A Week to Be Wicked (34 page)
By the time she left the churchyard and rounded the chapel corner, she caught sight of Colin leading the vicar, butler, and house servants marching in a bemusement-day parade. Holding open the door, he waved them all into the chapel.
“Come along, now,” he said, tapping his boot with impatience.
When the rest had all filed in, and only the two of them were left standing at the door, he caught Minerva’s gaze. “Ready?”
She nodded, breathless. “If you are.”
“I’ve never been so sure of anything.” He reached for her hand and kissed it. “You belong beside me, Min. And I belong beside you. I know it in my heart. I feel it in my soul. I’m certain, in every possible way.”
And he’d never been more handsome.
“Certainty becomes you,” she said.
Smiling, he laced her arm through his, leading her into the chapel.
And that was how the grand, epic story of their future—the tale they’d tell friends and dinner party guests and grandchildren for decades to come—ended. Just as a proper fairy tale should. With a romantic wedding, a tender kiss . . .
And the promise of happily ever after.
“Francine” was an iguanodon.
Preserved iguanodon footprints can be found in many places along England’s southern coast, but Minerva was a few years ahead of her time in identifying Francine’s footprint as fossil evidence of what we now call dinosaurs. Sussex geologist Gideon Mantell published his findings on iguanodons in the early 1820s. The discovery of several key fossils is often credited to his wife, Mary Ann.
Perhaps the earliest and most influential paleontologist of all was Mary Anning, who first discovered ichthyosaur fossils on the cliffs of Lyme Regis at the age of twelve. She spent the rest of her life unearthing valuable finds—only to watch them purchased, displayed, and written about by gentlemen of a higher social class.
I made up the Royal Geological Society of Scotland, but the Geological Society of London existed at that time. The Society did not admit women to its membership or its meetings.
In other notes, some readers might wonder why Spindle Cove is celebrating victory in April 1814, more than a year before Napoleon Bonaparte’s final defeat at Waterloo. Bonaparte did surrender in France in 1814, and he was exiled to the island of Elba. However, he managed to escape his prison in early 1815, forcing England and her allies to rally for the Hundred Days campaign. So the peace England enjoys in this book is sadly a temporary one—but the characters couldn’t know that yet.
Many thanks to Tessa Woodward, Helen Breitwieser, Martha Trachtenberg, Ellen Leach, Pam Spengler-Jaffee, Jessie Edwards, and Kim Castillo, for their expertise and assistance. And much gratitude to my husband and family, for their love and patience.
Researching and writing this book made me so grateful to be a part of the romance community today. Romance authors and readers are a brilliant, diverse, inspiring group. We are doctors, lawyers, businesswomen, scholars, scientists, soldiers, and much, much more. And to interact with this vibrant, enriching community of women (and a few good men), I needn’t travel any further than my laptop. This, to me, is a tremendous blessing. I am thankful every day.
So my thanks to the online romance community: the authors, the editors, the agents, the booksellers, the librarians, the bloggers, the reviewers . . . and the readers, most of all! Thanks to the many e-mail loops that keep me laughing and teach me something new every day: they include the Two Geniuses, the Vanettes, The Morning Juice, my fellow Ballroom Bloggers, the Avon Authors, and the Loop That Shall Not Be Named. Thank you, Twitter.
And thank you, Ada Lovelace.
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Coming September 2012
From Avon Books
“M
ore tea, Miss Taylor?”
“No, thank you.” Kate sipped the weak brew in her cup, masking her grimace. The leaves were on their third use, at least. They seemed to have been washed of their last vague memory of being tea.
Fitting, she supposed. Vague memories were the order of the day.
Miss Paringham put aside the teapot. “Where did you say you’re residing?”
Kate smiled at the white-haired woman in the chair opposite. “Spindle Cove, Miss Paringham. It’s a popular holiday village for gently bred young ladies. I make my living offering music lessons.”
“I am glad to know your schooling has provided you with an honest income. That is more than an unfortunate like yourself should have hoped.”
“Oh, indeed. I’m very lucky.”
Setting aside her “tea,” Kate cast a surreptitious glance at the mantel clock. Time was growing short. She despised wasting precious minutes on niceties when there were questions singeing the tip of her tongue. But abruptness wouldn’t win her any answers.
A wrapped parcel lay in her lap, and she curled her fingers around the string. “I was so glad to learn you’d settled here in Hastings. Imagine, my old schoolmistress, pensioned just a few hours’ ride away. I couldn’t resist paying a call to reminisce. I have such fond recollections of my Margate years.”
Miss Paringham raised an eyebrow. “Really.”
“Oh, yes.” She stretched her mind for examples. “I particularly miss the . . . the nourishing soup. And our regular devotionals. It’s just so hard to find two solid hours for reading sermons nowadays.”
As orphans went, Kate knew she’d been a great deal happier than most. The atmosphere at Margate School for Girls might have been austere, but she hadn’t been beaten or starved or unclothed. She’d formed friendships and gained a useful education. Most important of all, she’d been instructed in music and encouraged in its practice.
Truly, she could not complain. Margate had provided for Kate’s every need, save one.
Love.
In all her years there, she’d never known real love. Just some pale, thrice-washed dilution of it. Another girl might have grown bitter. But Kate just wasn’t formed for misery. Even if her mind could not recall it, her heart remembered a time before Margate. Some distant memory of happiness echoed in its every beat.
She’d been loved once. She just knew it. She couldn’t put a name or face to the emotion, but that didn’t make it any less real. Once upon a time, she’d belonged—to someone, somewhere.
“Do you remember the day I arrived at Margate, Miss Paringham? I must have been such a little thing.”
The old woman’s mouth pursed. “Five years at the oldest. We had no way to be certain.”
“No. Of course you wouldn’t.”
No one knew Kate’s true birthday, least of all Kate. As schoolmistress, Miss Paringham had decided all wards of the school would share the Lord’s birthday, December 25. Supposedly they were to take comfort from this reminder of their heavenly family on the day when all the other girls had gone home to their own flesh-and-blood relations.
However, Kate always suspected there’d been a more practical motive behind the choice. If their birthdays were on Christmas, there was never any need to celebrate them. No extra gifts were warranted. Wards of the school made do with the same Christmas package every year: an orange, a ribbon, and a neatly folded length of patterned muslin. Miss Paringham did not believe in sweets.
Apparently she still didn’t. Kate bit a tiny corner off the dry, tasteless biscuit she’d been offered, and then set it back on the plate.
On the mantel, the clock’s ticking seemed to accelerate. Only twenty minutes before the last stagecoach left for Spindle Cove. If Kate missed the stage, she would be stranded in Hastings all night.
She steeled her nerve. No more dithering.
“Who were they?” she asked. “Do you know?”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“My parents.”
Miss Paringham sniffed. “You were a ward of the school. You have no parents.”
“I do understand that.” Kate smiled, trying to inject some levity. “But I wasn’t hatched from an egg, was I? I didn’t turn up under a cabbage leaf. I had a mother and father once. Perhaps I had them for as many as five years. If only I could remember. All my memories are so vague, so jumbled. I remember feeling safe. I have this impression of blue. A room with blue walls, perhaps, but I can’t be certain.” She pinched the bridge of her nose and frowned at the knotted carpet fringe. “Maybe I just want to remember so desperately, I’m imagining things.”
“Miss Taylor . . .”
“I remember sounds, mostly.” She shut her eyes, delving inward. “Sounds with no pictures. Someone saying to me, ‘Be brave, my Katie.’ Was it my mother? My father? The words are burned into my memory, but I can’t put a face to them, no matter how I try. And then there’s the music. Endless pianoforte music, and that same little song . . .”
“Miss
Taylor
.”
As she repeated Kate’s name, the old schoolmistress’s voice cracked. Not cracked like brittle china, but cracked like a whip.
In a reflexive motion, Kate snapped tall in her chair.
Sharp eyes regarded her. “Miss Taylor, I advise you to abandon this line of inquiry at once.”
“How can I? You must understand. I’ve lived with these questions all my life, Miss Paringham. I’ve tried to do as you always advised and be happy for what good fortune life has given me. I have friends. I have a living. I have music. But I still don’t have the truth. I want to know where I came from. I know my parents are dead now, but perhaps there is some hope of contacting my relations. There has to be someone, somewhere. The smallest detail might prove useful. A name, a town, a—”
The old woman rapped her cane against the floorboards. “Miss Taylor. Even if I had some information to impart, I would never share it. I would take it to my grave.”
Kate sat back in her chair. “But . . . why?”
Miss Paringham didn’t answer, but merely pressed her papery lips into a thin slash of disapproval.
“You never liked me,” Kate whispered. “I knew it. You always made it clear, in small, unspoken ways, that any kindness you showed me was begrudged.”
“Very well. You are correct. I never liked you.”
They regarded one another. There, now the truth was out.
Kate struggled not to reveal any sign of disappointment or hurt. But her wrapped bundle of sheet music slipped to the floor—and as it did, a smug little smile curved Miss Paringham’s lips.
Beastly, horrid crone.
“May I ask on what basis was I so reviled? I was appropriately grateful for every small thing I was given. I didn’t cause mischief. I never complained. I minded my lessons and earned high marks.”
“Precisely. You showed no humility. You behaved as though you had as much claim to joy as any other girl at Margate. Always singing. Always smiling.”
The idea was so absurd, Kate couldn’t help but laugh. “You disliked me because I smiled too much? Should I have been melancholy and brooding?”
“Ashamed!” Miss Paringham barked the word. “A child of shame ought to live ashamed.”
Kate was momentarily stunned silent.
A child of shame?
“What can you mean? I always thought I was orphaned. You never said—”
“Wicked thing. Your shame goes without saying. God Himself has marked you.” Miss Paringham pointed with a bony finger.
Kate couldn’t even reply. She raised her own trembling hand to her temple and traced the dramatic wine-colored birthmark splashed there.
She knew her birthmark made her an object of distaste, sometimes pity. In the most rural, uncultured of areas, it even caused some to view her with suspicion. For years, she’d tried to obscure the mark with wide-brimmed bonnets or artfully arranged ringlets of hair—to no avail. People always stared straight past them. Eventually, she’d decided not to hide it any longer. Amongst friends, Kate forgot the blotch entirely. But sometimes, it took a great deal of strength to hold her head high.
At the moment, she felt her chin sinking.
With her fingertips, she began to idly rub the mark, the same way she’d done as a young girl—as if she might erase it from her skin. Her whole life, she’d believed herself to be a loved child, whose parents had met an untimely demise. How horrid, to think that she’d been cast away, unwanted.
Her fingers stilled on her birthmark. Perhaps cast away because of
this
.
“You fool girl.” The old woman’s laugh was a caustic rasp. “Been dreaming of a fairy tale, have you? Thinking someday a messenger will knock on your door and declare you’re a long-lost princess?”
Stay calm
, Kate told herself.
She’s a lonely, warped old woman who now lives to make others miserable. I will not give her the satisfaction of seeing me rattled
.
But she would not stay here a moment longer, either.
She reached to gather her wrapped parcel of music from the floor. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you, Miss Paringham. I will leave. You needn’t say any more.”
“Oh, I
will
say more. Ignorant thing that you are, you’ve reached the age of three-and-twenty without understanding this. I see I must take it upon myself to teach you one last lesson.”
“Please, don’t strain yourself.” Rising from her chair, Kate curtseyed and gave the woman a defiant smile. “Thank you for the tea. I really must be going if I’m to catch the stagecoach. I’ll see myself out.”
“Impertinent girl!”
The old woman lashed out with her cane, striking Kate in the back of the knees.
Kate stumbled a bit, catching herself in the drawing room entryway. “You struck me. I can’t believe you just struck me.”
“Should have done it years ago. I might have knocked that smile straight from your face.”
Kate braced her shoulder on the doorjamb. The sting of humiliation was far greater than the physical pain. Part of her wanted to just crumple into a tiny ball on the floor, but she knew she had to flee this place. More than that, she had to flee these
words
. These horrible, unthinkable notions that could leave her marked inside, as well as out.
“Good day, Miss Paringham.” She placed weight on her smarting knee and drew a quick breath. The front door was just paces away.
“No one wanted you.” Venom dripped from the old woman’s voice. “No one wanted you then. Who on earth do you think will want you now?”
Someone
, Kate’s heart insisted.
Someone, somewhere
.
“No one.” Malice twisted the old woman’s face as she swung the cane again.
Kate heard its crisp
whack
against the doorjamb, but by that time, she was already wrestling open the front latch. She picked up her skirts and darted out of the garden, into the cobbled street. Her low-heeled boots were worn flat on the soles, and she slipped and stumbled a bit as she ran. The streets of Hastings were narrow and curved, lined with busy shops and inns. There was no possible way the sour-faced woman could have followed her.
Still, she ran.
She ran with hardly a care for which direction she was going, so long as it was away. Perhaps if she kept running fast enough, the truth would never catch up.
As she turned in the direction of the mews, the booming toll of a church bell struck dread in her gut.
One, two, three, four . . .
Oh no. Stop there. Please don’t toll again
.
Five.
Kate’s heart flopped. Miss Paringham’s clock must have been slow. She was too late. The coach would have already departed without her. There wouldn’t be another until morning.
The summer had stretched daylight to its greatest length, but in a few hours, night
would
fall. She’d spent most of her funds at the music shop, leaving only enough money for her passage back to Spindle Cove—no extra coin for an inn or a meal.
She came to a standstill in the crowded lane. People jostled and streamed about her on all sides. But she didn’t belong to any of them. None of them would help her now. The despair she’d held at bay for so long crawled its way through her veins, cold and black.
She was alone. Not just tonight, but forever. Her own relations had abandoned her years ago. No one wanted her now. She would die alone, living in some cramped pensioner’s apartment like Miss Paringham’s, drinking thrice-washed tea and chewing on her own bitterness.
Be brave, my Katie
.
Her whole life, she’d clung to the memory of those words. She’d held fast to the belief that they meant someone, somewhere cared. She wouldn’t let that voice down.
She closed her eyes, drew a deep breath, and took a silent inventory. She had her wits. She had her talent. She had a young, healthy body. No one could take these things from her. Not even that cruel, shriveled wench with her cane and weak tea.
There had to be some solution. Did she have anything she could sell? Her pink muslin frock was rather fine—a handed-down gift from one of her pupils, trimmed with ribbon and lace—but she couldn’t sell the clothes off her back. She’d left her best summer bonnet at Miss Paringham’s, and she’d rather sleep in the streets than retrieve it.
