A Little Night Mischief by Emily Greenwood

Author:Emily Greenwood [Greenwood, Emily]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Romance, (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯)
ISBN: 9781402276316
Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca
Published: 2013-06-03T14:00:00+00:00

Sixteen

The day of the picnic outing was quite glorious, a quintessential English summer day. The sun shone in a soft blue cloudless sky and the air was light and fresh, carrying with it the teasing scents of myriad blossoms. A breeze gently lifted the leaves in the trees now and then. All nature seemed to be in harmony.

By late morning the carriages that would take the picnic party on their outing were being loaded. Felicity stood waiting in the drive with her father and watching Lydia and Alice, Sir Robert Dunlop and Lady Dunlop’s young daughters, flitting about in their yellow frocks like two butterflies. The little girls were eager to get going, and they circled their parents insistently and badgered the servants loading hampers with their questions, and unknowingly charmed Felicity all the while. It was a bittersweet feeling, because giving up her hope of marriage all those years ago had meant saying no to children. And while that hadn’t seemed such a sacrifice at seventeen, now it truly did. She couldn’t allow herself to consider this now, she knew, or she’d be lost to tears, emotion, foolish behavior. Envy was wrong, it was poison to the spirit, she reminded herself.

She decided then that she would treat the picnic day as if it were outside of time. She would allow herself to enjoy whatever pleasures presented themselves. Today was a gift. She might as well have one full day of freely enjoyed pleasure in the company of James and his family. He would be gone soon, apparently, off to be an MP and see to his other business. And all their time together would simply be part of the past.

“Aren’t you done yet, Fulton?” cried Lydia in her high little voice, dancing around at the man’s feet. His arms were full of a large picnic blanket.

“Not quite yet, miss,” came the muffled but patient reply.

“Lydia, leave Fulton alone,” scolded her older and much wiser sister. “You’re going to make it take longer to be ready.”

“Oh, do sit down, girls,” Lady Dunlop implored her children. With reluctance they seated themselves under a tree and began pulling up violets.

Finally it was time to go and the party set out in two carriages, with the Wilcox and Dunlop families riding together in one and James and the rest of his guests in the other. Mr. Block was apparently going to conduct some local business during the day, and so did not join the picnic.

They drove for perhaps half an hour, to a spot among a low sequence of hills where the first raspberries of summer were growing in large patches on the sunny slopes. The little girls escaped happily from the carriage, bubbling over with plans to pick as many berries as possible.

Hal announced that he wished to stroll along the stream at the bottom of the hills and then climb them for a view of the surrounding countryside and issued a general invitation. Lila Pendleton, James, and Aunt Miranda agreed to come along, and Mr.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.