River Queen Read Online Free Page B

we’re not partying and carrying on. There’s going to be a late supper in the Grand Salon, then fireworks and dancing. It’s going to be so much fun. I don’t understand you any more, Tyla. You’ve gotten so religious, so disapproving, that you never have any fun.”
    “Miss Julienne, didn’t we have fun this afternoon, picking out your jewelry to wear? I’m not all sour, it’s just that I know that you really are a virtuous, kind lady, but not everyone knows you like I do. People can be mean gossips, and if you keep ignoring the rules of polite society you’re going to get a reputation as a loose woman. It would grieve the Lord for that to happen.”
    “I’m not grieving anyone but you, dear Tyla. Let it go, will you? I’m tired of arguing about it. You’re harder on me than even my mother and father. I want to look pretty, I want to have fun, I want to dance. I might even meet some new exciting people!”
    Picking up the thick gold headband with pearl droplets adorning it, Tyla placed it just so at the crown of Tyla’s head. She wore gold earrings with teardrop pearls that matched the tiara, and a three-strand pearl bracelet. “You may meet some new people, all right,” Tyla grumbled. “When they cut off your head to get this gold.”

    FINALLY JULIENNE WAS READY and went downstairs to the parlor, a formal room with heavy velvet draperies, sofas, loveseats, and recamiers in the elaborate French rococo style, urns full of aspidistra, vases of peacock feathers, and gilt-framed paintings of seventeenth-century shepherdesses and maidens and princesses frolicking in dreamy woodland settings filled with golden light. Julienne was surprised to see only her mother, seated in a wingback chair by the fire, and Archibald Leggett sitting across from her. When Julienne entered he bounded to his feet.
    “Miss Ashby! You look beautiful, just beautiful,” he said, beaming at her. He was an average-sized man, with a compact figure, two inches shorter than Julienne (or four, as she was wearing two-inch heeled ball slippers). His hair was a nondescript brown, but it was always groomed perfectly in the style of the day, parted on the side with waves and brilliantine tendrils framing his face. Though his hair was thick, and he had bushy sideburns, he was somehow unable to grow adequate facial hair, as was all the rage. Once he had tried a mustache, but it was as faint and silky as a newborn baby’s hair, and Julienne had teased him so unmercifully about it that he had shaved it off.
    “Archie” had a small nose, large round brown eyes, and short full lips. They were almost like a cupid’s bow. In fact he was a nice-looking man, but to Julienne he looked too boyish and a little feminine. She preferred lantern-jawed masculine men with a commanding presence. Archie was formal and very proper, unassuming, and she thought that he was not very intelligent.
    To his enthusiastic greeting she replied, “You’re too kind, Archie. Thank you very much.” Julienne had long called him Archie even though they had never gone through the convention of agreeing to call each other by their given names. To her it seemed silly to call this nondescript young man “Mr. Leggett.” He, of course, had always called her “Miss Ashby.”
    “Not at all, you do look stunning this evening,” he replied, leading her to sit on the sofa. “And you come by it honestly, as you so closely resemble your lovely mother.”
    Although Roseann Ashby was close to fifty years old, and she had been married for more than thirty years with three children, she still had an air of innocence and naiveté. “You’re very kind, Mr. Leggett,” she said with pleasure.
    With some impatience Julienne asked, “Where is Papa? I know I’m running a little late but I did think he’d wait for me.”
    Archie Leggett cleared his throat. “Er, I persuaded him to go ahead, Miss Ashby. I’ve got my carriage, and I thought you wouldn’t object to going down to the