Mistletoe Kisses A Soldier's Tale / a Winter Night's Tale / a Twelfth Night Tale

Miss Philippa Wintercombe sat reading in a corner of the drawing room of Alderley Hall, while her aunt, Lady Alderley, passed cups of tea to her houseguests. "We must settle on a play!" said Miss Lancelyn-Greene with what was doubtless intended to be a fetching pout. "Christmas is less than a week away, Lady Alderley. There must be something planned for Twelfth Night! Otherwise the gentlemen will simply play billiards all day, and sit for ever over their port and brandy after dinner." She cast an affronted glance at Lord Bellingham, who, deprived of masculine drinking companions, was reduced to snoring on the sofa, a neglected brandy on the wine table beside him. "Very true, my dear," agreed Lady Alderley, delicatelynotlooking at her somnolent brother-in-law as she poured a cup of tea and passed it to Mrs Lancelyn-Greene. "And that would never do. "Tis inconvenient enough that Dominic is not come home yet, but to have him spending all his time in the billiard room would be very bad indeed. I am not quite sure why he has chosen to remain away so long, but it is time and more that he was home." Her sister, Lady Bellingham, was heard to mutter something about irresponsible young men. "Does he know that I am here?'asked Miss Lancelyn-Greene, patting a golden curl into place. Philippa pulled her shawl more closely about her against the sort of draught inevitable in a building built four hundred years earlier to keep out people rather than cold air, and told herself yet again that her cousin Dominic's marriage plans were no bread and butter of hers. "I was most careful to make sure he knew that you and your mama were being kind enough to bear me company," Lady Alderley assured Hermione. Hermione's pout became a trifle sulky. "Oh, I dare say he is still in a miff because I said he should not go back to war last spring. As if the war could not be won without him! If only he had admitted that he was being foolish, all would have been well." "Indeed," said Mrs Lancelyn-Greene, sipping her tea daintily. "One would have hoped that Lord Alderley might have seen the foolishness of his decision, and itisvery sad that he has lost the sight in one eye, but I dare say there is no real harm done." "Quite so," agreed Lady Bellingham. Pippa's self-control wobbled dangerously. "Gentlemen," she said, "do tend to take broken engagements personally. Selfish of them, no doubt, but there it is." She took great pride in the dispassionate tone she achieved, when she would have liked nothing better than to fling her book at Hermione's head. Lady Bellingham and Mrs Lancelyn-Greene favoured her with flinty stares over their tea cups, but neither deigned to reply. Hermione, however, took the remark at face value. "Very true, Philly," she said. "Why Dominic chose to break the engagement is a mystery to me!" The suggestion that Dominic had done anything so dishonourable as break his betrothal was too much for Pippa. Abandoning irony, she opted for the direct approach. "I was under the impression that you broke the engagement, Hermione," she said bluntly, "when you told Dominic that it was unfair to expect you to wait any longer than his period of mourning for your wedding day, and that he might be killed or even come back badly wounded.Youasked to be released from the betrothal, and he agreed." The gelid look on Mrs Lancelyn-Greene's face suggested that this recollection was less than welcome. "You forget your place, Philippa!'snapped Lady Bellingham. Pippa bit her lip. Lady Bellingham had very definite ideas on what constituted her 'place' these days. "Oh, well. That is all behind us now," said Hermione dismissively. "And if I am willing to patch up the quarrel after thehorridway he behaved--sneaking off at dawn, not even saying goodbye to anyone!" She swelled in indignation at the memory, and swept on, "I am surehehas no need to be in a fit of thRolls, Elizabeth is the author of 'Mistletoe Kisses A Soldier's Tale / a Winter Night's Tale / a Twelfth Night Tale', published 2006 under ISBN 9780373294237 and ISBN 0373294239.