On the Way to the Wedding (5 page)

Fingernails could only occupy a girl for so long, however, especially when they were already meticulously neat and groomed, so Lucy stood and walked to the wardrobe, peering absently at her belongings.

“Oh, dash,” she muttered, “I hate when she does that.”

Her maid had left a pair of shoes the wrong way, with the left on the right and the right on the left, and while Lucy knew there was nothing earth-shatteringly wrong with that, it did offend some strange (and extremely tidy) little corner of her sensibilities, so she righted the slippers, then stood back to inspect her handiwork, then planted her hands on her hips and turned around. “Are you finished yet?” she demanded.

“Almost,” Hermione said, and it sounded as if the word had been resting on the edge of her lips the whole time, as if she’d had it ready so that she could fob off Lucy when she asked.

Lucy sat back down with a huff. It was a scene they had 3

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played out countless times before. Or at least four.

Yes, Lucy knew exactly how many letters Hermione had received from the romantic Mr. Edmonds. She would have liked
not
to have known; in fact, she was more than a little irritated that the item was taking up valuable space in her brain that might have been devoted to something useful, like botany or music, or good heavens, even another page in
De-Brett’s,
but the unfortunate fact was, Mr. Edmonds’s letters were nothing if not an
event,
and when Hermione had an event, well, Lucy was forced to have it, too.

They had shared a room for three years at Miss Moss’s, and since Lucy had no close female relative who might help her make her bow into society, Hermione’s mother had agreed to sponsor her, and so here they were, still together.

Which was lovely, really, except for the always-present (in spirit, at least) Mr. Edmonds. Lucy had made his acquaintance only once, but it certainly
felt
as if he were always there, hovering over them, causing Hermione to sigh at strange moments and gaze wistfully off into the distance as if she were committing a love sonnet to memory so that she might include it in her next reply.

“You are aware,” Lucy said, even though Hermione had not indicated that she was finished reading her missive, “that your parents will never permit you to marry him.”

That was enough to get Hermione to set the letter down, albeit briefly. “Yes,” she said with an irritated expression,

“you’ve said as much.”

“He is a secretary,” Lucy said.

“I realize that.”

“A secretary,” Lucy repeated, even though they’d had this conversation countless times before. “Your
father’s
secretary.”

Hermione had picked the letter back up in an attempt to ignore Lucy, but finally she gave up and set it back down, On the Way to the Wedding

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confirming Lucy’s suspicions that she had long since fi nished it and was now in the first, or possibly even second, rereading.

“Mr. Edmonds is a good and honorable man,” Hermione said, lips pinched.

“I’m sure he is,” Lucy said, “but you can’t
marry
him.

Your father is a viscount. Do you really think he will allow his only daughter to marry a penniless secretary?”

“My father loves me,” Hermione muttered, but her voice wasn’t exactly replete with conviction.

“I am not trying to dissuade you from making a love match,” Lucy began, “but—”

“That is exactly what you are trying to do,” Hermione cut in.

“Not at all. I just don’t see why you can’t try to fall in love with someone of whom your parents might actually approve.”

Hermione’s lovely mouth twisted into a frustrated line.

“You don’t understand.”

“What is there to understand? Don’t you think your life might be just a touch easier if you fell in love with someone suitable?”

“Lucy, we don’t get to choose who we fall in love with.”

Lucy crossed her arms. “I don’t see why not.”

Hermione’s mouth actually fell open. “Lucy Abernathy,”

she said, “you understand nothing.”

“Yes,” Lucy said dryly, “you’ve mentioned.”

“How can you possibly think a person can choose who she falls in love with?” Hermione said passionately, although not so passionately that she was forced to rouse herself from her semireclined position on the bed. “One doesn’t
choose.

It just happens. In an instant.”

“Now
that
I don’t believe,” Lucy replied, and then added, because she could not resist, “not for an instant.”

“Well, it does,” Hermione insisted. “I know, because it 3

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happened to me. I wasn’t
looking
to fall in love.”

“Weren’t you?”

“No.” Hermione glared at her. “I wasn’t. I fully intended to find a husband in London. Really, who would have expected to meet anyone in
Fenchley
?”

Said with the sort of disdain found only in a native Fench-leyan.

Lucy rolled her eyes and tilted her head to the side, waiting for Hermione to get on with it.

Which Hermione did not appreciate. “Don’t look at me like that,” she snipped.

“Like what?”

“Like
that.
”

“I repeat, like what?”

Hermione’s entire face pinched. “You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

Lucy clapped a hand to her face. “Oh my,” she gasped.

“You looked
exactly
like your mother just then.”

Hermione drew back with affront. “That was unkind.”

“Your mother is lovely!”

“Not when her face is all pinchy.”

“Your mother is lovely even with a pinchy face,” Lucy said, trying to put an end to the subject. “Now, do you intend to tell me about Mr. Edmonds or not?”

“Do you plan to mock me?”

“Of course not.”

Hermione lifted her brows.

“Hermione, I promise I will not mock you.”

Hermione still looked dubious, but she said, “Very well.

But if you do—”

“Hermione.”

“As I told you,” she said, giving Lucy a warning glance, “I wasn’t expecting to find love. I didn’t even know my father had hired a new secretary. I was just walking in the garden, On the Way to the Wedding

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deciding which of the roses I wished to have cut for the table, and then . . .
I saw him.
”

Said with enough drama to warrant a role on the stage.

“Oh, Hermione,” Lucy sighed.

“You said you wouldn’t mock me,” Hermione said, and she actually jabbed a finger in Lucy’s direction, which struck Lucy as sufficiently out of character that she quieted down.

“I didn’t even see his face at fi rst,” Hermione continued.

“Just the back of his head, the way his hair curled against the collar of his coat.” She sighed then. She actually sighed as she turned to Lucy with the most pathetic expression. “And the color. Truly, Lucy, have you ever seen hair such a spec-tacular shade of blond?”

Considering the number of times Lucy had been forced to listen to gentlemen make the same statement about Hermione’s hair, she thought it spoke rather well of her that she refrained from comment.

But Hermione was not done. Not nearly. “Then he turned,”

she said, “and I saw his profile, and I swear to you I heard music.”

Lucy would have liked to point out that the Watsons’ conservatory was located right next to the rose garden, but she held her tongue.

“And then he turned,” Hermione said, her voice growing soft and her eyes taking on that
I’m-memorizing-a-love-sonnet
expression, “and all I could think was—
I am ruined.
”

Lucy gasped. “Don’t
say
that. Don’t even hint at it.”

Ruin was not the sort of thing any young lady mentioned lightly.

“Not
ruined
ruined,” Hermione said impatiently. “Good heavens, Lucy, I was in the rose garden, or haven’t you been listening? But I knew—I
knew
that I was ruined for all other men. There could never be another to compare.”

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“And you knew all this from the back of his neck?” Lucy asked.

Hermione shot her an exceedingly irritated expression.

“And his profile, but that’s not the point.”

Lucy waited patiently for the point, even though she was quite certain it wouldn’t be one with which she would agree.

Or probably even understand.

“The point is,” Hermione said, her voice growing so soft that Lucy had to lean forward to hear her, “that I cannot possibly be happy without him. Not possibly.”

“Well,” Lucy said slowly, because she wasn’t precisely certain how she was meant to add to
that,
“you seem happy now.”

“That is only because I know he is waiting for me. And”—

Hermione held up the letter—“he writes that he loves me.”

“Oh dear,” Lucy said to herself.

Hermione must have heard her, because her mouth tightened, but she didn’t say anything. The two of them just sat there, in their respective places, for a full minute, and then Lucy cleared her throat and said, “That nice Mr. Bridgerton seemed taken with you.”

Hermione shrugged.

“He’s a younger son, but I believe he has a nice portion.

And he is certainly from a good family.”

“Lucy, I told you I am not interested.”

“Well, he’s very handsome,” Lucy said, perhaps a bit more emphatically than she’d meant to.

“You pursue him, then,” Hermione retorted.

Lucy stared at her in shock. “You know I cannot. I’m practically engaged to Lord Haselby.”

“Practically,” Hermione reminded her.

“It might as well be official,” Lucy said. And it was true. Her uncle had discussed the matter with the Earl of Davenport, Viscount Haselby’s father, years ago. Haselby On the Way to the Wedding

3 5

was about ten years older than Lucy, and they were all simply waiting for her to grow up.

Which she supposed she’d done. Surely the wedding wouldn’t be too far off now.

And it was a good match. Haselby was a perfectly pleasant fellow. He didn’t speak to her as if she were an idiot, he seemed to be kind to animals, and his looks were pleasing enough, even if his hair was beginning to thin. Of course, Lucy had only actually met her intended husband three times, but everyone knew that fi rst impressions were extremely important and usually spot-on accurate.

Besides, her uncle had been her guardian since her father had died ten years earlier, and if he hadn’t exactly showered her and her brother Richard with love and affection, he had done his duty by them and raised them well, and Lucy knew it was her duty to obey his wishes and honor the betrothal he had arranged.

Or practically arranged.

Really, it didn’t make much difference. She was going to marry Haselby. Everyone knew it.

“I think you use him as an excuse,” Hermione said.

Lucy’s spine stiffened. “I beg your pardon.”

“You use Haselby as an excuse,” Hermione repeated, and her face took on a lofty expression Lucy did not enjoy one bit. “So that you do not allow your heart to become engaged elsewhere.”

“And just where else, precisely, might I have engaged my heart?” Lucy demanded. “The season has not even begun!”

“Perhaps,” Hermione said, “but we have been out and about, getting ‘polished’ as you and my mother like to put it.

You have not been living under a rock, Lucy. You have met any number of men.”

There was really no way to point out that none of those men ever even
saw
her when Hermione was near. Hermione 3

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would try to deny it, but they would both know that she was lying in an attempt to spare Lucy’s feelings. So Lucy instead grumbled something under her breath that was meant to be a reply without actually
being
a reply.

And then Hermione did not say anything; she just looked at her in that arch manner that she never used with anyone else, and finally Lucy had to defend herself.

“It’s not an excuse,” she said, crossing her arms, then planting her hands on her hips when that didn’t feel right.

“Truly, what would be the point of it? You know that I’m to marry Haselby. It’s been planned for ages.”

She crossed her arms again. Then dropped them. Then finally sat down.

“It’s not a bad match,” Lucy said. “Truthfully, after what happened to Georgiana Whiton, I should be getting down on my hands and knees and kissing my uncle’s feet for making such an acceptable alliance.”

There was a moment of horrified, almost reverent silence.

If they had been Catholic, they would have surely crossed themselves. “There but for the grace of God,” Hermione fi -

nally said.

Lucy nodded slowly. Georgiana had been married off to a wheezy seventy-year-old with gout. And not even a titled seventy-year-old with gout. Good heavens, she ought to have at least earned a “Lady” before her name for her sacrifi ce.

“So you see,” Lucy finished, “Haselby really isn’t such a bad sort. Better than most, actually.”

Hermione looked at her. Closely. “Well, if it is what you wish, Lucy, you know that I shall support you unreservedly.

But as for me . . .” She sighed, and her green eyes took on that faraway look that made grown men swoon. “I want something else.”

“I know you do,” Lucy said, trying to smile. But she couldn’t even begin to imagine how Hermione would achieve her dreams. In the world they lived in, viscounts’ daughters On the Way to the Wedding

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did not marry viscounts’ secretaries. And it seemed to Lucy that it would make far more sense to adjust Hermione’s dreams than to reshape the social order. Easier, too.

But right now she was tired. And she wanted to go to bed.

She would work on Hermione in the morning. Starting with that handsome Mr. Bridgerton. He would be perfect for her friend, and heaven knew he was interested.

Hermione would come around. Lucy would make sure of it.

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