Free The Windsor Knot by Sharyn McCrumb Page B

Jenny for maid of honor and Mary Clare from the anthropology department as a bridesmaid. (“Be sure you take notes during the ceremony!” Jake had urged her.)
    Elizabeth, busy with her plans, sped past the mountain vistas of 1-77 and down into the pine forests of middle Carolina with hardly a glance at the scenery.
       Geoffrey drew aside the curtain and gazed out at the winding gravel driveway. “I thought she’d be here by now, didn’t you?” he remarked to his brother Charles. “Of course, the trip probably takes longer with mice and pumpkin.”
    “Pumpkin?” said Charles, whose inattention was evident. “What are you talking about?”
    “It was a literary reference. Remember Cinderella? I was alluding to Cousin Elizabeth’s fondness for building castles in the air and then moving into them.”
    Charles did not bother to reply, as this might be interpreted by Geoffrey as an inducement to stay. Charles had retreated to the musty depths of the Chandler library to commune with his thoughts, and he had enjoyed a quiet hour of brandy and contemplation in the leather chair next to the fireplace. The interruption by Geoffrey, who insisted upon pulling back the velvet curtains and peering out the window while making inane remarks, wasmost unwelcome. Charles had just completed some soul-searching and found to his chagrin that he had remarkably little area to cover. The depression resulting from this discovery had made the prospect of a visit with his adder-tongued brother even more painful than usual.
    Geoffrey, blissfully unaware of the dread he inflicted, prattled on about the family’s current obsession. “I should be learning my lines for the play, of course, but I doubt that I shall get much chance with all the distractions to come. Still, I expect that I shall find Elizabeth’s royalty fantasies highly entertaining. Although, Lord knows, Southern brides are prone to it with less provocation than she has. Did you ever notice that?”
    “What?” murmured Charles. He was holding his brandy snifter in both hands, as if he expected the spirits therein to offer the sort of career advice Macbeth had received.
    “About Southern brides’ royalty fantasies,” said Geoffrey, warming to his topic. “A couple of weeks before the wedding, they all come down with a strange personality disorder. It’s characterized by delusions of grandeur, obsession with ritual, and a tendency toward ruthless tyranny.”
    “I hadn’t noticed.”
    “I expect you will, Charles. I predict that within hours of her arrival, Elizabeth will turn this place into the court of Catherine the Great. The brides can’t help it, I suppose. Southern women are raised on rosy images of Scarlett O’Hara and all the beautiful belles of Southern mythology. You know, the fiery little minx who breaks men’s hearts.” He shuddered. “We tend to encourage that image of femininity, wouldn’t you say?”
    Charles shrugged. “I don’t pretend to be an expert on femininity.”
    Geoffrey reddened. “Nor do I, but we in the theatre make it a point to study all of humankind. You should hear my analysis of
you
. But as I was saying, here are all these Southern girls, fancying that the best thing to be is a belle—only they are never given the opportunity. In today’s world, there’s college, dressing for success in your sensible job, and a social scene based on the
pretense
of equality, at least. Which is, of course, exactly what they desire—or ought to desire—but they have this peculiar idea drilled into their head by elderly female relatives that to be
feminine
is to be a silly, pouting coquette.”
    “Ugh,” said Charles, whose idea of foreplay was the Mensa exam.
    “I quite agree,” purred Geoffrey. “And I do think that modern Southern women ignore this conditioning admirably well. The only time they really succumb to the belle fantasy is when they are about to become brides. That’s when tradition takes over—”
    “Something old,