Read Online The Wedding Game by Jane Feather - Free Book Online Page A

a deep draught of his ale and laughed softly. What his mother would say if she could see him in this miserably dreary boardinghouse on the Cromwell Road, forking cold, overcooked fish into his mouth at the end of an unbelievably long day, he couldn't imagine. She would be sitting at this moment in the elegant Farrell mansion on Prince's Street in Edinburgh, probably preparing the menus for tomorrow, if she was not playing bridge with her friends or instructing one of her daughters on some aspect of child rearing or the domestic running of her household.
    It wasn't that he didn't love his mother; he did. But Lady Farrell was a grande dame of the old sort, an overbearing Victorian of rigid principles. She had given her Society-physician husband seven children before his death at forty. The last child was the longed-for son. Widowed, she had been obliged to assume the mantle of both parents. A mantle she had taken to with both relish and competence. All her children were in awe of her. Only her son had managed to shake off the maternal shackles and pursue his own course. And he'd only managed to do that with a fair degree of deceit.
    Douglas folded the letter and returned it to its envelope. It would require an answer very soon, and a careful one, since his mother must continue to be kept in the dark about the realities of his life and work. The truth would at the very least bring on an attack of angina. He had his own theories about his mother's heart condition, but whether or not he believed it simply to be a useful weapon in her arsenal of control, its effects were very real.
    He shook his head reflectively. His mother had never understood why he'd abandoned his destiny, left the lucrative practice that had earned his father a knighthood and kept the Farrell family at the top of Edinburgh's social tree. She had done her best to cope with the breaking of his engagement to Marianne, but at the first mention of her son's going to London to develop a practice there, she'd taken to her bed for a week, enlisting the desperate pleas of her daughters to keep him at her side. He'd resisted with grim fortitude and, if his sisters were to be believed, a total lack of compassion. He knew the latter was not true, just as he knew they would never understand why he was doing what he was doing.
    On which subject . . . He picked up the other envelope that sat beside his plate and slit it with his knife. He read the contents twice. It was a very straightforward, very practical letter. He tapped it thoughtfully into the palm of his hand. He didn't think it could have been penned by the veiled lady he had met in the National Gallery. Here there was no hint of condescension or moral superiority, just a simple list of instructions, as befitted a business arrangement. Personalities and personal opinions had no place in a business arrangement, and it was a relief to know that whoever
really
ran the Go-Between understood that. Their representatives could do with some training, he thought somewhat caustically. Perhaps he should drop a line to
The Mayfair Lady
and mention that he'd been dissatisfied with their emissary's less than professional manner. It certainly didn't look as though he'd ever meet one of the editors or managers in person.
    He read the letter again. The Go-Between had a prospect in mind for him. A lady sporting a white carnation at an At Home at a prestigious address in Manchester Square. Businesslike but completely anonymous, as he'd been told it would be.
    He glanced around the parlor, at the yellowing net curtains on the windows, the greasy antimacassars on the chairs, the stained tablecloth. The game had started. It was time to make a move. A man who frequented At Homes in Manchester Square held by the Honorable Miss Chastity Duncan could not continue to live at Mrs. Harris's boardinghouse on the Cromwell Road.
    The bank draft crackled in his pocket as he pushed back his chair. It would certainly go to a good cause, one that even