Mirror Bride by Jane Peart

Author:Jane Peart
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Array
Publisher: Zondervan

chapter 13

ON THE LAST DAY of the year, Cameron Hall hummed with activity. Everything was in preparation for the smaller party to be held that night for family and close friends, with the Open House to follow on New Year's Day.

Cara had never felt less like celebrating. It all seemed so pointless when the one person in the world she wanted to be with was not here. The future was a blank. The new year promised nothing.

The game she was playing was utterly false, but she couldn't stop now. It would have been easier had she been able to keep up the charade. Everyone was used to their sparring, their teasing, but for Kitty's sake, she must once and for all end things with Kip.

To make that more evident, she had introduced a new player into the game—a "pawn," Vance Langley, who had been constantly dancing in attendance since the summer at Cape Cod. One unexpected complication, however, was that her family was delighted with her new beau. An excellent horseback rider and hunter with the manners of a born Virginia gentleman, Vance had won both Rod's and Blythe's approval.

Maybe she could have handled that for the few days left of Christmas vacation if Kip hadn't made such a nuisance of himself. He had taken her new preoccupation with Vance as a direct challenge not to miss a single party, and there he would sulk and stare, generally disrupting her plans.

Cara felt helpless, trapped, and resentful. And it showed. She was snappish with her family, picked petty quarrels with Kitty, and argued with her mother. Everyone was finding her behavior tedious and tiring.

To make matters even worse, sandpapering her nerves was the unexpected arrival of Evalee Bondurant. She had wheedled an invitation from Blythe to spend the New Year's weekend at Cameron Hall instead of Montclair, which Evalee found deadly dull.

"Aunt Davida's always sick, and my mother and Jonathan are always out somewhere together," she complained, so the twins found themselves unwilling hostesses to their cousin.

Although she had been given a guest room to herself, Evalee popped in and out of the twins' room without so much as an "if you please," imposing her company on them constantly. Evalee put on so many airs, going on endlessly about her sister, Lady Bianding, and her country estate, her London townhouse, and all the social events she attended while visiting there, that Cara was ready to scream.

"Lalage has promised that she'll arrange for me to be presented at Court!" Evalee told the twins, posing and practicing what she assumed to be proper court bows in front of the full-length mirror in their bedroom.

Kitty watched nervously as Cara's temper grew shorter and shorter. Besides Evalee's annoying presence, she knew that there was something else bothering her twin. As the tension tightened, Kitty began to dread the inevitable explosion.

Arriving home on New Year's Eve afternoon, Scott Cameron was in an unusually introspective mood, his thoughts full of possible plans for the future. He had

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