The Windsor Knot

CHAPTER 6

ELIZABETH LOOKED AT the collection of mismatched and battered luggage heaped on the pavement beside her car. Each suitcase and totebag bore an identifying label (Cosmetics; Shoes; Stationery) so that she could find the items she had flung inside in the little time she’d had to pack.

“If I were organized, I would be taking only half this much,” she mused. As it was, she had thrown everything into the baggage, just to make sure that she wasn’t missing anything that would later turn out to be vital. She would have a difficult time fitting the untidy mound into her little car.

Elizabeth’s one point of satisfaction in seeing the mismatched heap was its striking resemblance to a pile of luggage pictured in one of her ubiquitous books on the royal family (they were now stashed in a black canvas suitcase labeled Books on Royal Family). Someone had photographed the Queen’s baggage at dockside, waiting to be loaded onto the royal yacht Britannia; there was a jumble of leather suitcases, cardboard boxes, green canvas bags, British Airways totebags, and black trunks, all bearing the yellow tag indicating that the items belong to Her Majesty.

When she discovered the picture, Elizabeth had been surprised at how plebeian the royal luggage looked. Surely the Queen-by all accounts the richest woman in the world-ought to be able to afford better travel receptacles than that! She should have a set of handmade leather luggage. Twenty matching pieces-forty! It made you wonder about expressions like fit for a queen! At least Her Majesty never had to carry any of the bags herself. That is where she and I differ, thought Elizabeth, hoisting a quilted garment bag into the back seat.

It was going to be a long drive. In order to reach Chandler Grove, located in the northernmost tip of Georgia, a traveler from southwest Virginia could either take Interstate 77 through the North Carolina piedmont to Charlotte-three hours of mindless driving-or one could follow the Blue Ridge Parkway, a rambling scenic route through the heart of the mountains, which took longer than the Lewis and Clark expedition. Elizabeth decided to take the dull but direct route. There would be enough scenic country roads after Charlotte, where anyone bound for Chandler Grove had to veer to the right and scoot across the South Carolina hills to pick up Highway 441 in Georgia. There, a succession of increasingly smaller country lanes led at last to Long Meadow Farm. The whole trip took about six hours, during which time Elizabeth planned to reflect further on her organization schemes for the wedding.

I expect I’m being very silly, thought Elizabeth. Probably some sort of genetic madness left over from the days when it mattered whether you got married or not But it’s my wedding, so whose business is it how manic I get?

She had spent the past few days devouring volumes on wedding etiquette, wedding folk customs, and royal weddings, soaking up the details as if she were going to be tested on the material. Now she was almost as much of an authority on the subject as Aunt Amanda. “And probably equally tiresome,” she said aloud. Elizabeth had no illusions about the glamour of romance; for nonroyal brides the fascination with matrimonial trivia did not extend beyond the bride’s most immediate circle. (This did not include the groom.) But she thought that perhaps women made a great ceremonial event out of a wedding in hopes that they would have to do it only once in their lives.

The volumes on royal weddings fascinated Elizabeth. She decided that she would not borrow any ideas from the weddings of Princess Margaret or Princess Anne, because their marriages had not worked out. “Of course I’m being superstitious about it!” she told Jake Adair. “If you’re not superstitious, why get married at all?” To which Jake suggested that she go down the hall to cultural anthropology and give herself up as a research specimen.

Elizabeth had begun her wedding research by reading a good deal about the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer. She was delighted to learn that her wedding date, July first, was also the birthday of Princess Diana, but she soon found that reading about the wedding was depressing in more ways than one. First of all, nobody’s wedding could bear comparison to that of the Prince of Wales, and in contrast it made even the most ambitious of efforts seem shoddy. What was Aunt Amanda’s oak-paneled drawing room compared to the splendor of St. Paul’s? And who cared whether your invitations were engraved or not, if theirs had been issued by the lord chamberlain on behalf of the Queen?

Once Elizabeth had got so caught up in her nuptial fantasies that she remarked aloud to Jake, “Would I love to get married in St. Paul’s Cathedral!”

Jake looked up from his Tony Hillerman novel and said, “Why? You don’t know anybody in Minnesota, do you?”

But there were drawbacks to the royal wedding that Elizabeth would not have to contend with. She comforted herself with those thoughts. No need of security guards. No government interference, forcing you to slight friends and distant relations in favor of foreign dignitaries. And nobody making the decisions for you about the reception food, the honeymoon, and all the other delightful details of planning the event. Face it, she told herself, Diana had very little say-so in that wedding.

Which brought her to the other depressing fact she had gleaned from her reading: by American standards the Princess of Wales was not even a high-school graduate. “That puts my Ph.D. in perspective,” Elizabeth had remarked. She would gladly give Diana any number of IQ points if she could also transfer to the princess a pound of weight per point.

Why couldn’t I be dumb and thin? she asked herself. Clearly, Princess Diana did not bear thinking about.

Thank God for Fergie.

The other royal wedding, that of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson, had been much more to Elizabeth’s liking. Elizabeth couldn’t even daydream herself into the role of a svelte blonde ice princess marrying the heir apparent, but the plump and clever Duchess of York was a bride that she could identify with. She read the hastily published biographies of the newlyweds with considerable interest.

Sarah Ferguson was a full twenty-six when she married Prince Andrew. She had held a full-time job; she was definitely not a size five; and she’d had two past affairs that nobody troubled to deny. This was a far cry from the virginal teenage Princess of Wales; this was bordering on reality as Elizabeth knew it.

Elizabeth studied the details of the Yorks’ wedding for inspiration. She liked the Duchess’s wedding gown; its low-cut circular bodice was very flattering; just the thing for the full-figured bride. Elizabeth hoped she could find one of a similar design.

From a description of Sarah’s bridal bouquet, Elizabeth learned that a sprig of myrtle was traditionally included for brides. (Whatever for?) Consult the folklore book. Myrtle, the symbol of Venus, goddess of love. Can you get sprigs of myrtle in June in Georgia? Elizabeth wondered. That should be an exciting task for the florist. What else should she use in her bouquet? Thistles, of course, for Scotland, and maybe dogwood, the state flower of Virginia. Subject, of course, to whatever the florists could manage on such short notice. It’s a good thing I didn’t have more time, Elizabeth admitted to herself; I could have been a florist’s nightmare.

The one custom about a royal wedding that Elizabeth did not admire and envy was the use of small children as the members of the wedding party. “There is no way,” she said, frowning at the charming photos of princes in sailor suits and winsome four-year-olds in Victorian frocks. “They’d probably start pelting each other with hymnbooks.”

Not that the American custom of bridesmaids was much better. The bride was expected to choose her sister, her fiancé’s sister, and a few close friends or cousins as attendants, preferably the most presentable looking of her acquaintances, so as not to blight the wedding pictures. Ruefully, Elizabeth remembered her own summons to serve as bridesmaid for Cousin Eileen, whom she barely knew. She had hated the malarial yellow dress chosen for her. I’m as bad off as Eileen was, she thought. I don’t have anybody to ask. How thoughtless of Cameron and me not to have sisters. We’re all right on brothers: Ian and Bill, for best man and usher, and presumably Charles and Geoffrey can usher. But that presupposes having four woman attendants. Not possible.

It was at this moment of desperation that Elizabeth remembered a childhood vow made with her then-best friend Jenny Ramsay, when during an orgy of sentiment watching Pride and Prejudice they had promised to be bridesmaids in each other’s wedding. Elizabeth’s family had moved to Virginia when she was in the tenth grade, so she and Jenny had not experienced the caste system of high school together. Gradually they lost touch. She hadn’t heard from Jenny in years. Elizabeth seemed to recall that she had gone to college at Agnes Scott-or was it Meredith? She remembered Jenny as a perky, fun-loving blonde whose idols in life were Donny Osmond and, in her I Dream of Jeannie days, Barbara Eden. Assuming that Jenny had not fulfilled her youthful dream of residing in a bottle in the home of an astronaut, she was probably still somewhere in the vicinity of Chandler Grove. (Burger King, thought Elizabeth uncharitably, remembering Jenny’s grade-point average in junior high.)

When Elizabeth telephoned Aunt Amanda to ask about the whereabouts of Jenny Ramsay, she was surprised that her aunt recognized the name at once. She was even more surprised to learn that Jenny, far from sporting a paper hat and serving fast food, was part of the news team on the local television station. Elizabeth had written her a long chatty letter, summarizing a few years of achievements and adventures, and ended by telling her about the Queen’s garden party and asking Jenny to be her maid of honor. The reply arrived a few days later, on a cat notecard: Love to! Call me when you get back to C. Grove!

So that was settled. Jenny for maid of honor and Mary Clare from the anthropology department as a bridesmaid. (“Be sure you take notes during the ceremony!” Jake had urged her.)

Elizabeth, busy with her plans, sped past the mountain vistas of 1-77 and down into the pine forests of middle Carolina with hardly a glance at the scenery.

Geoffrey drew aside the curtain and gazed out at the winding gravel driveway. “I thought she’d be here by now, didn’t you?” he remarked to his brother Charles. “Of course, the trip probably takes longer with mice and pumpkin.”

“Pumpkin?” said Charles, whose inattention was evident. “What are you talking about?”

“It was a literary reference. Remember Cinderella? I was alluding to Cousin Elizabeth’s fondness for building castles in the air and then moving into them.”

Charles did not bother to reply, as this might be interpreted by Geoffrey as an inducement to stay. Charles had retreated to the musty depths of the Chandler library to commune with his thoughts, and he had enjoyed a quiet hour of brandy and contemplation in the leather chair next to the fireplace. The interruption by Geoffrey, who insisted upon pulling back the velvet curtains and peering out the window while making inane remarks, was most unwelcome. Charles had just completed some soul-searching and found to his chagrin that he had remarkably little area to cover. The depression resulting from this discovery had made the prospect of a visit with his adder-tongued brother even more painful than usual.

Geoffrey, blissfully unaware of the dread he inflicted, prattled on about the family’s current obsession. “I should be learning my lines for the play, of course, but I doubt that I shall get much chance with all the distractions to come. Still, I expect that I shall find Elizabeth’s royalty fantasies highly entertaining. Although, Lord knows, Southern brides are prone to it with less provocation than she has. Did you ever notice that?”

“What?” murmured Charles. He was holding his brandy snifter in both hands, as if he expected the spirits therein to offer the sort of career advice Macbeth had received.

“About Southern brides’ royalty fantasies,” said Geoffrey, warming to his topic. “A couple of weeks before the wedding, they all come down with a strange personality disorder. It’s characterized by delusions of grandeur, obsession with ritual, and a tendency toward ruthless tyranny.”

“I hadn’t noticed.”

“I expect you will, Charles. I predict that within hours of her arrival, Elizabeth will turn this place into the court of Catherine the Great. The brides can’t help it, I suppose. Southern women are raised on rosy images of Scarlett O’Hara and all the beautiful belles of Southern mythology. You know, the fiery little minx who breaks men’s hearts.” He shuddered. “We tend to encourage that image of femininity, wouldn’t you say?”

Charles shrugged. “I don’t pretend to be an expert on femininity.”

Geoffrey reddened. “Nor do I, but we in the theatre make it a point to study all of humankind. You should hear my analysis of you. But as I was saying, here are all these Southern girls, fancying that the best thing to be is a belle-only they are never given the opportunity. In today’s world, there’s college, dressing for success in your sensible job, and a social scene based on the pretense of equality, at least. Which is, of course, exactly what they desire-or ought to desire-but they have this peculiar idea drilled into their head by elderly female relatives that to be feminine is to be a silly, pouting coquette.”

“Ugh,” said Charles, whose idea of foreplay was the Mensa exam.

“I quite agree,” purred Geoffrey. “And I do think that modern Southern women ignore this conditioning admirably well. The only time they really succumb to the belle fantasy is when they are about to become brides. That’s when tradition takes over-”

“Something old, something new…” murmured Charles, sipping his drink.

“Something Scarlett,” said Geoffrey. “The wedding belle. A formal wedding is every woman’s chance to star in Gone With the Wind. For a few short weeks she is the bride, able to throw scenes, to make people wait on her, and to be the absolute center of attention. This is how she thinks she ought to behave. It has very little to do with the institution of matrimony, as far as I can tell. It’s an ancient and terrible ritual. We’re in for it, I tell you.”

“So if Cousin Elizabeth starts throwing tantrums, we tell her to put a sock in it.”

Geoffrey shook his head. “It’s not going to be that easy.”

Clearly intending that to be his exit line, Geoffrey strolled toward the door, but their conversation had reminded Charles of something. He motioned for his brother to stay. “Listen, before you go, there’s something I wanted to ask you,” he began awkwardly.

“Yes, Charles, what is it? Do say that you are asking me to recommend a good hairdresser, because I have been so hoping-”

Charles scowled and swept a dark forelock away from his eyes. “I don’t need a haircut!”

Geoffrey closed his eyes dramatically. “Perhaps a defoliant…”

“What I wanted to ask you was-” He was blushing furiously. “Oh, this is ridiculous. Never mind!”

“Now you have gained my attention,” Geoffrey announced. “Out with it, Charles. What advice can I offer? A tailor’s reference? Singing lessons, perhaps? Have you been mispronouncing wines?”

“No.” Charles was sullen, as people usually were after more than ten minutes of Geoffrey Chandler. “I’d like to know how you meet girls around here.”

His brother favored him with an acid smile. “In your case, Charles, I should recommend setting snares.” This was Geoffrey’s second attempt at an exit, but this time his curiosity got the better of him. “Just what is going on?” he demanded. “And why come to me? Surely you know that Mother would be delighted to throw you to the social wolves if you so much as indicated your willingness to go.”

Charles paled. “No. I don’t want to attend dances or anything like that. I’d just like to meet someone nice. It’s time I thought about settling down with someone who’s my type. You know, involved in the sciences.”

“What a pity for you that Typhoid Mary is no longer with us.” Geoffrey deemed that exit line too good to pass up, and so he left.

Jenny Ramsay was touched and pleased to hear from her old friend Elizabeth after so many years, but she did not share her friend’s elation about a marriage day that coincided with the birthday of Princess Diana. In a way, Jenny had been Princess Diana for several years now and quite often she found it a royal pain.

This was one of those times.

As usual, she was impeccably dressed: pink linen suit, ruffled blouse with a satin ribbon at the neck, and her trademark double strand of cultured pearls. Her hair was a smooth, blonde bob, perfectly disciplined to stay in place, just short of her tiny gold earrings, and her heart-shaped face was carefully made up to look not made up at all. She wore her usual expression of sincere and urgent interest, suggesting that the present discussion of gardening strategies and shrubbery upkeep was the high point of her week.

In fact she was bored shitless. (Not an expression that anyone had ever heard Jenny Ramsay use, but she thought it a lot.) In her capacity as honorary chairperson and goodwill ambassador to the rest of Georgia, she was attending a board meeting of the local County Beautification Committee, and her fellow committee members had been holding forth for a good hour and a half, which is a long time to have to smile and look fascinated by utter drivel. Jenny was trying to think of a plausible yet foolproof way of escape.

Jenny Ramsay had graduated from college with a sorority pin, a C average, and a degree in communications, which she hoped to parlay into a career in show business. In the spring of her senior year, she had entered the local pageant of the Miss Georgia contest, in hopes of gaining some media attention, useful to job seekers who are short on marketable skills. Thanks to several years of aerobics classes with her sorority sisters, she looked all right for the swimsuit competition (though it felt rather strange to be parading around a crowded auditorium with hardly anything on). “Take out your contact lenses,” a pageant official advised her. “It’s a lot easier if the audience is just one big blur.”

The evening-gown event was delightful. She had worn a turquoise ball gown that needed only a wand to make her look like a fairy princess, and she was sure that the judges gave her higher marks than anybody in that category.

Jenny’s real problem with the pageant was the talent portion of the program. Jenny couldn’t sing-and her notions of dancing involved a drunken DKE for a partner and a very loud dose of beach music. It was then that she discovered she had entered the pageant fifteen years too late. The true contenders had been competing since the age of four, when ambitious and farsighted mothers enrolled them in piano, ballet, and modern-dance classes. On the advice of one of her communications professors, Jenny ended up doing Emily in the last act of Our Town, but she lost the crown to a cellist from Milton’s Forge, whose ambitions were to become a speech therapist and end world hunger.

The pageant had not been a total loss, however. One of the judges had been an executive from the local television station, and he had seen a perky quality in Jenny Ramsay that he thought would add just the right spark to the Channel Four news team. They already had the anchor duo-Bill (an overgrown Boy Scout) and Victoria (dark-haired and serious)-and sports announcer Badger Darnell, whose knee injury had sidelined him from a pro baseball career. Jenny was young and inexperienced, but the station thought that with a little coaching, Jenny Ramsay could corner the ratings for north Georgia.

She was hired to announce the weather on the six o’clock news, but although the public saw this as her principal function, it was, in fact, a small part of her duties, mostly involving reading prepared forecasts supplied to the station by actual meteorologists. Jenny’s part in the process was to wear cute outfits, read the teleprompter with accuracy and convincing sincerity while pointing to the correct spot on the map (you had to know which one was Alabama and which one was Mississippi), and to function as the so-called little sister of the news team. Jenny was the one who cooed over feature stories about animals and who talked about snowball fights with Badger when snow was in the forecast.

The station’s plans for Jenny involved much more than telling people whether or not to take umbrellas to work. They wanted a princess. Local news teams were small-town America’s answer to royalty, they reasoned. Actually, they didn’t reason it, as hardly anyone in television ever comes up with an idea independently. What they did was to go to a broadcasters’ conference in Chicago, where they attended a seminar on “The Rating Value of News-Team Members as Community Celebrities.”

The workshop speaker had, in fact, explained to the audience that media personalities performed the same functions in Middle America that the British royals did for the public in the United Kingdom. They lent their names to worthy causes, rode in parades, and served as figureheads and spokesmen for various civic projects. For the royal family, the rewards were an allowance from the civil list and a few castles to live in; for their American counterparts, it translated into ratings for the news-team celebrities’ television station.

The Channel Four executives discussed this revelation on the plane back to Atlanta and they decided that of their four newspeople, perky blonde Jenny Ramsay had the most potential for the role of community royal. She was wholesomely pretty rather than sexy, so that while men would find her attractive, women would still approve of her; she was young, inexperienced, and unmarried, which meant that her salary was not great, and her chances of relocating were small; and best of all, she was not terribly bright, which meant that she could discharge the endless social functions without going insane from boredom. Jenny Ramsay, the Weather Princess, was Channel Four’s answer to prayer.

They sent her to Atlanta for two weeks of charm school, in which she learned to walk like a model, moderate her Southern accent for the benefit of a microphone, and to turn her best side toward the cameras. Her instructors brushed up her table manners, fashion sense, makeup skills, and posture. When Jenny Ramsay came back from Atlanta, she was not perfect, but after a few months’ practice she acquired the polish to seem perfect. Although, as news anchor Victoria remarked privately, “The light in Jenny’s eyes is the sun shining through the back of her head,” most people were too dazzled to notice what a dim star she was.

The one thing that coaching had not taught Jenny Ramsay was the Manner. That she had learned on her own. It had not happened overnight, but gradually, Jenny had come to realize that all celebrities have a public persona as well as a private self. It isn’t acting, exactly, and it isn’t necessarily insincere; it’s just a way of coping with strangers who expect to be treated like old pals.

After a few months of appearing on Channel Four, Jenny began to receive fan mail from people who obviously felt that she was one of the family. We have dinner with you every night at 6:15, one of them wrote. Strangers began to hail her by her first name in the supermarket, and people would stop her on the street and tell her long, pointless stories about themselves, or ask her personal questions, like whether she was married and what kind of car she drove. At first these intrusions were frightening to Jenny, because she thought that the intruders might be planning to kidnap her or drop in for breakfast or something equally repugnant. Finally she realized that people liked talking to her because she was famous, and that later they could recount their conversation with her to the guys at the office.

The station assigned her to be the March of Dimes chairman and the parade marshal. After they had her read children’s letters to Santa Claus on the air and the newspaper pictured her cuddling the animal shelter’s pet-of-the-week, she became the Patroness of the Valley. Thereafter, she could no more snub her constituents than Congressman Williams could.

By that time Jenny Ramsay had learned what the public expected of her and she could give it graciously on an instant’s notice. She called it Sparkle Plenty, after the character in the Dick Tracy comic strip. Sparkle Plenty meant that you smiled in public much more than anyone actually does and that you showed a degree of enthusiasm otherwise limited to two-year-olds and puppies. The voice, too, took on a quality of delight and emphasis that was quite absent from one’s private conversations. When greeting her fans, she spoke in italics. “How nice to mee-eet you! It is soo-oo sweet of you to say so! My autograph? Well, of cour-rse!” Jenny had learned that if you didn’t do that-if, in fact, you treated people as you normally treated your friends and family-they thought you were reserved or stuck up. But Sparkle Plenty was a very tiring activity. After a daylong broadcast from the county fair, Jenny found that her whole face ached from the muscle strain of constant smiling. Still, she was thoroughly proficient at it, and one always came away from an encounter with the Weather Princess feeling that one was her true friend, that she was “just like anybody else.”

She Wondered how she ought to act at Elizabeth MacPherson’s wedding. Technically, of course, it was a private occasion, requiring the participation of the private Jenny Ramsay, and not the Channel Four Weather Princess, but lately it had seemed to her that she was recognized every time she went out in public, so that now she had to put on full makeup and dress clothes just to buy a quart of milk. Jenny was beginning to wonder if she could be Jenny Ramsay in any gathering at which strangers were present. She would have to see how it went.

A voice from the endless drone of the meeting interrupted her reverie. “What about you, Jenny? How do you feel about Dusty Miller?”

Jenny summoned a perky smile. “Great! My folks have a bunch of his records.”

An instant later she remembered that this was a beautification meeting, and that Dusty Miller must be some kind of damned plant, but the committee members laughed merrily. Later they told people that Jenny Ramsay, while perfectly natural, was much wittier than she seemed on television.

Geoffrey turned off the Channel Four six o’clock news just as Jenny Ramsay was assuring a Stetson-wearing majorette that it would not rain on her parade. “I believe she is traveling in a mice-drawn pumpkin,” he muttered. “How else could it take this long to get here from Virginia?”

“Antique shops,” grunted Captain Grandfather from behind the pages of the Chandler Grove Scout. “Outlet malls. Even petting zoos. I think Elizabeth would stop to watch grass grow if somebody advertised it on a roadside billboard. Her mother’s the same way.”

“Well, if she doesn’t get here soon, I shall be off to rehearsal,” Geoffrey announced, in tones suggesting the magnitude of her loss.

“She’ll probably wait up for you, Geoffrey. Keeping decent hours is something else she’s not known for.”

“I never could understand why early risers were so smug about it,” said Geoffrey, for whom mornings were only an ugly rumor. “They go to bed at ten and get up at seven, and they act like they ought to get gold stars for doing it! That’s nine hours sleep; while I, who go to bed at three A.M. or so, never get that much sleep. So, I ask you, who’s the sloth?”

“You get more done if you get up with the chickens,” said Captain Grandfather.

Geoffrey managed a frosty smile. “I much prefer owls. They’re smarter.”

The sound of a horn from the driveway diverted his attention from the argument. “About time!” he said, stalking out of the room.

Elizabeth’s white hatchback was parked in the circular driveway as close to the side door as she could manage. She was already hauling a collection of bags and parcels out of the backseat and stacking them on the concrete.

“Oh, good!” she cried, seeing Geoffrey approach. “I was afraid I was going to have to carry all this by myself.”

“What? No footmen?” Geoffrey inquired.

Elizabeth made a face at him. “You’re going to be absolutely unbearable about all this, aren’t you?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Unbearable is such a subjective thing. I plan to enjoy myself hugely, though, which may prove annoying to you.”

“I expect it will,” said Elizabeth, handing him a totebag full of books. “You usually manage to make me feel like a perfect fool.”

“When, alas, my goal is ever to prevent you from being one.” He inspected the totebag and drew out the topmost book: The Royal Wedding. “Too late, I see!”

“I refuse to be cross with you, Geoffrey,” said Elizabeth with a little laugh. “This is going to be the happiest day of my life.”

“Yes,” said Geoffrey. “I was afraid that it might.” He flipped through the book, solemnly studying the color photographs of the glass coach, the sailor-suited page boys, and the red-liveried horsemen in the wedding procession. “And is this a portent of things to come? I’m afraid Chandler Grove doesn’t run to landaus, but the high-school pep club could probably fix you up a float with some pastel toilet paper and twenty feet of chicken wire.”

“I don’t want a royal wedding,” said Elizabeth between clenched teeth. “But I would like a lovely and memorable ceremony, since I hope to do this only once.”

“Leave the bags here,” said Geoffrey, setting the books down. “Let’s go for a walk.”

“Shouldn’t I go in and say hello to everyone else?”

“They’re watching Jeopardy,” said Geoffrey. “You may as well wait until that’s over if you want them to notice you. Come on.”

Elizabeth looked for a long minute at the white castle across the road, and then with a little shudder she turned away. “All right,” she said. “But let’s not walk toward that.”

“It is rather ominous, isn’t it?” said Geoffrey. “I see it every day, and yet it still gives me chills. It’s strange how you remember someone who has died violently, even if you weren’t particularly fond of them.”

Elizabeth nodded. “I know, but I truly don’t want to think of him just now. Do you suppose that my coming here to have the wedding will bring back sad memories of Eileen?”

“Perhaps,” said Geoffrey. “But at least you will be making new memories to overshadow the old ones. That may help.”

They walked around to the back of the house, where a well-tended lawn gradually gave way to a field of tall grass that stretched a hundred yards or more to the edge of the woods.

“It’s so beautiful here,” said Elizabeth, stopping to admire a bank of cabbage roses. “It makes the twentieth century seem far away.”

“Well, it is,” said Geoffrey. “Unfortunately, one must commute there.”

“Yes. I don’t know where we’re going to live. It’s very hard to manage with two careers.”

“I should have thought that your two particular careers might make it easier than most,” Geoffrey observed. “Obviously, he has to be near an ocean, on account of the seals, and you will find that there are dead bodies everywhere, so it shouldn’t matter where you live.”

Elizabeth frowned. “There’s a bit more to it than that.”

“Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First comes the wedding. Now, you are sure that you want to do this? Because I have seen you go off on some tangents that would make the Flying Dutchman seem carefully navigated.”

“It isn’t a whim,” said Elizabeth softly.

“Well, I do rather like Cameron. He isn’t the wet dishcloth you usually become enamored of. I suppose he knows what he’s doing?”

“You will have to ask him,” said Elizabeth dryly.

“And all this undue haste isn’t just to meet the Queen? I have to tell you it sounds like a silly reason for getting married.”

“You sound like Bill!” said Elizabeth, regarding Geoffrey with considerable surprise. “I haven’t ever heard you sound so serious and responsible.”

“I am Captain Grandfather’s understudy,” said Geoffrey with a grin. “Which you may take as a warning that you will probably be having this conversation again.”

“Perhaps I should make an announcement,” said Elizabeth. “This is not sudden and I am not impetuous. But the garden-party invitation is a great honor, and it seemed all right to rearrange our plans in view of it.”

“You sound sane,” said Geoffrey doubtfully. “But then so does Ernie Barlow when he talks about getting flying-saucer transmissions on his bridge-work.”

“It’s going to be all right, Geoffrey,” Elizabeth assured him. She played her trump card. “In fact, I was hoping that since you have such a wonderful sense of style, you might help me plan some of the arrangements for the wedding.”

“We’ll talk,” said Geoffrey, looking smug. “I may have one or two little ideas.”

Dearest Dawsons,

Wherever I wander (just now I’m in Rome), Rest assured that you’re thought of by your

GARDEN GNOME

Cheerie Bye!