Marrying Up by Wendy Holden Read Free Book Online Page B

looking at? Her eyes were running up and down the columns, but beside the half-page ad for Vernon’s Bus Trips, she could see
     nothing but a report about the local Women’s Institute enjoying a knitting demonstration.
    Her mother angled the paper away, and her thick forefinger, a forefinger that for as long as Alexa could remember had been
     plunged in washing-up bowls, grappling with peelers, hanging out washing or stirring mugs of instant coffee, now stabbed repeatedly
     at the bus tour ad. ‘You can go all sorts of places. Scotland, Wales, even Dutch bulb fields.’
    ‘Very nice,’ Alexa said acidly. Coach tours, how unbelievably dreary. How unbelievably cheap and miserable and provincial.
     The ad was inviting readers to book Christmas trips already, for something called a Turkey and Tinsel Tour. She felt almost
     physically nauseous.
    ‘They’re nice coaches these days,’ Mum was saying. ‘Got lovely toilets and everything.’
    Toilets! Alexa shuddered with horror.
No one
said toilet. Or lounge. Or pardon.
    ‘Pardon?’ Mum said, looking at her.
    ‘I didn’t say anything,’ Alexa muttered.
    ‘No, but you made a funny noise. Anyway, love, come on. Which one do you fancy?’ Her mother’s face was bright beside the newspaper.
    ‘
Fancy?
’ Alexa’s brain, normally so quick, was struggling to understand.
    ‘I thought it’d be just the thing to cheer you up. You and me could go on one, I thought. There’s a Lincolnshire Cheese Weekend
     . . .’
    Her mother was suggesting she went on a
coach tour
?
    ‘A Whisky and Haggis Tour of Scotland . . .’ Mum went on cheerfully.
    The words fell on Alexa’s amazed ears like cymbals on a stone floor. Lincolnshire
Cheese
Weekend? When she had stayed at Lincolnshire’s finest stately homes? Whisky and Haggis Tour of Scotland? When her previous
     experience of Caledonia was baronial piles with stalking, fishing, shooting and maids who packed up your clothes in tissue
     paper?
    There was a painful sensation in her heart; was it breaking, or was this organ failure?
    ‘Or there’s Choirs and Steam Trains – that’s a three-day tour of Wales,’ Mum continued blithely.
    Alexa was gasping for air.
Wales!
The only thing about Wales she cared about was the Prince of it.
    ‘I can’t,’ she managed in strangled tones. ‘I’m going to . . . to . . . to . . .
London
! Tomorrow!’
    Mum looked amazed. ‘You what, love?
London?
’
    She made it sound like Mars, Alexa thought contemptuously. ‘Yes. London. I’ve got a job interview there,’ she snapped, adding,
     in a wheedling voice, ‘Although I’m going to need you to lend me the train fare.’
    Once Mum, stunned, had reeled back downstairs, Alexa snatched up the latest copy of
Socialite
from the top of the pile by her bed.
    She had almost forgotten what optimism felt like. But now all her old determination came roaring back. Working at
Socialite
, she would meet more influential people in a week than she had managed in three years at university. Once she had installed
     herself, she could spin the web in which she intended to catch a very grand fly indeed.
    She flicked to the magazine’s party pages. She was not the only one catching a grand fly, by the looks of it. Leading London
     socialite Lady Florence Trevorigus-Whyske-Cleethorpe seemed to have been promoted.
Frotton Park’s celebrated annual charity polo competition got off to a dramatic start when the Hon. Fizzy Slutt slid out of
     the saddle after scoring. Fortunately billionheir fiancé James Hugh-Fortune was on hand to mop Fizzy’s fevered brow, as was
     best friend Lady Florrie Trevorigus-Whyske-Cleethorpe, who, as is increasingly the case these days, had HRH in tow.
    Had the ubiquitous, all-conquering Lady Florrie managed to attain official royal girlfriend status?

Chapter 6
    The front door of the flat slammed shatteringly. Lady Beatrice Trevorigus-Whyske-Cleethorpe, deep in the pillows and even
     deeper in dreams, reared up from under the