With This Ring Read Free Page B

travel with a book. Let me recommend it to you,” Lydia said
as she slit open another page.
    “ Reading is a bore,” Kitty assured
her as she reexamined her nails for the tenth time in as many
minutes. “Look here, my maid is so stupid. This cuticle is not
pushed down as far as the others. Oh, dear! I did not notice it
until this minute!”
    If I throttled my sister, a jury of
rational men would never convict me, Lydia thought as she glanced
at her sister’s shapely, perfect hands. “I think you will be able
to endure this calamity until we return to the house, my dear,” she
commented, then turned her attention back to the book. When Kitty
began to sniff and hunt about in her reticule, Lydia closed her
book in resignation. “If you cry, you will frighten away any
prospects you hope to see here.”
    Kitty sniffed back her tears, but
continued to regard the offending fingernail with a mournful
expression. It lasted until she noticed that there was the smallest
scuff on her boots. Her lips, which one or another Devon poet had
called “twin pillows of fairy repose,” drew together into a tight
line reminiscent of Mama. She turned her boot this way and that,
muttering, “I do not know that another person is as mortally tried
as I am, Lyddy.”
    Lydia was spared the insincerity of
a suitable reply with the arrival of a barouche, the first that she
had seen this spring.
    She pointed out the conveyance to
Kitty, who was still regarding her boots with a frown. “Look,
Kitty, the game’s afoot,” she said. I shall keep a satiric eye, she
told herself, or this whole humiliation will overwhelm me. “My
dear, let us see if they are suitably gowned, coifed, and
sweet-smelling. Oh, yes, let us make sure that their cuticles are
pushed back, or we will have nothing to do with them,” she
teased.
    Kitty smiled her dazzling smile. “I
know the care of one’s hands is of vital significance,” she said
with complete serenity. “How good it does me to hear you recognize
the importance of it, too.”
    Lydia swallowed the hot words that
rose in her throat. What sense would there be in scolding someone
with so little evidence of a brain box between the ears? She was
murmuring something suitably appropriate when another barouche drew
up beside the first. More elegantly gowned young ladies allowed
themselves to be handed down by equally well-dressed young
men.
    “ Kitty, I believe there are enough
of the Haute Ton to suit even Mama. Do let us follow them
into the church.”
    Kitty hung back, even as she watched
the parade of pastel afternoon walking dresses and modish bonnets
pass their carriage. “Lyddy, you don’t think I will be required to
help the soldiers, do you?”
    “ Of course not,” Lydia replied with
a small sigh. “I do not think it is possible for you to do too
little for them.”
    That answer, delivered with a
straight face, seemed to satisfy her sister. Kitty allowed the
footman, who had been cooling his heels beside the coachman, to
help her down. With Kitty at her side, they picked their way
through the moldy straw covering the street just in time to bring
up the rear of the elegant party. There are none of us equipped to
help even a butterfly, Lydia thought with embarrassment as they
entered the church. I should rather imagine that sturdy shoes and a
sensible apron would be more to the point than bonnets with
feathers and shot silk fabric.
    They were greeted by a veritable
wall of odors that made her take a step back. Kitty turned quite
pale and grabbed her arm. “Lyddy, I can’t go in there!” she
whispered.
    One of those rare times wholly in
sympathy with her sister, Lydia patted her hand as Kitty clutched
her. “Then, are you prepared for an evening with Mama’s flutterings
and spasms and accusations if we return without making at least one
or two acquaintances?” she whispered back.
    “ N-no,” Kitty stammered, but made no
move to step forward into the nave. She tightened her grip on