Must the Maiden Die Read Online Free PDF

and the white
velvet parasol she held dripped silken fringe. She accepted her
cousin's quick embrace with a faint smile.
    "I'm glad you're here safely, Bronwen, and
thank you for coming. That was a most dramatic entrance."
    Glynis smiled, recognizing that Emma, too,
had picked up the theatrical element of her cousin's descent into
Seneca Falls. But Bronwen threw Glynis a quick glance before she
said, "Emma, are you all right?"
    Emma's dark brows raised slightly. "Yes, I'm
all right. Why wouldn't I be?"
    "I thought you might be annoyed that I was
late getting here."
    Emma shook her head, but didn't answer and
seemed preoccupied. Had seemed so, in fact, for several days, and
Glynis wondered if it was wedding preparations alone that
disturbed her. Or if the recent disagreement with her fiancé,
attorney Adam MacAlistair, had escalated rather than been
resolved.
    "The party tonight will be at Emma's shop,"
Glynis told Bronwen, mostly to divert her from questioning her
cousin further.
    Emma appeared to pull herself back into the
present with some difficulty. "Yes, we've been moving things around
all day to accommodate a harp"—Emma gave Glynis an amused
look—"under the baton of Vanessa Usher."
    Glynis pressed her lips together to keep
from smiling when Bronwen groaned. "I thought Aunt Glyn wrote me,"
she said to her cousin, "that The Lady Vanessa was hosting your
wedding. Or is she, as usual, running the entire show?"
    Emma's smile faded. "Miss Usher is being
very generous, and I'm not sure I like my wedding being
characterized as a 'show.'"
    "No, of course not—I'm probably still giddy
from the thin air. But Emma, why shouldn't Vanessa Usher be
generous? She's got more money than Midas, and she could never
find clothes like the gorgeous stuff you make for her."
    Glynis watched a storm gather in Emma's gray
eyes, as she seemed torn between defending her best customer and
accepting her cousin's rather backhanded compliment. But while
"gorgeous stuff' was not the most delicate phrasing, it was
undistilled Bronwen and Emma should know her cousin by now. Trying
to head off discord, Glynis said quickly, "We should probably be
going, Bronwen, or there won't be time to dress."
    "I'm afraid I didn't bring much to wear,"
Bronwen said with a look of untypical chagrin. "I knew the
bridesmaids' dresses were being made by you, Emma, and the
balloon's basket can't hold much."
    "I've things at the shop that you can wear,"
Emma offered. "Actually, I've made several gowns for you—and for
Cousin Kathryn, too," she added. "We're nearly enough the same
size."
    Size, thought Glynis, being the only thing
about these two young women that was the same. And Bronwen's older
sister Katy—or Kathryn, as she had gently suggested she now be
called—was unlike either.
    "Emma, I hope you don't intend to put me in
one of those steel-cage hoops," Bronwen said, "or worse yet, a
corset!"
    Her cousin's face gave away nothing, but her
eyes went beyond Bronwen to where Professor Lowe stood talking and
nodding animatedly, surrounded by townspeople who were doubtless
asking about his miraculous journey. His height put Glynis in mind
of Gulliver among the Lilliputians.
    Emma, with her gaze still on Lowe, commented
dryly, "Why don't you ask to borrow the Professor's stylish Prince
Albert coat, my dear cousin?"
    "The very thing, Em! I'll ask him."
    "You know, Bronwen," said Emma in the same
dry voice, "I have always feared for your sanity." She smiled
faintly as she turned and walked toward Fall Street, the fringe on
her parasol swaying with every step.
    "Sanity?" Bronwen repeated to Glynis.
"Emma used to just call me crazy. Have I been raised in rank, do
you think?"
    Glynis was trying not to think of what the
next days with these two might bring, and so nearly missed
Bronwen's second question.
    "What's the matter with her, Aunt Glyn?
Emma's always been on the serious side, but now she looks
positively funereal. Like she's readying for a wake instead of