Page 67 of Bad Luck Bride

He broke off, but she finished his sentence for him. “Since he and Pam both saw you kissing my mouth off?”

“Something like that. Either way,” he rushed on, “it’s pretty obvious what happened. Rycroft heard about my quarrel with Pam the morning after, probably from one of the servants, and becausehe was angry with both of us, he decided to make trouble, so he told the papers both weddings were canceled, thereby spiting us both.”

“Perhaps, but—”

“Don’t try to defend him, Kay. He’s a vengeful cove, and this rather proves it, don’t you think?”

“Either way, it doesn’t matter. Didn’t you—”

“Is the fact that he didn’t discuss things with you before going to the papers really all that shocking? I mean—”

“Devlin, for heaven’s sake,” she interrupted, “do stop rattling on about how the papers got hold of the story. That’s not the shocking part, obviously.”

“Then what is?”

“Didn’t you read past the headline?” She stepped closer and tapped her finger forcefully against the words below the headline. “Pam and Wilson got married!”

“What?” He blinked, trying to comprehend this bit of news. “To each other?”

“Of course to each other!” she cried, lifting her hands in a gesture of complete exasperation. “Honestly, why are you so dense today?”

Admitting he’d gone on a bender over his lustful thoughts about her and was now suffering for it was not, he decided, a wise idea.

“They eloped to Gretna Green,” Kay went on when he didn’t reply.

He made a scoffing sound. “This whole thing’s ridiculous. That Dawlish woman must have got it all wrong. They hardly even know each oth—”

He broke off, remembering the opera supper, and Pam hanging on Rycroft’s every word about Wall Street. And at the soiree at the Mayfair, he recalled, they’d spent a great deal of time talkingtogether. And the house party, with the two of them seated at the dining table side by side, their heads together.

He looked down, scanned the first couple paragraphs, and looked up again. “Maybe it is true, after all,” he said and gave a low whistle. “I’ll be damned.”

“I have no doubt about the fate of your soul,” Kay said. “But it’s a relief to know we’re no longer talking at cross-purposes.”

“Well, well,” he said, laughing a little as he glanced down at the paper again. “Rycroft and Pam? What’s that line from Shakespeare? ‘Of all mad matches, never was the like,’ or something like that. Describes them pretty well, doesn’t it?”

“Rather, but that’s not the question.”

“What is the question?”

“What are we going to do about it?”

“Do? I’m not sure there’s anything we can do, Kay. It’s not as if we can go chasing after them and stop them. The deed is done.”

She waved a hand impatiently in the air. “I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about us. By the end of the week, everyone we know will be wondering what could have spurred this turn of events. They’ll be nodding and ho-humming and saying inane things to each other—no smoke without fire, and how the fire had never quite gone out, and how Pam and Wilson must have seen it, too, and decided to start a little fire of their own, and rot like that.”

He opened his mouth to reply that it wasn’t inane rot if it was true, but when she spoke again, he decided it was best not to stress unpalatable facts.

“They’ll say how they knew all along we really did elope and all our denials were lies.”

“I daresay they will,” he agreed mildly.

“I’ll be a subject of ridicule. Or worse—pity. The papers will feed on it, don’t think they won’t. They’ll rake up everything, including my broken engagement to Giles. Delilah Dawlish is probably already authoring the stories. I can just imagine them now. Poor, poor, Lady Kay, she’ll write. Three engagements, but she just can’t get to the altar. She truly is the bad luck bride, isn’t she? Dear, dear, what does she do to drive all these men away?” She paused and took a deep breath as if bracing herself for the onslaught. “It will be humiliating.”

“No doubt,” he acknowledged, appreciating how hard it was going to be for her to go through all that, and reminding himself that it was all his fault. He had to make it right.

“You got me into this mess,” she accused as if reading his mind. “Twice. Three times, really.”

“So I did.”

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