The Bad Luck Bride (The Brides of St. Ives #1)(19)
Harriet Anderson, Alice’s oldest and dearest friend, entered the parlor cautiously as if she might be interrupting some terrible bout of tears and hysteria. She wore a plain, gray dress, not particularly unusual for Harriet, who tended to dress more like a stern governess than the daughter of a wealthy man, but this one smacked of mourning. The dress matched her friend’s expression, for her moss-green eyes were looking at her as if she were walking into a sick room.
“Oh, stop, will you?” Alice said, grinning. “I am not dead, you know. Please stop looking at me as if I’m lying in my coffin. Or soon will be.”
Harriet smiled and rushed to her friend, her hands outstretched. “I’m sorry, Alice, but I’ve been so worried about you.”
Alice waved a hand, dismissing her friend’s concern. “I’ll live. And I’d very much appreciate it if you would never look at me that way again, not you. Unless I actually am dying, and then I would quite appreciate a sad look or two.” Alice let out a gusty sigh. “Everyone is trying to be kind, tiptoeing around me as if I’m constantly on the verge of tears, and it’s getting a bit tiresome.”
“I shall endeavor to treat you with complete callous disregard.”
“Thank you,” Alice said on a laugh.
“We were all very angry with Lord Northrup. I do wish we were there. I would have hunted him down and given him a piece of my mind. The cad.”
“No, it was much better that you were all here. I don’t know I could have borne it if you were witness to yet another humiliation. To be honest, Harriet, it’s my pride that stings more than anything. And the realization that I must abandon the future I had so carefully planned for myself.”
“Don’t say such things, Alice.”
“It’s only the truth and the sooner I come to accept my fate, the better. I hardly think any man will even look my way now. Three fiancés, Harri. Three. And not a single marriage.” Alice smoothed her skirts and looked down to her lap. “Did you see Town Talk?”
“No one reads that drivel and if they do, they don’t pay attention to anything it—” Harriet stopped abruptly when Alice jerked her head up and gave her friend a hard stare. “Oh, very well. Everyone has read it and everyone is talking about it. But it will pass, Alice. These things always do.”
Alice shook her head. “No, they do not. When I am eighty years old, little children will point and say, ‘there goes the bad luck bride.’ Oh, I could shoot whoever wrote those words. Wasn’t it bad enough that my chances are all but ruined of ever finding a husband? With those words, my fate was sealed.”
Harriet was silent for a moment, and Alice realized she’d hoped that her friend would dismiss her predictions. When she did not, it made her situation somehow more real. “Then we shall be two old maids together,” Harriet said, “for I doubt I shall ever marry, given that no one has even so much as asked me for a dance except as an act of charity.”
“That’s not true, Harri,” Alice said fiercely. When Harriet was with her friends, she was vibrant and witty, but this was not the case during social events. She withdrew, grew quiet, and had a terrible tendency to keep her eyes lowered and averted whenever a man happened to look her way. The first time Alice had seen her friend outside of one of their group’s houses, she’d been dismayed by how quiet and reserved Harriet was, as if she was an automaton that had wound itself down and could no longer move.
Harriet, who was pretty but not beautiful, who could sing but not well, who fumbled on the pianoforte and produced needlepoint that was always a bit messy, lived in the shadow of her older sister. Clara was all that Harriet was not, and it was impossible to dislike her because she truly was the loveliest girl, inside and out. Their mother, on the other hand, made no attempt to hide the fact she had no patience and little affection for her younger daughter. It had been evident from Harriet’s birth. Merely the fact she had not been a boy, when Mrs. Anderson had so fervently wanted one, might have been overlooked if Harriet hadn’t come short of Clara in nearly every category. Only with her friends could she be herself, could she allow her wit to shine. Seeing her outside their cocoon of friendship was devastating.
“You’ll never guess who I saw,” Alice said, desperate to change the subject. “Henderson.”
Harriet’s face lit up. “Is he in St. Ives?”
Alice tried to stop her stomach from clenching. “No. He’s in London. Or perhaps already on his way back to India. He’s working on famine relief and is very passionate about it.”
“Oh.” Harriet didn’t keep the disappointment from her voice. Unlike Alice, who would have died before letting her feelings for Henderson be known, Harriet had no such compunction. In fact, it had become a bit of a joke between the girls, for Harriet fully and gleefully admitted her crush. “Is he well?”
“Yes,” Alice said with the smallest bit of hesitation. “He’s changed, though, become more serious. Grown up a bit, I suppose.”
“We all have.” Harriet furrowed her brow slightly. “Have you seen Eliza and Rebecca since your return?”
Alice shook her head. “I think they’re afraid to see me, but you can assure them I am well and would love their company. I promise not to cry or fall into hysterics.”
Harriet grinned. “As if you would. I know if it happened to me I’d be in bed with the curtains drawn for a year. But here you are looking as calm as ever, as if it never happened. I wish I could be so.”