Kitty by MC Beaton Read Free Book Online

friends, and Kitty, thinking of Hetty back in Hampstead, did long for a best friend.
    The day of the wedding arrived at last. No expense had been spared. Mrs. Rosa Lewis’s catering service had been hired and her staff of girls with their high, white, laced boots, white dresses, and chef’s hats had taken over the kitchen.
    Kitty stood in her bedroom, patiently raising her arms so that Colette could drop the white gown of Brussels lace over her head. The waist and the bodice were embellished with tiny seed pearls and the train was so long it required the attentions of six bearers. Even Lady Henley’s forceful personality had not been enough to raise the necessary maids of honor and so the small children of various society families had been pressed into service.
    A distant relative of Lady Henley, Mr. James Bennington-Cartwright-Browne, had been recruited to give the bride away. Kitty’s timid suggestion that she might send an invitation to Hetty had been coldly received. “Ask the baker’s daughter? Are you mad?” said Mrs. Harrison, dropping only one hairpin to show how minor the irritation was.
    At last there was the church and there was the steeple, but who on earth were all these people? The pews seemed to be crowded with all of London’s fashionable society and not a friendly face among the lot of them. They had come to see the Baron marry “his little shopgirl.”
    It was Veronica Jackson who had called Kitty that and society had delightedly taken up the phrase and exchanged story after gleeful story of Kitty’s terribly middle-class “refeened” behavior. It made such good gossip that Kitty’s quiet, well-bred manner was unable to contradict it. She was the latest joke in a season thin of jokes. So the shopgirl she remained.
    It seemed as if it were all over so quickly. One minute she was Miss Kitty Harrison, the next she was Lady Kitty Chesworth, Baroness Reamington.
    The reception was excellent, run with the firm hand of the famous Mrs. Lewis in the background. The aristocratic guests were obviously surprised, for they kept saying so in very loud voices.
    Kitty waited patiently beside her new husband at the head of the long table. Would they never be able to leave? They were to spend their first night in their own town house and then travel to Reamington Hall on the following day. Kitty had secretly hoped to go somewhere exotic like Paris or Rome.
    Her new husband seemed to be drinking a great deal of champagne in a quiet, steady manner. Mrs. Harrison was positively radiant; she would read about herself in the society columns at last! Lady Henley sat with her head sunk over her plate, for once absolutely stupefied with food.
    The plover eggs served with cream cheese had been removed. That had been the eighteenth course, Kitty noted. Surely now it would end. But the last and nineteenth—
soufflés glacés à l’entente cordiale
and
bonbonnières de friandises
—was brought in and all the guests fell to cheerfully as if they were attacking the first. Then came the toasts. Kitty groaned inwardly. She had forgotten about them.
    Mr. James Bennington-Cartwright-Browne was called upon to give the toast to the bride. But the gentleman had fallen sound asleep, his heavy, white, tobacco-stained moustache rising and falling gently and his freckled old hand stretched out toward his glass. His neighbor nudged him rudely and he came to life. “Eh, what? What, what?”
    “Speech,” hissed his neighbor.
    “Oh, eh, harrumph. Just so.” Mr. James Bennington-Cartwright-Browne lurched to his feet and surveyed the room with his rheumy eyes.
    “I—ah—now—ah—declare this bazaar open.” And amid cheers and hoots from the guests, he sat down and promptly fell asleep.
    He was again nudged awake. “Toast to the bride,” he was told.
    “Eh, what bride?” said the old gentleman. “The shop-gel, Kitty,” hissed the woman on his other side. Once again Mr. James Bennington-Cartwright-Browne got to his feet.