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

  “I won’t stay long,” his friend added, assuming a quick and unconvincing sulk, “if I’m in the way.”

  Darius sighed. “You’re not in the way.”

  “I could always stay in that charming little tavern down in the village. The landlord—delightful chap by the name of Bridges—tells me he has a spare room above.”

  So he’d already been to the Pig in a Poke; that would account for the strong odor of cider emitted with the first gales of laughter. Miles never wasted any time and quickly made himself at home wherever he went. He had a knack for fitting in, whereas Darius was the eternal square peg in the round hole.

  “Apparently he also has a spare daughter,” his friend added. “Took the opportunity of mentioning her several times.”

  “Yes. There is a lot of that around here.”

  “And I met a robust fellow who eagerly gave me a lecture on bacon and tried to sell me some there and then. An excellent salesman, I might add. I was tempted to take him up on it, until I remembered I don’t care for bacon.”

  “There is a lot of that here too.”

  Miles scratched his chin, his gaze hastily and somewhat slyly taking in the contents of the study. “Well, I’d be content to stay at the tavern, if you haven’t the room. I don’t want to put you out.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course you can stay here.”

  Miles beamed anew, the veneer of a huff speedily forgotten. “Splendid. I noticed the woods and parkland behind the house. There must be excellent shooting this time of year.”

  “So I understand.”

  The unexpected guest nodded his sun-gilded head, dropped backward into a chair, and put his heels up on the desk. “Now what’s this I hear about a harvest dance tomorrow?”

  “Bridges told you about that too, did he?”

  “Sounds like merry fun. We must attend.”

  “Certainly we must not.”

  “But I insist. I must get to know all the lovely young ladies. Can’t have you keeping them all to yourself, Wainwright. It is my duty—yours too, as a gentleman—to see they don’t go without partners.”

  “I’ll leave that task to your capable hands. You can dance with them all.”

  “Even the one that has kept you away from Town these last two weeks?”

  Darius strode to the sash window and wrenched it open for some air. As much as he distrusted fresh air, sometimes large gulps of it were the only cure for a feverish headache like the one he suddenly suffered. “Well,” Miles demanded, “it is a woman, isn’t it? I knew it must be.”

  He took a few deep breaths and then turned to face his friend again. “Ever the optimist and the romantic. I can assure you the reason for my extended stay has nothing to do with a female.” Perhaps it was a good thing Miles had come, he thought suddenly. His friend’s presence was a timely reminder of real life and matters about which he should be thinking.

  Miles waited, brow quirked, his palms pressed together as if in prayer, their fingertips propping up his chin.

  “My great-uncle left his affairs in some disarray. I stayed to put them in order.”

  Still Miles was silent, but his pale blue eyes gleamed slyly. Darius spun around to the window again and tugged harder. The warped frame was stuck fast and as he sweated over it, he hissed out a terse question to his friend over his shoulder. “Have you ever known me distracted by a woman, Forester?”

  After a short pause his friend replied softly, “Only once. More than ten years ago.”

  Darius finally left the window, resolved to tackle the problem later. Turning, he rested against the ledge and glowered at Miles.

  “I began to despair of seeing you ever so pleasantly distracted again, Wainwright. That’s why I had to come and witness the event with my own eyes.”

  Shaking his head, Darius looked away at the wall, his hands curled around the window ledge behind him.

  “I only hope this young lady has more wits about her than the first,” added Miles.

  “I hate to disappoint you, but if that’s why you came, you made a wasted journey into the country. There is no young lady, and I cannot imagine why you think there is. Can’t a man come and go around the country without his friends assuming he’s lost his mind?”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “If you came here to tease me, you’ll just have to find other diversions, won’t you?”

  “You know me, Wainwright—I’ll find my entertainment while I’m here.”

  “Good. Just don’t expect me to make any for you.”

  ***

  The Book Club Belles had reached a very dramatic chapter in Pride and Prejudice, and today was Justina’s turn to read aloud.

  “I have never desired your good opinion, and you have certainly bestowed it most unwillingly…”

  Her friends were hushed, listening in awe as Elizabeth Bennet berated Mr. Darcy with every gusty word and rejected his marriage proposal.

  “With so evident a desire of offending and insulting me, you chose to tell me that you liked me against your will, against your reason, and even against your character?”

  As soon as the scene was complete, Catherine exclaimed, “Poor Mr. Darcy. I cannot help feeling he has been wronged. Elizabeth Bennet is too ready to believe all the bad she hears of him.”

  Justina gazed at her sister in disbelief. “Poor Mr. Darcy? The man is a terrible prig and deserves every severe word.”

  “I cannot help feeling he has been wronged,” Cathy insisted gently. “Elizabeth Bennet is very sure of herself. While confidence is an admirable quality, an excess of it can be unbecoming in a young lady.”

  “The clue is in the title,” said Rebecca, reaching over to pour tea, “Pride and Prejudice. But which is the victim of which?” She handed the first cup and saucer to Lucy, who had to be called away from the window where she’d been standing for some time.

  With the arrival of Mr. Wainwright in the village, Lucy had lost much of her previous interest in the fiction, just as she grew tired of adventures and mischief. Justina suspected she only came to the Book Society meetings now to keep up with the gossip and show off whatever new trinket she had lately acquired.

  “The mail coach is late again,” Lucy exclaimed impatiently, taking the tea cup she was offered without turning away from the view outside.

  “You are usually the one on tenterhooks for the post,” Rebecca said to Justina with a smile. “Have you given up waiting for your mysterious letter?”

  She shrugged. “A watched pot never boils, as they say. Perhaps if I do not expect it, the wretched thing will come at last.”

  “And you will not tell us what it is?”

  “No!” She had decided not to inform her friends of the manuscript she’d sent away to a publisher. Even Catherine knew nothing about her ambitions and would probably think her vain. Changing the subject to direct their attention away from her, she added hastily, “Lucy hopes for sight of your brother, Becky. That is the reason she waits for the coach.”

  Of all the Book Society ladies, only Diana Makepiece showed no excitement at the prospect of seeing Captain Sherringham again.

  “I suppose you told your brother of my engagement in your letters,” she said as she stirred her tea, sitting very prim and straight in her chair.

  Rebecca replied breezily, “Of course. Such important news must be shared. Nate insists upon knowing all that happens in his absence.”

  Justina looked at Diana, waiting for more, but nothing came. Her spring green eyes were downcast, her black lashes leaving a shadow on her ivory cheeks. Diana was a classic beauty, but her countenance did not have the natural warmth and kindness of Cathy’s—as Mrs. Penny would be quick to point out.

  Diana and her widowed mother lived carefully on a slender budget, but they did so with their heads high and never let anyone show pity. Always aware that
she would be expected to marry well and shrewdly, Diana must have experienced great relief when she received a proposal from William Shaw, but although she spoke of her coup repeatedly, almost as if to reassure herself of her success, there was never a vast deal of emotion apparent in her face. This much-needed betrothal had not melted her icy exterior.

  When Diana finally took her spoon out, the tea in her cup spun in a deep vortex. Cathy asked her if William Shaw was coming from Manderson to accompany her to the harvest dance. Diana replied that he would try, but his grandmama was sick and he may not be able to leave her side.

  “Mustn’t risk his inheritance,” Justina remarked dourly. “I would tell him to remain with Old Moneybags rather than come to the dance.”

  Her sister gave her a quick frown.

  “What now? I am only being practical. Who cares about the silly dance anyway?”

  Behind them all Lucy suddenly jumped, cup clattering in her saucer. “Oh, there is Mr. Wainwright riding by. With another handsome gentleman.”

  At once Rebecca joined her by the window and beckoned to Cathy. Justina, restraining her curiosity with difficulty, kept to her chair. Diana, who seemed lost in thought while staring into her teacup, did the same.

  “I wonder who it can be?” Rebecca muttered. “He certainly has a sunny smile.”

  “Oh, he looks familiar,” said Cathy, her voice soft and puzzled. “Do come and look, Jussy. I believe we have seen that gentleman before.”

  Now Justina had an excuse to look. Sighing heftily, she put her cup aside and went to the window. Her gaze instantly, and against her wishes or intentions, caressed Wainwright from head to toe. Spotless and devilishly handsome as ever.

  The fair-haired gentleman riding beside him had an open, friendly smile.

  “Never seen him before in my life.” Justina returned to her chair. She knew it was the gentleman who had danced with her sister in Bath—the one who was obliged to abandon Cathy, most humiliatingly, in the midst of a set because his friend would not stay with a stained waistcoat. It was a surprise to her that Cathy had not recognized Wainwright before now, but her sister had understandably paid more attention to her pleasant partner than to his disagreeable friend. Now she saw them together and it must have nudged her memory.

  But Justina was not about to help her sister remember an incident, and a stained waistcoat, that she was doing all in her power to forget.

  Nineteen

  The evening of the harvest dance was upon them at last. Weeks of frenzied preparation came to this. The ladies of the Book Society gathered together, admiring one another’s gowns and hair. Lucy, as promised, sported her mother’s pearls, and this caused her to walk about with her head lifted and to utilize a rather foolish, high-pitched, exaggerated laugh that shook her head and made her earrings jostle to catch the light. All this, however, could be overlooked when she greeted Justina with giddy flattery, so surprised and unrehearsed that it had to be genuine.

  “How lovely you look, Jussy. I almost didn’t recognize you!”

  “It is nothing,” she replied with a nonchalant wave of her hand.

  “But your hair looks so pretty tonight, and there is a glow about your face. Oh, I do wish my hair curled naturally like yours, but mine will hang like wet willow branches by the end of the first dance.”

  Lucy had a knack for saying these things. It was artless and usually left the recipient feeling guilty for being irritated with the girl only moments before.

  The harvest ball was held in Dockley’s barn, the largest covered dancing space in the village. As long as the rain held off, the old building served as an adequate function room. As the name inferred, it had once belonged to the property of old Farmer Dockley, but when he died without sons to tend his farm, his widow sold the land to Major Sherringham. The major was a merry fellow who declared there was nothing he liked to see more than young people enjoying themselves, so he had donated the broken down barn for the general use of the villagers. Of course, his benevolent gesture also absolved him of any responsibility or expense when it came to repairing the place.

  Despite a leaky roof and leaning walls, the village ladies made the best of it, always gathering together to decorate the barn for annual dances and festivals, as well as the occasional wedding party.

  Tonight, bowers of willow and autumn leaves cascaded from the rafters and benches were set around the walls for seating, but Justina always preferred the hay bales. It was not a harvest dance, in her opinion, without a hay bale to sit upon, and those who chose the benches were missing out, not truly getting into the spirit of things.

  Diana arrived with her mother, but no William Shaw. His grandmama’s health, it seemed, had taken yet another turn for the worse when she learned of his plans to leave her for the evening.

  “It is no matter,” said Diana, reminding Justina of herself a few moments earlier when she’d hurriedly dismissed Lucy’s admiration. “I would not have come this evening myself, if Mama did not want to go out. She insisted.”

  Despite the fact that she was not wearing her best gown, Diana still looked elegant, her fine features and naturally graceful, well-balanced figure not requiring any artifice. She wore a simple green ribbon in her hair and it matched her eyes almost perfectly. Looking around the barn, she fidgeted with her long white gloves, which—like the roses on Justina’s slippers—were really too grand for the harvest dance, and asked whether Rebecca had yet arrived.

  “No,” Justina replied, “nor has Captain Sherringham.”

  Diana shrugged. “Oh…” She caught her breath and looked down at her gloved fingers. “I do not expect he will come.”

  “But he promised his sister he would be here in time,” said Lucy.

  “That rake is forever making promises and forgetting them.” Gloves adjusted finally to her satisfaction, Diana looked around at the other villagers, letting her gaze skim the barn with casual carelessness. “I do not hold my breath to see him again.”

  “Well, of course,” said Justina, carefully keeping a solemn face. “After all, you are an engaged woman.”

  “Precisely.”

  The musicians seated at the end of the barn had just begun to play. Justina looked over at the benches and saw her mother poking and prodding at poor Cathy’s hair and dress. Her sister tolerated it with remarkable patience, as always. “One of these days I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Cathy doesn’t simply snap and take a wood axe to the pickle jars in the pantry,” she muttered. “No one could possibly hold all that inside and not suffer for it.”

  Diana replied, “It is surprising how much a person can keep inside. Especially when they are bound by duty.”

  Before anyone might react to that statement, a whispered exclamation swept the barn, gathering volume as it traveled. Every face turned. There in the open doorway stood the tall, breathtaking figure of Darius Wainwright.

  Justina’s heart forgot to beat. Now, quite suddenly, she was torn between wishing she’d stayed home and being glad for the silly roses on her slippers.

  ***

  “What a jolly scene this is,” Miles exclaimed, beaming, rubbing his hands together. “And so many lovely ladies. I hardly know where to begin.”

  Darius had been forced out of the house by his friend’s enthusiasm to dance. Miles Forester, when determined, was like a strong storm at sea. It buffeted him about until he relented, weary and clinging to his mast. He took in his own sails and let the blustery gale lead his ship until it had worn itself out.

  “If you don’t care to attend, I’ll go by myself,” Miles had threatened. “I suppose the good innkeeper Bridges will introduce me to the ladies of the village, if you cannot.”

  Well, Darius could not let his friend go alone into the fray, could he?

  As soon as they entered the place, every eye turned to observe them standing there. Like two stupid bookends, thought Darius, the tips of
his ears feeling cold and exposed.

  “What splendid fun,” Miles burbled away at his side. “I’ve never been to a dance in a barn before.”

  “Really? I am surprised.”

  “Oh, do take that dour expression off your face for once, man, and enjoy yourself.”

  “Enjoy myself?”

  “Yes, you know, stop worrying. Forget business for a few hours.”

  “I hope the weather remains dry this evening as I understand the roof leaks.”

  “All the better.” Miles chuckled. “I shall see the ladies running about in wet clothes, in need of me to shelter them.”

  Dr. Penny and his wife had spotted the two gentlemen and were already urging their eldest daughter forward, but several other couples did the same with their single daughters too. They were about to be converged upon from all sides.

  “Welcome to hell,” Darius muttered.

  Miles quickly focused his sights on Miss Penny as her mother dragged her through the crowd of rowdy dancers. “Aha! Here comes a very pretty girl, indeed. There in the blue. Fancy you keeping her all to yourself, Wainwright! Introduce me at once, you blackguard!”

  “I doubt you’ll need my help with an introduction. They don’t stand on ceremony around here.”

  Darius left his eager friend to it. Moving away from the dancers, he collected a glass of punch and found a seat on a corner bench, away from the general commotion, where he might observe from a safe distance.

  ***

  Justina watched her sister dancing and felt the usual forlorn mixture of pride and envy. Two more sins to note in her diary tonight, alas. There would, she had no doubt, be more by the end of the evening. As much as she knew Cathy was a most deserving object of that beauty—for she was just as sweet on the inside—it was very hard sometimes that all the good looks should have gone to one daughter, when they might have been shared in smaller measures between two. But perhaps she was destined for other things in life. Justina liked to think that was God’s reason. If He had one, other than a capricious delight in giving out challenges and setbacks to good people.