Page 17 of Bad Luck Bride

That question had barely crossed her mind before her sister’s words from this morning echoed through her mind.

Spite and jealousy… he heard you were going to marry… he wanted to pay you out.

He’d given her up for money, and she had no doubt he’d been the source of the rumors that had sabotaged her wedding plans with Giles and ruined her reputation. Was it really all that hard to imagine him making trouble for her again now, even over a decade later?

She thought of her first sight of him in the flower shop and the mockery and resentment she’d seen in his eyes.

“That bastard,” she whispered, choking on the words. “That despicable, conniving bastard. What a malicious trick to play.”

All the pain and anger Kay had been working so hard to snuff out since this morning came roaring back, stronger than ever. And though she didn’t know how he could have learned of her wedding plans, she was damn well going to find out. And when she did, she thought, tears of outrage stinging her eyes, she was going to tell that man exactly what she thought of him, his mockery, and his petty, mischief-making schemes.

Blinking back tears, rage still seething through every fiber of her being, she turned away from the two women in the adjoining banquet room, escaped out into the corridor, and made her way back to the lobby. But as she approached the front desk, she appreciated the fact that an unmarried woman could not just walk up to a hotel clerk and openly ask for a man’s room number.

She stood for a moment, lost in thought, then she veered away from the front desk and entered the Savoy’s reading room instead. Crossing to one of the writing desks, she sat down and opened the center drawer, helping herself to an envelope and a sheet of the hotel stationery that was always available to guests.

Back in the lobby a few minutes later, she watched from a short distance away as the bellboy she’d asked for assistance took her sealed envelope with a blank sheet of paper tucked inside to the front desk and gave it to the clerk. When the clerk put the note into one of the cubbyholes of the massive wall cabinet behind him, she noted the number on the brass plate above it: room 506.

Her ploy successfully accomplished, she turned around and made her way out of the lobby and down a side corridor to the electric lift that would take her to the fifth floor.

It was time—long past time—for a showdown with Devlin Sharpe. She could only hope that he was in, he was alone, and there wasn’t a hatchet anywhere in the vicinity.

4

Pamela was right. He needed to hire a valet, even if it was only temporary.

Devlin straightened from the trunk he’d just opened, staring in dismay at the rumpled mess that only yesterday had been two stacks of neatly folded evening clothes.

All his things had been packed with meticulous care by a footman at Stonygates before his departure, but the contents of this trunk, at least, were now a mess. Worse, he realized in chagrin, it was his own fault. Due to his failure to secure the interior straps after pulling out a spare handkerchief at the last minute, all his evening clothes had been left to become a hopeless jumble during the journey from Yorkshire to London.

Devlin tossed aside the dress shirt in his hands and picked up another, only to find it was as wrinkled as the first. The same could be said of all his other evening coats, waistcoats, and trousers. Not a thing in this trunk was fit to wear.

He glanced at his watch, noted it was half past five, and did a few quick calculations. Half an hour or so for the Savoy laundry to iron his clothes—if he was lucky—then a quarter hour to dress. Thenanother quarter hour to arrive at Lord Barton’s house for dinner before the opera.

“That’s cutting it close,” he muttered.

His future mother-in-law already didn’t approve of him, and he very much feared that arriving late to her brother’s dinner party would do him in forever as far as she was concerned. On the other hand, showing up in wrinkled clothes was probably an even greater sin. For the former, he could at least invent some excuse.

He pressed the call button beside his bed to summon a footman. When the servant arrived, Devlin handed over his best evening suit, requested the quickest service humanly possible, and gave the young man a very generous tip, hoping for the best.

The tip, he appreciated a short time later, must have done the trick, for he’d just finished scraping away the day’s beard stubble from his face when there was a knock on his door.

Suitably impressed, Devlin set aside his razor, retrieved his discarded trousers from the floor, and pulled them over his naked hips. He then did up the buttons, snagged a towel from the rack on the wall, and left the bathroom. He wiped traces of shaving soap from his face as he crossed the sitting room of his suite, happily relieved that the Savoy laundry was so much more efficient than he’d anticipated.

But when he opened the door of his suite and saw that the person standing in the corridor was not a Savoy footman with his evening suit, Devlin’s relief evaporated, and a mingling of astonishment and consternation took its place.

“Kay?” He glanced past her, noting no one else in the corridor. “What the devil?”

“Ssh. Not so loud. Are you alone?”

He blinked, his surprise deepening at the abrupt, rather suggestive question, but even putting everything in their past aside, the expression on her face was enough to make it clear she wasn’t here for the usual reason a woman came to a man’s room. That dangerous, silvery glint in the depths of her green eyes, the proud tilt of her chin, and the determined set of her jaw were all very familiar to him, though he hadn’t seen them for years. Kay had always had a quick temper, and right now, she was mad as hell. It was obvious, for some reason he couldn’t fathom, that he was the cause, and that alone made the temptation to needle her irresistible.

“Why, Kay, you naughty girl,” he murmured, smiling. “I’ve only been back in town a day, and here you are at my hotel room door asking me questions like that? I’m flattered, my sweet, but you know I’m already engaged to someone else.”

A wave of pink washed into her pale cheeks. “Don’t be absurd.”

“Is it so absurd?” He paused, dabbing the last bit of soap from his chin, then he slung the towel across his shoulders and went on, “What else is a man to conclude from a visit like this, and at this particular time of day, too?”

“I didn’t come for acinq à sept! Especially not with the likes of you. I’d rather be tortured on the rack.”

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