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

  Moved by her sister’s faltering attempt to comfort them both, Justina patted her hand in the moonlight. Poor Cathy could have no idea, for she had not seen the thing Justina once, by terrible mischance, encountered in the Wrong Man’s bed. Nor would she believe it. That too would be dismissed as an object conjured up out of Jussy’s ragbag of lurid ideas.

  But even her imagination, she thought with a sleepy sigh, was not wicked enough to invent him.

  Wainwright.

  And there, she had thought of him again. There was no escape, it seemed, from that particular misdeed, because it was the one event she had not dared confess to her diary.

  Two

  Mayfair, London

  With a tight sigh, Darius checked his fob watch again. Ah, he knew it! One hour and twenty minutes into his Wednesday, and it was all arse about face.

  Although he seldom allowed his day to vary from its well-regimented structure, already he faced a slight curve in his path. It was not a bump, or an obstacle, per se, but any deviation from the usual was unwelcome to a man who kept his busy life in order by maintaining clockwork efficiency. For example, dressing and his ablutions required no more than fifteen minutes—thanks, in part, to an unvarying taste in clothing that meant he never had to make a choice. Breakfast was then allotted thirty minutes, no more and no less. Therefore, at precisely forty-five minutes after rising from his bed, he expected to depart his house. Every day. Except Sundays.

  But today, long after he should have digested the last few mouthfuls of a plump sausage and completed his perusal of The Times, he had not even opened the paper. It sat beside his plate, neatly folded and ironed to keep the ink from soiling his fingers. And there it would probably remain, because his mind was diverted by the contents of a letter just arrived from Buckinghamshire.

  While it was by no means unusual to receive correspondence, this was an extraordinary letter because it contained a message that was neither connected to his business nor asking for money. In fact, on this occasion, he was to be the beneficiary. Someone actually meant to give him something rather than take.

  It seemed so unlikely a circumstance that his naturally cautious and skeptical nature made him bring the letter to breakfast where it might be studied at greater length and mulled over with the assistance of coffee.

  “…and so it is my duty to inform you, Mr. Darius Wainwright, that as the sole beneficiary of your great-uncle’s will, Midwitch Manor—house, grounds, and contents—are now yours to dispose of as you wish…”

  He had not seen Great-uncle Phineas Hawke for thirteen years and quite expected to be forgotten by the old man, but, as the letter pointed out, Darius was the last surviving male with Hawke blood in his veins. Since his elder brother was missing and presumed dead, there was no one else to whom the old house might be left.

  It was a surprise to hear the place still stood. As far as Darius recalled, it was somewhat shaky upon its foundations, just like old Phineas himself.

  As his gaze reexamined the words upon the paper, his astonishment remained undiminished, but the lone footman in attendance could have no clue of the turmoil beneath that calm, stern surface. The Wainwright countenance, so Darius had been told, was one that rarely betrayed his thoughts.

  “Contempt and hauteur you do very well, Wainwright,” Miles Forester, his friend from their Oxford days, would say with a chuckle. “But anything else must demand too much effort from your stern features.”

  What did he care? Darius had far too many other things to do than worry about whether or not he might offend somebody with his face.

  Damn it all! Once again his mind had wandered from its proper course. He set down the letter and reexamined his fob watch to confirm that he was now so far behind in his routine it was unprecedented.

  May as well finish his sausages. Perhaps he should pretend it was Sunday. In which case he would allow himself an extra triangle of toast.

  Darius picked up his knife and took a small, precise portion of butter, which he spread thinly over his toast. The rasp of his blade across the golden brown surface was the only noise in the room, apart from the solid, steady, comforting clunk of the longcase clock. Until his stepmother entered and peace was shattered.

  “Gracious, you gave me a dreadful shock! What are you doing still here on a Wednesday?”

  “If it helps, you may pretend I am not here,” he muttered. “I’ll gladly do the same.”

  “Where is Sarah?” she inquired, glancing at his niece’s empty chair. “She rises late today.”

  He continued reading. “I believe she paints outdoors this morning.”

  “Outdoors? But it is the end of summer. She will catch a chill.”

  “Unfortunately, some people simply will not be advised against the risk.” Attentive to the closing of windows and the exclusion of drafts, Darius had never suffered a cold in his life. But the trend for chancing one’s health whilst in pursuit of nature’s “delights” appeared to have gathered his niece up in its clutches.

  Often he wondered what his elder brother would make of Sarah had he lived to see her grow up, for she had very little of her father’s character. Lucius “Lucky” Wainwright had seldom risen from his bed before noon or gone back to it by midnight. It was safe to say he’d never opened his eyes to find himself in a sunlit garden on purpose. Far more likely he’d stumbled there the night before, passed out, and woke with a curious snail sitting on the back of his hand and his face planted in the grass. He would never have enjoyed a dawn chorus of birdsong without shortly thereafter throwing a boot at the tree from whence it came.

  Perhaps Sarah’s mother had partaken of outdoor rambles, although that seemed doubtful, knowing the sort of nocturnal creatures with whom Lucius once consorted. The less known about the poor girl’s mother the better, for she had wanted nothing to do with the child and gladly turned her over to the Wainwrights, who could better provide for her.

  But whatever drew Sarah outside, thought Darius, it kept her from under his feet and out of his stepmother’s critical view, so perhaps it was a good thing at that hour of the morning. At least she had the capacity to entertain herself and was not all noise and giggling like most females of her age.

  His stepmother, however, complained the girl was withdrawn and peevish. “You’re raising her to be as unsociable as yourself,” she snapped.

  “Sarah is fifteen. She is not ‘out’ and therefore not meant to be sociable.”

  “Whatever your future plans for the girl, she must learn how to hold a conversation and be gracious. She is too turned in on herself. Of course, she leads a solitary life in this house with no one her own age and no cousins, since you flatly refuse to marry and produce any.”

  But Darius saw nothing amiss in his raising of Sarah or in the way she turned out. He measured his success in the fact that he could sit quietly in her company for half an hour and feel neither the stressful need to fill an awkward silence, nor the beginnings of a tense headache. She seldom made any sign of disagreeing with his opinions and, in fact, had said very recently, “I look at you, Uncle Darius, and know exactly what I want, and don’t want, in a husband.” He was pleased to think he had set her a fine example upon which to base future judgments.

  “I do hope you have not forgot,” his stepmother exclaimed, the moment she was seated with her coffee cup, “that my daughter arrives on Saturday with her little boys.”

  Ah, if only it was possible to forget. Darius could almost hear his stepsister Mary’s strident voice already, echoing around the walls to find him wherever he hid, and the vibration of her heavy steps obscuring the comforting chime of his clocks. Her need for constant evening society never failed to cause discord in his quiet life.

  “It will be splendid to have good company again to cheer me,” his stepmother continued. “You are certainly no company at all.”

  He stabbed another wedge of sausage on his
fork and pondered his letter.

  “Darius! It is rude to read at the table when you have company.”

  “But the contents are of some urgency, madam. They require my immediate attention.”

  “What could possibly be more important than gracious manners? ’Tis no wonder you have no wife, with your grim disregard for etiquette.”

  “Yes. That must be what has held me back all these years.” He read on. At the other end of his table, she fussed in her chair, making the legs creak so that he was obliged to read the same sentence of his letter thrice.

  “Of course, Mary will beg us to return to Dorset with her for Christmas. How merry we shall all be there together.”

  “You can be merry in Dorset, certainly. I’ll be merry in Town.”

  “Oh, but you’ll never guess the news I just heard!” Apparently unable to get this gossip out quickly enough, she waved her hand and her knife, all her large round parts bouncing urgently. Darius calmly watched this performance over the top edge of his letter, wondering if she choked on a crust. “Cousin George is engaged again,” she managed finally. “Let’s hope this one sticks.”

  With a curt exhale, he returned to his letter.

  She swallowed a hasty and audible mouthful of coffee and then, as the cup clinked in the saucer, resumed shrilly, “Only the daughter of a baronet, but one must make the best of it.” She paused. “It’s a pity you have such an aversion to marriage.”

  There it was, he mused. Hint number two. There were usually, on average, five mentions of marriage and his lack of a wife made during any encounter with his stepmother. The desire to avoid these collisions with her, or at least to reduce their duration, was one of the reasons why he kept his day in such tight order.

  Darius let her prattle on while his gaze wandered further over the letter in his hand.

  “If you might apprise us of your intentions in regard to the property, we would be pleased, as Mr. Hawke’s long-entrusted solicitors, to undertake the sale or lease, as required…”

  “You really ought to take a leaf out of my cousin George’s book and stop avoiding your duty to the next generation.”

  When he glanced up, his stepmother was battling with a butter stain on her gown, tapping uselessly at it with a napkin. “I do not have the pleasure of understanding you, madam.”

  “Marriage, of course! You should have found a wife by now, but you make no effort. I’ve never seen such a grim face as the one you put on when you deign to attend a ball. And you won’t even agree to come to Bath with us next year.”

  Bath. He shuddered inwardly at any mention of that place. The last time he was there, a strange young woman had conned her way into his lodgings one evening and leapt onto his bed, almost causing him a heart attack. She claimed a case of mistaken identity, but the very next day he encountered the same curious creature trying to burn down the Upper Rooms, a tragedy averted only by his quick thinking and brave actions. A perfectly good waistcoat was ruined. It was all far too much of a coincidence for Darius to believe these encounters accidental. Fortune hunters would go to any lengths, apparently.

  In his opinion, this incident was an example of everything amiss with Bath and with the younger generation. No, he would not go there again, not for ten thousand pounds and a life supply of port and Stilton cheese. He preferred going to his bed at night without fearing an unguarded young hussy might leap out on him. In naught but her stockings and pink silk ribbon garters.

  He thrust his fork at the last piece of sausage and missed, hitting the plate with empty prongs. The resulting scrape across china made his teeth hurt and apprised him of the fact that he’d been grinding his jaw rather tightly.

  “Even you might have found a wife in Bath had you bothered to look while we were there last year.” His stepmother boiled and bubbled away like a large, round, overheated witch’s cauldron.

  He put down his fork. “I rather think, madam, that I have enough females to manage as it is. The world is already gifted with you.” A heavy sigh oozed out of him. “Surely one Mrs. Wainwright is enough.”

  “Nonsense. You must have a wife. I promised your father, on his deathbed, that I would make you marry. He was most distressed at the idea of your being left alone.”

  “I was unaware there might be any chance of that,” Darius muttered.

  “Mary will sort you out when she comes,” she threatened sternly. “My daughter won’t stand for your nonsense. She will get you a bride.”

  Odd, he mused, how nonsense meant different things to different people. His friend Miles would say, “But what a good thing it is that we are not all alike. Variety keeps life interesting, don’t you think?”

  Darius could hardly agree less. He would much prefer it if everyone was like him, quiet and sensible.

  His stepmother continued the restless creaking about in her chair, shouting at the footman, “You there! My coffee is cold. What am I supposed to do? Breathe on it?”

  After carefully patting his lips with a napkin, Darius cleared his throat to announce, “I’m afraid you must tend single-handedly to the needs of your daughter and her delightfully unrestricted offspring when they arrive, madam. I leave at once for Buckinghamshire.”

  “Buckinghamshire?” she cried, as if it were John o’ Groats or even farther away. “What on earth for?”

  “I have come into some property there.” Although he didn’t like leaving his business for long periods, there were advantages in this instance. With any luck, by the time he returned, the ghastly Mary would have removed her gaggle of children and her mother safely off to Dorset for the Yuletide season.

  “But my daughter brings a guest especially to entertain you!”

  The contents of his stomach curdled. He might have known. Mary was forever pushing her friends at him as prospective wives. His neck began to itch.

  Swiftly he folded his letter. “Alas, I am called away from Town. Pity, but there it is.”

  “I do not believe you for a moment! What am I to say to my daughter? She will be offended. I quite despair of you. Really, it is too bad, Darius, that you will not stay. Buckinghamshire, indeed! As if you ever go into the country if it can be avoided. Mary puts herself to all the trouble of bringing a young lady to amuse you and yet you cannot even stay to greet her.”

  “Madam, you may assure your daughter that since I have no time to be bored, I have no need of amusements. She may thus be relieved of putting herself to any future trouble on my behalf.”

  “You are the most obstructive, contrary man I ever knew.” She enlarged upon her disappointment in Darius for another ten minutes, unabated, until he finally rose from the chair and made his exit. He left her with no one to shout at except the footman, who could smile benignly at the disgruntled lady, due to the foresight, Darius suspected, of having pressed two small lumps of cheese into his ears.

  It was a method he and his brother had often employed for the same purpose.

  Three

  Hawcombe Prior, two days later

  “I think we should go back, Jussy. This was another of your very bad ideas, I fear.” Seated in the bow, the young lady who uttered this caution kept one gloved hand gripping the side of the rowboat and one comforting a snorting pink snout laid in her lap.

  At the stern end, heaving on the oars with all her might, Justina Penny, lifelong adventurer—but, alas, novice mariner—exhaled her words in a stream of gusty puffs, like an overworked chimney. “Do be silent, Lucy, before you wake the entire village!”

  Moonlit ripples licked up over the rattling oar hooks as the small vessel pitched and yawed from the unsteady weight of its cargo and the violent struggles of its operator, who, despite the fact that plans very rarely succeeded for her, still refused to be anything other than indignant and surprised the moment they went awry.

  “I believe the boat leaks,” Lucy protested now, in a more hushed voice. “I
am becoming very damp at the hem.”

  Although Justina also felt the slow gathering of water around her toes, seeping in through a worn hole in her nankeen boots, she was not about to let that little problem stop them. “You do want to save your pig, don’t you?” she demanded.

  “Of course. But sometimes I feel your methods are more theatrical than they are effective.”

  “Do you not think a little discomfort must be suffered for the cause? After all,” she reminded her friend, “this was your idea.”

  “Not exactly,” whimpered Lucy, gathering the hem of her fine new cloak out of the puddles slowly forming in the rowboat. “I said I wished Sir Mortimer Grubbins could be saved, since he was my favorite and I hand-reared him from a runt. I didn’t suggest we appropriate papa’s boat and row down the stream, in near darkness, to steal him back from Farmer Rooke before he goes to the…”—she lowered her voice even further and covered the pig’s ears with her hands—“axe. This scheme was all yours. As usual.”

  Already annoyed with her friend for attending their secret, late-night mission in that bright red cloak—of all things—Justina’s temperature rose another notch. The weed-laden oar splashed down again and she hauled it through the water, moving the boat onward with a shuddering lurch that was nothing like the smooth, speedy escape she’d envisioned. “I don’t care for your tone, Lucy. You begin to sound like a wretched ingrate who cannot bear a trifle inconvenience even to save her beloved pet from slaughter.”

  “I am merely saying there must be other ways—” An owl hoot startled them both and they jumped several inches on their wooden seats.

  Justina replied in a hasty whisper, “We must work at night to avoid being seen, and over water we cannot be tracked by hounds.”

  “But this does seem a rather extreme measure. Surely, when I get the pig home again, it’s not likely I can hide him anywhere. This level of secrecy is perhaps excessive.”

  “Miss Lucy Bridges, your adventurous spirit is considerably lacking lately, ever since you turned eighteen, got that fancy new scarlet cloak for your birthday, and began showing more bosom at every opportunity.”