Chapter 15

CHAPTER15

“Ijust do not understand it,” Rachel complained, for what felt like the fifth time that morning, to Bridget.

Sat before her vanity table, Bridget kept holding up different pairs of earrings to her ears, trying to decide what ones to put on for the day. Strangely, it wasn’t something she had concerned herself so much with before, but the distinct way that Seth had nipped her ear, playfully, had her insides squirming with delight. She rather wanted to put on the best earrings she could possibly find.

“What do you not understand?” Emily sighed from where she was sitting in the window seat, exhausted and yawning widely. Clearly, Maya had kept her up for a good part of the night again. She relaxed back and laid her head on the window. “You are perplexing us both, Rachel.”

“How can you and Lord Ramsbury suddenly be courting in such a manner?” Rachel appeared behind Bridget in the mirror, staring at her keenly. “I saw the pair of you yesterday. It was as if you were inseparable.”

Bridget tried to keep the smile off her face. She too had noticed it, though she was no longer certain if Seth had been doing it to keep up the act in front of the Earl, or if he had genuinely wanted to spend time with her.

They had started in the library, talking about Galileo and all the other great stargazers. In the afternoon, they had partaken in parlor games with the other guests, though when it came to cards, she and Seth had always been on the same team. Come late evening, they had returned to the library, though Rachel had insisted on accompanying them as their chaperone. They had looked through the telescope together, marveling at the stars, as Bridget had internally wished her sister would leave.

Is it an act? It certainly doesn’t feel like an act.

“Are you two going to be married within the month, at this rate?”

“Rachel!” Bridget said sharply, dropping one of the earrings on her vanity table.

“I have to ask the question.” Rachel shrugged and folded her arms. “I need to be certain that Lord Ramsbury will marry you after his stained reputation.”

“Yes, yes, stained reputations,” Emily called tiredly from the window seat. “Impossible to remove those stains, is it not?”

“We are not talking about your husband,” Rachel said dismissively. “We are talking about Lord Ramsbury.”

“Actually, I was talking about your own, Sister.” Emily sat up off the cushions just as Rachel flinched.

Keeping her head down, Bridget collected the earrings and put them in her ears, no longer so fussy about which ones she wished to wear.

“Come off it.” Emily laughed. “Your reputation was hardly pristine when you married Daniel, was it?”

“I have told you a hundred times and more.” Rachel sighed with clear exasperation. “That was an error. I would never have been so… so…”

Bridget and Emily glanced at one another, knowing the truth. Rachel put too much stock in propriety to ever truly transgress boundaries, yet Rachel’s dress had been torn one evening outside a ball, and Daniel had been the one to find her. When others had come upon them, it had been assumed that Rachel and Daniel had been locked together in some sort of a lovers’ tryst.

“All I am saying is that a reputation is not the summary of a man,” Emily pointed out.

“Exactly,” Bridget agreed with a full heart. “Seth is kind and attentive, and he’s interested in the things I like. He shows me respect.”

“Seth? We are calling him Seth now?” Rachel spluttered, moving to walk around Bridget and catch her eye.

“I am,” Bridget said in a low tone, remembering how Seth had asked her to call him that, in the midst of one of their embraces. At that moment, she rather thought she would have done anything he had asked of her.

“This is mad,” Rachel muttered to herself, shaking her head as she walked away.

“I do wish she’d calm down,” Bridget whispered in Emily’s direction.

“Mama Rachel does not know what the word calm means.”

“I can hear you both,” Rachel hissed, turning to face them once again.

“Good. Perhaps it will help matters.” Emily stood and matched her stance with folded arms.

“Emily, please, speak some sense for a minute or two. You said yourself last night that you were rather startled by the speed with which their courtship progressed, that they seemed so…” Rachel waved a hand in the air, clearly struggling for the right word once more.

“Addicted to one another,” Emily finished for her.

“Yes.”

Bridget looked up, staring into the mirror before her once more. Was that what she was? Was she addicted to Seth? Somehow locked in a kind of infatuation? No, certainly not, for she was sensible of his faults as well as his virtues. She knew he was enigmatic, not always forthcoming about things she longed to know about him, just as she knew he had a past he would not talk of. What was more, she was sensible of the fact he was not seriously courting her.

His heart can never truly be mine.

Her shoulders slumped as she looked down at her hands. No matter what the reason was, Seth had made it quite plain from the beginning. The only reason he was giving her all of this attention was to make the Earl of Burnington jealous.

“Very well, I shall issue a note of caution,” Emily acquiesced, “though forgive me if I go about this in a manner quite different from yours, Rachel.”

Rachel tutted but said nothing in answer.

Emily flounced in Bridget’s direction and sat down on a stool beside her, leaning on the vanity table, with her chin resting in the palm of her hand. For a minute, she just stared at Bridget, her bright eyes penetrating.

“What?” Bridget said, trying to elicit some words from her.

“Do you love him?”

“Emily, we are merely courting. I think it is a little too soon for that,” Bridget said hurriedly, looking away. She fidgeted with the bracelet she had picked up next from her jewelry box and wrapped it around her wrist, and she could feel her cheeks turning crimson.

“You’re blushing.”

“Because you claim I’m in love.”

“From your reaction, I’d say you are on the path to love, even if you do not realize what it is yet.”

“How is this helping, Em?” Rachel called from across the room.

“You have your methods. Allow me mine.” Emily waved her off and leaned further across the vanity table, capturing Bridget’s attention again. “Is there something we do not know about all of this? Some declaration Seth has made, perhaps? Some oath of fidelity, which is why you’re willing to give the rake a chance?”

Bridget chewed on the inside of her cheek to stop the truth from tumbling out of her mouth. She’d always been considered to be the best-behaved of the three sisters—the quietest, perhaps, yes, but also the most honest. The fact that she was now keeping a secret from them both was gnawing at her as if a rat had locked itself onto her ankle and kept on chewing, determined to get the truth out of her.

“Bridget?” Emily prompted, her eyes narrowing a little.

“There is nothing you do not know.”

Bridget had to work hard to keep her voice level, the guilt overwhelming. As a part of her argued that she should tell everything to her sisters, another part argued against it. After all, they had not always told her everything, and they had what they wanted in life. They have love, families of their own—a happiness that Bridget longed for herself. Was it so wrong to tell a small lie now if it would help her toward this happy future too?

Briefly, an image appeared in her mind of walking down the aisle toward someone. Yet, Lord Burnington wasn’t the man standing at the altar, waiting for her. It was Seth.

Stop it! I am letting my foolish heart run away with me. That is all.

“I like him,” Bridget told Emily. “I like Seth very much, indeed, and I am willing to give him this chance. Surely that matters above anything else—any suspicions either of you may have. I am giving him the benefit of the doubt, so why can’t you?”

“Well, I’m happy to.” Emily leaned back and shrugged as if she was helpless and had done all she could.

“What an impact you had,” Rachel muttered to her.

“Thank you, Sister. I aim to please.” Emily curtsied in a rather flamboyant manner, coaxing a smile from them all.

As Emily and Rachel fell into conversation about their children, Bridget looked away, not only feeling left out but with her thoughts repeatedly turning back to the image of that altar.

She had pictured it all so clearly, with Seth standing in a dark black suit by the altar, that easy, charming smile in place as he waited for her. Would he take her hand as she approached? Would he tuck it in the crook of his arm, his familiar warmth spreading through her body?

Stop it. Seth will never marry me. I know that for certain.

* * *

Try as she might, Bridget could not lift her own mood for the rest of the day. She kept thinking of how that image of Seth at the altar could never come to be.

In her despair, she had started to ignore everyone. Even when Seth had tried to join her in the library once more, she had thought of reasons to avoid him.

Now, as late afternoon dawdled on and the sun dropped beneath the skeletal trees in the distance, Bridget walked around the estate, desperate for an escape from everyone in the house. Light snow had started to fall, the flecks in the air haphazard and wayward, blown in different directions by the lightest of breezes. She pulled up the hood of her pelisse against the bitter wind and tugged at the leather gloves on her wrist, trying to ward off the chill. Yet, it followed her through the estate, rather like her own sadness.

This is madness. I must let go of this. I knew what I was agreeing to.

These thoughts kept whirring through her mind repeatedly. How she had known Seth was just putting on an act for her benefit. How foolish her heart was to feel anything for him at all when he was simply a good actor.

“He seemed like more than a good actor,” Bridget muttered to herself as she turned down a path through the woods that meandered alongside the lake.

Just like the day when she had wandered here beside Seth, the lake was frozen over in patches, looking both glacially beautiful and very dangerous.

She thought of how he had lowered his lips to hers, kissed her, introduced her body to other sensations. When her body had reached that peak and she had closed her eyes, her every sensation bound up in pleasure, she had been convinced he was doing this for some other reason than a simple act.

I was wrong. I need to make my foolish heart believe that.

She heard footsteps in the distance. At first, she thought it was her own imagination. Wiping flecks of snow from her eyes, she looked at the ground, noting it was beginning to settle in places now, with clumps forming around the bases of the trees and along the lake’s edge.

The footsteps grew louder. With hope, she turned around, her heart thudding hard in her chest.

Is it Seth?

Yet, it was not Seth walking toward her. It was Lord Burnington, dressed in a very formal frock coat, indeed, with his overflowing cravat still noticeable in the gap between his top buttons.

“Lady Bridget.” He bowed as he approached her, his handsome face stretching into a smile. “Forgive me for intruding on your peace.”

“Have no fear of that, My Lord.” She forced herself to smile and curtsied too.

Was this not what she had wanted at some point? For Lord Burnington to seek her out of his own accord? Yet, it seemed strange now, to want the company of a man who had laughed at her interest in the stars and had also willfully not taken notice of her for some time.

“You are eager to take a walk too, My Lord?”

“No. I could be without this cold quite happily.” He adjusted the frock coat across his body, casting what appeared to be a weary glance at the falling snow. “Yet, I would brave any such weather to come to you.”

The line sounded as if it had been taken from some romantic play. Confused by it, Bridget said nothing and simply stared at him.

“I apologize, but I had to take this opportunity whilst you were alone. Lord Ramsbury seems stuck to your heel like some pathetic lapdog, so I had to take this chance now before he returns to you.”

If only he were stuck to my heel.

Bridget could have laughed at her own thoughts. Seth would never be so attached to her.

“You wish to speak to me?” she managed to speak at last, registering just what Lord Burnington had said. “What about?”

Lord Burnington looked around the lake and down the path, clearly making sure no one else was nearby. He circled her, urging her to follow him a little further down the path until they were right at the edge of the lake, where the toes of Bridget’s boots were nestled in the settling snow.

“Ever since I came here,” he began in a rush, his voice deep but clipped, “I have noticed you increasingly, Lady Bridget. You have turned my head on more than one occasion. Surely you must have seen that?”

Bridget said nothing and merely continued to stare at him. She had not seen that. If anything, Lord Burnington had seemed content with the attention of many women, not just her.

“I think I did not truly realize what it was I felt, though, until you announced your courtship with Lord Ramsbury.” He stepped forward and took her gloved hand. She nearly retracted it in surprise, before she reminded herself that this was what was supposed to happen.

Seth had coached her for such an eventuality.

“The moment you entered that dinner party on his arm, I felt disgust toward him, an all-consuming hatred, that made me see at once what I felt. You must permit me to tell you, Lady Bridget—to confess this to you now. I am quite madly in love with you.”