The Waltzing Widow Read Online Free PDF Page B

Mary. Her eyes contemplated her daughter's lovely face. It had been the right choice, and more than anything in this life she wished her own daughter to have the opportunity to seek the love that should be hers. She was more glad than ever that she was taking her daughter away to Brussels, where Abigail would be far from her grandparents’ insular, one-sided view of what constituted a proper marriage. Free of her grandparents’ destructive influence during this important first Season, Abigail would have the opportunity to try her wings, and hopefully she would discover that there was more to life than an unending round of parties.
    As Lady Mary watched the expressions flit across Abigail's face during the lovely and solemn ceremony, she could not but smile. It was definitely in her daughter's interest to remove to Brussels, but Abigail would be appalled if she knew that was what her mother thought. Better to let her think that the main purpose of the journey was that it be one of pleasure.
    Betsy's wedding day ended in a flurry of good-byes as the bridal couple was seen off in their carriage. Abigail shrieked that she would write to her friend. Betsy blew Abigail a kiss before she pulled her head back inside the carriage window.
    Abigail and Lady Mary stood with the other guests waving until the carriage had rolled out of sight behind the trees and hedgerows. “I shall miss Betsy,” Abigail said, discovering it for the first time.
    "I know you will,” Lady Mary said, hugging her briefly. She did not say it, but she rather thought that they would both miss their former comfortable lives once they reached Brussels.
    Two days later the Spence ladies set off on their journey, accompanied by Miss Steepleton in their own carriage and followed by a second carriage that carried their maids and the majority of their baggage.
    The trip by carriage across England, with only a brief delay in London to call on Emily Downing and the agent who had procured the house in Brussels, ended at Dover, from whence they took sail across the Channel. As they traveled once more by carriage, the ancient cities of the Low Countries passed in a fascinating panorama: Ostend, fishing port and terminus of the Dover mail boat; Bruges, with its lofty thirteenth-century square bell tower that stood like a crowned giant over the flat expanse of West Flanders and the humpbacked bridges, swan-graced canals, and mellow brick dwellings; Ghent, with the soaring towers of the Cathedral of St. Bavon, the Belfry, and St. Nicholas Church.
    Miss Steepleton was profoundly grateful to be allowed to travel to countries whose histories she had only read about. In anticipation of the journey she had procured for herself an extensive guidebook from which she was wont to quote entire passages.
    When the travelers entered Belgium she volunteered the information to her companions that the country derived its name from “Gallia Belica,” used by the Romans to describe all of the southern region of the Low Countries, and that the political division of Holland from Belgium, decreed in 1609, had lasted until the present, when the Netherlands and Belgium were united into the Kingdom of the Netherlands under King William I in that year of 1815. “And that, of course, explains our own countrymen's eagerness to travel to Brussels. We have always loved the pomp and ceremony connected with royalty,” Miss Steepleton said with satisfaction.
    In Ghent, the ladies stayed in the oldest hotel in Belgium, the Cour St. Georges, which had been erected in the thirteenth century. Abigail had thought herself too old to be lectured on antiquities and history, but she was fascinated to learn that the hostel was the early headquarters of the honorable crossbowmen of St. George. She felt herself to be in love with the city of abbeys, castles, canals, quays, guilds, churches with chimes, and cobbled market squares. “Mama, is it not the most romantic place?” she sighed, staring up at the