Page 9 of Bad Luck Bride (Scandal at the Savoy #3)
She paused, looking at her mother in a way she hoped was appropriately apologetic. “I’m sorry, Mama, but I really think I must return to the hotel and have a rest.”
“Of course.” Magdelene rose. “I shall fetch Josephine, and we’ll go at once.”
Magdelene started to move toward the changing rooms, but Kay put a hand on her arm, stopping her. She couldn’t bear any more of her mother’s unceasing stream of repetitive conversation. Not just now. She badly wanted to be alone.
“Oh, no, Mama, there’s no need for that,” she said.
“What with the wedding and her first season coming, Josephine needs so many gowns. We’ll never have them all chosen in time if we delay.
No, you stay here with her, and I will take a hansom back to the Savoy.
Don’t fuss, Mama,” she added as her mother started to protest. “I’ll go straight back, and it’s barely a ten-minute carriage ride.
Besides, I very much doubt Delilah Dawlish is skulking about the Savoy lobby waiting to catch me out. Thanks to your good work, of course.”
Mollified, Magdelene consented with a nod. “Very well. But go straight up to your room when you arrive. No dillydallying.”
Fortunately, Kay had already turned away and started for the door, so her mother didn’t hear her sigh. “Of course,” she called back. “I am in no mood for dillydallying, I promise you.”
Despite that assurance, Kay did not take a cab back to the hotel. Instead, she chose to walk. It was a fine spring afternoon, and by the time she reached the Savoy, the cool, crisp air had done much to restore her equilibrium.
Out from under Mama’s watchful eye, with no desire to sit in her room nursing a fictional headache, Kay instead took a stroll through the hotel.
She passed the American Bar, noting the men sipping cocktails there with both envy and curiosity.
She’d never had a cocktail. Given Wilson’s rather domineering personality and old-fashioned ideas, she doubted she ever would.
Still, a glance into the dining room on her way to the front desk to fetch her letters reminded her that many freedoms would be accorded her once she was married that even Wilson wouldn’t blink an eye at. Lingering over afternoon tea in an elegant restaurant with her friends, for one.
Thoughts of marriage brought thoughts of the wedding, reminding her that they still had nowhere to hold the wedding banquet.
If they didn’t find something soon, they’d have no choice but to pare down the guest list. Given Mama’s conversation with Mrs. Carte, that possibility seemed more likely than ever, and Kay knew it might be wise to take a second look at some of the Savoy’s smaller banqueting rooms.
Tucking her letters into her handbag, Kay left the front desk and retraced her steps through the lobby and past the American Bar, then turned down the corridor of banqueting rooms that were reserved for the private parties of those who could afford them.
Not the Mikado, she realized, with one look through the doorway.
Even if she cut her guest list to the absolute minimum and used both the banqueting room itself and its adjoining reception room to seat everyone, there would still not be enough space.
Kay gave up on the Mikado and moved on, but she was soon forced to discard both the Penzance and the Gondoliers for the same reason.
Just as she’d feared, all these rooms were just too small.
As she passed the Pinafore Room, she stopped, staring through the doorway of the reception room to the banqueting room beyond with a hint of wistful longing. Pointless, she knew, to wish for what might have been, and yet…
Irresistibly drawn, she stepped through the doorway into the Pinafore’s reception room.
Plenty of space for guests coming from the church to mingle here before the meal.
Standing here, she could picture many of those who had once judged and condemned her happily sipping champagne punch from pewter cups and sherry from slim cordial glasses, gladly toasting the bride and groom, magnanimously forgiving Kay for her past sins. People adored stories of redemption.
Kay moved to the adjoining room, where waiters were setting tables for some big affair that evening, and as she watched them, she imagined them serving the twelve delicious and elegant courses she had planned so carefully with the Savoy’s head chef.
Such a meal would have been a shining triumph, the perfect way to close the door on a decade of shame, the perfect entrée into her new role, the role every girl dreamed of and all parents of a daughter hoped for: that of the married woman.
Perfect, she thought with a pang as she fingered one of the precisely folded napkins. This room would have been so perfect.
“Lady Kay?”
She looked over her shoulder to find the ma?tre d’h?tel standing nearby, watching her in some perplexity. “Can I be of help, my lady?” he asked.
“No, no, not really.” She gave him a rueful smile as she turned around. “Not unless you know how I might turn two of your smaller banqueting suites into one larger one?”
His brow cleared, as if he’d heard that wish expressed before. “I’m afraid not, my lady.”
“Never mind then,” she said. “There’s nothing I need, thank you.”
Satisfied, he gave a bow and walked past her, crossing the long banqueting room and departing through the open doorway into the corridor beyond.
Kay turned in the opposite direction, intending to retrace her steps out of the Pinafore, but she had barely passed through the doorway leading back into the reception room before another voice, a nauseatingly familiar feminine voice, sounded from the banquet room behind her, and she paused.
“Oh, Mama, look! Won’t this be just perfect?”
Lady Pamela Stirling.
This echoing of her own thoughts by Devlin’s fiancée was more than she could bear just now. Kay resumed walking toward the door, quickening her steps in her desire to get away, but she’d only made it halfway across the reception room before Pamela’s next words brought Kay to a halt.
“I am so glad Devlin was able to reserve it for the wedding.”
Kay turned, frowning. Devlin and Pamela had managed to secure the Pinafore for their wedding, but she would be stuck settling for something not half as nice for her own? Life, she thought in aggravation, was just not fair.
“It will have to do,” another female voice replied in grudging agreement. “It’s pretty enough, I suppose. For a hotel.”
“Now, Mama,” the girl said in a wheedling voice, “you know we can’t have the wedding at home in Durham.
The house is leased. Besides, with the wedding set for June, everyone will be here for the season, so it’s much more convenient to marry from here, making a hotel the best solution.
And the Savoy has the biggest banquet room in town, so we can have a proper sit-down dinner. ”
“Stand-up breakfasts are more fashionable.”
“They are only fashionable because so many people are pinching their pennies these days.”
“So are we.”
“Maybe so, but I refuse to announce the fact to the world. Besides,” she added as her parent started to interrupt, “Devlin thinks stand-up breakfasts are silly, and so do I. Sipping soup out of cups and nibbling on canapés? No, a banquet here at the Savoy is a much more desirable option. And this room is perfect.”
“It will certainly seat all the guests we wish to invite,” Lady Walston countered, her voice dry. “We can say that much.”
“Mama, you really mustn’t be this way. As I said, a banquet room here is the most sensible course, and I’m so grateful we were able to secure this one. It was quite clever of Devlin, I think, to make the arrangements and secure the room so far in advance.”
The older woman gave a huff in reply, making it clear that she didn’t think much of her future son-in-law or his cleverness.
Kay smiled, taking what was probably an uncharitable amount of pleasure in that thought, and she abandoned any notion of retreat. In fact, wild dogs couldn’t have dragged her away at this point, and she moved to one side of the open doorway, straining to hear more.
“Dear Mama, please don’t frown so disapprovingly. It was clever. Admit it. You know we’d never have acquired a banqueting room of this size for the seventh of June had we waited until now to begin looking for it.”
The seventh of June?
Kay’s momentary amusement vanished, and she stared at the open doorway, aghast, hardly able to believe what she was hearing.
Devlin was the one who’d gotten the Pinafore Room, taking it away from her for his own wedding?
Devlin was the reason she and Mama were now scrambling so desperately to find a suitable replacement?
But how had he managed it? And why hadn’t Delia told her about it?
Kay had barely asked herself these questions before Pamela’s voice came again, giving her at least some answers.
“Another party wanted the room, I understand, but Devlin easily took care of that. What a fortunate thing that he and Lord Calderon are such good friends.”
“Oh,” Kay breathed, a sound of outrage that was—fortunately—too low for the women in the adjoining room to hear.
So like him, she thought, her hands curling into fists at her sides, to do something like this. His special gift seemed to be that of dashing her hopes and spoiling her dreams, even if in this case it was just a bizarre, awful coincidence.
But was it? Kay tensed, her nails digging into her palms as another appalling thought struck her. Was it a coincidence, or had Devlin done this on purpose?
The latter theory would presuppose he’d known of her engagement two months ago. She had accepted Wilson’s proposal at Christmas, but they had decided not to announce it until after his return to London.
Still, Giles and his family and the handful of her other scattered cousins had all been told once the date had been fixed, and though they’d been sworn to secrecy until the season began, a secret known by more than one person didn’t usually remain a secret.
Devlin, she supposed, could have learned of it somehow, and decided to steal a march on her.
But would he really be so low, especially after all this time?
That question had barely crossed her mind before her sister’s words from this morning echoed through her mind.
Spite and jealousy… he heard you were going to marry… he wanted to pay you out.
He’d given her up for money, and she had no doubt he’d been the source of the rumors that had sabotaged her wedding plans with Giles and ruined her reputation. Was it really all that hard to imagine him making trouble for her again now, even over a decade later?
She thought of her first sight of him in the flower shop and the mockery and resentment she’d seen in his eyes.
“That bastard,” she whispered, choking on the words. “That despicable, conniving bastard. What a malicious trick to play.”
All the pain and anger Kay had been working so hard to snuff out since this morning came roaring back, stronger than ever.
And though she didn’t know how he could have learned of her wedding plans, she was damn well going to find out.
And when she did, she thought, tears of outrage stinging her eyes, she was going to tell that man exactly what she thought of him, his mockery, and his petty, mischief-making schemes.
Blinking back tears, rage still seething through every fiber of her being, she turned away from the two women in the adjoining banquet room, escaped out into the corridor, and made her way back to the lobby.
But as she approached the front desk, she appreciated the fact that an unmarried woman could not just walk up to a hotel clerk and openly ask for a man’s room number.
She stood for a moment, lost in thought, then she veered away from the front desk and entered the Savoy’s reading room instead.
Crossing to one of the writing desks, she sat down and opened the center drawer, helping herself to an envelope and a sheet of the hotel stationery that was always available to guests.
Back in the lobby a few minutes later, she watched from a short distance away as the bellboy she’d asked for assistance took her sealed envelope with a blank sheet of paper tucked inside to the front desk and gave it to the clerk.
When the clerk put the note into one of the cubbyholes of the massive wall cabinet behind him, she noted the number on the brass plate above it: room 506.
Her ploy successfully accomplished, she turned around and made her way out of the lobby and down a side corridor to the electric lift that would take her to the fifth floor.
It was time—long past time—for a showdown with Devlin Sharpe. She could only hope that he was in, he was alone, and there wasn’t a hatchet anywhere in the vicinity.