I and My True Love Read Free

grateful too that the drive to Georgetown had passed so easily after all.
    “What? Me?” Kate looked at her cousin in astonishment. Ever since she had met Sylvia, she had been feeling gauche and awkward.
    “You’re so full of confidence,” Sylvia said. “Don’t lose that, Kate.”
    Kate’s astonishment grew. “I—I didn’t know I had any,” she admitted, and began worrying in case confidence prevented her from ever looking like Sylvia. Not that she’d ever be beautiful as Sylvia was—but she could be thirty, and elegant, and poised, and wear smart little black hats and suits and a fur stole thrown round her shoulders with such proper carelessness. “What’s that perfume you’re wearing, Sylvia?” she asked with startling suddenness. “You smell so good.”
    Sylvia laughed, unexpectedly. But Kate could forgive her, for there was warmth and life in her face and voice at last. That’s the way she should always look, Kate thought.
    “You can borrow some of that good smell, tonight,” Sylvia was saying as they now climbed a narrow street, trees spaced along its brick sidewalks, variously coloured houses mounting on either side, “We’re having a small dinner party to welcome you to Washington.” Then she swung the car into a street, still narrower, still shorter than those they had travelled through in the last few minutes. “Here we are,” Sylvia said. “Joppa Lane.” She brought the car to rest before a three-storeyed house of brick painted blackish-grey with white shutters and a white door. Kate looked at it, then at the row of houses stretching along the little street, elbowing each other for space.
    Sylvia was beginning to smile again. “You don’t think much of it, do you?”
    “Well,” Kate said slowly, searching for politeness, “it is all very—interesting. Old, isn’t it?”
    “Eighteenth century mostly. That’s Payton’s reason for liking Georgetown.” It was the first time she had mentioned her husband. “Stewart Hallis says Joppa Lane is the most expensive firetrap in America, but he’s just bought that narrow little house over there with the yellow door. You’ll meet him at dinner tonight.”
    “Painters must thrive in this part of town,” Kate said, looking at the variety of colour schemes along the street. But she was wondering, as she followed her cousin over the worn brick steps, through the Georgian doorway, into a soft carpeted narrow hall, why Sylvia slipped into a way of talking which sounded amusing only because it was spoken in an amused voice. It didn’t fit Sylvia, somehow. And Sylvia’s smile at the moment was just as unreal, too. I prefer the way she was at the station, Kate decided, even the way she seemed upset, troubled, although I couldn’t understand any of it.
    Waiting in the hall, listening to Sylvia’s quiet voice giving directions about the luggage, watching the white-haired servant with his precise bow, looking through a glass-panelled doorway which led to a small walled garden at the back of the house, Kate suddenly had her first attack of homesickness. She thought of a rambling house built on a hillside, its wide windows giving light and air and a view of a valley in blossom. And behind the miles of orchards, there were the foothills of the Sierras stretching limitless and free. The vivid memory silenced her as Sylvia led her up the steep narrow staircase.
    “Payton is particularly proud of the balustrade,” Sylvia was saying. “And one of his triumphs is this wallpaper. Early nineteenth century. Mr. Jefferson had it sent over from France.” She turned quickly to look down at Kate, and a glimmer of a smile came back to her lips. “You’ll delight Payton if you ask him how he ever got it on these walls.”
    “I’ll remember,” Kate said.
    “You must be tired. Why don’t you rest before you unpack? Walter will give you a hand with that. He’s awfully good about things like unpacking.”
    “Oh, no,” Kate said in alarm. “I’m not