A Certain Magic Read Online Free PDF Page B

anyway.”
    “You do not need three ladies,” she said. “That would play altogether too much on your conceit.”
    “Now don’t play hard to get, Allie,” he said. “Seriously, I was planning to call on you later, even if I had to risk the danger of a house full of measles in order to do so, to ask you to accompany me. Should I invite another gentleman or two? I will if you think I ought.”
    “Yes,” she said. “I think that would be quite proper, Piers. But wait.” She set her teacup down on its saucer and frowned into it for a moment. “I shall invite someone, if I may.”
    He raised his eyebrows. “Suitors, Allie?” he said. “And I have been feeling sorry for the fact that you have been shut up in a sickroom all the time since your arrival.” 
    “He is not a suitor,” she said. “And I did not meet him here. He is an acquaintance newly arrived from Bath. He called on me this morning and invited me to the theater one evening. This will work out well.”
    “I hope I am not expected to turn my back while the two of you bill and coo in the shadows of my box,” he said. “I understand such behavior is not considered quite genteel. He followed you here, did he, Allie? And he is not a suitor? I shall have to see this man who cannot bear to see you absent from Bath for three days without following on your heels but is not your suitor. He had better not be a damned fortune hunter.”
    “Nonsense,” she said. “Don’t be foolish. He is as rich as Croesus.” 
    “Then he is after your body,” he said, getting to his feet and pulling back her chair for her, “And I can only applaud his taste. Still blushing, Allie? Tomorrow evening it is, then?”
    “Tomorrow evening,” she said. “I shall inspect your infant and give my opinion.”
    “And I shall inspect your Romeo,” he said, “and give mine.” 
    Alice stood up. “Romeo!” she said and laughed.

Chapter 3
    PHOEBE CARPENTER was not at all happy to hear that her sister-in-law was to attend the theater the following evening, even though Alice drove to Portman Square immediately after breakfast and remained until late afternoon. She read endlessly to Mary, whose eyesight was declared too much at risk from the infection to allow of her reading to herself. And she played spillikins with Richard and listened with cheerful interest to his enthusiastic accounts of his brother’s various escapades at Oxford.
    But Phoebe was very disgruntled and peevish.
    “I do think you might have put your brother’s family before your own pleasures for just a couple of weeks,” she said.
    “Mary and Richard are convalescing quite nicely,” Alice said. “You need not have the smallest qualm about leaving them to their nurse’s care for an evening, Phoebe. I shall return in the morning.”
    “Amanda has only an invitation to a concert, which she does not at all wish to attend,” Phoebe said crossly. “We will remain at home. But still, Alice, you might have thought of the predicament you would have put us in if you had wanted to attend the theater tomorrow night. It is Lady Partiton’s ball and like to be one of the biggest squeezes of the Season.”
    ”I did not bring you all the way from Bath so that you might indulge in frivolity,” Bruce chose to add at that moment.
    Alice smiled at him. “Don’t provoke yourself, Bruce,” she said. “I brought myself, if you will remember.”
    “Well,” her brother said, “you will be so independent, Alice. It is not at all the thing. Not when you have a brother to see to your needs.”
    “The children will be as right as rain within the next few days,” Alice said briskly. “I would recommend a short drive for them tomorrow if the good weather continues. Fresh air will do them the world of good.” Phoebe shrieked and pressed a handkerchief to her lips.
    Altogether, Alice thought as she was riding through the streets of London on her way home, she was not sorry that she