The Villa of Death: A Mystery Featuring Daphne du Maurier (Daphne du Maurier Mysteries) Read Online Free PDF Page A

the private balcony and gazed out at the woods.
    I wanted a moment alone. To grieve, to be angry, to dream of what I’d say to Mister Major Browning when he showed up with his fiancée. Lady Lara Fane! The name made my blood boil.
    Perhaps I should say nothing at all. Treat him with cool indifference, to pretend he meant nothing to me. Oh, how I wished Sir Marcus was here! I missed his merry humor. Instead, I had to face the vultures—the haute ton of English society and their American counterparts, the Bostonians.
    I dreaded it. And as maid of honor, I wouldn’t exactly be inconspicuous, would I? At the best of times, I had little self-confidence and had no wish to be ogled at by all and sundry. I cheered myself that I only had to walk the aisle, smile, and support Ellen.
    *   *   *
    If only it were that simple, I thought at the dinner table the next evening surrounded by a host of Bostonians. Two of Teddy’s sisters, Mrs. Bertha Pringle and Mrs. May Fairchild, sat there staunch-faced and proud, their children Dean, Amy, and Sophie talking to their cousin Jack and Teddy’s daughter, Rosalie. A party of seven, and they did not mix easily with the English, though Megan endeavored to do her vivacious best to fill the void.
    Glimpsing Ellen’s face across the table, I saw how uneasy she’d become, even shy. Teddy’s daughter Rosalie flaunted herself shamelessly while deliberately ignoring her stepmother-to-be. The Americans liked to dance and Angela joined them while I preferred to remain at the table. The men were good looking and loud, the women lively and overdressed. I gathered that the Americans considered us English as staid as old biscuits.
    After discussing several neutral subjects with the two aunts, I ran out of things to say. Teddy stepped in then, handsome, boyish, and kind, directing his broad grin to me.
    “Daphne here is the daughter of Sir Gerald du Maurier. She comes from a long line of English crust as does my Ellen here.”
    “Oh,” they chorused, lifting their brows, and there was a sudden interest in anything I had to say from that moment on. Mrs. May Fairchild eyed me peculiarly as though trying to ascertain whether or not I possessed a sizable dowry. As the mother of Dean and Sophie, I gathered she planned to wed either of them into our English “crust.”
    The next day hastened my opinion of my fellow guests when upon returning from my ride with Charlotte, Amy asked me outright if my sisters and I had any money to our name.
    We were standing in the stable courtyard, and the gentle breeze rustled Amy’s corn-colored hair about her face. She was prettier than her cousin Sophie, I decided, and more forward, too.
    “Aunt May is determined Dean marries well. She wants a rich English wife for him.”
    Perhaps too forward.
    “So are you…?”
    “Rich? No. Well, my father is. As for dowries, I guess you’ll have to ask him when he arrives.”
    Her face fell. “Sir Gerald’s coming here?”
    “Of course he is. And the earl of Rutland, too, if you are name hunting. In fact, I do have a list of all the attendees if you’d like to peruse it. I can even add a column on the side with their status in life and the amount of their fortune.”
    She stared at me, her brown eyes thrilled at the prospect before she registered my cynicism.
    “You English are far too proud. I meant no insult.”
    She stormed off, and I let out a little laugh. The confrontation lifted my spirits and I spent the afternoon with Megan making last-minute preparations. The rest of the guests arrived that afternoon, my parents among them, and the hour for the wedding dawned.
    “I’m terribly nervous,” Ellen confessed as we dressed in her chamber on the far side of the house.
    “I’m not nervous, Mummy,” Charlotte said, twirling in front of the mirror. “I like my daddy. Why didn’t you tell him about me? You said my daddy was dead!”
    Half in her dress, Ellen reached out to hold her daughter’s hand.