Once Upon a Kiss (Book Club Belles Society) Read online

  Copyright © 2014 by Jayne Fresina

  Cover and internal design © 2014 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

  Cover art by Judy York

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  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

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  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Thirty-two

  Thirty-three

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  To Mrs. Jones

  It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

  —Pride and Prejudice

  One

  End of Summer, 1815

  “Well, someone has to go first, and since you’re all a bunch of dainty blossoms, I daresay it will have to be me.”

  So declared Miss Justina Penny who, despite being one of the youngest in the group, saw herself as a fearless adventurer and hoped one day to see a statue erected in her honor on the village green.

  “Without risk,” she was fond of saying, “there is nothing gained.”

  The five young ladies of the Book Club Belles Society, rounding the bend together while involved in lively debate, had not seen the wide brown puddle lying in wait for them until it was at their feet. While the other ladies still pondered the best route around it, Justina made up her mind with the reckless aplomb for which she was notorious. Ignoring any words of caution uttered by her companions, she gathered up her skirts, reversed a good distance, and took a running leap.

  Her walking boots left the earth, goose bumps fluttered across her skin, and she exhaled a joyful gust of triumphant laughter.

  It turned out to be premature, which was also by no means unusual for her.

  The first part of her journey proceeded well enough, even—it was admitted later by her sister—with a spectacular sort of style, if one could overlook the abundant display of leg and stocking. But where her flight failed most was at its end.

  Justina felt herself descending far too quickly and several feet short of dry lane. In fact, she was headed directly for the deepest, brownest center of what now appeared to be a lake, rather than a puddle.

  Compounding her misfortune, here came Mrs. Dockley, at that same moment, innocently opening her gate. The tidy, fragile old lady stepped out into the lane in her Sunday best, oblivious to the unstoppable airborne menace descending rapidly toward her with the speed and grace of a cannon ball.

  ***

  August 29th, 1815 A.D.

  Today I splashed Mrs. Dockley from head to toe, broke a china plate, and failed to heed Mama. Thrice. All these things, but for the last, were quite accidental. I was quarrelsome on four occasions and fibbed regarding the china plate, pieces of which will one day be found buried in the herb garden and not in the possession of a wild-eyed, knife-wielding gypsy with a wart and a wooden foot. Although I think my version of events is better.

  Sometimes real life is very dull, or simply inconvenient, and things never turn out quite the way one expects or hopes. I have heard it said that challenges are sent to try us. I would like to know who is sending so many to me, for I believe they have been misaddressed. I am quite tried enough, and I suspect that someone, somewhere, is completely light since I have all their calamities as well as my own.

  Speaking of which, today I thought of the Wrong Man again.

  I know not why he continues to plague me, unless it is a developing, chronic case of Maiden’s Palsy. It has been over a year.

  All I can say is, the blasted town of Bath has a great deal to answer for and I would not go there again for ten thousand pounds and a life supply of hot chocolate.

  Anyone coming upon Justina Penny’s diary would be shocked, not only by the fullness of its pages, but by the fastidious attention to detail.

  Her sister, Catherine, kept awake every evening in the bed beside her while she recorded these “trivial happenings and idle thoughts,” proclaimed it to be a wicked form of self-indulgence.

  “Your time would be better spent in somber internal reflection and prayer, Jussy,” she said primly. “Why you bother committing all your terrible shortcomings to paper, I’ll never know.”

  To which Justina replied, “Really, Cathy! How can I be sure of making proper recompense to those I wronged if I do not keep track of my daily malefactions?”

  “If only it didn’t take you quite so long to write them all down.” Cathy tugged hard on her side of the coverlet. “And if you did not keep breaking into gleeful snuffles, shaking the entire bed, I might get a few more hours of sleep. I begin to pass for a haggard scarecrow as it takes you longer each night to write in your diary.”

  “Impossible, sister. You could not look like a scarecrow under any circumstances.” And Justina should know, having “trimmed” her sister’s hair many years ago with scissors from their mama’s sewing basket in an attempt to achieve something akin to that very look. “One cannot rush these things, Cathy. In order to feel the weight of my wrongdoing I must consider every word.”

  I cursed inventively when I caught my skirt in the kitchen door and again when I found a splinter in my finger.

  At approximately ten o’clock, when I saw Lucy in her new scarlet cloak, I was wracked with envy. But it lasted only until a quarter past, at which time she shared a jam tart with me and lamented the fact that her hair will never hold a curl so well as mine. Ah, vanity—one is hounded by it relentlessly when one has so little to be vain about.

  Yesterday we sat in the hayloft and watched Major Sherringham’s hired harvest hands at work.

  Briefly I lusted.

  That is when I thought of the Wrong Man again. But even I do not suffer the Maiden’s Palsy as often as Lucy, who will confess—when pressed—that she is seized by wicked desires at least twice daily, even with no militia encamped nearby. I suspect this may be due to the fact that she was once a sickly child.
I shall advise her to eat nettle soup. And a quantity of it.

  Catherine peered over the edge of the coverlet. “If you feel the need to write your sins down, would it not be less time-consuming to behave properly in the first place?”

  Ah, it was easy for her to say, thought Justina. Her sister was never tempted by the perfect target of a backside bent over, or a man needing his opinion adjusted. Catherine was angelic goodness itself, never lured into trouble by an unbound curiosity. Even laid flat in bed she managed to be upright.

  “No other young lady in this village feels the need to leap over puddles, Jussy.”

  “That’s their fault. It is a tremendous thrill to be flying through the air.”

  “Sadly one must always come down again, and in your case the landing has a propensity to be sudden, heavy, and lacking in ladylike elegance.”

  While Justina allowed this to be true, she still maintained it was not her fault that anyone else’s petticoats were splashed in the descent. “How was I to know that Mrs. Dockley would come out of her gate at the exact moment I landed in the flooded lane?”

  “Perhaps by considering the possible consequences before you indulge yourself in another of your thrills? No, I suppose that would be too much to ask. I wouldn’t want to spoil the joyous spontaneity for you.” Cathy burrowed again, mole-like, under the covers.

  “Sarcasm is unbecoming, sister dear. It will give you wrinkles and dyspepsia. Possibly also gum boils.”

  The next words were muffled. “For which I shall blame you.”

  The sky remains calm, although according to the rusted weathercock on Dockley’s barn, North is now South. Some say it is a bad omen. I, for one, am glad. It’s time things around here were turned on their head. Perhaps something interesting will happen.

  “Honestly,” Justina muttered, pen scratching furiously across the page, “it’s no surprise to me that Nellie Pickles ran away with some lusty sailors. There is no fun to be had in this village.”

  The sheets churned beside her again and Cathy reemerged. “Nellie didn’t run away with any sailors. Who told you such a terrible thing?”

  “No one tells me anything,” Justina replied gloomily. “I have to imagine it for myself most of the time.”

  “Well, I wish you would not. You spend too much time dwelling on these…unsavory ponderings.”

  “With entertainment so thin upon the ground, is it any wonder?”

  “But—”

  “If people answered my questions, I wouldn’t have to make things up, would I? No one tells me what I want to know.”

  “Because the things you want to know about usually aren’t suitable subjects for young, unmarried ladies. Lusty sailors, indeed!”

  Justina sighed in disgust as a large ink blot dripped from her pen. “Do you not want to know either, Cathy? Have you no curiosity about your wedding night, for instance?” She didn’t have to look at her sister to know she blushed. “I’m sure you have questions about that, just as I do.”

  “I do not think of it,” Cathy replied. “It is not for me to know anything about.”

  “Why? Is the man supposed to do it all? What if he doesn’t know either?”

  “Of course he’ll know. He’s a man.”

  Justina laughed at that. “Saints preserve us! If everything were always left up to men, where would we be? If men can do it all without us, why are we here? I shall tell you, sister. Women exist to put right all the wrongs men do and to keep them from making a complete pig’s ear of the world.”

  Cathy groaned. “Oh, do finish and put out the candle, Jussy. You’ve wasted an inch of wax tonight at least.”

  “Very well, but first you must admit Nellie Pickles left Hawcombe Prior to become the plaything of a shipload of sailors. ’Tis all there is to it.”

  “That is the fate you decided for her, is it?”

  “I am resolved upon it.”

  Nellie Pickles was once a scullery maid up at Midwitch Manor, the grandest house in the village, until she disappeared one day, never to be seen again and with no explanation left behind. Three years later, folk still talked about the incident in hushed tones, everyone pretending they knew more about it, and more about Nellie, than they possibly could, considering she was a mute, unable even to write her own name.

  “If she did not run off with the navy, there is one other option I will allow.” Justina waited for her sister to ask, but upon hearing only a weary sigh, she continued, “Old Phineas Hawke did away with her. There, is that not better? Murder, I suppose, would be preferable to scandalous ruin at the hands of a half dozen sailors.”

  “Jussy!”

  She snorted. “Phineas Hawke was a mean and miserly master to all his servants. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if she’s buried somewhere in the overgrown garden at Midwitch Manor. If he didn’t eat her minced in a pie with his supper one evening.”

  “Did away with her, how?” her sister demanded. And then, much to Justina’s amusement, she added a hasty, “For pity’s sake.” Cathy, of course, would never want to be caught encouraging her younger sister’s wicked imagination.

  “Strangled her, perhaps with her own stockings,” Justina replied, perusing the ceiling and stroking her chin with the end of her quill. “Drowned her in the cider barrel, plucked out her eyeballs with a shoe horn, or threw her down the stairs in a fit of rage.”

  “That frail, grumpy tyrant? I don’t believe he’d have the strength. He was wheeled about in a Bath chair for the past five years at least. May I remind you that Nellie Pickles was a stout, solid girl who could have pulled a plow?”

  Justina shrugged. “Well, it is too late now to make old Hawke confess his wretched crime.” Phineas had been found dead in his bed just a week before. Whatever became of the missing scullery maid, it seemed unlikely the truth would ever be uncovered. Suddenly a new idea came to her. “Perhaps the ghost of Nellie Pickles returned to settle the score with her rotten master.”

  “What nonsense you speak, Jussy. There are no such entities as ghosts. Now, do put out the candle.”

  “Believe there are no spirits of the undead then, sister, if that allows you to sleep comfortably.” Justina got up to put her diary away in the writing box by the window. Her feet were bare, the floor cold, so she raced back to bed and, in the time-honored tradition of evading robbers who might be hiding under it, launched into a flying leap, almost landing on her sister. While Catherine also took precautions every night against the possibility of strange men under the bed—an evil they’d come to envision as a likelihood when they were children—her more sedate method of precaution was to sweep a besom broom beneath it every night before climbing in. For Justina, however, wondering if a hand would flash out to catch her by the ankle as she leapt was part of the pleasure. In all honesty, she was disappointed when it did not.

  But with that lurking, potential menace outsmarted once again, she snuffed the candle, leaving their chamber lit only by a silver harvest moon through the window.

  “Papa said that old Hawke’s corpse had such terror on its face that Mrs. Birch, who found him, had to be revived with several glasses of the trifle sherry,” she muttered. “Now what, may I ask, would be the cause of that? When living, Phineas Hawke never had any expression on his face other than bitter resentment. In fact, as I told him once when he accused me—falsely—of trespassing in his neglected orchard, I did not think he had the required muscles in his sagging face to portray any other emotion.” Justina tugged briskly on her side of the coverlet. “Mark me, Cathy, he was taken to his day of judgment by none other than his innocent victim, poor Nellie Pickles, and in extremis, the old bugger’s countenance was finally moved to show something other than anger.”

  Her sister was quiet, staring into the shadows of their room, twisting the end of her braid around her fingers.

  Justina gave a long, satisfied yawn and settled into her
pillow. “Nellie Pickles might be dead and gone, but her spirit remains in that house, wandering the halls. I thought I saw her pale, pudding face peering forlornly from a window only yesterday when I passed the place. Yet the gates were locked, and no one was seen going in or out since they took the old man’s shriveled carcass to the bone yard.”

  “Nellie is not dead at all. You made the entire thing up. Not five minutes ago you said she ran away with some sailors.”

  “Alas, you did not like that possibility,” Justina replied gravely. “Murder is quite obviously the only other solution, or someone would have word of her by now.” She wriggled her shoulders further under the covers. “The more I think of it, the more certain I am that Nellie was murdered at Midwitch Manor. It is unlikely she ran away. The poor, mute girl never got up much speed and had the wit of a gate post. But one must not speak ill of the dead.”

  “Ouch! Your toes are like ice blocks!”

  “Not nearly as frozen cold as poor Nellie’s feet. Wandering up and down the corridors of her murderer’s lair.”

  “Stop it! That wretched imagination of yours, Jussy, is nothing but trouble.”

  But apparently it caused other folk far more trouble than it had ever caused her. Justina knew her elder sister was now wide awake, listening to every creak in the house, while she prepared to sink into her own deep, untroubled sleep. With her diary of wickedness complete for another day’s entry, she could rest easily. It was always good to get things off one’s chest. She urged Catherine to do the same, but instead her sister bottled things up and kept more worries to herself than they had full pickling jars stored on the larder shelf. Then those anxieties and fears kept the silly girl awake all night.

  Oh well, thought Justina, in her opinion, the less beauty sleep her elder sister got, the better. Catherine was already too pretty for her own good. It could only end in tragedy for a country doctor’s daughter with very little dowry.

  “It cannot be so dreadful, I think,” said Cathy suddenly, her voice wavering a little, “to tolerate the physical needs of one’s husband. It cannot be, or there would not be so many babes in the world.”