Amanda Scott Read Online Free

seven shillings the dozen, and the next she is insisting that there must be ten linkboys hired whether the guests stay on after dark or not—just on the chance that they will—or it will not look right. And how they can call it a wedding breakfast and serve six varieties of ices from Gunter’s, I cannot tell you, but Sophie insisted that it was the thing to do and Orson, for all his nipfarthing notions, never tells her she mustn’t do what she has set her heart upon doing.”
    “You called him Orson when you took leave of him,” said Chalford, “or I should not have realized you speak now of your brother. I’ve never heard him called anything but Alston.”
    Adriana grinned. “He detests being called Orson. Miranda and I have been forced to call him only by his title ever since the day I shouted at him that he ought to have been eaten by a bear.” Chalford looked puzzled, so she explained, “We are all named after characters in Shakespeare’s plays. I am from The Comedy of Errors, which my friend Sarah says is appropriate, and Miranda is the admired heroine of The Tempest, of course, while Orson is from Twelfth Night.”
    “I do not recall a scene in the play where Orsino is eaten by bears, however,” Chalford said, amused.
    “No, of course not, but years and years ago, I discovered on the shelf in our nursery an old child’s tale about a boy named Orson who was carried off by a bear and raised with her cubs. Because the character was actually called Orson, not Orsino in the Italian way, I said Mama must have got the name from the bear story, not the play. Then came the day when I said the mama bear ought to have eaten him, that I hoped one would someday. Miranda was scarcely more than a baby at the time, but she was like an echo, saying everything I said, and the two of us kept repeating that last refrain until he soundly boxed my ears and ordered us never again to call him anything but Alston. I have—in his presence, at any rate—obeyed him until today.”
    “Your farewell was a declaration of independence?”
    She glanced at him uncertainly. “In a way, I suppose it was. Have you any brothers or sisters, sir?”
    “One of each,” he replied, “and I must confess to you that my sympathies lie entirely with Alston.”
    “Were they there today? Although I know your parents to be deceased, I know little else about your family.”
    “Barring a few cousins, none of my family was there,” he said quietly. “My brother, Ned, is married to a Scottish lady and lives thirty miles north of Edinburgh. I think he would have come, had Molly not been expecting at any moment to be confined. My sister, Lydia, is also married. She wrote that she would have come to London had it not seemed foolish to do so when she had only just got home to Sussex, not knowing before she left that I intended to commit matrimony. She trusts you will forgive her and looks forward to meeting you once we are settled at home.”
    “If she lives in Sussex, perhaps we might visit her when we go to Brighton,” Adriana suggested.
    “Perhaps, but since we will not go to Brighton before Lydia comes to Thunderhill, as she generally does each September with all her offspring, you will meet her first at home.”
    “Not go to Brighton!” Adriana stared at him. “But of course we will go. Everyone is going to Brighton, if not for the races then certainly for the prince’s birthday celebration.”
    “Not everyone, my dear, for I do not, and nor will you. Your duties at Thunderhill will keep you entirely too busy.”

2
    A DRIANA, HAVING SENSE ENOUGH not to debate the matter at once, turned to look out the window, for experience had taught her that when a gentleman took a notion into his head that ran contrary to her own wishes, she was generally wiser to approach the matter obliquely, rather than to confront it straight on. To argue with either her father or her brother was useless, served only, in fact, to set them to bellowing at her, but