Bridal Favors Read Online Free PDF Page A

surrounded by diminutive cygnets, a headless barnyard duck listed sideways in a puddle amongst the soggy, bloated pastry bodies of its progeny.
    Nor had he witnessed the debacle with the five hundred white doves she’d ordered released at the Reynolds’ wedding. She’d been so proud of herself for buying their feed at a cut rate. She should have asked why it was so cheap. It was cheap because it had gotten damp and started to ferment.
    By the day of the wedding, the doves, cunningly concealed in rafters of the outdoor pavilion, were thoroughly pickled. Instead of releasing them to fly gracefully away, opening the trapdoor had simply dumped them en masse on the banquet tables, where they waddled in drunken ecstasy amongst the dessert plates, gorging themselves on wedding cake as the guests fled shrieking.
    There had been other “wrinkles,” too. Small things but, when added up, condemning. She lifted her gaze to his, the remembered evidence of her own ineptitude stripping away every shred of her self-protective veneer. “Mr. Powell,” she said, “I am a
disaster
!”
    He looked at her stricken face and made no further attempt to argue. His hand rose toward her cheek and stopped. He frowned at it, as if he wasn’t exactly sure how it had moved, and let it drop. “I’m sorry. But what has that got to do with me?”
    Ashamed of such weakness, she dashed away the tear that had slipped down her cheek and readjusted her glasses. She folded her hands primly in her lap.
    “First,” she said, “I want you to understand that my desire to do well by my aunt isn’t motivated by pride and self-conceit. At least,” she added honestly, “not
primarily
by pride and self-conceit. If it was only my vanity that was at stake, I would just go quietly away.”
    He looked doubtful.
    “I am a mature woman. I can accept that there are things of which I am not capable. Though,” she continued, pleased with how reasonable she sounded, “I confess I wouldn’t have suspected something which, at its core, is nothing more than a matter of simple logistics and management to prove so formidable. Would you?”
    She didn’t wait for an answer. “I mean, though I dislike boasting, I
have
managed my parents’ estate during their absences, traveled extensively by myself, and only last year founded a school for itinerant farm laborers in our parish.”
    She tried to relax but her jaw seemed to have seized up. She continued through her teeth, “I also opened a housemaid training service for the local girls, and have sat on our district’s council for three years running. Now, Mr. Powell, given these facts, don’t you find it amusing,” she tried to laugh to prove just
how
amusing it was and failed, “how silly and aggravating and out-and-out
stupid
it is that something as simple as planning a wedding reception should be the one thing I
cannot seem to get right
?”
    She looked up at him for concurrence and found him staring at her. Had she shouted that last bit? She forced herself to smile brightly.
    “Of course you do,” she answered. She picked up her abandoned glass and took a ladylike sip of lemonade. “Do you have any questions?”
    “Well, yes.”
    “And that is . . . ?”
    “I suspect I missed something—happens to me all the time, so wouldn’t be surprising—but did you ever tell me how your current, er, difficulty involves me?”
    “Oh, didn’t I say?” she answered, happy that her voice had regained it usual calm. “You are involved because I need you in order to once again establish Whyte’s Nuptial Celebrations as the uncontested leader in wedding planner services.”
    “And how am I to do that?”
    “By renting me North Cross Abbey for six weeks.”
    “The Granddad General’s old place?” he said, clearly surprised. “It’s just a tumbled-down rubble heap in the middle of sheep country. Can’t imagine why you’d want to rent it.”
    “I don’t. My client does. I explained to her that it likely has