Distant Choices Read Online Free PDF Page A

were tugging the hat to an even more drastic angle, badly ruffling its feathers and Evangeline’s with them, Matthew had no doubt at all.
    â€˜Please – don’t trouble,’ said Evangeline.
    â€˜No trouble,’ said Kate. ‘Oh – absolutely not … We can’t have you looking such a fright …’ And perhaps she would have had the hat off altogether and several strands of Evangeline’s smooth hair tumbling down with it had not another pair of hands swiftly intervened.
    â€˜ Do allow me,’ murmured his other daughter, Miss Blake, moving Kate aside with so little fuss, setting the hat and the awkward moment with it so swiftly to rights that even Matthew Stangway felt obliged to admire her expertise.
    â€˜There, mamma. You are quite lovely again.’
    â€˜Thank you, my darling.’ They smiled at one another with quiet satisfaction.
    â€˜Are you acquainted with my daughter,’ enquired Evangeline of everyone around her, bringing Oriel forward and, without appearing to do so, pushing Kate back.
    Astute Evangeline. And polished, immaculate, highly accomplished Oriel. But when it came to marriage – wondered her father – would the silver hair, the clear blue eyes, the cool serenity, even the dowry he knew Evangeline would prevail upon him to give her, be compensation enough for the questions concerning her birth which even Evangeline would be unable to answer?
    He doubted it. Which seemed a pity, since she had everything in her to make a man happy: whereas it would take a desperate man indeed to risk himself with Kate.
    â€˜Come – everyone.’ Evangeline was calling them all together, eager now to go and take possession of the home for which she had waited so long.
    â€˜Come, Maud – and Letty. Come, children …’ And then, with the air of a woman who has suddenly mislaid her gloves. ‘Come, Matthew …’
    Where was he?
    â€˜Here, my love.’
    Smiling, he handed her into her wedding landau, tucked a fur rug carefully around her knees just as if she were precious to him, even kissed her hand. Bells rang. There seemed to be a flurry of snowflakes mixed with dried rose-petals in the air. He saw that his sister Letty, surrounded by her progeny, was shedding tears; his sister Maud standing as rigid and stern as a soldier on parade. His daughter Kate scowling and scuffing her new kid boots on a stone. His daughter Oriel making pleasant conversation with strangers, her gloved hands neatly clasped together, saying – he felt certain – only the most appropriate thing.
    Did any of them realize that he had seen the dawn of this, his second wedding day, with no more joy than his first? That all he really wanted from these women – daughters, sisters, wives – was to be left alone?
    Did any of them understand that?
    Only Evangeline.
    â€˜Welcome to your kingdom, my darling,’ he said.

Chapter Two
    Maud Stangway gave up the keys to High Grange Park with a steady hand, a fixed smile and venom of a most lethal nature in her heart, thus abandoning a reign which had been as long as it had been absolute.
    â€˜What a noble-hearted creature she is,’ the Gore Valley had been saying of her these thirty years, enjoying a spasm of self-righteousness at the sight of this handsome and, at one time, perfectly marriageable woman sacrificing herself on the altar of family loyalty. Since somebody , after all, had been needed to make good the shortcomings of her brother’s wife and bring up his difficult daughter. Poor, brave Maud, they said, who had remained single, the better to do it.
    But, in fact, she had been a perfectly happy woman, finding in her strict control of the house, the estate, and all within it, the very things she most desired from the married state without any obligation to suffer the caresses of a man. A physical indignity from which her brother’s domestic misfortunes had spared her.
    For