The Courtship of the Vicar's Daughter by Lawana Blackwell Read Free Book Online Page B

pleading eyes, but Julia shook her head. She had learned last year, upon assuming the responsibility of mothering her children instead of allowing a nanny to do so, that if bedtime were allowed to be negotiated one night, it would have to be negotiated every night. And since she didn’t wish their last conversations of the day to consist of arguments and pleadings, she enforced the rule with the rigidity of a garrison sergeant except on special occasions.
    While the girls headed with reluctant steps for the water closet to take care of their toilet, she went to the bedroom they shared and laid out their nightgowns. Philip’s bedtime was pushed back thirty minutes when he graduated from Gresham School, so she had plenty of time to hear the girls’ prayers and read a story before it would be time to bid him good-night.
    And the boy’s bedtime ritual would end with that, for shortly after his graduation he had approached her with the request that he not be tucked into bed anymore. “I’m too old to be coddled now,” he’d explained after some hesitation. “You don’t mind, do you?” Julia had smiled and assured him she understood, then went to her room and wept for a little while. Her son no longer needed her. If Gresham were Alaska, she would be one step closer to being set adrift on an ice floe.
    But she had forced herself to see reason. It only meant that he was trying as best he could to become a man— not that he had no use for a mother. She had come to accept that for her son, “tucking in” now meant a kiss on his cheek in his doorway and exchanging wishes for pleasant dreams.
    The story Julia selected from Grace’s big book of fairy tales was The Ugly Duckling by Hans Christian Andersen. Two well-scrubbed faces listened intently from their pillows as Julia read:
“It was so lovely in the country—it was summer! The wheat was yellow, the oats were green, the hay was stacked in the meadows and the stork went tiptoeing about on his red legs, jabbering Egyptian, a language his mother had taught him. …”
     
    She could tell that Aleda enjoyed the story as much as her younger sister did, though she would have been loathe to admit it—for she, like Philip, was beginning to feel the constraints of her age. But in Aleda’s case, having a younger sister afforded her the opportunity to listen in.
    When both daughters had been properly tucked in for the night, Julia went two rooms down the family corridor and knocked upon Philip’s door. There was no answer, so she returned to the hall. The Clays had retired to their apartment, and Mr. Ellis had come downstairs and was reading Mrs. Hyatt a portion of a letter from his wife back in Liverpool. Shortly after the archeologist had arrived at the Larkspur , he and Mrs. Hyatt had been pleased to discover they were second cousins twice-removed. Mr. Durwin did not seem to mind the shared tidbits of family gossip between his fiancée and Mr. Ellis, for he listened with eyes half-closed and a pleasant smile.
    “You must hear this part, Mrs. Hollis,” Miss Rawlins said from the opposite sofa, where she and Mrs. Kingston still sat. “I based the heroine on you.”
    “You did?”
    “Well, her appearance anyway.”
    Mrs. Kingston nodded up at Julia. “As soon as she read it to me, I said, ‘Why, she sounds just like Mrs. Hollis!’ ”
    Philip will likely come along soon , Julia thought. The two women moved apart to give her room, and she settled in between them. With a sideways smile that seemed to say, Just wait until you hear this! Miss Rawlins cleared her throat and began to read.
“Penelope St. Martin was a beautiful woman, slender and well-proportioned, who carried herself with a quiet grace that belied her tempestuous spirit. Oh, the eyes were calm enough—green like the sparkling sea under the noon sun—but in contradiction with hair that flamed crimson about her shoulders.”
     
    “Why, that’s very good,” Julia said as the author lowered the page.