Page 28 of Miss Harvey's Horribly Lovable Fiancé
Her outrage filled the room. “I cannot fight it, is that what your reticence declares?”
“Time can cure much of this. The man will die one day.”
Or I will. Or Northington.“God forgive me, Charlie, if I say…” She stood, put down her wine glass and her fantasies. “Not soon enough.”
* * *
“Wherehaveyou been?”The second Esme’s foot touched her sitting room carpet, her mother shot up from her chair. Her lips trembled, her brown eyes misted. Her hands quivered.
“Alice, please.” The viscount rose from his own post in the opposite chair and took his wife’s hand. “She’s here. Safe.”
“She’s been gallivanting!” Her mother whipped her fan to proportions of a gale, her honey gold hair flying in the wind like a woman in Bedlam. “Where?Where?You should know we’d be wild to find you.”
Esme inhaled. Oh, she’d known as she walked in the glade that her mother would lose tears over her disappearance. She didn’t need to look at her father’s expression to understand his feelings. He’d most likely guessed where she’d gone and hadn’t enlightened her mother. Best to keep Mama in the dark on so many things. This was one of them.
“Do sit, Alice.” Her father could tame her mother like no other.
The lady plunked her bottom into the fine upholstered chair and fished a handkerchief from her sleeve. Then she blew her nose. Loudly. Honked, actually. Twice.
Esme was not surprised to see that her mother had not yet begun her toilette for tonight’s ball. But her Mama’s neglect was to be expected, of course, when that lady had learned that her daughter, the bride—the young woman of the hour, so to speak—was not at home.
Not to be found less than an hour before the start of the ball.
“Tell us where you’ve been,” Mama demanded.
“I was walking in the woods.”
“For hours?”
“And getting my last words of instruction from Reverend Compton.”
“Oh, piffle. What words of wisdom has the notorious Captain to commend him to a young bride?” Charlie had been her father’s favorite for the post of vicar to the village. Never her mother’s.
“Alice. My dear. This is not like you.”
“You should not be in another man’s company alone! The night before your wedding!” She shrugged him off and fluttered her fan in vast objection. “What if someone had seen you?”
At the thought of the two women from the village, Esme couldn’t stop herself from wincing.
“Ohhhhh, who was it?”
“Not anyone who will tell, Mama. Really. I was careful. And Charlie is a man of God.”
“Charlie has only lately returned to the Church. Before that he was known as the hell spawn of Wellington’s infantry.”
“Alice!” Her father barked. “Contain yourself.”
“I hope he was respectful.”
Interpreted, that meant Charlie had not discussed the arts of making love. “He was.”
“Alice, I think it best if you leave us.”
“No.”
“I insist.” He gave her the look which declared he would not be nay-sayed. Long ago, he’d not discussed business with his wife. She’d go into apoplectic fits if she knew he’d ever lost a penny. So, no. This discussion would not be appropriate, especially if the mother-of-the-bride was to appear her best self in the chapel tomorrow at nine o’clock sharp.
“You be firm with her.”
