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

  “Because if you did, it belongs to me, remember?”

  “Of course,” she muttered, quickly looking away.

  “We’ve all been invited to join the Sherringhams for an evening of entertainment,” Miles Forester blurted, like a boy suddenly bored with the adults’ conversation. “I do hope we’ll see you there on Thursday next, ladies. And your sister, Miss Penny. She will attend, I hope.”

  She nodded. “I expect so. Rebecca is a good friend of ours.”

  “So is the captain, I understand.”

  “Yes.”

  Justina thought she heard Wainwright exhale a low huff of disdain. One of his specialties.

  “Well, good-bye. I see you won’t need us here again, so we’ll take our leave. Come, Lucy.” She grabbed her friend’s hand and headed for the gate, not waiting to be reprimanded further for her antics that day. One of her specialties.

  As they walked back to the village Lucy’s dour mood soon became evident enough to break through Justina’s daydreams.

  “What’s the matter with you?” she demanded, noting Lucy’s heavy footsteps splashing through puddles with unusual disregard for the state of her petticoat.

  “Oh, nothing! What do I matter?”

  “Lucy Bridges, explain yourself.”

  The other girl stomped onward. “I don’t exist when you’re there. He only has eyes for you.”

  “Who? What?”

  “You know very well who. And you don’t even want him. It’s such a dreadful waste.”

  Had it been so obvious? She didn’t know what to think of it all. The shredded chrysanthemums, the pacing, the odd visit. And now the smile.

  “Everyone has secrets except me,” Lucy protested. “If I wasn’t here none of you would even…”

  They had suddenly spied Captain Sherringham climbing a stile some distance ahead. Justina slowed down at once, not wanting to meet him or be seen. Her head and heart were too full just then, and she was in no mood for him that afternoon; he would look for her to be breezy and joking as usual, but she simply could not. When she held Lucy’s arm to keep her from running after him the girl complained again.

  “What now? You are in an odd mood, Jussy.”

  “Me? Not nearly as odd as you.”

  As they waited behind a tree, they saw the captain was not alone. He turned back and offered his hand to help someone else over the stile behind him.

  Diana.

  They watched the two people converse. The captain raised Diana’s hand to his lips, but she snatched it back and shouted something. The wind whipped her words away down the lane and Justina could not identify them, but she saw the anger on both their faces. Diana raised her skirt out of the mud and swept by him. The captain caught the edge of her mantle and tugged her back. Justina held her breath, expecting the couple to kiss. But they stood thus for a long time, their lips close but unmoving. Finally, Diana pulled her mantle out of his grip and ran off, leaving him to walk slowly after her, his head bent, his usually sunny demeanor thoroughly vanquished.

  “I cannot think why the captain is so fascinated with Diana Makepiece,” said Lucy suddenly. “She has never shown him the slightest affection.”

  “Perhaps that’s exactly why.”

  “Well, the sooner she is married and gone to Manderson the better for them both. He can stop thinking of her. Nathaniel needs someone to cheer him up. He has had a dreadful fit of the blue devils lately.”

  But Justina was not looking forward to any one of their little group leaving the village. And it was a group that included more now than it once did. As for Captain Sherringham, she rather thought he was capable of cheering himself up. He wasn’t the sort to be down for long.

  “It’s all so very frustrating,” Lucy moaned.

  “What is?”

  “These men pining after women who don’t want them.”

  “I’m sure no one pines for me.”

  Lucy shot her a frown. “I, for one, am quite sick of being overlooked.”

  But Justina was no longer listening to her friend, for she was too busy thinking of Wainwright’s hands on her drawers and then of a certain unexpected smile.

  Twenty-six

  “What a curious creature, so…unkempt and surly,” Mary remarked later that afternoon when Miles raised the subject of Miss Justina Penny’s unusual exit once again. “I cannot think any situation was such an emergency that she should react in that fashion, scaling the wall like a circus acrobat.”

  “I thought her exertions had put a very pretty bloom in her cheeks,” Miles replied, deliberately lingering over the last word, just to tease Darius and horrify the ladies. He got away with it, of course, because a man with his charm could never offend. Not even in Mary’s case.

  “Miles Forester, you are a rascal of the worst order. I’m sure you are the reason for that creature being here. They flock to you like bees to lavender.”

  “Indeed, no, Lady Waltham. She is entirely your stepbrother’s responsibility. Unlikely as it may seem. He is her favorite.”

  Darius said nothing. His hands tightened into fists on his knees. When Miles was in the mood to tease and torment it was often wisest to ignore it. Not to feed the beast.

  Miss Augusta Milford exclaimed that she thought Justina a very odd name and was it, by chance, foreign? “Of course, one hesitates to make assumptions of that nature, but I should not be at all surprised to find she has foreign blood.”

  “It would explain her wild behavior,” Mary replied with a sneer, “and her appallingly continental manners.” She paused, examining the ruffles of taffeta at her wrist. “I shall say only this, if she is foreign, be very wary of trying her temper. They scratch and spit like feral cats. She reminded me very much of an insolent, slovenly chambermaid I once had the misfortune to encounter in Bournemouth.”

  “Bournemouth?” Darius scratched his head slowly. “That is hardly the continent, Mary.”

  “No. That is my point. One does not expect such surly behavior from domestic servants in this country. Nor from country doctors’ daughters who show their drawers in public.”

  With a sigh he stared at the fire.

  “I shall certainly keep my jewelry locked away while I am here,” she added crossly, “if strange young women take to climbing walls as a matter of course.”

  “She is not a jewel thief, Mary.”

  “But what was she doing in your bedchamber? I cannot think what to make of that! What have you been up to with that girl?”

  Rather than answer his stepsister, Darius got up and swiftly left the drawing room. He went directly upstairs, taking the steps three at a time, to find out for himself what she’d done in there. For it suddenly occurred to him that she might have found the rest of those letters, the last remaining pieces of a game he’d given up.

  ***

  By nightfall everyone in the village knew that Midwitch Manor had welcomed more guests. Justina—practicing her newfound discretion—said nothing to anybody, but Lucy could not help herself.

  The equine Lady Waltham and her stout friend were seen at church the following day, seated in Wainwright’s pew, looking down on the general populace, talking only to the gentlemen of Midwitch and sparing the rector a few moments of their condescending notice.

  On Monday the two ladies graced Hawcombe Prior’s main street to visit the haberdasher. Where they supposedly found nothing good enough to buy. That was sufficient cause for the majority of the Book Club Belles to decide they ought to be snubbed.

  Within eight and forty hours, even worse news had reached the Penny household. Martha Mawby reported that Miss Augusta Milford followed Mr. Wainwright about his house like a concerned cow hovering over a young calf. According to Martha, Miss Milford liked to advise the gentleman on everything from his dress to his choice of food at breakfast. She had even, so Martha grumbled, snatched one
of his waistcoats away to sew a loose button on for the gentleman herself.

  It must be concluded that Miss Milford was serious indeed, for seizing anything out of Martha’s ham-hock fists was no task to be undertaken lightly.

  “This is a terrible development,” their mother cried, dashing into their bedchamber again while they sat together, drying their washed hair by the fire. “That woman has come to steal him away! It cannot be borne. I’m sure I shan’t say a ‘good morn’ to her again when I see her in our lane.”

  Cathy was calm in the face of their mother’s distress. “Mr. Wainwright was never really mine, Mama. I do not believe he has any interest in me. We must be civil to the ladies.”

  “Of course he was in love with you! Why else would our invitation to dine be the only one in the village he accepted?”

  “But Mama, you must recall, he did not dance with me at the harvest ball. His only partner then was Jussy. Yet you do not assume he has an interest in her.”

  “Jussy?” their mother exclaimed, flinging her hands in the air. “Why on earth would he look twice at her?”

  “I don’t know, Mama,” replied Cathy softly. “Should we ask Jussy?”

  Justina glared at her sister. She’d begun to suspect that Cathy’s cold was altogether too convenient in its coming and its going. There was also the matter of a certain message Darius Wainwright had claimed to send via his friend. A message that was either waylaid or ignored. “I don’t know what you mean,” she snapped. “I have done nothing. I resent the supposition that one silly dance means anything. I’m sure it is not my fault.”

  Their mother was equally adamant. “You are the one for him, Catherine, and he must be made to see it. I do not think you have made the effort you might. Now that plump, opinionated goose waddles into view and tries to take him away from you.”

  “Opinionated goose?”

  She clasped her hands beneath her bosom. “I was outside beating the rugs this morning when Miss Augusta Milford”—her head twitched with every syllable of that name—“passed by and thought herself called upon to tell me they were too worn to be saved and that beating them thus hard would wear the threads away entirely. Then she proceeded to point out the faded patches and suggested I did not turn my rugs enough to prevent the sunlight damaging the pattern! As if I have not managed my rugs for more years than she’s worn a corset. And those rugs have sentimental value. My dear brother Justin brought them back from India! It is nothing to do with what one can and cannot afford.” The border of her lace cap twitched madly. “Well, I gave her a very sharp look, I can tell you. And I beat those rugs twice as hard.”

  Justina laughed. “That showed her, Mama!”

  “Indeed it did. Sticking her nose into my rugs.”

  “She was lucky you did not turn the beater on her. Next time you should.”

  “So I shall, Jussy! Wretched meddler. Stealing our Mr. Wainwright away!”

  “Mama,” Catherine gently intervened, “that lady is surely entitled to accompany her friend into the country without causing speculation about her motives. Perhaps she is simply the motherly type who concerns herself with the welfare of other people. There is nothing bad about that.”

  Justina was still laughing. “Miss Milford’s concern, as far as I can see, is only for one particular person—herself—and anyone else can go hang themselves.” While watching from their window that morning, she’d seen the lady skirting puddles in the lane yet making no effort to warn her noble companion of the same lurking danger. Justina had also witnessed Miss Milford sneak back alone to the village shop, where she purchased the last length of muslin in a pattern and color she had loudly insulted as “garish and common” when dissuading Lady Waltham from choosing it the day before.

  “For pity’s sake, sit closer to that fire,” their mother urged Cathy. “You are just recovered from a bad cold, and we cannot have you laid low again now! Not with that impertinent baggage sniffing about the place with her expert opinions on all and sundry.”

  At the next meeting of the Book Club Belles, Rebecca agreed that her impression of Miss Milford was of a pushy, demanding, pretentious woman who, although she followed Lady Waltham about like a lapdog, was by no means wilting in her shadow, but sharing the light of entitlement that shone upon that lady to boost her own circumstances. “There is a slyness about her that I do not like.”

  Diana had caught Lady Waltham sneering at her worn boots in church and heard her whinny to her friend that the services of a cobbler must not be easily found in the area. That remark, and the subsequent snickering of both ladies within her hearing, had almost reduced Diana to tears. “I do not think Lady Waltham very stylish at all. For a viscountess I would expect something quite different. Her companion certainly lacks refinement, which is also a sign of the lady’s bad judgment in friends.”

  And Lucy added that Miss Milford had very poor taste in hats.

  The Book Club Belles, therefore, were united in their dislike of the newcomers. Only Cathy still held out some hope for the two ladies, but she was never loud enough to overcome the doubts voiced by the others.

  Augusta Milford’s forceful commandeering of Darius Wainwright and his waistcoat buttons was soon known and disapproved of throughout the village. She had a propensity, it seemed, to rub people the wrong way with curious faux pas in her speech, and she was indeed a meddler, poking her nose into anywhere she desired and not caring overmuch if others were affronted. Cathy insisted Miss Milford was merely unaware of the impression she gave. Justina was inclined to believe the lady intentionally rude.

  But Justina had other things to do and little time to ponder the behavior of those newcomers. As the Book Society ladies read Mr. Darcy’s long letter of explanation and confession to Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, Justina also had something enlightening to peruse—the last bundle of letters she’d found in the old dresser drawer in Wainwright’s room.

  The first, which she assumed to be the earliest, was tinged brown with age again, the ink faded.

  My dearest angel,

  From the first time we met, I was in your power. You have consumed me ever since. My waking moments are filled with thoughts of you and my dreams with visions of the same. I have not the courage to speak of my feelings and so I write them down.

  In her hands, it seemed, she held more love letters of Phineas Hawke to his mystery lady. There were no addresses penned upon the fold so he must never have sent them. Curious. Poor man. Her heart opened to him more with every word she read. Every word he had not been able to say out loud to his sweetheart.

  Forgive me my awkwardness. I am not a man familiar with the ways of soft words and courtship. I have been told, in fact, not to attempt it.

  Yet here I am, throwing my friend’s warnings and my own doubts to the four winds, on a letter you may never read. At least, when you do, I will not be there to see your face or hear the derision in your laughter.

  But he gained confidence with his writing, for he found words to fill several more sheets of vellum over a passage of time.

  Justina greedily guarded the pile of love letters, hiding them with the others she’d found earlier in her shawl inside a hatbox, taking them out to reread whenever she could be alone. She did not want to share her discovery with anybody.

  Sometimes the letters were solemn, pensive. At other times they were lighthearted, self-effacing, even whimsical.

  I saw you today

  it was but brief

  it served to give me

  some relief.

  How strange it was that the bent old miser Phineas Hawke, who once chased her from his blossoming trees with the threat of setting his dogs upon her, should be capable of writing these sweet words to his lady love.

  If I had you, mine to please,

  I would bring you pleasant ease.

  Never would you lift a finger,

&nb
sp; except to make the butterflies linger.

  She thought of the butterflies from her father’s collection and how she once purloined them for decoration in her hair.

  How Wainwright had looked at her that night.

  And so would you return to me

  all the joy there is to be.

  I do not smile so much, ’tis true.

  How can I, when I have not you?

  With a heavy sigh, she folded the letter and put it away with its companions in the hatbox. She really must stop thinking about Wainwright the Wrong, but everything seemed to lead her thoughts back to him these days, even these letters written by his great-uncle.

  Nothing of any good could come from regret, she thought sadly. Soon he would leave and never return to their “mud rut” of a village. As her father had said, he was too grand for them.

  Oh, but…that dreadful Milford woman.

  Miss Augusta Milford, who could not spare a moment to warn a friend about a puddle, would never do for Darius Wainwright. He was accident prone and needed someone to point out things like puddles to him, or at least to fall in them herself first, to apprise him of the danger.

  Sighing heavily, Justina rested her chin on one upturned palm and watched raindrops slide down the window panes, racing one another. Sometimes they ran parallel for a while and then merged. Like lovers who could not stay apart.

  I do not smile so much, ’tis true.

  How can I, when I have not you?

  Justina decided she must know more about the young Phineas. It became a very important mission to track down the woman to whom he’d written his letters and poetry. Although she remembered him as a mean-tempered, bitter old man, she supposed there must have been some reason why he got that way. People were not born thus. After all, one rarely saw a mean-tempered, bitter baby—unless someone had taken its teething ring away.

  If she could uncover the truth of what happened to his love affair, perhaps she would know why he died alone and let his house fall into sad disrepair. It might be too late to help Phineas, but there was another who could benefit from a lesson about the past.