Free All About Passion by Stephanie Laurens Page B

said. "We must have Gilly up from the village and check that it fits." Franni had been mumbling. Now she lifted her head. "That leaves something new and blue."
    "Garters, perhaps?" Ester suggested.
    Francesca nodded, grateful for the suggestion.
    "Can we go into Lyndhurst and buy them tomorrow?" Franni fixed huge eyes on Ester's face. Ester glanced at Francesca. "I don't see why not."
    "No, indeed. Tomorrow, then," Francesca said.
    "Good, good, good !" Franni leapt up and flung her arms wide. The cushion went tumbling. "Tomorrow morning! Tomorrow morning!" She waltzed around the room. "We're going to get Francesca something new and blue tomorrow morning!" Reaching the open door, she waltzed through. "Papa! Did you hear?
    We're going…"
    Ester smiled as Franni's voice died away. "I hope you don't mind, dear, but you know how she is."
    "I don't mind at all." Shifting her gaze from the door to Ester's face, Francesca lowered her voice.
    "Charles told me he was worried that Franni would become querulous once she realizes I'm leaving, but she seems quite happy."
    "To be truthful, dear, I don't think Franni will realize you're leaving—not coming back—until we return here without you. Things that are obvious to us often don't occur to her at all, and then she's upset by the surprise."
    Francesca nodded, although she had never truly understood Franni's vagueness. "I'd intended to ask her to be bridesmaid, but Uncle Charles said no." She'd shown her letter to her uncle first, and he'd been adamant on that point.
    "He said he wouldn't even like to say Franni will be at the wedding—he said she might not wish to be there."
    Ester reached out and squeezed Francesca's hand. "That has nothing to do with what she feels for you. But she might become frightened at the last minute and not want to appear. As bridesmaid, that really wouldn't do."
    "I suppose not. Charles suggested that I ask Lady Elizabeth's advice on who should stand with me—I don't even know if Chillingworth has sisters."
    "Sisters, or close cousins of the bridegroom, given we have no one of suitable age on our side. Asking Lady Elizabeth would be wisest."
    Ester rose; Francesca did, too. She glanced at the letter in her hand. "I'll write this afternoon." She smiled as she recalled Lady Elizabeth's warmth. "I have lots of questions, and she seems like the best person to ask."
    Despite Charles's worry, Franni's transparent happiness over Francesca's wedding did not dim, although to everyone's relief, her expressions of joy became less extreme. Franni's temper remained sunny; engrossed though she was in the myriad preparations for her nuptials and her researches into her husband-to-be, his house and the estate, Francesca noted that with a certain happiness of her own. Charles, Ester, and Franni were now her family; she wanted them there, at her wedding, and as happy as she was.
    When, four days before the wedding, they set out in the lumbering coach, Charles and Ester on one seat with Francesca and Franni facing them, Francesca was as excited as Franni and even more impatient. They would spend two days on the road, arriving at Lambourn Castle on the second day, two nights before the wedding as Chillingworth had stipulated. On that point he'd remained firm, unmoved by Lady Elizabeth's pleas for more time before the wedding to become acquainted with her future daughter-in-law. Lady Elizabeth hadn't accepted his refusal with anything like good grace—Francesca had laughed at the diatribe the Dowager Countess had, in her next letter, heaped on her son's head. After their first exchange of letters, correspondence between Lambourn Castle and Rawlings Hall had proliferated dramatically, letters crossing and recrossing. By the time Francesca left Rawlings Hall, she was almost as eager to meet her mother-in-law-to-be as she was to see her handsome fiancé again. The first day passed easily as the coach rocked its way north.
    At noon on the second day, it started to rain.
    Then it