Elizabeth Kidd Read Online Free PDF Page B

the match.”
    “You’ve met her, then?”
    “Yes, last night at the reception. To be sure, we spoke only very briefly. That is why I have come to you, dearest Aunt.”
    “Do not cut a wheedle with me,” Julia advised forthrightly. “You know I will give you my advice whether you ask for it or not, and slicing me up sweet will not make it any more palatable if it is not the advice you seek.”
    Antonia smiled, more at Julia’s twisting of the slang she heard at second-hand from Hester than at her scarcely concealed curiosity about Miss Melville.
    “I would not dream of doing such a thing,” Antonia protested. “I only hoped for a suggestion from you as to how I might begin to entertain Elena, to make her feel welcome. I have the liveliest dread that my usual style of party would not be to her liking at all.”
    “Has the engagement been formally announced?” Julia asked.
    “No, and that is another matter I wished to consult you about. Shall we put an announcement in the Times at once?”
    “I suppose Carey would happily shout it from the rooftops,” Julia remarked, somewhat mollified nonetheless by the assurance that her self-sufficient niece-by-marriage did occasionally need her advice in social matters.
    Antonia smiled. “I have no doubt he would, but I believe he will defer to your advice in this matter. I suspect he is still a little unsure of his good fortune and even wary of causing Elena to think badly of him.”
    “It appears that your scapegrace brother is coming to his senses at last. Perhaps this Miss Melville will be a good influence on him. I should advise making friends with her first, even if you feel you have done so already. Not everyone is so readily intimate with others as you are, Antonia.”
    “Yes, Aunt Julia,” Antonia said meekly.
    “Then you may bring her to see me,” Julia went on. “Say, for nuncheon on Friday. That will give me a few days to see what more I can learn about her family—discreetly, of course.”
    “She is of Greek extraction, an orphan, and the ward of Mr. Arthur Melville.”
    “We do not know him, I believe,” Julia said, and Antonia wondered if the plural included Miss Coverley—which seemed unlikely, given Hester’s wide-ranging acquaintance—or was, even inadvertently, royal. Antonia did not doubt that Julia could not only look at a king, but stare him down.
    “You may in the meanwhile invite her to Brook Street for dinner,” Julia went on. “Just you and Duncan and Carey, and perhaps one or two amiable friends. She cannot be so timid as to find that prospect daunting.”
    “Oh, I do not believe she is timid,” Antonia ventured. “Only—reserved. She certainly did not seem overwhelmed by the Drummonds.”
    “That is a promising sign,” Julia conceded thoughtfully. “Perhaps—”
    But whatever she might have said next by the entrance into the room of Miss Hester Coverley, the second occupant of the house, Lord Kedrington’s aunt on his mother’s side and a lady who could not have been more different from Julia Wilmot had they been born on different continents instead of merely in different counties.
    Hester had been one of the celebrated Coverley Girls in her youth, the other being Lord Kedrington’s mother Cecily, and despite her gray ringlets and plump figure, she still retained some of the beauty and all of the vivacity of her youth. As usual, she was dressed in a youthful style and shade of blue and carried a darker silk pelisse over her arm, obviously in preparation to go out. Antonia suspected that a matching bonnet await her in the hall, but Julia disapproved of Hester’s frivolous taste in headgear, so Hester did not inflict it upon her if she could avoid it.
    Hester put her head in the door and trilled, “I’m off now, Julia, dear,” before noticing their visitor and stopping in her tracks.
    “Antonia! What a delicious treat!” Miss Coverley bustled in to give her dearest Duncan’s pretty wife a hug and express herself