“No one could have made a more beautiful bride, Lady Silverton. I am so very happy for you.” Miss Mandelton’s pleasure was clearly genuine as she pressed Kitty’s hand and raked her bridal attire with glittering eyes.
Tears welled in Kitty’s own eyes and she blinked rapidly. “It could have been you,” she responded, stricken, and was almost cut off by the rejoinder.
“But I’m so glad it’s not! I’m so glad I realized before it was too late that Silverton didn’t love me. To be married to a man whose heart belonged to another would surely have been like living a slow death until I was put in my grave.”
Laughter and chatter echoed all around them, and a great joyfulness filled Kitty from her toes upward. “You cannot imagine how tormented I was when I met you, Miss Mandelton, and realized that you were to be married to Silverton.” There wasn’t much time for confidences with the church bells pealing, and guests waiting to congratulate the pair of them, but Kitty wanted to take her opportunity while she could. Silverton was a little to one side, beaming as the Duke of Albion pumped his hand in between casting furtive admiring glances in Kitty’s direction.
Kitty put her head closer to Miss Mandelton’s. “I relinquished any claim I might have had to Silverton as soon as I realized he’d made you an offer. I knew I could never marry him. I was not respectable enough.”
“But now you are. And you deserve to be marrying the man you love because you are the heroine of the country. You risked your life to bring a dangerous criminal to justice.”
“I’m sure you overstate it, Miss Mandelton,” Kitty said modestly.
“Indeed I do not! The news sheets and gossip sheets have no room to discuss anything else—and with good reason. The safety of our country is due to you, for was there no limit to the evils perpetrated by that traitor, Lord Debenham. First, he was cruelly responsible for blackmailing a poor innocent into becoming his wife over that incident at Vauxhall Gardens. Poor Lady Araminta—I believe she balks at using the name Debenham, synonymous as it has become with perfidy—didn’t know what else to do other than agree she’d been in Lord Debenham’s supper room when really he was plotting with two other villains. And as a result of her name being tarnished, she was forced to marry the man!”
Kitty blinked. Miss Mandelton obviously relished scandal more than Kitty would have supposed.
“Yes, marry the very man who would have murdered you as revenge for the fact that you were clever enough to discover the evidence that would convict him.”
Kitty thought it wise that Miss Mandelton didn’t go into too much detail over how Kitty had discovered this evidence.
Miss Mandelton suddenly became diffident. She lowered her voice and gripped Kitty’s hand. “I…hoped we could be
friends. I mean, that I could call on you when I’m in London, and that you’d call on me when Silverton and you repair to the country at the end of the season. I know his mother took a little while to come around to the idea that he wasn’t marrying me after all, but I’ve thoroughly persuaded her of the fact I would have been dreadfully unhappy married to someone I regarded more like a brother, and you with your publicly lauded gifts are in the position to advance not only his prospects, but his happiness so much more than I could ever have done.”
“Oh, Miss Mandelton.” Kitty squeezed her fingertips. “Nothing could make me happier. I would love that.”
“Kitty.”
It was her sister. The four of them were together today at Kitty and Lissa’s joint wedding, but Kitty recognized it as the voice of the sister who’d always been more like a mother to her. The sister she loved more than any other. The sister whom she’d sought to make proud. Lissa.
Smiling, she turned, and her heart swelled to see that Lissa’s normally serious expression was joyous. But then Lissa had done little else other than smile since Mr. Tunley had apparently proposed in the most heartfelt terms, on bended knee, with a family ring his romantically minded favorite aunt had bequeathed him for the purpose.
“Ralph wants to introduce you to Sir Edward,” she murmured, nodding her regrets at Miss Mandelton for taking Kitty away. “He’s been extolling your virtues, Kitty—and your bravery.” She pressed her lips together as she and Kitty stood facing each other, alone for the moment. “I’m ashamed to admit that I didn’t give you the credit you deserved for forging ahead and doing what you believed in—both to advance your own happiness and then for what you saw as the common good.”
“The common good? You make it sound so noble, Lissa, when the truth is that I did it for you.”
“Me?” Lissa looked taken aback.
“I wanted you to be able to marry Ralph. After everything you’ve ever done for me—being the mother I never had, keeping me in line when I was little and needed it, reading me stories, mending my clothes, making sure I went to sleep on a laugh and not in tears. All those things I’ve never told you, but which I only realized was the foundation of my happiness after I’d run away to London. When I made my name on the London stage, I couldn’t bear to think you were ashamed of me, and that was the reason you didn’t make contact. I had no idea you were doing what you do best—working quietly and without fuss to achieve a good end. I wanted to repay you in the best way I could, and because I thought I had nothing of importance left to lose since I’d lost Silverton and your respect— or so I thought.”
“Oh Kitty, you really thought all that?” Impulsively, Kitty leaned forward and kissed her sister on both cheeks. “In truth, I’m far showier than you’d imagine. I wanted to be the one to shower us all in glory and so enable Ralph to wed me.”
“But it was your sketchings that brought all of this into the open and alerted the government to the nature of Lord Debenham’s wickedness. Without your talent, none of us would be here.” Kitty indicated the petal-strewn cobbles that surrounded St Margaret’s and the rarefied, finely-dressed crowd distinguished by a more than respectable smattering of England’s Upper Ten Thousand. She smiled over her shoulder as she saw Ralph and her beloved new husband advancing toward her. “Let’s just say that finding happiness today has been a family affair.”
Thankfully, Kitty was about to slide into obscurity, safeguarded from the hubbub by Silverton’s protective bulk, when a stately figure in half-mourning stepped in front of her.
“Kitty, the Countess de Lieven wishes me to introduce you to her.” It was Araminta, wearing her widow’s weeds over her pregnant belly like a badge of honor. “And you too, Lissa, though she’s more interested in the extraordinary circumstances in which society can so readily embrace someone who’s made their living on the stage. Not that she said it in so many words. She’s a stickler for convention but loves knowing that she can confer the right to be accepted or not—just by her endorsement. Rather a lucky coincidence she was on more than passing good terms with Papa, which of course made it rather difficult to refuse to acknowledge you after Papa publicly accepted you.”
Papa. Their Papa. Not so many months before he’d stood in this very church and declared to Nash and the small gathering of wedding guests—though he might have declared it to the world—that Kitty was not a suitable match for Lord Nash, and could never consider herself on an equal footing with respectable society because of the sin in which she’d been born.
The perpetual sin to which he’d consigned her.
It was astonishing how courting the favor of a handful of the right people could influence society as a whole.
It seemed Araminta had turned the ignominy of Debenham’s end to her own advantage, making herself a victim and her sisters heroines who had saved society as they knew it from the chaos her husband would have imposed had he his way.
Silverton rolled his eyes as he took in the last of this speech. “Go on, take her away to meet the countess, but I would like to spend some time with my wife on our wedding day.” He smiled fondly at Kitty, who gave his hands a quick squeeze, pulling him down for a daring kiss on the cheek.