Free When the Splendor Falls by Laurie McBain Page A

seems a very considerate man,” Leigh continued, remembering his patience with a confused and crotchety old gentleman who’d known his father and wanted to reminisce, and his kindness in comforting a frightened young boy who’d been thrown from his mount.
    “You’ve already said he’s a gentleman, Leigh,” Julia reminded her. “And?” she prompted, her mouth full of pâté and biscuit.
    “And?” Leigh asked, curious, for it seemed she had described Matthew Wycliffe reasonably well.
    Julia swallowed the mouthful of half-chewed food, nearly choking in her haste. “Why, he’s rich! I declare, Leigh, how Matthew Wycliffe is situated in life is to be considered above all else. Naturally, it would be hoped that he is handsome, but then, that is why we are considering him in the first place. We don’t have to choose just any ol’ body. We can be selective.”
    “ We? ”
    “Well, of course, silly, you don’t think I’m going to let you choose your husband? I’m family now with your sister married to my brother. You’ve too soft a heart. As your very best friend, which I trust you will always remember—especially when I come to visit you in Charleston—I really must look out for our best interests,” Julia declared, although she wasn’t too concerned because Mrs. Travers had a keen eye when it came to matrimony and doing what was proper. Mrs. Travers would never allow Leigh to make a mésalliance. And Matthew Wycliffe as a son-in-law was hardly that, Julia thought with a sigh of deep satisfaction as she planned their futures in Charleston, her thoughts drifting dreamily away into the warm afternoon.
    “Actually, I think I will never wed,” Leigh stated, thinking Julia had far too smug a look about her. “I will become another Rebecca, who can never know the love of her knight, Wilfred of Ivanhoe,” Leigh predicted, pleased by the momentary start of surprise on Julia’s face. “I shall pine away with unrequited love, leaving this land to journey far.”
    “La dee, then I’ll be the Lady Rowena, I am as fair as she, and then I’ll be the lady of the manor,” Julia decided, wishing she could spy a knight in shining armor come riding through the trees to sweep her up in his arms and carry her off to be ravished.
    “You would be the lady of the castle. Ivanhoe had a castle.”
    “Hmmm, I declare I like that even better.”
    “Even if named Udolpho or Otranto?” Leigh asked with a shudder as she remembered the castles of those Gothic tales of old.
    “Even then, for I might meet up with a very mysterious, handsome prince who would hold me captive until I fell in love with him.”
    “Or you could end up like poor Clarissa,” Leigh said, reminding Julia of Richardson’s classic, while holding her clasped hands against her breast, “dying because she has been held against her will and cruelly violated.”
    “Oh, Leigh, really!” Julia said with a look of outrage on her blushing face. “The scandalous things you say.”
    “Which are not unknown to you, I suspect, since you were raised on a horse-breeding farm the same way I was,” Leigh reminded her, surprised by Julia’s sudden missishness, for unless she had been blind her whole life she must have seen a stallion mount a mare in heat.
    “Well, I think I will be Evangeline,” Blythe said softly, “and I will search for my true love, only to find him on his deathbed, then I will die tragically of a broken heart.”
    “Oooh, la dee, I do so hate unhappy endings,” Julia exclaimed. “At least little Jane Eyre found her Rochester, although, ’twas a pity he was nearly blinded in that fire and he was never considered quite handsome. I’m sure I don’t know what she saw in him. He was quite disagreeable and she was far too much the mouse to suit me. I dare say, I would not have had the patience to put up with his ill humor.”
    “But if you loved him, you would stay by his side despite whatever happened to him,” Leigh said.
    “I most