Page 9 of Bad Luck Bride

For some reason, Pamela found that amusing. “Of course not, silly,” she replied with a tinkling laugh of her own. “Lady Kay graduated many years before I was ever there.”

Inwardly, Kay grimaced.Ouch.

“No,” Pam went on, “I was at Willowbank with Lady Kay’s sister, Josephine. We were friends there. Lady Kay and I met during the graduation ceremonies.”

Other than a brief introduction during the event in question, Kay could not recall Jo making any mention at all of Lady Pamela, so the two girls being friends was a doubtful prospect, but Kay had no choice but to give Pamela the benefit of the doubt. “All of you looked so lovely that day in your white caps and gowns.”

Pamela laughed again. “We thought ourselves so grown up in them, I daresay. Although to someone your age,” she added, “we must have seemed terribly young.”

Biting back a sarcastic rejoinder about being older than Methuselah, Kay kept her smile in place, but the effort of doing so was already making her jaw ache, and she wondered just how long she had to stand here with these two, making small talk, before she could escape. Fortunately, Fate chose that moment to come to her aid.

“Kay?” Josephine’s voice called behind her. “I’ve got a growler waiting for us. If we don’t go soon, we’ll be late meeting Mama. What on earth is taking you so—Heavens, it’s Pamela!”

That surprised exclamation bolstered Kay’s resolve even more. After all, like the couple in front of her, she too had moved on to a better life and future.

“What a nice surprise, isn’t it, Jo?” she said, almost wincing at the forced heartiness of her own voice as her sister came to a halt beside her. “Running into your friend Lady Pamela this way? And you’ll never believe who’s here with her! Mr. Devlin Sharpe.”

Faced so unexpectedly with the man who had ruined her sister, Jo couldn’t quite hide her shock, nor her resentment on Kay’s behalf. Her eyes widened, then narrowed.

“I’m sure you don’t remember Mr. Sharpe,” Kay said quickly. “He’s so much older than you, after all,” she added, getting a bit of her own back for Pamela’s earlier remark. “Why, I think you were only a toddler when he went away to Africa all those years ago.”

Devlin perceived her emphasis on the wide gulf between his age and Pamela’s, for a wry smile twisted one corner of his mouth.

Josephine, heaven bless her, recovered, taking Kay’s cue. “Apleasure to meet you, Mr. Sharpe,” she said. “And Pamela, too. What an extraordinary surprise this is.”

“Lady Pamela and Mr. Sharpe are engaged to be married,” Kay went on, putting just the right amount of congratulatory pleasure into her voice. “Isn’t that wonderful news?”

In profile, she saw Jo’s lips part in astonishment, but again, Jo managed to play up beautifully. “Congratulations to both of you. Goodness, Kay,” she added, her voice taking on a lively tone, “it’s weddings, weddings everywhere this year, isn’t it?”

“What’s this?” Lady Pamela cried as Kay shot her sister a grateful glance. “Josephine, don’t tell me you’re getting married, too?”

“Me?” Jo laughed at that. “Good heavens, no. I’m out, I suppose, but it’s not official until I make my debut in May.”

“Didn’t you come out last year? I was away in Europe, but I thought you had. I know you didn’t come out with me the year before. Illness in the family, wasn’t it?”

“Our father, yes. I would have come out the following year, but then our father died.”

“Lord Raleigh’s dead?” Devlin asked Kay as Pamela left off clinging to him like a limpet and moved closer to Jo. “I’m sorry, Kay,” he added as Pamela murmured similar sympathies to Jo.

“Are you?” Kay murmured, her voice tight and too low for the two others to hear. “I don’t recall you being particularly fond of my father.”

“I barely knew him, but nonetheless, I’m sorry for your sake,” he answered quietly, a kind reply that stung because he sounded like he meant it. “I know how fond you were of him.”

He knew nothing of her complicated relationship with her late father, but either way, she didn’t want him to be kind. No, damn itall, she wanted him to be rude and uncivil and awful, which didn’t make any sense, especially given how necessary it was to maintain this charade of friendly politeness.

“Yes,” she said with quiet dignity, “I was very fond of him.”

“I almost envy you.”

Kay understood at once what he meant. “You and your father haven’t made amends, I take it?”

“Has the sun started rising in the west?”

She caught the bitter note behind the lighthearted question, but before she could think of how to reply, Lady Pamela broke off her conversation with Jo and returned her attention to Kay, offering the appropriate sympathies before reverting to the previous topic of conversation. “But if Jo’s not getting married, then who is?”

The possibility that Kay might be the bride in question had clearly not occurred to the girl, and she supposed that as a disgraced and ruined spinster, firmly on the shelf for more than a decade, she ought to be used to that sort of dismissal. But nonetheless, it stung, particularly since the girl’s own fiancé had been the cause of Kay’s fall from grace.

“The one who’s getting married is me,” she said, savoring the news as she said it. “The wedding is in June.”

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