The Blue Bottle Club by Penelope Stokes Read Free Book Online

future. Sure of the man I was destined to marry." She let out a long sigh. "I, Letitia Randolph Cameron, on this twenty-fifth day of December, 1929, here set forth my dream for my life. ..."

5
    O HOLY NIGHT
    December 24, 1929
    L a-tish-ahhh!" The familiar screech echoed up the stairway and careened around the doorpost into Tish's room. She winced. Philip was coming up the walk—she had just looked out her bedroom window and seen him—and no doubt he, not to mention the rest of the neighbors, had heard that banshee wail.
    Letitia wished, for the thousandth time, that her mother would make an effort to be a little more refined. Daddy had all the class in this family, and why he had married Mother was a mystery not only to Tish herself, but to most of the rest of Asheville society. She had seen people whispering behind their hands at parties or the symphony. Mother was too outgoing, too eager—what people derisively called New Money. She laughed at her own jokes, readily admitted her ignorance of social customs, and actually seemed to enjoy the social faux pas she committed with alarming regularity. In short, Mother embarrassed Tish. She was too real, too down-to-earth.
    Some of Tish's friends—especially Eleanor and Mary Love—adored her mother, thought she was funny and wonderful and easy to get along with. But then Eleanor was entirely too liberal for Tish's tastes, and Mary Love was, well, if not common then at least middle class. She could hardly be blamed for not knowing any better.
    Adora, Tish's best friend, of course favored Tish's father. Adora had style and grace and a sense of propriety. And Philip Dorn, the boy Tish fully intended to marry when she turned eighteen, gracefully ignored Mother and cultivated a relationship with Daddy. The two of them could talk for hours about stocks and bonds and what investments would yield the most capital growth. Both of them were convinced that this downturn in the market would spring back and right itself if people would just be patient.
    Tish didn't understand finance, but she did understand that Daddy wholeheartedly approved of Philip. And Philip, on his part, idolized Daddy. There was a partnership in Daddy's firm with Philip Dorn's name on it, just waiting until Philip finished college. By the time their first child came along, the sign on Daddy's office door would read Cameron, Matthews, and Dorn. Philip would be a bona fide financial adviser and commodities broker, and they would raise their children to be responsible, profitable members of polite society
    "La-tish-ahhh!" Mother squealed again. "Your young man is here!"
    "He has a name, Mother," Tish muttered under her breath. She shoved the last pin into her hair and turned to survey her appearance in the full-length mirror. Oh, yes, Philip would be pleased. The green velvet dress she had wheedled out of her father set off her gray-green eyes to perfection and made her waist look smaller than it actually was. Her hair, a pleasant enough shade of strawberry blonde, glistened in the light, and she had filched a bit of rouge and lipstick from her mother's cosmetics drawer. She would do, she thought. Tonight she would be a suitable adornment for Philip's arm . . . almost.
    Not for the first time, Tish thought what a cross it was for a girl to bear the knowledge that her intended was better looking than she was. Philip was so thoroughly handsome, with his dark hair and eyes, his muscular shoulders and slim hips, and that million-dollar smile. He always upstaged Tish wherever they went.
    But what she lacked in natural beauty, she made up for in grace and charm and social poise. Tish made sure of that. No one was going to talk behind her back the way they talked about Mother when she wasn't around. She would be a fitting wife for Philip Dorn—and an acceptable match in the eyes of the Dorn family—if it took her last ounce of energy and imagination.
    When she descended the stairs to find Philip waiting