Slightly Dangerous

1 "Your cheeks are looking alarmingly flushed, Christine," her mother remarked, setting her embroidery down in her lap the better to observe her daughter. "And your eyes are very bright. I hope you are not coming down with a fever." Christine laughed. "I have been at the vicarage, playing with the children," she explained. "Alexander wanted to play cricket, but after a few minutes it became clear that Marianne could not catch a ball and Robin could not hit one. We played hide-and-seek instead, though Alexander thought it was somewhat beneath his dignity now that he is nine years old until I asked him how his poor aunt must feel, then, at the age of twenty-nine. I was it all the time, of course. We had great fun until Charles poked his head out of the study window and asked us--rhetorically, I suppose--how he was ever to get his sermon finished with all the noise we were making. So Hazel gave us all a glass of lemonade and shooed the children off to the parlor to read quietly, poor things, and I came home." "I suppose," her eldest sister, Eleanor, said, looking up from her book and observing Christine over the tops of her spectacles, "you did not wear your bonnet while you frolicked with our niece and nephews. That is not just a flush. It is a sunburn." "How can one poke one's head into small hiding places if it is swollen to twice its size with a bonnet?" Christine asked reasonably. She began to arrange the flowers she had cut from the garden on her way inside, in a vase of water she had brought with her from the kitchen. "And your hair looks like a bird's nest," Eleanor added. "That is soon corrected." Christine rumpled her short curls with both hands and laughed. "There. Is that better?" Eleanor shook her head before returning her attention to her book--but not before smiling. There was a comfortable hush in the room again while they all concentrated upon their chosen activities. But the silence--tempered by the chirping of birds and the whirring of insects from beyond the open window--was broken after a few minutes by the sound of horses' hooves clopping along the village street in the direction of Hyacinth Cottage, and the rumble of wheels. There was more than one horse, and the wheels were heavy ones. It must be the carriage from Schofield Park, Baron Renable's country seat, which was a mere two miles away, Christine thought absently. None of them took any particular notice of the carriage's approach. Lady Renable often used it when she went visiting, even though a gig would have served her purpose just as well, or a horse--or her feet. Eleanor often described Lady Renable as frivolous and ostentatious, and it was not an inaccurate description. She was also Christine's friend. And then it became obvious that the horses were slowing. The carriage wheels squeaked in protest. All three ladies looked up. "I do believe," Eleanor said, peering out the window over her spectacles again, "Lady Renable must be coming here. To what do we owe the honor, I wonder. Were you expecting her, Christine?" "I knew I should have changed my cap after luncheon," their mother said. "Send Mrs. Skinner running upstairs for a clean one if you will, Christine." "The one you are wearing is quite becoming enough, Mama," Christine assured her, finishing the flower arrangement quickly and crossing the room to kiss her mother's forehead. "It is only Melanie." "Of course it is only Lady Renable. That is the whole point," her mother said, exasperated. But she did not renew her plea for a different cap to be sent for. It did not take a genius to guess why Melanie was coming here either. "I daresay she is coming to ask why you refused her invitation," Eleanor said, echoinBalogh, Mary is the author of 'Slightly Dangerous', published 2004 under ISBN 9780385338110 and ISBN 0385338112.