Read Christie Online

Authors: Veronica Sattler

Christie (9 page)

"Thank you," replied Garrett as he took a seat,
"however, I had an excellent breakfast served me at my cottage. But don't let me hurry you. I don't mind waiting."

His face registered no particular expression as he glanced in Christie's direction and nodded a greeting, and Christie felt a brief surge of relief that for once, he wasn't aiming his customary mocking aspect in her direction, but she felt herself annoyed at what she regarded as Garrett's intrusion. She and Charles had been dining alone this morning because she had planned it that way. She had had precious little time alone with her father lately, and she had hoped for at least this brief session in private with him on this landmark day in her life. Ignoring Garrett entirely, she went back to her conversation with Charles.

"Father, you were saying about my view of there being no rain again today?"

"Ah, yes, darlin'. What I found humorous about your concern! Any other young woman, upon rising on the morning of her eighteenth birthday ball and finding a cloudless sky would be tickled pink that there would be no rain coming to spoil the celebration! But what does my little individualist say? That we could use some rain for the crops!"

Charles began to chuckle warmly all over again. "Do you believe it, Garrett?" He laughed. "The lass is put out because it won't rain today! Ah, Christie, you're a priceless treasure to give my old heart joy!"

Christie looked up from her hot chocolate to discover Garrett Randall looking at her with the queerest expression on his face, but in a fraction of time, his eyes caught her glance and they shuttered, rendering his face once again unreadable.

"Well, Father," she said, "you've long known my opinion of the sort of vanity you cite, which is so unfortunately possessed by a great many men
and
women we've met. At best, it precludes clear thinking; at worst, it renders the person owning it selfish and boring to be with. And, besides, dear Father," she added as she rose from her chair and came around to where Charles sat, "are not my attitudes in such matters a reflection of your own? Surely, sir," she said proudly, "I am my father's daughter."

Then, not really allowing her smiling parent a chance to comment, she kissed him quickly on the cheek and moved toward the door, saying, "Now I've got to run.
I
may not be caught up in a dither over tonight's fete, but Aunt Celia is near apoplexy with worry over last-minute details. . . . I'm past due joining her upstairs." And nodding briefly in Garrett's direction, she floated gracefully out of the
room.

The day passed quickly for Christie. She endured the final fitting for her gown with good grace, and spent much of the afternoon helping Aunt Celia greet the continual flow of guests who arrived in a steady procession of carriages. They were welcomed with pitchers of cool lemonade to assuage huge thirsts acquired from long rides on dusty roads, and helped to settle into the various guest chambers and cottages that had been readied for them; for few would be returning home before a stay of at least a
few days.

At four o'clock she was ordered to take an hour's nap in her room, and this time she actually slept; the
business of welcoming so many people had, indeed, proved tiring, and in some cases,
tiresome.

Not the least of those guests she would have preferred not to endure were her cousins from Charleston, Melissa and Belinda Stanhope. Aunt Margaret's daughters, not to mention Aunt Margaret herself. The two girls were three and two years older than Christie, respectively, and as such, had always been held up by their mother as examples by which Christie ought to be measured by her father. Not that Charles had ever seen the need to do any comparing. He had always viewed the spoiled and artificially mannered offspring of his sister as exact examples of what he could never abide in young womanhood, and it had been with an eye to avoiding such development in his own daughter that he had carefully guarded her growing up, keeping her well sheltered from urban life at Windreach. They were, he ultimately noted with satisfaction, everything Christie was not. Vain, shallow surface creatures whose daily existence hovered around the greedy acquisition of material things and fashion's whims, they were more apt to be concerned about the tailored cut of a man's suit than the character of the person in it; the shape of a woman's bonnet than what was told by the eyes that peeked out from under it; and the size of a family's house, rather than the degree of warmth and harmony within. Right now, as during the past three or four years, their chief objective in life was to catch a rich husband. At this they seemed to work day and night, not lightly abetted by their mother.

Margaret Trevellyan Stanhope was, herself, a model for the comportment of her two daughters, although, as Charles had often explained to Christie,
she hadn't always been that way. Somehow, marriage to Philip Stanhope and her life with him in Charleston society had changed her. She, like Celia, had come to these shores long ago with little beyond a staunch English middle-class background to recommend her, but Margaret, by far the prettier of the two sisters, had used her looks and the influence of her successful brother's name to make her entree into colonial society, setting her cap for only the wealthiest of the unattached men. Thus it was that she had met Philip—Not, perhaps, the wealthy son of landed gentry she might have wished for, that kind of a "catch" being just beyond the reach of the daughter of one of England's merchant class. But Philip's had been a rising star, the smell of newly made money still fresh about him, and if his own less-than-noble beginnings were lower than the kind of which Margaret had dreamed, she had finally accepted his proposal of marriage as perhaps the best she could manage.

It was a good thing, Charles had once told Christie, that Philip's fortunes had been able to keep up with his wife's growing taste for luxuries. "Oh, well," he had mused, "if Philip has been fool enough to allow your aunt to become more enamored of the getting and spending of his wealth than of him, that, thank God, is his problem! And if your cousins have turned out to be two 'Margarets in replica,' for that, too, he has only himself to blame."

So Christie had greeted the arrival of her cousins with polite civility, privately deploring those social customs which forced her to invite people she didn't
like.

At five o'clock, Almeira awakened Christie, and
the final ablutions, coiffing, and dressing began, an intricately elaborate process which at last culminated, a full three hours later—a ridiculous three hours later, in Christie's opinion—in a perfumed and pampered, begowned and beribboned finished product.

She took a final look at herself in the wardrobe mirror and decided what she saw pleased her. Her slender, willowy form did complete justice to Madame Celeste's efforts, for it provided the pale aqua magic of the frothy concoction with the exact silhouette it required to be exquisite; a tiny waist and slender hips for the new, softer look achieved without panniers; well-rounded breasts for a decolletage lower than any she had worn before, Madame Celeste having convinced a doubtful Aunt Celia, in typically French fashion, that it was
chic
without being indecent; long legs to add to the grace of a skirt that fell softly to the floor in long folds. And against the color, the slight tint of apricot the sun had given her creamy skin worked beautifully.

Her hair had been pulled up and away from her temples and neck in a cluster of shiny wheaten curls and long, braided loops gathered at the crown of her head and studded there by six magnificent jewels which had belonged to her mother—three stunning emeralds and three brilliant sapphires, all of matching size and cut. These were duplicated by six stones set in a necklace she also wore for the first time tonight. In an emotional moment, Charles had taken the jewelry carefully out of its box in his study and sent it to her room with a tender note explaining how it had been saved for her all these years, to be bestowed on just this occasion. In it he had also described how her mother had looked the last time she had worn them. Finally, the note had begged her understanding of why he had not brought t the jewelry in person, and Christie had smiled a misty-eyed smile at this; for as long as she could remember, Charles had shed his tears in private.

The musicians were already playing in the great ballroom when she descended the long staircase, but at her appearance, they stopped, and a hush fell over the crowded room as all eyes fell on her. A loud burst of applause greeted her ears, and, having reached the base of the stairs, Christie gave a deep curtsy. Then she smiled broadly at the roomful of people before nodding to the musicians to resume playing.

She saw Charles coming forward to greet her and trilled, "Oh, Father, you look so handsome tonight!"

Whispering in his ear a private thank you for the gift, she embraced him. Her father cleared his throat suspiciously and threw her a smile that showed her appearance captivated him.

"Christie, darlin', we've been waiting for the birthday girl, and it has certainly been worth the anticipation. Your own brilliance outshines even those jewels, my dear," he said warmly.

"Christie, what a lovely young woman you've become!"

The voice behind her father was that of Uncle Philip who stood there beside Aunt Margaret before moving forward to take her by both hands.

"Here, let us look at you. By God, Charles, she looks more like Jennifer all the time. My dear, you dazzle us."

"Yes," purred the small woman beside him, "one would never believe the scrawny-looking menace of a
few years ago would turn out to be such a young lady."

There was little attempt on Aunt Margaret's part at disguising the cattiness in her remark as her piercing, hawklike eyes darted threateningly over Christie's frame.

"Of course, Charles, she is still rather tall, you know. It must have been all that riding about the countryside working up an appetite, while she ought to have been kept indoors, busy at—"

"Margaret!"

Uncle Philip's tone was sharply in contrast with his otherwise mild, bland features.

"I'll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head," he continued. "This is Christie's party, and you'll not spoil it with your jealous snipping. And if you must criticize, may I suggest you begin by seeing what your own offspring are about?"

As he said the last, Philip gestured toward a small female figure they could see in a far corner of the room, flirting brazenly with two young men in outlandishly coquettish fashion, and then to a spot near the banquet table where a petite auburn-haired young, woman of about Christie's age was giggling loudly at the attentions of a ruddy-complected young swain.

As Aunt Margaret marched swiftly off in the direction of the nearer of the two, Christie couldn't help feeling a brief, wicked throb of satisfaction as she thought of the fierce tongue-lashings her cousins would receive.

But now Charles was bowing in exaggerated fashion before her, and she took the arm he proffered as she flashed him her sweetest smile.

"They're waiting for us to lead the dancing, darlin'," he said, ushering her out onto the floor with a grace of movement Christie had always marveled at in a man of her father's size and stature. "You look radiant, darlin'," he said. "Happy?"

"Oh, Father, what girl wouldn't be with all this lavish attention focused just on her? But really, love, you needn't have told the musicians to stop playing as I came down the stairs, just so I could make a grand entrance. You should know that's not my way of doing things," said Christie.

They were in the center of the floor now, and she noticed several other couples had joined in the dancing.

"But I ordered no such' thing," said Charles. "I assure you darlin', they stopped of their own accord. Can't say I blame them, though." He chuckled. "The sight of a woman of your beauty should be more than enough to arrest the mere playing of an instrument— and a few young male heartbeats, too, I'll wager, judging by the looks I'm seeing you getting from some of those young pups. Who's the lucky toff to be having the next dance?"

"Oh, Beau Richardson," replied Christie in a tone bordering on boredom. "You might know he'd not have been satisfied with less than the first dance after yours. Beau doesn't like being anything but first. Even when we were children, he could not stand losing, or being second. Remember the time he stole out with his father's chestnut gelding, thinking to best me in a race on Jewel, that big mare I had been using before you gave me Thunder?"

"Lord, yes," laughed Charles, "and I had given you Thunder only the day before, unbeknownst to
young Master Richardson, so you turned up on the gray and trounced him soundly."

Christie's laughter pealed out in tones of delicious delight. "Oh, he was so angry," she chortled. "He demanded a rematch just as soon as he could convince his father to buy him a new mount, too, of course!"

"Which, when George Richardson found out his gelding had been taken and raced without permission, was something that did not happen for a very long time. I don't think I've ever seen George so angry," chuckled Charles. "Well, it's certain you're not overly fond of Beau, love. Tell me, are there
any
young men here who do strike your fancy?"

"Why, they're mostly all quite pleasant, I suppose, sir. But if, by my 'fancy' you mean my interest along more serious lines, no, Father, I cannot begin to regard any of them with more than . . . friendly cordiality."

"Hmm, I thought as much," said Charles pensively. "Christie, what is your opinion of our guest from South Carolina, Mr. Randall?" queried Charles, his expression not entirely decipherable to her, and he thought he felt her stiffen ever so slightly before she spoke.

"Garrett? Oh, I—why do you ask?" Her heart had given an involuntary leap at the unexpected question, compounded by the fact that the gentleman in question had, she noticed out of the corner of one eye, chosen just that moment to make his entrance into the room.

"You don't like him very much, do you?" asked Charles.

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