Tempting the Bride

EPILOGUE



The wedding of Helena Charlotte Fitzhugh and David Hillsborough, Viscount Hastings, was not the wedding of the Season—understandably, since the Season had already ended. But in scope, attendance, and the amount of gossip it generated, taking place long after the couple had been established to have eloped, it rivaled any wedding of the Season in recent memory.

The bride wore a blindingly white wedding gown. The groom dripped with diamonds and pearls—diamond cuff links, diamond stickpin, diamond shirt studs, and a mother-of-pearl pocket watch. The ladies of the bride’s family wept openly during the ceremony, and her brother was seen dabbing surreptitiously at his eyes.

To mark this momentous day, the bride and the groom each prepared a gift for the other. Given the grandeur of the occasion, one might be forgiven for guessing those gifts to be comprised of legendary works of art, extraordinary pieces of jewelry, and perhaps exquisite ancient manuscripts. But one would be wrong.

The groom gave the bride a miniature model of a dirigible named Hastings’s Pride. The bride returned an even less costly present: a wooden sign, the sort to be found everywhere at crossroads and near landmarks.

This particular sign was staked into place by the pond at Easton Grange. One side of the sign read, OLD TOAD POND, the other, LAKE SAHARA.


AUTHOR’S NOTE

The Bride of Larkspear, Hastings’s smutty love letter to Helena, is available in its entirety at your preferred vendor of fine e-books.

The text of Helena’s book on publishing is borrowed From Manuscript to Bookstall: The Cost of Printing and Binding Books, with the Various Methods of Publishing Them Explained and Discussed, a volume published in 1894 by Arthur Dudley Southam, now in the public domain.