Читать книгу Bridegrooms Required: One Bridegroom Required / One Wedding Required / One Husband Required - Sharon Kendrick - Страница 16

CHAPTER EIGHT

IT WAS just very fortunate that starting a new business meant that there were always a hundred and one things to think about, and to do—and for that Holly was extremely grateful. At least it meant that she didn’t allow her mind to get stuck on that frustrating loop which wanted to know just why Luke Goodwin had:

a. Kissed her (and more)

b. Then acted as though she had some kind of infectious disease; and

c. Had disappeared conclusively from her life in the days following the opening of her shop.

She supposed that she could have picked up the telephone, or even gone round to his house, to ask the great man in person—but she had her pride. Luke wasn’t a man she could imagine being railroaded into anything, and she certainly wasn’t going to march round to beg him to make love to her!

So she forced herself to be sensible, filed all these unanswered questions away under ‘Waste of Time’, and resolutely refused to dwell on them further. Even though she missed him. Missed him like mad.

She had a few long, sleepless nights asking herself what had gone wrong, and why. Then she came to the conclusion that, since she wasn’t going to get any answers, then there wasn’t much point asking the questions. It was a useful safety mechanism.

Then she happened to bump into Luke’s cleaning lady, Margaret, in the general store.

Margaret smiled encouragingly at her, and Holly plucked up courage to ask, very casually, ‘How’s Luke?’

‘I wouldn’t know, dear,’ Margaret replied, with the repressed excitement of someone who knew that the person who had asked the question was hanging onto every word. ‘He’s gone away!’

Holly nearly dropped her organic wholemeal loaf on the floor. ‘Gone?’ she echoed in horror. ‘Gone where?’

‘He didn’t say, dear. Just upped and left the day after your shop opened, I think it was.’

‘And is he coming back?’ asked Holly, her heart feeling like a leaden weight in her chest.

Margaret shrugged. ‘I expect so. He hasn’t taken much—apart from his passport.’

‘His passport?’ repeated Holly, like a parrot.

‘That’s right.’

‘But you don’t know where he’s gone?’

“Fraid I don’t dear.’ A mischievous gleam entered Margaret’s rheumy eyes. ‘Shall I say you was asking?’

‘Er, no,’ said Holly quickly. She flashed her most beseeching smile. ‘I’d rather you didn’t, Margaret.’

The article about Lovelace Brides had appeared in the Winchester Echo and captured the public’s imagination. The people of Hampshire loved the story of Holly winning a wedding dress competition and opening a bridal shop—and then offering the same wedding dress as the prize in another competition!

It had proved so popular that it had been picked up by the national press, including one of the broadsheets as well as three tabloids. In a week where news was scant, journalists and photographers were dispatched to Woodhampton, where Holly posed standing next to the dress, trying like mad to pin a happy-go-lucky smile to her lips.

It was fabulous publicity for her, and she knew that she should feel overjoyed—it was just very annoying to feel so deflated. Especially over a man she had foolishly imagined had shared her feelings.

Which only went to prove that her imagination was best left to dreaming up wedding dresses, and not romantic scenarios with would-be suitors.

Lured by the competition, brides-to-be flocked into the shop in what became an unusually busy December. It was traditionally a slack month—too many parties and too much preparation for Christmas leaving brides with little enthusiasm for buying their wedding dresses. With the added inches from too much merry-making, they tended to leave that until the New Year.

As the steady stream of customers filed into the shop, Holly soon realised that she was going to have to recruit more outworkers than she had originally anticipated. She needed workers who were good enough to sew her intricate designs and close enough for her to be able to keep an eye on them. She scribbled out an advertisement and put it in the Echo.

On a dull Monday morning, a couple of weeks before Christmas, Holly was rearranging her window display when she saw a woman standing waiting on the pavement outside, trying to catch her attention.

‘Are you open?’ mouthed the woman, pointing exaggeratedly at her watch.

‘Not until ten!’ Holly mouthed back, then wondered why she was sounding so inflexible. It was her business, and she could open when she liked! With a final twist of fern, which Michelle had concocted into a huge, old-fashioned bouquet with white silk roses, Holly jumped down out of the window and went to unlock the door.

‘Come in,’ she smiled

‘You’re not supposed to be open until ten, are you?’ murmured the woman, but she stepped into the shop anyway and looked around. She was wearing dark corduroy trousers, a green padded jacket and wellington boots. She wore the traditional country clothes well—they suited her clear skin and her neat, butter-coloured hair. She was trim, with tiny wrists and tiny ankles—the sign, or so Holly had been told by her mother, of a true lady.

‘You’re only ten minutes off, and the shop is still very new,’ said Holly with a smile. ‘I need to build up a reputation, and it wouldn’t do mine much good if I forced you to stand outside in the cold, instead of bringing you in here and letting you browse around. I’m presuming that you are a bride-to-be?’

‘I most certainly am!’ giggled the woman. It was an attractive, infectious laugh, but a little girlish, too. And maybe just a tad inappropriate for someone pushing thirty, Holly thought. Until she reminded herself sternly that she was here to make wedding dresses, not value judgements! Still, she would bet, with a giggle like that, that this woman would go for flounces and frills and a bouquet as big as the Blackwall Tunnel!

‘When,’ asked Holly immediately, ‘is the wedding?’ The woman pursed her lips together in a smile. ‘Well, we haven’t quite decided yet—you know what men are for making a commitment! My fiancé came over without me—to get everything ready,’ she added with a coy shrug.

‘But you’re not planning a sudden Valentine wedding, are you?’ asked Holly quickly. ‘Because if you are, we’ll have to get a move on.’

The woman shook her head. ‘Oh, no! My fiancé and I haven’t actually discussed a date—but I want to be sure that, when we do, I’ll be ready to go!’

Keen, thought Holly with a smile. But, there again, so many brides were—and it would be a little disappointing if they weren’t! ‘Then we’d better introduce ourselves,’ she said. ‘I’m Holly Lovelace—owner and designer.’

‘Caroline,’ said the blonde, holding her hand out. ‘Caroline Casey. I’m afraid that I’m a novice at all this—what do I do now?’

‘You take a look at all those sample gowns hanging over there on the rail, and decide which ones you like the look of. Then you try them on, see which suits and whether you want any modifications made, and then I can have it made to measure.’

‘And do they all have price tags?’

Holly nodded. ‘Yes, they do.’ Not all shops carried prices on their gowns, but it had been a conscious decision of hers to do so, because nothing was worse than falling madly in love with a wedding dress, only to discover that it was much more than you could afford. Holly knew that brides rarely looked too closely at a gown which was financially out of their reach. ‘But if you’re on a budget and particularly like a certain design, then we can sometimes have it made up in a less expensive fabric.’

‘Oh, no!’ Caroline laughed delicately, showing teeth which were straight and white and even—teeth which told of a lifetime’s good nutrition, of sunshine and milk and no sweets to cause cavities. ‘Money’s certainly no object.’ She paused and gave Holly a helpless little shrug. ‘My fiancé has just come into a very large inheritance!’

Blinking away a brief but distracting feeling of déjà vu, Holly managed to smile, even though she thought the woman sounded more than a little smug. ‘Good for him! And for you!’ she added robustly, supposing that it was difficult to talk about a large inheritance without sounding smug. ‘Nice to be in love,’ she said wistfully. ‘And it’s probably even nicer if he’s rich into the bargain!’

‘Oh, I’d never have agreed to marry him if he hadn’t come into money,’ said Caroline, smiling and shaking her head when she saw the look of horror on Holly’s face. ‘Oh, no! I don’t mean that I’m marrying him just for the money—although I have to agree, it helps! It’s just that money brings with it responsibilities. And, more importantly, stability. And my fiancé was pretty wild before he inherited!’ She wrinkled up her pretty nose. ‘Very wild!’

The mind boggled. ‘In what way?’ asked Holly curiously.

‘In every way.’ Caroline shrugged. ‘The original rolling stone!’

Holly smiled, feeling a sneaking sympathy for the man. She suspected that the pretty but determined Caroline Casey would keep her errant flancé on a very short rein indeed! ‘Listen—why don’t I make us some coffee and leave you to browse through the dresses at your leisure?’

‘That’s very sweet of you.’

When Holly came back with coffee, it was her turn to feel smug, since the woman had done exactly as she’d predicted and picked out the most frothy, fairy-princess dress on the rail! It had a low, flounced neck, a jewel-encrusted bodice, nipped waist and a skirt wide enough to hide a family of six beneath its voluminous silk folds.

Holly didn’t just design dresses that she was passionate about—she also designed dresses to sell. You had to if you were a businesswoman, or so her favourite tutor had told her at college. And frothy, traditional dresses did sell—no doubt about it, there was always a market for them.

Caroline experimentally held the dress up in front of her. ‘Do you like it?’

‘Your waist is going to look like Scarlett O’Hara’s in that,’ promised Holly truthfully.

Caroline clutched the dress to her. ‘I’ve dreamed of a wedding dress like this one ever since I was a little girl!’

‘Well, that’s what tends to happen.’ Holly smiled. ‘Just so long as you aren’t marrying a man who wants you to elope in a short red dress on the back of his motorbike!’

Caroline frowned. ‘I think that’s what most men would like, if the truth were known. Men don’t like a lot of fuss, do they?’

Holly had learnt to agree with the customer—up to a point. ‘Generally speaking, no.’

‘But I’m a great believer in tradition,’ said Caroline firmly.

‘But not tradition simply for the sake of it, surely?’ the imp in Holly argued back.

Caroline fixed her with a look of mild amusement. ‘Most certainly I do. Tradition is the bedrock of society—the fabric that binds us together and links us with our past. Now...’ she ran her finger along a ruffle of lace on one of the sleeves ‘...can I go and try this on?’

‘Please do,’ said Holly. ‘The changing room is over here. What shoe size are you?’

‘Only four.’ Caroline gave a little wriggle of her shoulders as she projected a dainty foot forward like a ballet dancer. ‘I’m only little, I’m afraid.’

‘Then take these shoes with you—and call me if you need me,’ said Holly gently, and drew back the velvet curtain to the changing room. She found herself wondering why Caroline had no one with her. Brides rarely came looking for gowns alone—they generally brought their mother or a best friend. Someone close enough to be brutally honest when asked the universal question, Does my bottom look big in this?

While Caroline was in the changing room, Holly hunted around for more accessories—veil and headdress—which she thought might go well with the dress.

And when Caroline reappeared, looking a little self-conscious in all her finery, Holly experienced the familiar feeling of awe and wonder at how a wedding dress could transform a woman into a goddess. Women stood differently in a wedding dress. Walked differently.

‘That ivory silk does wonders for your complexion,’ she told her admiringly.

Caroline twirled in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirror. ‘Does it? It’s beautiful,’ she said breathlessly. ‘I feel just like a fairy princess!’

‘It’s much too big around the waist. Here—let me take it in a bit.’ Pins on her wristband, Holly crouched down and adjusted the waist and then the hem.

While she was making her alterations, Holly chatted and listened. Women opened up to their dressmakers, and Caroline was no exception. By the end of the fitting, Holly was left with the impression that Caroline was a pleasant and competent woman, but grindingly dull and conventional!

It was getting on for lunch-time when the bride-to-be came out of the changing room, an ordinary woman once more in her cords and sweater. Holly looked up from the ivory silk and smiled at her. ‘So what made you choose my little shop in Woodhampton for your wedding dress?’

‘Nothing more inspiring than geography, I’m afraid.’ Caroline found a compact inside her handbag, and, peering into the mirror, began to pat the shine off her neat little nose. ‘I’m going to be living here, you see.’

‘Oh? Whereabouts?’

‘In Woodhampton itself.’ Caroline’s voice became injected with pride. ‘There’s a rather nice Georgian house in the village,’ she confided. ‘Apson House. I expect you know it.’

For a moment Holly’s heart missed a beat while the world stopped turning. Either that or she would wake up in a moment. She felt all the blood draining from her face, and wondered whether she had a corresponding colour loss. ‘Yes, I know it,’ she replied, in a muffled voice which seemed to come from a different pair of lungs than hers. Then forced herself to ask the question, as if she didn’t already know the answer, ‘And wh-who’s your fiancé?’

Caroline frowned, antennae alerted by the fine beads of sweat sheening Holly’s brow. ‘It’s Luke,’ she said precisely, her pale grey gaze piercing. ‘Luke Goodwin. Do you know him?’

Holly was experiencing sensations she had only ever read about. Head like cotton wool. Legs like jelly. Stomach turned to water. She was terribly afraid that she might funt. And meanwhile the unbelievable fact was hammering into her brain. Luke Goodwin was engaged to be married to the grindingly dull Caroline Casey!

Luke Goodwin was a no-good deceiving bastard!

‘Do you know him?’ repeated Caroline ominously, sounding as if she were counsel for the prosecution, and Holly were on the witness stand.

Well, she couldn’t lie. Margaret, Luke’s cleaner, knew that she had been staying up at the house while the shop was being renovated, and so did everyone else in the village. ‘Yes, I know him,’ she answered steadily.

Caroline looked at her wordlessly, her eyebrows raised in expectation.

‘You see, I was...I was staying up at Apson House—’

‘You were what?’ came the disbelieving snap.

‘Just for a couple of weeks—’

‘A couple of weeks?’ Caroline’s eyes were spitting fire. ‘Perhaps you’d care to explain?’

Holly swallowed. ‘This shop and the flat above it were in the most dreadful state when I arrived, and Luke kind of came to the rescue. He had to sack the agent and there was nowhere habitable for me to stay—that’s why he put me up.’

‘And why would he do that?’ Caroline asked, in a voice of quiet menace.

‘Because he owns the freehold of this building—but you probably knew that already.’

Caroline’s mouth had thinned into a sarcastic line. ‘I’m afraid that my knowledge of Luke’s life in England is somewhat patchy—certainly when compared to yours. You must fill me in, Holly. Just how well do you actually know Luke?’

Holly stared at her. The inference was clear. ‘What do you mean, exactly?’

‘I’ll tell you exactly what I mean!’ Caroline put her head forward, like a tortoise emerging from its shell and blinked rapidly at Holly. ‘Luke is a man with certain, shall we say... appetites? And he’s a little old-fashioned at heart You know, one of those men who marry a woman because they love and respect her, but who will avail themselves of an attractive substitute should the need arise—if you’ll forgive the pun,’ she finished maliciously. ‘So did he?’

Holly’s throat was so tight she could scarcely breathe, let alone speak, but somehow she forced the words out. ‘Did he what?’

‘Did he sleep with you?’

Only in her tortured and exquisite dreams. ‘How dare you ask me that?’

There was a pause. Caroline looked her straight in the eye. ‘I’ll ask you again, Holly. I’m a very understanding woman, you know, and sex has nothing to do with respect—especially where Luke is concerned. Did you sleep with him?’

Thoughts buzzed into Holly’s mind like sandflies, but the most disturbing dominated all the others. She could hear Caroline saying it defiantly, almost proudly: ‘Oh, I’d never have agreed to marry him if he hadn’t come into money.’

She met Caroline’s gaze without blushing. Guided solely by instinct coloured with a gut feeling of pure indignation, Holly realised that with her next words she could wreck her reputation. But she had gambled everything else—why not her reputation? ‘I stayed in his house for days,’ she replied, with slow deliberation. ‘And you know Luke. What do you think?’

‘I’ll tell you what I think! I think you’re deluding yourself if you think you stand any chance with him.’ Caroline gave her a smile which was almost sympathetic. ‘Because Luke was always rather bored by any woman who was such an easy lay!’