Bridal Favors by Connie Brockway Page A

don’t know exactly when the bloody thing will arrive. It isn’t as if it’s being shipped legally, you know. It might arrive a few days after it leaves port or a few weeks. I can’t see any woman leaving a crate unopened for a full day, let alone an entire week—regardless of whom it is addressed to.”
    “She won’t open it, Bernard—and here I wish you to pause and appreciate the magic I have worked—because I’ll be there to see that she doesn’t. It’s the one stipulation that I put on renting her the place: I must be allowed to reside there while it’s being readied for the wedding.”
    Bernard stroked the side of his jaw thoughtfully.
    “Look, Bernard, since you gave me this commission, I have been racking my brain trying to figure out some means to get this thing into the country and into your hands without exciting curiosity. My plan meets all the criteria you set forth. The wedding preparations serve as perfect camouflage. Once the shipment arrives, I’ll send word and we’ll be able to slip your scientist in as a tradesman or repairman, to have his peek at the device without rousing suspicion. Added to which, I can control the environment there in a way I never could in London. North Cross Abbey is thirty-five miles outside London, which means the crate can be shipped with a great deal less possibility of something unfortunate happening to it than there would be amidst London’s myriad byways. In the country, everyone knows everyone else and the roads are few and easily watched. Should unfriendly forces get wind of where you’ve had it sent and a stranger shows up, I will hear of it at once. With Beverly watching the goings-on at the abbey and me keeping an eye on the locals, we’ll have the situation pretty well attended. In London, the Kaiser could move in next door and I might not know of it until next year.”
    “It sounds good,” Bernard allowed. “It might do.”
    “It’s a godsend and you know it, particularly as we don’t know precisely when your man on the continent will be able to send it across the Channel. This way we will have as much control as can be hoped.”
    “But what about this young woman, Jus?” Bernard fretted. “Won’t she get suspicious?”
    Justin relaxed again. “She is single-minded in making sure this wedding comes off. Besides, any contact between us is likely to be limited to her attempts to keep me away from the female wedding guests.”
    Bernard blinked, surprised. “Why is that?”
    Justin’s eyes danced with delighted memory, but his tone was quite bland. “Lady Evelyn is convinced I am the last word in womanizers.”
    Bernard stared, trying to gauge whether Justin was joking or not. When it became apparent he wasn’t, he burst into such spirited laughter that Justin had to thump him on the back.
    “Oh, dear,” Bernard said, wiping his eyes and sniffing. “Forgive me, Jus. It’s just that—
you,
of all people, a womanizer.”
    “My sentiments exactly,” Justin replied pleasantly.
    “However did she get such a notion?”
    “Oh, she has reasons. Based on erroneous assumptions, but reasons, nonetheless.”
    Bernard was still dabbing at his eyes. “Is she addled? Her father is rumored to be rather eccentric.”
    Justin pulled a wounded expression. “My dear Bernard, surely a woman doesn’t have to be addled to consider me a—what did she call it?—a wolf.”
    “God, she
is
addled. What’s she like?” Bernard asked, curious in spite of himself.
    Justin shrugged. “Says the damnedest things. Whatever pops into her head, in very nice accents, of course, without appearing to have the least idea how they might sound. Nor does she have any idea of what she looks like, I should imagine. Very cavalier about her appearance. She’d dressed in boy’s clothes for our interview.”
    “Gads. What
does
she look like? Her mother was Francesca Cummings, you know. Stunning beauty. And the oldest daughter is Verity Hodges.” Bernard nodded as though