The Other Miss Bridgerton

“Helen will have footmen waiting with umbrellas,” Lady Bridgerton assured her. “We will not get very wet going from carriage to house.”

“Will Edmund and Violet be there?” Georgie asked.

“I’m not sure,” her mother replied. “Violet is getting very near to the end of her confinement. I imagine it depends on how she feels.”

“I’m sure she’s fine,” Georgie said. “She loves being pregnant.”

“Have they thought of a name?” Poppy asked. Her cousin Edmund had married quite young—he was barely nineteen at his wedding. But he and his bride were wildly happy by all accounts and currently expecting their second child. They lived quite close to Aubrey Hall, in a charming manor house given to them as a wedding gift from Edmund’s parents.

“Benedict if it’s a boy,” Lady Bridgerton said. “Beatrice for a girl.”

“How very Shakespearean,” Poppy murmured. Benedick and Beatrice were the lovers from Much Ado About Nothing . She’d quoted Balthasar’s song from that very play when she and Andrew had had their battle of the Shakespearean quotes.

It was ridiculous how much fun that had been.

“Benedict ,” Georgie said. “Not Benedick.”

“Sigh no more,” Poppy murmured. “Sigh no more.”

Georgie gave her a sideways glance. “Men were deceivers ever?”

“Not all men,” came a grumble from the opposite corner.

Poppy jerked with surprise. She’d quite forgotten Lord Bridgerton was there.

“I thought you were sleeping,” Lady Bridgerton said, patting her husband on the knee.

“I was,” he said with a hmmph . “I’d like to be still.”

“We were so very loud, Uncle?” Poppy inquired. “I’m sorry that we woke you.”

“It’s just the rain,” he said, waving away her apology. “Makes my joints ache. Was that Shakespeare you were reciting?”

“From Much Ado About Nothing ,” Poppy said.

“Well . . .” He rolled his hand in the air, urging her on. “Have at it.”

“You want me to recite it?”

He looked at Georgie. “Do you know it?”

“Not in its entirety,” she admitted.

“Then yes,” he said, turning back to Poppy. “I want you to recite it.”

“Very well.” She swallowed, trying to melt the lump that had started to form in her throat.

“Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, Men were deceivers ever; One foot in sea— ” Her voice caught. Choked.

What had happened to him? Would she ever know?

“Poppy?” Her aunt leaned forward, concerned.

Poppy stared into space.

“Poppy? ”

She lurched back to attention. “Sorry. I was just, er . . . remembering something.” She cleared her throat. “One foot in sea, and one on shore, To one thing constant never .”

“Men are flighty creatures,” Lady Bridgerton said.

“Not all men,” her husband said.

“Darling, no ,” she said. “Just no.”

“Then sigh not so, but let them go ,” Poppy continued, barely hearing the conversation around her. “And be you blithe and bonny, Converting all your sounds of woe . . . ”

Would Shakespeare always make her think of Andrew? Would everything make her think of him?

“Into Hey nonny, nonny ,” Georgie finished for her. She gave Poppy a queer look before turning to her father. “I knew that part.”

He yawned and closed his eyes.

“He always falls asleep in carriages,” Georgie said.

“It’s a skill,” Lord Bridgerton said.

“Well, it’s a skill that shall have no reward this evening,” Lady Bridgerton said. “We’ve arrived.”

Lord Bridgerton sighed audibly, and the rest of them gathered their gloves and bags and whatnot, preparing to alight.

As Lady Bridgerton had predicted, they were led inside under the cover of umbrellas, but the wind had picked up, and they all got a bit wet on the way in.

“Thank you, Wheelock,” Lady Bridgerton said to the butler as he took her cloak. “It is so very dreary tonight.”

“Indeed, my lady.” He handed the cloak to a footman and moved to help Georgie and Poppy. “We shall dry these as best we can during dinner.”

“Is the family in the drawing room?”

“They are, my lady.”

“Wonderful. No need to take us in. I know the way.”

Poppy shrugged her arms from her cloak and followed her aunt and uncle to the drawing room.

“Have you ever been here before?” Georgie asked.

“I don’t think so. I haven’t really spent that much time in Kent.” It was true. Poppy saw her cousins in London far more than she did in the country.

“You will adore Lady Manston,” Georgie assured her. “She is like a second mother to me. To all of us. Dining here is always informal. It’s just like family.”

“Informal is a relative term,” Poppy murmured. Back on the Infinity she hadn’t worn shoes for a week. Tonight she had dressed just as grandly as she would for any meal out in society. The pink dress she’d borrowed from Georgie was a hair too short, but it wasn’t very noticeable. And the color seemed to suit her.

She was trying to get on with her life. She really was.

The hard part was that there was nothing she could do. She did not know where Andrew was from, who his family was. It certainly did not help that the surname he used was James—surely one of the most common in all of England.

How many common surnames were also common Christian names? James, Thomas, Adam, Charles . . . They all seemed to be male names. Even Andrew could be a surname. Hadn’t she met someone before with that name? In London, perhaps . . .

“Poppy!”

She looked up. How was she in the drawing room already? Her cousin Billie was regarding her with amusement.

“Sorry,” Poppy mumbled. “Just woolgathering.”

“I dare not ask what you were thinking about. It is always the strangest thing.” But Billie said this with the greatest affection. She took Poppy’s hands and leaned in for a double-cheeked kiss. “I’m so glad you’re here. You’ll get to meet George’s brother.”

“Yes,” Poppy murmured. She hoped they weren’t trying to match her with Nicholas. She was sure he was perfectly amiable, but the last thing she wanted right now was a flirtation. And wasn’t he quite young? Just a year older than she was.

“He’s not down yet,” Billie said. “He was quite travel-worn when he arrived.”

From London? How difficult was it to travel from London?

“Let me get you a glass of sherry. I’m sure you need it. The weather is frightful. You’d hardly know it’s summer.”

Poppy accepted the glass and took a sip, wondering who the young gentleman across the room was if not Nicholas. He looked the correct age, and he and Georgiana were laughing like old friends.

But Billie had said he had not come down yet.

Odd. Poppy gave a mental shrug. She wasn’t curious enough to ask, so she took a few steps farther into the room, smiling politely as she watched Lady Manston enter the drawing room through a doorway in the far wall.

“Alexandra!” Lady Manston called out, hurrying over to embrace Lady Bridgerton. “You will never guess who arrived this afternoon.”

Georgie appeared at her side and tugged her sleeve. “Come over and meet Nicholas.”

Nicholas? Poppy frowned. Then who—

“Andrew!” Lady Bridgerton cried.

Andrew . Poppy looked away from the gathering, horrified by the moisture pooling in her eyes. Another common name, just like James. Why couldn’t the bloody man have been named Marmaduke? Or Nimrod?

Enough . She had to get through the evening. With renewed determination she turned back to the room, her eyes finding her aunt, who was now across the room, embracing someone.

Someone with brown hair, sun-streaked with gold.

Pulled back in a tidy queue.

Dear God, he looked just like—