The Wedding Game Read Online Free PDF Page A

more angular Prudence. “I'm probably not eating so much cake,” she said, cheerfully dismissing the subject.
    “Who did you invite for me this evening?” She stood on tiptoe to examine her completed coiffure in the overmantel mirror. She licked a finger and smoothed her arched eyebrows over her hazel eyes.
    “Roddie Brigham. That's all right, isn't it?” Prudence asked a little anxiously.
    “Yes, of course it is. He's easy to talk to and we always enjoy each other's company,” Chastity responded.
    “You don't sound overwhelmed with enthusiasm,” her sister observed.
    “I'm sorry.” Chastity turned back from the mirror and smiled at her. “I like Roddie and I like not having to stand on ceremony with him.” She regarded Prudence with a slightly quizzical air. “But even though he's asked me to marry him at least three times, I am not looking for a husband, Prue, so don't get your hopes up.”
    “In my experience, you don't have to look for one, they just turn up,” Prudence replied.
    “What just turn up?”
    They both spun to the door at the new voice. Their eldest sister, Constance, came into the room, preceded by a waft of exotic fragrance.
    “Husbands,” Prudence said.
    “Oh, yes.” Constance nodded. “How true. They tend to appear where least expected.” She kissed her sisters. “You haven't found one, have you, Chas?”
    “Not since yesterday,” her sister informed her with a laugh. “But, as I just said, I'm not looking. At least,” she added, “not for myself.”
    “Ah, did we acquire a new client this afternoon?” Prudence asked, remembering that Chastity was keeping an appointment as the Go-Between.
    Chastity's small nose wrinkled. “I'd much rather tell him to go and fish in some other pool,” she said. “He's really obnoxious.”
    Constance poured sherry for them all. “But that's not really the point, Chas,” she said slowly. “We don't have to like our clients.”
    “I know.” Chastity took the offered glass and arranged herself on the sofa again.
    “What was his name? Doctor something . . .” Prudence sat down on the opposite sofa.
    “Farrell. Douglas Farrell.” She sipped her sherry. “He wants a rich wife, first and foremost. An essential
quality,
if that's the word.” She couldn't disguise her distaste.
    “Well, at least he's honest,” Constance pointed out.
    “Oh, yes, he's that all right. Not only must this wife be rich, she must also be willing and socially positioned to entice rich patients for him.”
    “Where does he practice?”
    “Harley Street. He's just beginning to build a practice, hence the need for a procuress.”
    Her sisters grimaced. “Must you put it like that, Chas?” asked Prudence.
    “I did to him and he said it was exactly right. He liked to call a spade a spade.”
    “You really didn't like him,” Constance stated.
    “No, I did not.” Chastity sighed. “He's so cold and calculating. And he was so scornful of the Harley Street patients that he wants to enroll, basically said they were hypochondriacal malingerers. I can't imagine what his bedside manner must be like.”
    Her sisters regarded her in silence for a minute. It was so unlike Chastity to take such a determined stance against someone. Of the three of them she was the most charitably inclined, the least willing to criticize.
    “It's not like you to be so dead-set against someone, Chas,” Constance said.
    Chastity shrugged. “He put my back up, I suppose.” For some reason that she did not understand, she had not confided to her sisters her first unwitting sight of Dr. Farrell at Mrs. Beedle's. And for the same inexplicable reason she couldn't bring herself to tell them how her dislike of the man was rooted in disappointment. It seemed so illogical to have formed expectations of someone based on a clandestine observation behind a shop curtain.
    “But you didn't tell him we wouldn't take him on as a client?” Prudence sounded a little anxious. Chastity could sometimes