Marrying Miss Hemingford Read Free

from the ground floor,reminded Anne of a dimly lit tower. But the rooms that led from it were light and airy with balconied windows at the front, which afforded a view of the sea, calm and sparkling on the afternoon they arrived.
    â€˜First things first,’ Mrs Bartrum said when they had chosen their rooms and left the maids to unpack. ‘We will have some refreshments, give instructions to the servants about how we like them to go on and then we will go and announce our arrival.’
    â€˜Announce it?’ Anne queried, laughing. ‘Are you going to send out the town crier?’
    â€˜No, you foolish girl. We go to Baker’s library and sign the visitors’ book and while we are there we will read the names of those who have preceded us. After that, home for dinner and then we shall see what tomorrow brings.’
    Baker’s library was on The Steine at the bottom of St James’s Street and they decided to walk. Putting a light shawl over her lilac silk gown, Anne slipped her arm through her aunt’s and they stepped out briskly along the sea front. Anne had never known such a dazzling light. It glittered on the sea, shone on the pastel stucco of the buildings, reflected in the windows and picked out the colours of other strollers’ clothes like an artist’s palette. And the air was so clear, they felt almost giddy with it.
    â€˜Shall you bathe in the sea?’ Anne asked her aunt, noticing the row of huts on wheels that stood along the water’s edge and the women standing beside them holding armfuls of cotton garments for bathers to change into.
    â€˜Why not?’ her aunt said. ‘There is no sense in coming to the seaside if you do not take a dip, is there?’
    Anne smiled. Her aunt was game for anything. ‘No, I suppose not.’
    â€˜We’ll go one morning very early before anyone is about, then if we find we do not like it, we can come out and no one the wiser.’
    â€˜What else have you in mind for us to do?’
    â€˜That depends on the Master of Ceremonies. He will advise us what is going on and what is most suitable for us. That is why we sign the visitors’ book: it tells him we are here.’
    Anne found herself laughing. ‘You mean he is a kind of matchmaker?’
    â€˜Not at all.’ She paused. ‘Unless you want him to be, then of course he will make sure you are introduced to the right people.’
    â€˜I positively forbid you to speak of me, Aunt. I will not be paraded like a seventeen-year-old newly escaped from the schoolroom.’
    â€˜I would not dream of it, my dear. There is no need.’
    Anne looked sideways at her. Her aunt was looking decidedly complacent and she wondered just what she was up to. She felt no alarm; let the dear lady have her fun, for that was all it was. A diversion, wasn’t that what she had said?
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    Even in the old part of town, there were new houses interspersed with old and Anne began to wonder what the original fishing village had been like fifty years before and what had become of its inhabitants. There must still be fishermen, because their nets were laid out to dry on a wide grassy bank next to the sea and one or two boatswere pulled up at the water’s edge, but of their owners there was no sign. She supposed they set out very early in the morning and, once their catch had been landed and sold and the nets put out to dry, disappeared for a well-earned rest.
    They picked their way over the nets and found the library where Mrs Bartrum spent some time perusing the visitors’ book and making notes, while Anne borrowed two books, then they set off to explore a little further. They wandered up Old Steine, looked at the house where Mrs Fitzherbert, the Regent’s mistress, lived and a little further on came to the Pavilion, his seaside home. It had begun as an ordinary villa and had been extended and glorified over the last twenty years until it looked like an