A Rather Charming Invitation Read Online Free PDF Page A

and her smile was less guarded. Right next to her, with his arm around the back of her seat, was a man whom she quickly introduced to us as Guy Ansley. In a flash I saw that he was her new beau.
    He was old-fashioned enough to rise when I approached the table and took my seat opposite him, and he kissed my hand, which I could see struck Jeremy as a pretentious thing for an Englishman to do. Guy was dressed in an expensive, tailored grey suit with a bright yellow sweater, a silk ascot, a neon blue handkerchief, yellow socks and conspicuously new shiny shoes. He was beefy, genial and laughed easily . . . and loudly. As we exchanged pleasantries about the weather and the traffic and all that harmless stuff people say to start a conversation, I noticed that Guy kept one arm around Aunt Sheila the whole time, even as we began to eat the little appetizers that started appearing at our table.
    “Well, shall we break ‘nan’ together?” he asked, nodding at the arrival of the Indian bread.
    I grinned, and Aunt Sheila caught my eye and smiled wryly. If every man in the entire restaurant had been assembled at the bar so that I could guess which one was her date, it’s quite possible that this is the last fellow I would have picked. And she knew it, too, but it didn’t dampen her spirits one little bit. She seemed to be in on the joke, and was nonetheless aglow in a way that I’d never seen her before, making her look years younger. Not once had Aunt Sheila felt the need to identify Guy as “my friend” or anything else, but it was pretty clear that he was indeed someone very special.
    “Shall we order the main course now?” Guy beamed. I stole a look at poor Jeremy, whose shocked expression was the same as if, say, he’d suddenly swallowed an olive with the pit still in it. I knew this must be difficult for him, and I wondered why Aunt Sheila hadn’t warned him in advance. But perhaps she knew her son even better than I.
    “They do a nice chef’s special-for-four, featuring various platters that we can all share,” Guy said hopefully. “What say we go for it, eh?”
    It was clear that he intended to pay, and now, as he generously contemplated the wine list, I saw that he had absolutely no airs about him. He liked to tell silly jokes, which he himself enjoyed immensely. He even, at one point, slapped Jeremy on the back; and when Aunt Sheila broached the subject of our upcoming wedding, he insisted on ordering a bottle of champagne “for good luck”, he said. There was something endearingly genuine when he raised his glass in a toast to Jeremy and me, saying, “I want to wish you both the greatest happiness together, long life and good health”, as if he meant every word.
    We clinked glasses, and for a moment I thought all was well, until Guy fecklessly and broadly hinted, “Who knows? Someday soon there may be other wedding bells ringing for some other lucky bloke.”
    And that, I think, was when Jeremy began to despise him.
    He didn’t really show it. Jeremy was perfectly polite, but I knew he was struggling; and again, I felt that Aunt Sheila had been a bit unfair to him. Of course, it would be a vast understatement to say that she was a secretive woman when it came to her love affairs. Before marrying my Uncle Peter, she had been desperately in love with Jeremy’s dad, an Italian-American musician who’d arrived in London’s swinging ’60s, but died shortly after serving in Vietnam, when Jeremy was a baby. And the thing is, she never told Jeremy about his real father, not until quite recently, when the truth came out during an inheritance kerfuffle over Great-Aunt Penelope’s will. So I could see why Jeremy didn’t need another shockeroo like this.
    “Guy is an horologist, Penny,” Aunt Sheila said. “I imagine you and he must have a lot in common, you know, with your history-research background.”
    “Ah, yes, Sheila told me about your career!” Guy said, and we plunged into a conversation about his