Free The Bridal Season by Connie Brockway

frilly unmentionables stood open about the room; pads and tounures
to shape the hips, and chemises and corsets to enhance the bust. And there were
petticoats, beautiful, soft, draping petticoats, designed to tantalize the
imagination of anyone who might catch a glimpse of their frilly hems.
    Letty’s mother would have fainted dead away in ecstasy. Veda
had always claimed that she’d stayed with Lady Fallontrue because in return for
her talents, her ladyship had allowed Letty to be educated with her own
children. But Letty suspected that as good a reason for Veda’s putting up with
the woman’s cruel tongue and pitiful wages was that Lady Fallontrue gave Veda
free rein to create all the wondrous gowns that crowded her imagination.
    For all her flaws—and there were a great many— Lady Fallontrue
had two distinct gifts: she knew genius when she saw it and was wise enough not
to interfere with it. Who else would let a nobody like Veda create as she saw
fit? Certainly not the music hall owners with their cheap velveteen and cheaper
chintz.
    But that’s where Veda had ended up—as costume designer to
second-rate music hall performers. Not that they’d always been second-rate,
Letty thought loyally. When Lady Fallontrue had hired The Amazing Algernon as a
divertissement for one of her “athomes,” he’d been at the top of his career, a
handsome, acrobatic, and charming magician.
    Lady Fallontrue was not the only one who thought so. Veda had
taken one look at The Amazing Algernon—born Alfie Potts—and for the second time
in her life, fallen in love. This time with happier results.
    Not that Letty wasn’t the sunshine of her life, Veda had
always said, but frankly put—and Veda Potts was nothing if not frank—Letty was
likely the only good thing that had ever come from Letty’s father, Viscount
Napier.
    Twenty-four hours after Alf’s performance—and just which
performance Letty had never had the nerve to ask—Veda had given Lady Fallontrue
her notice. The rest, as the storytellers liked to say, was history. Alfie and
Veda had married and Alf had happily stepped into the role of stepfather. The
three of them had moved to London where Letty had lived ever since, raised
behind a hundred stages’ crimson curtains, sung to sleep at night by racy
ditties, and apprenticed in the myriad crafts of the theater, both legit and
un.
    Then, six years ago, Veda had caught a cold that had turned
into pneumonia. She’d died. Alfie, brokenhearted, had left the stage. Veda
would have hated that. She hated a quitter and she hated a soft-heart. “Give me
a strong back over a soft heart any old day,” she’d said. And even on her
deathbed had managed to croak out, “Don’t cry, Letty. Tears are for the weak and
the weak don’t survive.”
    Letty refused to leave London with Alf. She was a good singer
and, regardless of what the know-nothing critics said, a good actress, too. And
she was beginning to be noticed by those who could get a girl a leg up.
    Like Nick Sparkle...
    Letty flopped over on her stomach, refusing to entertain
thoughts of Nick and her mistakes related to him. She studied the cascades of
material thoughtfully. Oh, the things her mother would have done with this
windfall!
    Letty smiled.
    Veda had been no saint and, Lord knows, neither was Letty. But
mostly they’d been pals. Especially after Alf had come into their life. Alf had
knit them together, made them a family.
    It had been too many months since she’d visited him. Maybe
once things with Nick had blown over she could look him up in his little rural
cottage. He’d said the door would always be open to her. On the other hand, she
wasn’t about to bring her troubles to her stepfather’s door. She’d go somewhere
else. Maybe France.
    And in order to do that, she needed money. Which a few of
these dresses and some of these costly baubles would bring. If she could
find a buyer for them. She sat up.
    The first order of business was to continue to string these
folks along in their belief