Page 102 of Rivals at Ashmore Castle

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

There was a saying that one wedding brings on another.

‘Doesn’t mean anything,’ Rose asserted, when someone said it at the table. ‘It’s not going to happen by magic just because you say it.’

‘When’s your wedding going to be, Rose?’ Eddie chirped up from the lowly place at the middle of the table.

‘Don’t you be cheeky or I’ll come and clout you,’ Rose snapped.

‘We Italians love weddings,’ said Miss Petrocelli. Mr and Mrs Sebastian had returned from Town and not yet departed for Henley. ‘But they are different from yours.’

‘Tell us, then,’ said Daisy.

‘Oh, you walk through the village to the church with your family in a procession, and everyone comes to their door and beats on a saucepan with a spoon to make much noise.’

‘Ooh, whatever for?’ asked Doris.

‘To keep away the evil spirits. Sometimes there are firecrackers too. Devils do not like loud noise. And we would never get married on Friday, like your Lady Rachel. Or Tuesday. They are bad-luck days.’

‘Evil spirits and bad luck?’ said Rose. ‘You don’t have a lot of hope for it going well, then?’

‘Tell us another thing,’ Mrs Webster said hastily.

Miss Petrocelli turned dreamy eyes on her. ‘The bride wears her ring on the left hand, the third finger, because there is a special vein, the vena amorosa, which carries the blood from there straight to the heart.’

‘Oh, that’s pretty!’ said Doris.

‘Everyone wears the ring on that finger,’ Rose said flatly.

‘But nobody told us why before,’ Doris said, anxious to retain some romance. ‘Don’t you think that’s lovely?’

‘I think you’re a fool.’

‘Why are you so against weddings, Rose?’ Sam asked.

‘Cos nobody’s ever going to ask her, that’s why,’ Cyril said, and Afton leaned over and slapped the back of his head to save Rose having to get up.

‘You’re all idiots,’ Rose said. ‘Not you men – you get what you want, always do. But you girls, you think getting married is all lovely and romantic and everything’s going to be flowers and kissy-fingers. But it’s cleaning up after a man and waiting on him hand and foot, that’s all. You’ll find out.’

Mabel said, ‘We do that anyway. I reckon I’d sooner clean up after one man than twenty. And you get someone to warm your feet on at night.’

‘Ooh, don’t talk so shocking, Mabel!’ said Daisy.

‘Well, what I say is—’ Mabel began.

But Rose had seen Ada slip from her seat to go and whisper in Mrs Webster’s ear, and she interrupted Mabel to say, ‘What’s she want? Whispering’s bad manners in company, Ada, you should know that.’

Ada, blushing, scuttled back to her seat, and Mrs Webster caught Moss’s eye down the length of the table, and tinkled her fork against her water-glass. ‘If I may, Mr Moss? Ada’s asked me to make an announcement.’

Moss first frowned, then smiled. It was for him to make announcements; but he could never be cross with Ada, his lily-white fairy with the spun-gold hair.

‘Carry on, Mrs Webster.’

‘Ada’s too shy to speak herself, so she’s asked me to say that she and George Soper – one of the grooms from our stables, for those of you who don’t know him – have been walking out now for nearly two years, and he’s…What was it, Ada?’

Ada, her transparent cheeks rosy with surging blood, her eyes cast down in agonised shyness, whispered something, which Tilda, sitting beside her, had to relay.

‘Got a new position.’ More whispering. ‘Groom to Mrs Peel in School Lane.’