Page 47 of Bad Luck Bride

“How mysterious,” Magdelene murmured as Jo entered the bedroom.

“There you are!” Jo said, pausing in the doorway, “I woke up andyou were already out and about. Foster’s gone looking for you, you know.”

“I only went for a walk.”

“Well, either way, since Foster’s not here, I need you to button me up.” Jo turned, presenting her back.

“By the way,” Kay went on as she pushed the younger girl’s long auburn tresses over her shoulder and began slipping the carved ivory buttons of Jo’s dress through their corresponding holes, “I’ve made an appointment for you with the Savoy florist to choose the flowers for your debutante ball.”

“You mean I get to pick the flowers?” Jo turned her head in surprise, looking first at Kay, then at their mother, and then at Kay again. “Really?”

“Of course you get to pick,” Kay replied before Mama could do so. “It’s your ball, after all. Why wouldn’t you choose your own flowers?”

“Well…” Josephine paused. “The two of you usually do things like that for me.”

“Do we?” Kay hesitated, remembering her instructions to Jo about wine the other night, and she realized to her dismay that she had been smothering Jo the same way she had always been smothered.

The more things change…

“I suppose we have tended to hover over you too much,” she admitted. “But you’re out now, and you deserve some freedom to make your own decisions. And,” she rushed on before her mother could object, “Mama and I have no doubt you’ll choose the perfect arrangements. But the only appointment Monsieur Lavigne had available this week was for half past nine this morning, so you’ll have to hurry.”

“I should say so,” Jo said, laughing. “It’s twenty past nine now.”

“I know, and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, but I forgot. While you’re downstairs, you might also see the maître d’hôtel to be sure the other decorations coordinate with the flowers you choose. There,” she added, patting her sister’s back. “You’re all done up.”

Jo left the bedroom, and Kay watched from the doorway, waiting until Josephine had left the suite, then she turned around. “What,” she said, wasting no time on preliminaries, “happened to my letters?”

“Letters? What letters?”

“My letters to Devlin Sharpe fourteen years ago, and those he sent to me.”

Magdelene looked away, touching a hand to the side of her neck, adjusting the collar of her nightdress in an obvious attempt to stall. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” she said at last.

“Don’t play the innocent, Mama. I wrote Devlin dozens of letters, but he never got them. He also claims he often wrote to me—”

“And how do you know all this? Have you been talking to That Horrible Man? Oh, Kay, really!” she added on a wail. “What is wrong with you? Have you no sense at all?”

“Don’t make this about me. What happened to those letters? You suppressed them, didn’t you?”

In confronting her mother with this, Kay had thought Magdelene would immediately fall back in a faint or go into hysterics. Instead, to Kay’s surprise, Magdelene lifted her chin, settled against the brass headboard behind her, and faced her accusation with surprising equanimity. “Yes,” she admitted. “I did. What of it?”

Kay breathed a humorless laugh at her mother’s unexpected candor. “At least you are honest enough to acknowledge your contemptible deceit when faced with it.”

“Contemptible?” Magdelene tossed her head. “I was trying to save you from making an irrevocable mistake.”

“A task at which you ultimately failed.”

“And whose fault was that, pray? Given his character,” she added as Kay made an impatient sound, “I suppose your father and I ought to have known Sharpe would spread vicious rumors about you upon your engagement. But that thought never occurred to us.”

“They weren’t rumors, Mama,” she reminded uncompromisingly. “They were facts. But Devlin didn’t cause those facts to become known.”

“Is that what he told you?”

“Yes. And I believe him.”

“Oh, Kay! How can you be such a fool? He’s lying.”

“A grievous sin you seem to know a great deal about,” she countered. “Nonetheless, he says he did not start those rumors, and I believe him. As for who you were trying to save, please don’t pretend you were motivated by any motherly concern for me. You were trying to save Papa and yourself. I was merely the means by which you chose to do so.”

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