How Miss Rutherford Got Her Groove Back by Sophie Barnes Page A

there was anything the least bit humorous about her parents’ deaths. She loved her parents and had spent two years in full mourning as opposed to the standard one. Not a day passed without her thinking of them, yet there had been something very comical about the way in which Baroness Giddington (or Mrs. Peacock, as Emily presently thought of her) had looked as she raised her eyes toward heaven and let out a small sigh. One might even be tempted to think that she had rehearsed the scene at home in front of a mirror and was now merely acting it out. Emily’s mouth twitched again at the idea.
    How strange to have that sudden urge to laugh again, Emily thought. She hadn’t laughed in a whole week, which was so very unlike her. It felt good, though—like a burden had been lifted from her shoulders and she was finally able to relax. Oh, but she mustn’t laugh now, not again. Out came yet another croak.
    “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Veronica exclaimed. “Would somebody please get this poor woman some water?”
    Francis quickly poured a glass from the decanter sitting on the table. Some of it missed, splashing onto the polished wooden surface. He quickly brushed it away with the palm of his hand to prevent it from leaving a permanent mark—something that his mother had always made a point of.
    Thrusting it forward, the water sloshed from side to side, almost spilling onto the top of Emily’s dress as she reached for the glass and steadied it. “Thank you,” she muttered, looking everywhere but at Francis, who she knew would be regarding her disapprovingly.
    “This is Emily,” Francis said as he addressed Veronica with a tight smile that wasn’t really a smile at all. “She’s the middle sister, Beatrice being the eldest and Claire the youngest.”
    “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Beatrice told Lady Giddington kindly.
    Thank God for Beatrice, Emily thought as she worked on mastering some form of self-control. It was proving difficult, but not impossible, even though Francis seemed to be in an increasingly bad mood. Emily didn’t doubt for a minute that it was because of her. She closed her eyes briefly in order to rid herself of “the giggles,” as she termed it—likening her fits of laughter to a disease of sorts. She then took a deep breath, opened her eyes again, and managed a brilliant smile that didn’t appear to be nearly as fake as it felt.
    “Well, I daresay,” Veronica remarked as she loosened the ribbons of her bonnet and removed it. “You are all as lovely as Francis told me you would be. This shan’t be difficult at all!”
    “Liar!” Emily wanted to yell. If there was one thing that she was sure of, it was that Francis had never used the word “lovely” to describe her or her sisters in his life. She was willing to bet her life on it if she had to. But she kept her smile steady, appearing at least outwardly to be having a jolly good time indeed. The truth, however, was that she had no desire to be there at all. She would so much rather be shoveling manure in Mr. Hughes’s pig sty back in Hardington, but refused to think of it lest she suffer yet another onset of “the giggles.”
    As it turned out, Baroness Giddington wasn’t nearly as pretentious as Emily had first thought. In fact, the rest of the afternoon passed surprisingly well with a large degree of amicable conversation. And yet, as Emily had recently come to discover, things were more often than not too good to be true.
    “Did you happen to hear that Mr. Adrian Fairchild is in town?” Veronica asked as she raised a smug eyebrow. She was certain that she would be the first to deliver the news, for she had just happened to pass Lady Carroway in the street that very morning. “He is a friend of yours, is he not?”
    Emily almost spat out the tea that she’d been drinking, biting down on her tongue instead as she clamped her mouth shut. Her eyes darted nervously toward Beatrice, who was inscrutable as she carefully picked up