The Bad Luck Bride (The Brides of St. Ives #1)(3)

“Of course you can,” Christina said, and Alice gave her a grateful look. “Besides, his heart should have led him directly to you, not that miserable girl. Honestly, Alice, you cannot just let people take complete advantage of you.”

Alice stared at her sister until Christina began to squirm. “I simply do not inspire men to love. I have come to accept this. As for Northrup’s actions today? Yes, they were unforgivable and humiliating, but how would I have felt years from now knowing he loved another all along? Better a few moments of humiliation than a lifetime of regret.” She nodded her head to make her point, and was exceedingly annoyed when Henderson laughed aloud.

“I fail to see anything amusing in what I said.”

“Had you no feeling for this man at all?”

Alice gave him a level look. “Should I have?”

He seemed stunned by her words, and inside Alice felt a small bit of discomfort. She should love the man she would marry. She wanted to, but life had shown her a different path, or perhaps she had just meandered onto the wrong path. Her first fiancé, the baron, was kind and handsome and seemed to truly enjoy her company. Spending time with him had been mostly tolerable and the man had seemed to delight in everything she said—to an annoying degree. She’d been just nineteen years old and, frankly, flattered by an older man’s admiration and attention. So she basked in the novelty of having a man court her, was gratified that her parents seemed so pleased with the match and were smiling as they hadn’t since Joseph’s death. Here was something good, something that could make her parents happy. Somehow it hadn’t mattered that he was in his fifties; he hadn’t acted old nor seemed a man ready to keel over and die. When he did die, Alice had felt oddly devoid of emotion. Though sad, she hadn’t cried, hadn’t truly felt much of anything until, when standing by his casket at his funeral, she looked up and saw real grief in the eyes of the baron’s children. They had clearly adored their father, and she’d felt like a fraud, unworthy even to be standing at his graveside. When she’d finally cried, it had been from a deep and cutting shame.

Her second fiancé was an unmitigated mistake, a man with about as much substance as a wisp of smoke. Charming, flamboyant, and the finest actor Alice had ever seen, Bertram had fooled nearly everyone he met. He claimed to be distantly related to the Queen herself, third cousin twice removed or some such stuff. Dressing and acting like a man of means, moving with ease among the ton, Bertram hardly caused suspicion. It wasn’t until Papa insisted on meeting his relatives that it all fell apart. Just six days before their wedding, he was gone, leaving behind a note that said, “Sorry, love. I think it would have been grand.”

Alice hadn’t crumpled the note, hadn’t cried. She’d laid the note on the small rosewood table that she used for all her correspondence and sighed, thinking only that her poor parents would be terribly upset to realize they’d wasted money on yet another engagement ball. Part of her realized she should feel something more; she even tried to make herself cry, then gave up, laughing at her own foolishness. Since her brother’s death, Alice had changed, she realized. Joseph’s dying had scarred her in ways she hadn’t realized until recently. I should feel something, she thought, having just been jilted at the altar.

Now, sitting in the carriage after her third failed wedding, that hollowness grew until there was no room for anything else. The giddy feeling she used to get when Henderson walked in the room was missing. Everything was missing.

Henderson tilted his head and studied her as if he were trying to determine whether or not she was joking, wondering, perhaps, how it was possible a woman who’d just been jilted could sit in a carriage dry-eyed and perfectly calm. Had he thought she’d be in hysterics?

“I suppose I’m a romantic,” Henderson said finally, off-handedly. “I actually thought girls liked to be in love when they married.”

Alice gave him a stare, then turned to look out the window again just as the carriage stopped in front of their home. As soon as the step was lowered and the door opened, Alice stood and offered her hand to the footman. Christina followed, but turned to Henderson and said, “She may not show her emotions, sir, but I know she is terribly hurt.”

Alice heard her sister and stifled the retort that hung on the tip of her tongue. Oddly, she was not hurt. She knew she should be…something. Outraged, angered, distraught. But the only emotion she seemed to feel at the moment was humiliation. Her pride had been hurt, not her heart. And as her grandmamma always said, pride goeth before a fall.



*



Henderson hated that look in Alice’s eyes, that cool emptiness. As illogical as it was, he blamed himself for everything that had befallen her, including her brother’s death. That night, that terrible night when everything in his life stopped and irrevocably changed, Joseph had wanted him to join their Oxford friends for a house party. Henderson had been at their home in St. Ives, where he spent nearly all his free time. So much so, that he seemed a part of the family. As an only child, Henderson, especially when he was younger, had imagined he was part of the family. To a boy who lived alone with a mother who rarely spoke to him directly and a father of unknown origins, the Hubbard household seemed perfect.

“My God, Joseph, have you seen Mrs. Patterson?” Henderson had said to Joseph that night. Mrs. Patterson was a willing widow, and in Henderson’s experience, nothing trumped that.