understand congratulations are in order,” she said.
“Hmm.” He shifted his weight on the settee, looking, Kay was gratified to note, slightly ashamed of himself. “Yes, well, Pam and I rather hit it off at the house party. Perhaps that was because,” he added dryly, “we sensed we had something in common.”
What? she wanted to ask. A thirst for vengeance?
She bit the words back. “I suppose you did,” she said instead. “And I hope the two of you will be very happy.”
“Happier than you and I would have been, under the circumstances.” His face hardened into merciless, unforgiving lines. “You must understand, I could never marry a woman who has demonstrated that she can’t be faithful to me.”
She grimaced, but though his assessment was brutal, it was also, sadly, fair. “I understand.”
“As for being happy…” He paused and shrugged. “We’ll be as happy as most married people, I expect. For one thing, Pam will be able to bail out that worthless spendthrift father of hers. What is it with you Brits, anyway? Spending yourselves into oblivion and refusing to work?”
“Gentlemen aren’t supposed to work.”
“How convenient for ’em.”
“Convenient” wasn’t quite how she’d have described it.
She thought of Pam’s father and her own, peers trapped in the morass of financial obligations associated with their rank and estates, obligations they’d never been allowed to prepare for and that their social position prevented them from doing much about.
Desperation, she knew, had led to her parents’ actions regarding her all those years ago.
That, she appreciated, was why she’d been able to forgive.
Desperation was something she understood quite well.
She’d been desperate enough to marry a man whose need for absolute control would have given her a lifetime of misery, a man who, she realized now, would have been equally unhappy with her.
“Either way,” Wilson went on when she didn’t speak, “it’ll be a good matchup, I think. She’ll be able to rub her American husband in her mother’s face every chance she gets, which is something I gather she’s looking forward to tremendously. They don’t get on.”
Another thing, Kay thought with an inward sigh, she understood quite well. “Will you be living here permanently, then, instead of returning to New York?”
“Oh, no, we’ll live in New York, of course. She wants a place here, too, which makes sense, since we’ll come back for a bit when she brings Charlene out for your London season.”
Kay nodded. “Of course. And in spite of her elopement, Lady Pamela’s position in society is still far more established and secure than mine; she’ll be able to do much more for Charlene than I would have been able to do.
In fact, looking at it objectively, she’s a far better match for you than I am. ”
“Yes. I’d—” He looked away. “I’d have preferred you,” he muttered.
He looked at her again, and in his craggy, ruthless face, was a flash of something she’d never seen there before. She saw pain. And a hint of vulnerability.
“I loved you, you know,” he said.
She blinked at this unexpected declaration, and she had no idea what to say in reply.