she added as she rose from her chair and came around to where Charles sat, "are not my attitudes in such matters a reflection of your own? Surely, sir," she said proudly, "I am my father's daughter."
Then, not really allowing her smiling parent a chance to comment, she kissed him quickly on the cheek and moved toward the door, saying, "Now I've got to run. I may not be caught up in a dither over tonight's fete, but Aunt Celia is near apoplexy with worry over last-minute details. . . . I'm past due joining her upstairs." And nodding briefly in Garrett's direction, she floated gracefully out of the room.
The day passed quickly for Christie. She endured the final fitting for her gown with good grace, and spent much of the afternoon helping Aunt Celia greet the continual flow of guests who arrived in a steady procession of carriages. They were welcomed with pitchers of cool lemonade to assuage huge thirsts acquired from long rides on dusty roads, and helped to settle into the various guest chambers and cottages that had been readied for them; for few would be returning home before a stay of at least a few days.
At four o'clock she was ordered to take an hour's nap in her room, and this time she actually slept; the business of welcoming so many people had, indeed, proved tiring, and in some cases, tiresome.
Not the least of those guests she would have preferred not to endure were her cousins from Charleston, Melissa and Belinda Stanhope. Aunt Margaret's daughters, not to mention Aunt Margaret herself. The two girls were three and two years older than Christie, respectively, and as such, had always been held up by their mother as examples by which Christie ought to be measured by her father. Not that Charles had ever seen the need to do any comparing. He had always viewed the spoiled and artificially mannered offspring of his sister as exact examples of what he could never abide in young womanhood, and it had been with an eye to avoiding such development in his own daughter that he had carefully guarded her growing up, keeping her well sheltered from urban life at Windreach. They were, he ultimately noted with satisfaction, everything Christie was not. Vain, shallow surface creatures whose daily existence hovered around the greedy acquisition of material things and fashion's whims, they were more apt to be concerned about the tailored cut of a man's suit than the character of the person in it; the shape of a woman's bonnet than what was told by the eyes that peeked out from under it; and the size of a family's house, rather than the degree of warmth and harmony within. Right now, as during the past three or four years, their chief objective in life was to catch a rich husband. At this they seemed to work day and night, not lightly abetted by their mother.
Margaret Trevellyan Stanhope was, herself, a model for the comportment of her two daughters, although, as Charles had often explained to Christie, she hadn't always been that way. Somehow, marriage to Philip Stanhope and her life with him in Charleston society had changed her. She, like Celia, had come to these shores long ago with little beyond a staunch English middle-class background to recommend her, but Margaret, by far the prettier of the two sisters, had used her looks and the influence of her successful brother's name to make her entree into colonial society, setting her cap for only the wealthiest of the unattached men. Thus it was that she had met Philip—Not, perhaps, the wealthy son of landed gentry she might have wished for, that kind of a "catch" being just beyond the reach of the daughter of one of England's merchant class. But Philip's had been a rising star, the smell of newly made money still fresh about him, and if his own less-than-noble beginnings were lower than the kind of which Margaret had dreamed, she had finally accepted his proposal of marriage as perhaps the best she could manage.
It was a good thing, Charles had once told Christie, that Philip's
Then, not really allowing her smiling parent a chance to comment, she kissed him quickly on the cheek and moved toward the door, saying, "Now I've got to run. I may not be caught up in a dither over tonight's fete, but Aunt Celia is near apoplexy with worry over last-minute details. . . . I'm past due joining her upstairs." And nodding briefly in Garrett's direction, she floated gracefully out of the room.
The day passed quickly for Christie. She endured the final fitting for her gown with good grace, and spent much of the afternoon helping Aunt Celia greet the continual flow of guests who arrived in a steady procession of carriages. They were welcomed with pitchers of cool lemonade to assuage huge thirsts acquired from long rides on dusty roads, and helped to settle into the various guest chambers and cottages that had been readied for them; for few would be returning home before a stay of at least a few days.
At four o'clock she was ordered to take an hour's nap in her room, and this time she actually slept; the business of welcoming so many people had, indeed, proved tiring, and in some cases, tiresome.
Not the least of those guests she would have preferred not to endure were her cousins from Charleston, Melissa and Belinda Stanhope. Aunt Margaret's daughters, not to mention Aunt Margaret herself. The two girls were three and two years older than Christie, respectively, and as such, had always been held up by their mother as examples by which Christie ought to be measured by her father. Not that Charles had ever seen the need to do any comparing. He had always viewed the spoiled and artificially mannered offspring of his sister as exact examples of what he could never abide in young womanhood, and it had been with an eye to avoiding such development in his own daughter that he had carefully guarded her growing up, keeping her well sheltered from urban life at Windreach. They were, he ultimately noted with satisfaction, everything Christie was not. Vain, shallow surface creatures whose daily existence hovered around the greedy acquisition of material things and fashion's whims, they were more apt to be concerned about the tailored cut of a man's suit than the character of the person in it; the shape of a woman's bonnet than what was told by the eyes that peeked out from under it; and the size of a family's house, rather than the degree of warmth and harmony within. Right now, as during the past three or four years, their chief objective in life was to catch a rich husband. At this they seemed to work day and night, not lightly abetted by their mother.
Margaret Trevellyan Stanhope was, herself, a model for the comportment of her two daughters, although, as Charles had often explained to Christie, she hadn't always been that way. Somehow, marriage to Philip Stanhope and her life with him in Charleston society had changed her. She, like Celia, had come to these shores long ago with little beyond a staunch English middle-class background to recommend her, but Margaret, by far the prettier of the two sisters, had used her looks and the influence of her successful brother's name to make her entree into colonial society, setting her cap for only the wealthiest of the unattached men. Thus it was that she had met Philip—Not, perhaps, the wealthy son of landed gentry she might have wished for, that kind of a "catch" being just beyond the reach of the daughter of one of England's merchant class. But Philip's had been a rising star, the smell of newly made money still fresh about him, and if his own less-than-noble beginnings were lower than the kind of which Margaret had dreamed, she had finally accepted his proposal of marriage as perhaps the best she could manage.
It was a good thing, Charles had once told Christie, that Philip's
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