Bad Luck Bride

Lady Kay Matheson is truly the bad luck bride. Her first try at matrimony was a disastrous failed elopement with handsome rake Devlin Sharpe. Soon after, Devlin departed for Africa without even saying goodbye, leaving Kay unwed and her heart in a million pieces. Her second attempt with the boy next door was the ideal match everyone wanted, until rumors of her previous elopement hit the papers and her perfect groom dumped her due to the scandal. Now Kay is forced to face life as a ruined and disgraced spinster.

No one is more surprised than Kay when American millionaire Wilson Rycroft offers her a third chance at matrimony. Just when she’s convinced her luck’s changed and she finally will make it down the aisle, the scoundrel who took her virtue and broke her heart many years ago returns, with a young and beautiful fiancée of his own.

Kay isn’t the only one nursing grudges—Devlin has a few of his own. Like Kay, he just wants to forget the past and make a new life. But when circumstances force them together, reigniting the passions they felt long ago, it culminates in a searing kiss that threatens to ruin their perspective wedding plans and their futures, and make Kay the bad-luck bride all over again.

     The Savoy Hotel, London, 1898

     She shouldn’t. She really, really shouldn’t.

     Lady Kay Matheson stared at the breakfast plate before her, her hand still holding the silver cover she’d just pulled from the tray, and she felt the paralyzing agony of sudden temptation. And who could blame her?

     Before her were all the elements of a traditional English breakfast— eggs, bacon, baked beans, fried potatoes, and mushrooms sautéed in lovely, lovely butter. No fried bread was on the tray, but there was a basket of French croissants, along with a pot of jam. Raspberry jam— her favorite. Naturally.

     Kay’s empty stomach rumbled.

     This was not, she reminded herself sternly as she set aside her plate cover, her breakfast. She slid her gaze across the table to the other tray, then to the one being carried away by her mother’s maid, Foster.

     Either of those, Kay knew, could contain her own breakfast, which consisted of a single piece of melba toast, a few paper- thin shavings of cold ham, and a boiled egg. She opened her mouth to call Foster back, then stopped.

     Just one slice of bacon, she thought, as the maid disappeared into Mama’s bedroom. Josephine wouldn’t mind.

     Unable to resist, she moved to take a piece from the plate in front of her, but then a vision of white satin, lace, and tulle sprang into her mind, and the first notes of Mendelssohn’s wedding march sounded in her imagination. She snatched her free hand back and sat on it, reminding herself of the fabulous wedding gown Lucile was making for her and how it would never look right if it had to be let out at the seams. Desperate to marshal her willpower, she took a deep breath, but she was immediately overwhelmed by the delicious scent of bacon.

     Willpower went to the wall, and Kay capitulated, sliding her free hand from beneath her hip just as the door of her bedroom opened. Quick as lightning, she snatched the bacon off the plate and shoved it into mouth, then slammed the plate cover back over her sister’s breakfast.

     “I smell breakfast,” Josephine said as she crossed the sitting room to the table where Kay sat.

     “Morning,” Kay mumbled rather indistinctly as her sister crossed the sitting room and approached the table.

     “Morning,” Josephine responded, sliding into the opposite chair, her hand lifting the cover off the tray in front of her, exposing Kay’s meager bits of food. “What the— ”

     Josephine paused, looking up, her emerald- green eyes widening a little, her exquisitely shaped lips curving at the corners. “Stealing my breakfast, are you?” she said teasingly.

     Kay’s answering glance was apologetic even as she savored the heavenly taste in her mouth. “Only a bit,” she said once she had chewed and swallowed the stolen treat. “Sorry, but I just couldn’t help myself.”

     “Perfectly understandable.” Josephine gestured to the full plate in front of her sister. “Have the rest, do.”

     Kay sighed. “I can’t. I felt my corset growing tighter with every moment I spent looking at those fried potatoes of yours.”

     “You’ve been banting for months. You’ve been so terribly strict with yourself, in fact, I’m surprised you haven’t fainted dead away at some point. It won’t hurt to indulge yourself just this once.”

     “Won’t it, though?” Kay gave her sister a rueful glance across the table. “If that dress of mine shows the tiniest bulge, the gossip rags will shred me into spills. And giving them any excuse to employ their poisonous pens is something I will never do again. So…”

     She paused, shoving the tray toward her sister before she could change her mind. “Take it,” she urged, making a face. “And give me my bread and water.”

     The trays were exchanged, but before either of them could pick up a fork, their mother’s voice entered the conversation.

     “It’s a miracle, my darlings!” Magdelene cried, coming toward them in a negligee of pink silk, a newspaper in her hand and a pair of gold- rimmed pince- nez perched on the tip of her nose. “An absolute miracle!”

     Always flamboyant, Magdelene paused beside Kay’s chair, lifted the paper higher, and began to read. “’Lady Kay Matheson, as we all know, was one of London’s least impressive debutantes the year she came out— ”

     “What are you reading, Mama?” Kay cut in, though given the words her mother had just recited, she feared she already knew.

     “Talk of the Town.”

     “Delilah Dawlish’s column?” Her fears confirmed, Kay made a sound of exasperation and disdain. “Awful woman. Why do you read her malicious rubbish? We already know she hates me— ”

     “Ah, but she doesn’t,” Magdelene said triumphantly, waving the paper in the air. “Not anymore.”

     Kay gave a snort of disbelief. “Since when?”

     Magdelene merely smiled, held up the paper and continued, “ ‘Because of her scandalous attempt at elopement fourteen years ago, we thought reckless, foolish Lady Kay was forever doomed to shame, disgrace, and spinsterhood. But— ’ ”

     “That’s what you deem a miracle, Mama?”

     “Listen, won’t you?”

     “Must I?”

     Magdelene ignored that wistful plea, gave a theatrical little cough, and went on, “ ‘But things may at last be changing for poor Lady Kay. She was spied Tuesday last in the showroom of Lucile. And what, you ask, was she doing? Selecting bolts of satin. White satin, my dears! Can it be that society’s longest- suffering jilted bride has finally found some much- deserved happiness?’ ”

     “I admit, that’s an agreeable change from her usual dreck,” Kay said, working to keep her voice light. “I wonder how long it will last.”

     “Permanently, I hope,” Magdelene replied, tapping the newspaper with one decisive finger. “It’s taken years, but all the other society pages have been slowly coming around, especially once dear Wilson began showing his interest in you.”

     To her mother, Kay’s fiancé was always “dear Wilson.” The American millionaire was saving her family from the dismal fate of genteel poverty, after all. Even if he proved to be the greatest villain since Napoleon, Mama would probably still call him a dear.

     “Delilah Dawlish was the last one holding out on you,” Magdelene said, as if Kay needed that particular reminder, “but it appears that even she is finally ready to forgive and forget your great mistake.”

     Kay’s disastrous attempted elopement with a stone- broke fortune hunter had been a mistake, no doubt, but given the humiliating way she’d been forced to atone for it, she felt her mother’s hopes about Delilah Dawlish were somewhat premature. Granted, she was finally going to be washed clean by becoming respectably married, but she’d seen her name dragged through the mud of the gutter press too many times in the past to think anything was going to change before she got to the altar.

     “You’re so optimistic, Mama,” she said wryly. “Fourteen years ago, if you recall, I was the plain, freckled, chubby girl no man would ever look twice at. Is it any great surprise that I eloped with a fortune hunter? I thought,” she added before her mother could reply, “after I’d come to my senses, that we’d be able to hush it all up. But no. Just as I was on the verge of marrying Cousin Giles, the elopement scandal came out, Giles called things off, and I was ruined, shamed, destined— so Talk of the Town and all the other gossip rags reminded everyone daily— for permanent spinsterhood, forever spurned by the bachelors of good society.”

     As she paraphrased bits from the stories that had been written about her over the years, Kay could not quite hide her past pain nor her contempt for both the ravenous journalists and the despicable scoundrel who had given them such rich meat to feed on at her expense. “And we can all thank Devlin Sharpe— ”

     She stopped, her utterance of his name like a hand around her throat, choking her.

     Magdelene sighed, giving her daughter a censorious glance over the rims of her pince- nez. “We do not mention That Horrible Man,” she reminded, giving the devil his due in obvious capital letters. “Not ever.”

     “Quite right, Mama,” Kay replied, shoving thoughts of Devlin out of her mind. “But I can’t imagine what on earth has brought about this transformation of me into the— how did the Dawlish woman put it?— the ‘longest- suffering jilted bride’ deserving of happiness.”

     “Does it matter? You cannot deny that Mrs. Dawlish speaking in your favor is a splendid turn of events. For both of you,” she added with a glance at her younger daughter.

     “Very splendid,” Kay agreed. “Especially with Jo coming out this season. But I’d still dearly love to know what has inspired this change of heart about me.”

     “Dear Wilson,” Magdelene murmured with a sigh. “Such a wonderful man. Handsome, successful, and so, so generous.”

     It was the final part of that assessment that gave Kay a hint as to what her mother meant. “Are you saying Wilson bribed that sordid scandal sheet to write something nice about me?”

     Even as she spoke, Kay knew such an action would not have been out of character for her fiancé. He did tend to think money could solve any problem. That, she supposed, was a luxury of the very rich.

     “No, no, darling. That’s not how it came about. Not at all.”

     Kay found her mother’s choice of words anything but reassuring. “How then?” she asked, growing uneasy.

     Magdelene gave a deprecating shrug. “Wilson and I have been corresponding regularly during his visit home to New York, and in one of my letters, I happened to mention that Sir Adair Sloane owns Talk of the Town. And,” she added, ignoring her eldest daughter’s aggravated sigh, “I explained that it is London’s most influential society paper, that it has been very cruel to you in the past, and that it still seems inclined to harp on some . . . ahem . . . unfounded rumors about your past. Upon his return yesterday from New York, he must have called on Sir Adair and resolved the problem.”

     “Unfounded rumors?” Kay echoed and laughed. “I know we’ve had to deny everything and pretend to society that the elopement never happened, but there is no point in whitewashing things to Wilson. When he proposed to me in January, I told him that the rumors about me were true.”

     “You did?” Magdelene stared at her in dismay. “But why? That is the same mistake you made with Giles, and look how that turned out. Why would you do such a thing a second time?”

     “So I should accept a man’s proposal under false pretenses?” Kay shook her head. “No. Don’t worry, Mama. Wilson, unlike Giles, didn’t care a jot. Like nearly everyone else, he knew our denials were all a hum just to save face.”

     Her mother sighed. “Really, my dear. There is such a thing as too much honesty.”

     “Since we’ve all been living a futile lie ever since the rumors began circulating eleven years ago, I found being honest a refreshing change.”

     “Oh, did you? You might have stopped to consider the risks. What if Wilson had done what Giles did and cried off? What would happen to Josephine’s chances of a good marriage? And what about you and me? Where would we live? We’d end up scraping by on Giles’s charity, in a horrid little cottage somewhere. Did you think of that?”

     “I’m never allowed to stop thinking about it, with you constantly reminding me,” she countered, and immediately regretted it as her mother’s face took on the appearance of a wounded kitten. “But how,” she said, deciding it was best to divert the conversation, “did telling Wilson about Sir Adair’s dirty little paper impel that rag to have a change of heart about me?”

     Thankfully, her ploy succeeded. “Ah, well,” Magdelene said, “I happened to mention to dear Wilson that Sir Adair’s favorite charity is a most worthy one. Widows and orphans. What, I asked him, could be more worthy of a contribution than that?”

     “You’re so public spirited, Mama. I suppose I should be grateful that you didn’t actually come right out and ask Wilson to bribe Sir Adair.”

     Magdelene had the temerity to look affronted. “I would never be so crude as that.”

     “Nor, I suppose, would you have to be. Wilson didn’t become one of the wealthiest men in America by being slow on the uptake. Your hints were enough, I daresay. Tell me,” she continued, almost afraid to ask, “did you and Wilson do this with all the papers, or just this one?”

     “It wasn’t necessary with the others.” Magdelene set down the paper and patted it with once hand. “As I said, the other papers have already softened their stance toward you quite a bit. And I’d have expected you to be relieved that the Talk of the Town is finally saying nice things about you.”

     “I am, I am,” she replied at once, holding up one hand in a show of capitulation. She might not care much for her mother’s methods, but if they had the happy result of Delilah Dawlish no longer shredding her into spills, Kay supposed she could live with it, especially given how much it would help Jo make a successful debut this season. “I know you and Wilson were both acting for my benefit, so go on.” She gestured to the paper in her mother’s hand. “Finish reading me the result of your joint efforts.”

     Magdelene returned her attention to the page and continued, “ ‘Lady Kay, we have observed, is looking quite fashionably slim nowadays. No doubt that is what inspires her to look at white satin.’ ”

     “A moment of madness,” Kay muttered, took a sip of her unsugared tea, and grimaced.

     “It wasn’t,” Josephine assured her at once. “It will make a lovely wedding dress. You’ll be the most beautiful bride in London.”

     Kay knew that was sisterly loyalty talking, but nonetheless, she felt a fierce wave of affection for her young sibling rising up inside her. “You’re a darling, but I wonder if I ought to have picked the chiffon instead? I know it’s not as fashionable as the satin, but— ”

     “Only the plump girls wear chiffon,” her mother cut in, “and you are most certainly not one of those. At least not anymore.”

     “Thank you, Mama.”

     The dryness of her reply was lost on her mother. “Besides, Wilson prefers the satin. I asked him. Don’t swear, dear,” she added as Kay muttered an oath. “He told me quite clearly that he wanted to be kept informed of all the wedding plans while he was away.”

     “What?” Kay cried, tossing down her napkin, now truly exasperated by her mother’s interfering ways. “Oh, Mother, really!”

     “Isn’t the dress supposed to be a surprise for the groom?” Jo asked.

     Magdelene ignored them both and resumed reading. “ ‘We thought that Lady Kay might have caught Mr. Wilson Rycroft’s eye during his first visit to England last summer. But when he returned to America for the holidays and no engagement was announced, we could only conclude we were mistaken. But he is back in London now, and giving us cause to wonder anew if a certain red- haired spinster with a checkered past is what has pulled him back to our shores. We are certain it is no coincidence that well before the season, he and Lady Kay are both residing in the same London hotel. No engagement has been formally announced yet, but the bolts of satin at Lucile rather give the game away, don’t you— ’ ”

     Magdelene broke off as Foster placed a tray of food in front of her. “What’s this?” she asked, removing the pince- nez from her nose to study the half- empty plate with surprise and a hint of distaste.

     “It’s half past ten, my lady. I thought you might wish to finish your breakfast.”

     “No, no.” Magdelene, still quite slim at the age of fifty- five, waved a hand over the tray in an uninterested way that her famished eldest daughter could only envy. “I’m quite finished. And I don’t have time, in any case, if it is half past ten. I don’t want us to miss our first appointment of the day.”

     “What appointment?” Kay asked as Foster took the offending tray away. “We aren’t returning to Lucile until this afternoon, I thought.”

     “I’m not talking about Lucile. I scheduled a meeting for us with the Savoy florist at eleven to discuss the wedding flowers.”

     “But why? We’re not having the wedding banquet here, unfortunately. Not now.”

        “Who says so?”

     Kay stared at her mother in surprise. “Delia said so. The only room the Savoy has that’s large enough for us is the Pinafore Room, and because of that muddle between her and Lord Calderon in January, our reservation got pushed aside for another wedding.”

     “It was quite unforgivable of Calderon to pull the Pinafore out from under us for someone else! That is why, after we meet the florist, I am paying a call on Mrs. Carte to discuss the situation with her.”

     “I realize Mrs. Carte is now in charge of the Savoy, but I don’t see what good talking to her will do.”

     “Delia had mentioned before she left for Paris that she had another plan in the works that might allow us to still have the wedding banquet here.”

     “But that was before the Savoy fired her, along with most of the other members of staff. Lord Calderon resigned, leaving Mrs. Carte in charge. And since that woman hates Delia, it’s clear any plan she had for us is surely out the window. And now that she’s had to go to Paris— ”

     Her mother interrupted with a sniff. “It was very inconsiderate of Delia to go off like that and abandon us.”

     Mama was nothing if not self- absorbed. “Delia’s had her own troubles, Mama. She did get fired, after all. Still, I am sure she hasn’t abandoned us. She said she was only staying a fortnight, so she’ll be back any day. And she did give us a list of possibilities to investigate in her absence. Not that it’s done us much good,” Kay added with a sigh. “We’ve looked everywhere, but there doesn’t seem to be a single ballroom or banquet hall anywhere else for the seventh of June that’s large enough to accommodate us.”

     “Just so. We have no choice but to discern if Delia’s plan— whatever it was— can still be managed. Failing that, we might see if the party that stole the Pinafore out from under us can be persuaded to change their reservation.”

     “Never say die,” Kay said solemnly. “Perhaps like Sir Adair, they have a favorite charity Wilson can donate to.”

     “My thoughts, exactly,” Magdelene said with complacence.

     “Mother!” Kay cried in vexation. “I was joking.”

     “I wasn’t.”

     Kay groaned, and for a moment she wondered if a second attempt at elopement might be in order. But she shoved that mad idea aside. This wedding had to be right out in the open, for everyone who mattered to see. For Jo’s sake as well as her own, it had to be the biggest, most opulent social event of the season, the event everyone spent the rest of the summer talking about, not because it was a scandal, but because it wasn’t.

     That was why, despite Wilson’s desire not to formally announce the engagement before he returned, they had informed all their relations of the news. Happily relieved that their most disgraced relation was about to be washed clean, all of them had agreed to attend, hence the need for such a large banquet room. Making her wedding a social success was why she’d chosen fashionable satin for her dress when she preferred chiffon, why she starved herself with minuscule breakfasts, and why she was willing to accept the embarrassing efforts of her mother and Wilson to bribe the society papers— it would all be worth it in the end. Once she walked down the aisle in honorable fashion in front of all of society, her past would be well and truly behind her at last.

     “Either way,” she said, returning to the vital point, “I doubt even Wilson’s money can be counted on to persuade the party reserving the Pinafore Room to vacate it.”

     “I think we are obliged to explore all possibilities. We simply must find a room that will seat everyone.” That was an inarguable point.

     “So,” her mother went on in the wake of her silence, “I asked Mrs. Carte if we might call on her to discuss the matter. She suggested half past eleven, but now, I wonder . . .”

     Magdelene paused, considering. “I wonder if that gives us enough time. We shall have barely a quarter of an hour to see the florist before we have to dash off. Perhaps you could see about the flowers while I pay that call on Mrs. Carte. Orchids would be lovely, darling, by the way.”

     “Very lovely,” she agreed, her gaze straying to her desk where the unpaid bills were piling up with alarming rapidity. “And very expensive.”

     “But we don’t have to worry about expenses, darling. Not anymore.”

     Yes, there’s nothing like marrying a millionaire to solve all a girl’s problems.

     That rather cynical reply hovered on Kay’s lips, but as she looked up, noting how her engagement to one of America’s richest tycoons had smoothed away the lines of worry that had been etched into her mother’s face since her father’s death a year ago, any impulse Kay had to say those words vanished.

     Giles, being the new earl, had wanted— quite rightly— to move into the house. He had halfheartedly offered to let them continue living there with him and his wife, but that would have been terribly awkward, to say the least, and they had declined. For the past year, they had been drifting all over England, from hotel to hotel, trying to make their minuscule quarterly allowance from the impoverished estate last by ducking their bills and evading their creditors. Had Wilson not come along, had he not proposed, they’d eventually have had to go abroad.

     But Wilson had come along, and when he proposed, Kay’s relief had been so great, she’d nearly fainted for the first time in her life. The creditors could all be paid, Mama would be secure, and Josephine would be able to have her first London season at last.

     London, of course, was expensive, but the Savoy had always been known to have fairly liberal terms of repayment, at least as far as members of the aristocracy were concerned.

     “Yes,” her mother said, breaking into her thoughts, “orchids would be best, I think.”

     She wanted gardenias, but for a June wedding, gardenias would be almost as much as orchids. On the other hand, did it really matter? After all, the dresses were from Lucile, the Savoy was costing the earth, and the pricing estimates for Jo’s debutante ball had made her gasp in shock, but perhaps her mother was right to not be worried. After all, Wilson was one of the richest men in America, and once her engagement to him was formally announced, the bank would be happy to give her a loan based on her expectations. And once she and Wilson married, the marriage settlement he’d agreed to pay would cover everything. They’d only be in trouble if the wedding didn’t come off.

     “Not orchids,” she told her mother. “I prefer gardenias.”

     “Gardenias? No, no, dear. I know they are your favorite, but they are white, and your dress is white. No, orchids will better. Pale green ones with your coloring.”

     “I’ll have both, then,” she said, making the compromise. “But either way, I don’t have to pick them today. I’d rather go with you to see Mrs. Carte,” she added, hoping there might be a way to prevail upon the wife of the Savoy’s founder for the Pinafore Room without attempts at bribery. “After all, the room is more important. We have plenty of time to choose the flowers.”

     “But we don’t, Kay. That’s just it. June seventh is only ten weeks away, dear. The season will be full- on by then, with flowers of all sorts in short supply. And with this being Josephine’s first season, things will be a whirlwind for us as well. Best to have all the wedding plans made well in advance. I will call on Mrs. Carte, and you will see the florist. Your sister can accompany you.”

     Kay capitulated, knowing her mother was right. “Very well. When Jo and I have finished, we’ll come fetch you, have lunch at the Criterion, and go on to Lucile from there.”

     A frown marred Magdelene’s smooth forehead. “I’m not sure that’s wise. I don’t want anyone to see you two on your own and think you’re gallivanting around London unchaperoned.”

     “A valid point, Mama, but a five-minute ride in a growler with my sister is hardly gallivanting. And it’s silly for you to come back here when Mrs. Carte’s office is right on the way to the Criterion.  Don’t fuss.”

     “Oh, very well, but you’d best stop dawdling and eat your breakfast,” Magdelene said as she set down the paper and rose from the table. “You’ve only half an hour, and you still have to dress.”

     Kay turned toward her sister as their mother started toward her room with Foster on her heels. “You don’t mind helping me with the flowers this morning, do you, Jo?” she asked, casting a covetous glance at Josephine’s croissants as she picked up her napkin.

     “Don’t call your sister Jo,” Magdelene admonished over her shoulder without so much as a backward glance. “And, Kay, I’d suggest that you not sponge off your sister’s plate,” she added, making Kay wonder— not for the first time— if her parent had eyes in the back of her head as well as the front. “Satin is so unforgiving. What will people think if the dress doesn’t fit?”

     Despite this echoing of what Kay already knew, she couldn’t help a wistful sigh as she picked up a slice of melba toast. “I wish I didn’t have to care so much what people think.”

     “It’s not for much longer,” Josephine said. “Only until June. Once you’re married, you can eat whatever you like and wear whatever you like and go where you like, and no one will care, not even Delilah Dawlish.”

     Jo was right, of course, but as Kay took a bite of hard, dry toast, she grimaced. It was like eating sawdust. June, she decided, could not come fast enough.