Impulse Read Free Page B

people are going to start saying you’re odd if you persist in walking about with that entire menagerie.” She lifted her lorgnette and focused on Trey. “Especially when some of them are so…different.”
    â€œNo, they will simply say that they fit me perfectly.Everyone already thinks I’m odd, you know.” She crossed the room and gave the old lady a peck on the cheek in greeting, then turned toward her mother. “Hello, Mama. How are you this afternoon?”
    â€œNot well,” her mother replied in a die-away voice. “But, then, I am rather accustomed to it. One learns to adjust.”
    â€œI should think you would be accustomed to it,” Angela’s grandmother, Margaret, commented. “You are never well.”
    Laura, the younger Lady Bridbury, assumed a faintly martyred look, her usual expression around her mother- in-law, and said proudly, “Yes, I do not enjoy good health. But, then, it was always so with the Babbages.”
    â€œPack of weaklings.” Margaret dismissed them contemptuously. “Thank God the Stanhopes don’t suffer from such nonsense. I did not have so much as a chill all winter.”
    Laura gave her mother-in-law a rather pitying look. She had known the dowager countess for almost thirty- five years now, and she still was unable to understand why the woman took so much pride in her robust condition. In her own opinion, a woman ought to be suffering from something most of the time; otherwise, she would never get enough attention from the male members of her family.
    However, Laura knew it was useless to try to make Lady Bridbury understand any point of view other than her own, so she turned back to her daughter. “Have you been out walking, my dear? You should wrap up. You might catch a chill. I know it is April, but the wind, you know, can be so dangerous. You should wear a muffler.”
    Angela’s grandmother rolled her eyes, but Angelamerely smiled at her mother and replied, “Doubtless you are right, Mama.”
    She kissed her on the cheek as well, and nodded toward Miss Monkbury, her grandmother’s self-effacing companion, who sat away from the fire, knitting. Miss Monkbury gave an odd ducking nod in reply and continued to knit. Angela sat down between her mother and grandmother, saying, “Did Jeremy come home? I saw the carriage outside.”
    â€œYes. And he brought a decidedly peculiar young man with him,” Margaret answered. “An American.”
    â€œAn American? I wasn’t aware that Jeremy even knew anyone from America.”
    â€œOne doesn’t, normally,” Laura agreed.
    â€œThat is one of the things that is so odd about his coming here. A Mr. Pettigrew, Jeremy said he was. Jason Pettigrew. I ask you, what sort of name is that? Sounds like a commoner, but then, I suppose all Americans are, aren’t they? He looks like a solicitor, but when I told him so, he denied it.” Her frown seemed to indicate that she suspected he had lied to her.
    â€œI found him rather shy,” Laura put in. It was rare that her opinion on any matter agreed with her mother- in-law, though she never disagreed directly. “Of course, he does speak in that American way, but other than that, he seemed quite gentlemanly.”
    â€œYes, but what is he doing here? That is the question, Laura,” Margaret put in impatiently. “Not whether he is polite.”
    â€œBut what is Jeremy doing here, either?” Angela asked. She, of course, lived at Bridbury year-round, and had for four years now, ever since the divorce and its attendant scandal. But Jeremy and his wife spent most of their time in London.
    â€œThat is what I asked him,” Margaret assured her. “But he would not tell me. He said he had to talk it over with you first.” She looked affronted.
    â€œWith me?” Angela was astonished. She loved her brother, and owed him a great deal for what he had done for