Page 46 of Bad Luck Bride

“Don’t make this about me,” he said, seeing right through her. “The point is you are choosing to marry a man just like your father. The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

That stung, mainly because she’d thought that exact same thing as she’d watched her mother cave to Wilson’s wishes about the soiree.

“A man who can control you is what you know,” he went on. “It’s what you’re used to, what you understand. And I would imagine doing this is also a very good way to—how shall I put it?—atone for what you see as your own past sins.”

She opened her mouth to reply, but the furious denial she wanted to offer stuck in her throat, because he was right, damn him.

“My motives are my own business,” she said, striving not to show he’d hit a nerve. “And whether Wilson is like my father or not is irrelevant. We may not be love’s young dream, but Wilson is the only man who has offered me marriage since Giles threw me over. He’s the only chance to marry I’ll ever have.”

“You don’t know that. And even so—”

“As for your accusation of selling myself,” she cut in, “marrying for a dowry is a time-honored and perfectly acceptable tradition. Many women and men have done it,” she added as he turned away with an oath of exasperation and started for the door. “When they’ve had no other choice.”

“What you really mean,” he shot over his shoulder, “is that the choice you’re making is one your mother and society would approve of. You care far more about pleasing others than you do pleasing yourself.” He paused by the door and turned to look at her. “You always have.”

“I am working to ensure that my family is safe, secure, and happy,” she countered, baffled—not for the first time—by his selfish outlook on life. “What is wrong with that?”

“Nothing’s wrong with it, unless it’s always at your own expense.”

“Well, you’ll have to forgive me, but I happen to like being safe and secure, too! I like knowing I won’t have to spend my lifeducking creditors. I like being able to pay my bills for a change. And it is a great comfort to me to know that my mother, my sister, and my future children will be taken care of. But you’re right about one thing, Devlin. You’re right to point out that the more things change, the more they stay the same, because I remember us having a very similar conversation to this one fourteen years ago. I remember you persuading me to rebel, to put my own happiness first and run off with you, a selfish decision that, despite the fact that I changed my mind, ended up costing me everything.”

“And you don’t think marrying this man will cost you at least as much, and perhaps far more?” He turned to open the door, shaking his head as if he was as baffled by her point of view as she was by his.

“What’s it to you?” she cried. “Even if all you say is true, what difference does it make to you what I do or who I choose to marry? After all this time, why do you care?”

He stopped at the question, but he didn’t reply straightaway. Instead, his gaze raked slowly down over her, and when he looked into her face again, something in the brilliant depths of his eyes made Kay’s heart slam against her ribs with enough force to rob the breath from her lungs.

“Damned if I know, Kay,” he muttered as he turned and walked out. “Damned if I know.”

9

In the wake of Devlin’s departure, Kay’s head was in a whirl, her emotions a scrambled, unholy mess. The revelations they had shared and the conclusions drawn from them had left her baffled, frustrated, and angry. And yet, as she thought about it, she knew her present feelings, whatever they might be, were of little consequence.

Unless she wanted to toss her sister’s welfare aside, marrying Wilson was her only real choice. Wilson was also her best chance to escape being a childless spinster for the rest of her life. And having spent the past year in the agonizing uncertainty of genteel poverty, she knew that a lifetime of that was no better guarantee of happiness than her present course.

No, though her conversation with Devlin may have cleared up a few mysteries from the past, she’d appreciated almost immediately that knowing what had really happened fourteen years ago didn’t change a thing now.

There was, however, one aspect of the past that did have to be addressed, and she tackled it first thing the following morning. Up before the others, she dressed, went downstairs to the Savoy florist,and booked an appointment. Upon her return, she found that her mother was awake. Hearing voices from the older woman’s room, she tapped on the door and entered.

She found her mother in bed, reading the paper and eating her breakfast.

“Ah, there you are,” Magdelene cried, looking at Kay above the pince-nez on her nose. “I’ve been frantic wondering where you’d gone. I sent Foster to go in search of you.”

“I needed a walk.”

“Alone?”

“Of course not,” she said at once. “I took the bellboy with me. I’m sure everyone who’s anyone saw us together and rumors will fly in tomorrow’sTalk of the Townthat I’m dallying with a much younger man, but what can I say? He’s a charming fellow.”

Magdelene, of course, did not appreciate the sarcasm. “There’s no need to be snippy, miss.”

Given the revelations she and Devlin had shared, Kay felt more than snippy. “Mama, I need to speak with you about something. It’s rather important.”

Magdelene reluctantly put aside that morning’s edition ofTalk of the Town. “Of course. What is it?”

“Kay?” Josephine called from the other room. “Are you back? I need your help.”

“I’m in here, darling,” she called back and turned again to her mother. “I don’t want Jo to overhear our conversation,” she said in a lower voice, “so I’m sending her downstairs on an errand.”

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