A Cup of Tea: A Novel of 1917 Read Online Free PDF Page A

soft curve of her breasts. He started to kiss her there.
    “We’re running out of time, Rose,” he said so quietly it made her hold her breath. He meant the war, the thing they never spoke about. And that there were rumours that the U.S. might soon join.
    “Don’t say that, Philip,” Rosemary answered. “It frightens me.”
    He looked at her and smiled sadly. His Rosemary, who never had a hair, a button out of place, who stepped so easily out of her car into the warmth of wherever she was going. In a way, she was as innocentas a child. She seemed to live her life as though she honestly believed that nothing bad would ever happen, and, if were to, by sheer force of will, she thought she would be able to right it. It was one of the things he admired most about Rosemary, that she staunchly believed that things should be a certain way…and that she had the luxury to believe it. “Oh, my precious, Rosemary,” he said, stroking her hair softly, “in her almost perfect world.”

 
    T he city felt as though it had been washed clean, the rain had finally stopped entirely, and the air was full with the fragrant smell of the onset of spring. Rosemary had been out for a walk, a constitutional so to speak, uncharacteristically without a store as a destination.
    She took her hat off and shook her hair out as she walked into the library where her father was sitting in a leather chair listening to news of the war on the radio. She had color from the outdoors. She looked almost pretty. Henry Fell hardly noticed she’d come in, intent as he was on hearing the news from Europe.
    That was all anyone did anymore was listen to newsof Europe and speak about the war. “Will you think I’m terrible,” asked Rosemary petulantly, “if I tell you that I’m sick of Archduke Ferdinand?”
    Her father chided her softly. “Are you going to tell me that you’re sick of the Archduchess Sophia, too?” he asked. He was teasing but trying to elicit a more human response, for although history would forget this, the Archduchess was killed alongside her husband and whatever Rosemary’s mood, she had always been a defender of women.
    “No,” she answered soberly, “but their legacy lives after them. I don’t want to hear about Bismarck or how they feel in France.” Her father switched off the radio and looked at her carefully. She looked back at him. Her voice softened. “I would just like one day,” she said, “where I didn’t feel as though the world, my world, was in, was about to be in, a state of siege…”
    Mr. Fell stared at his daughter and wondered whether he’d raised her at all adequately for any of the things she had to deal with now. But do we ever raise our children, particularly those as pampered and protected as Rose has been, to deal with whatever unexpected occurrences life throws at them? “What,” Mr. Fell wondered, “defined character and backbone?” What lessons had he passed on about morality and perseverance? He looked at his daughter’s unlined face, his child who had known little of tragedy excepther mother’s death and she was so young when that occurred.
    “No,” he said, “I don’t think you’re terrible. I just think you want the war to end.”
    Rosemary stood by the fireplace, an almost wistful expression on her face, framed like a cameo by the flickering light of the fire behind her. She looked for a moment like what she was, a society girl who had lost the society she was raised in.

 
    W hen Jane Howard came over for her practically regular afternoon visit, she found Rosemary up in her bedroom, the canopied bed scattered with pieces of lace, samples, for her veil and wedding dress and train. Rosemary looked displeased. Jane set aside a pile of lace, cleared a spot for herself, and sat on the edge of the bed. Rosemary sorted through a number of the pieces and held up a square of pure-white netted lace with curlicues of butterflies and daisies, clearly hand-made as the pattern was