“And with tomorrow being the wedding and all, everyone will need to be up with the sunrise,” his mother added helpfully. He glanced at her, and she gave him a curt nod.
“Yes, I suppose you’re right,” Miss Loery said. “But let’s do play this hand before we retire. I simply can’t stand to have unfinished business.”
“Certainly,” Richard replied, swallowing to try and relax his throat which now felt mightily constricted.
The wedding is tomorrow morning.It wasn’t that he’d forgotten exactly. It was more that he’d been so wrapped up in each event that had come before that it almost felt as if the wedding day itself was never likely to arrive.
But here it was…just a few hours from now, and I’ll have checked another item off my list.
Richard thought of his list now and his father. He cast a look of gratitude toward his mother, and she smiled back at him. And at that moment, Richard’s doubts about Miss Loery, his confusion about Leticia, and everything else that had been plaguing him throughout the wedding weekend drifted away. He was content, and with his mother sitting opposite him, beaming proudly in his direction, he reveled in that sensation.
CHAPTERTWELVE
As Leticia’s lady’s maid, Mrs. Phillips, helped her into her gown in preparation for the wedding ceremony that morning, her thoughts were in tatters.
I should have told him at once…or at least I should have done it last night.
When she’d fled from the game room the night before, she’d gone to the library, hoping that somehow, Richard might have known to follow her there. She waited for him for almost half an hour, and when it was clear he wasn’t going to show up, she left and stalked toward her own chamber.
“Mrs. Phillips,” Leticia said, allowing the soft white muslin dress to slip gracefully over her curvy hips. It was a bit snug, but she didn’t complain. All the ladies, including herself, who had been specially invited to take place in the processional had been gifted these identical dresses. While it pricked at Leticia’s sense of style to be dressed so much like everyone else at the wedding that day, she agreed to wear the gown because she knew it would make her aunt and the Dowager happy to see her being so agreeable.
“Yes, Lady Leticia?” Mrs. Phillips asked as she gave the dress one final tug, and it fell neatly into place. She moved toward Leticia’s backside and began doing up the simple buttons there.
“If you knew something about someone else, and it was…salacious…would you be tempted to tell what you knew?”
Mrs. Phillips, who was about ten years Leticia’s senior, snorted loudly. “Have you fallen onto a piece of valuable gossip, Lady Leticia?”
“I’m not sure what I know is gossip-worthy,” Leticia answered. She thought for a moment about what she’d overheard Miss Loery say about her intentions for Richard. “I suppose if it fell into the wrong hands, the gossip mills would have a field day with the news, but as far as I’m concerned, I’m thinking more of the people the news pertains to.”
“Ah,” Mrs. Phillips murmured. She put a steady hand on Leticia’s back and steered her toward the vanity. “Sit,” she commanded, and Leticia did, flopping gracelessly onto a chair. “Do you think it would make you feel better if you told someone else?” she questioned, returning to the topic at hand.
Leticia rolled her shoulders, bringing herself into a better sitting position, so she could give the maid easy access to her long strands of hair. “I do think I’d feel better if I could just get this off my chest, but I’m not sure if it’s my place to share something so…divisive.”
“Now, I see,” Mrs. Phillips commented as she picked up the silver-handled brush and began to run it through Leticia’s wavy brown locks. “You know something about someone else, but you’re reluctant to tell them about it because you’re afraid you’ll ruin their happiness.”
“No,” Leticia answered, “that’s not it.” She pictured the way Richard had been moping about these past two days, only showing any signs of his old, overbearing self when he had taken her in hand and lectured her about behaving in a more ladylike manner. “I’m not sure happiness has anything to do with it.”
“Happiness always has something to do with it,” Mrs. Phillips countered. “Even now, we’re only having this wisp of a conversation where I frankly have no idea what you’re talking about because something is weighing heavily on your heart. I truly believe that if you thought the information you’d been given would be better off shouted from the rooftops, I’d be trying to drag you back inside that window right now.”
And for a second, Leticia took her maid’s words to heart.
If I thought it would help Richard, I would climb out that window, stand on the shingles, and shout about Miss Loery’s deviousness. But—
Leticia shook her head and then stopped herself when she realized she shouldn’t move about so much while Mrs. Phillips was attempting to do her hair. “I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I know I appear a bit scatterbrained this morning.”
“Think nothing of it,” Mrs. Phillips replied with a brief shrug of her shoulders. “The whole household is in disarray. I heard, while I was out collecting your dress, that the Dowager has been in high dudgeon all morning. She was so distraught while poor Mrs. Hubbard was trying to get her into her dress that she stomped out of the room, tearing the hemline of the gown as she went.”
Leticia gasped. “Why is Her Grace so upset?”
“I haven’t a clue.” Mrs. Phillips divided Leticia’s hair into sections and began rolling slender slivers of the tresses around a hot iron. As the maid worked, Leticia tried to picture the Dowager being enraged, but she could not. She’d known the grand lady her whole life, and while she had certainly earned herself a scolding a time or two from the Dowager, she’d never seen the Lady so out of sorts that she’d storm out of her dressing chamber and rip her dress in the process.
This isn’t fair to her. While I might not be able to tell Richard about Miss Loery’s double-edged plans, I should confide in the Dowager. She wants him to marry someone he loves, and it will break her heart to see her son suffer so greatly once Miss Loery’s plans come to fruition.
“And Aunt Amelia?” Leticia asked, “Have you seen her at all this morning?”
Mrs. Phillips continued methodically working with Leticia’s hair, but she looked up and met her eyes in the mirror. “I have.”
“And how is she? Is she tending to the Dowager?”