Nicola and the Viscount by Meg Cabot Page B

dissuade her. Nor did Lady Sheridan’s assertion that she preferred a long engagement, and that, had Nicola been her daughter, she’d have made her wait two years, since she did not believe in girls marrying before their eighteenth birthday.
    This only served to make Nicola grateful that it was Lady Farelly, and not Lady Sheridan, who was to be her mother-in-law. Two years! It seemed eons to Nicola. She was miffed enough over the fact that she was going to have to wait a month before becoming Viscountess Farnsworth, as Lady Farelly needed that long to make all the arrangements and get out the invitations. Imagine having to wait two whole years!
    And yet it was difficult for Nicola to be unhappy about much of anything…not now that she had, at long last, her heart’s desire. For what girl wouldn’t wait a month, or even two, for the privilege of marrying a young man like the God? Nicola could not think of one. She was the envy of her entire set. Even Honoria was jealous…though not, of course, for the same reason Stella Ashton, another graduate of Madame Vieuxvincent’s, was. No, Honoria was envious because Nicola had had two—two!—proposals in one day, while Honoria still hadn’t had even one.
    â€œJust wait,” Nicola had told her. “Wait until Charlotte and Martine finish removing all the feathers. You’ll have proposals galore.”
    Though it was hard for Nicola to think about anyone, really, other than herself, in her current state of joy. Especially when everyone—everyone besides the Honorable Nathaniel Sheridan, that is—was so full of congratulation and joy over Nicola’s engagement. Nana wrote from Beckwell Abbey, offering Nicola her best wishes, and promising to prepare for the bride and groom her famous ginger cake upon their first visit to Northumberland as a married couple. Madame Vieuxvincent sent a congratulatory note, along with a copy of Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman , a must-have, she wrote, for every bride preparing to begin a family.
    Even the Milksop, being the milksop that he was, sent Nicola a nosegay, along with his sincerest—or so he wrote, anyway—wishes for a happy marriage. That, coupled with his father’s grudging agreement to loan Nicola enough money to outfit herself with a smart trousseau, made her happiness quite complete. The Grouser even went so far as to give Nicola his blessing…though grudgingly.
    â€œI suppose,” he’d said, coming to call upon Nicola shortly after the news reached him, “you know your own mind. Though I must say I think my Harold’s twice the man your viscount is.”
    Nicola kept her own opinion on this matter to herself.
    But her delight—over the man she’d loved proposing, her love for her future in-laws, the fact that she was soon to be a viscountess—was not as easy to keep inside.
    And, more often than not, the place where it all came bursting out was in the company of Eleanor Sheridan. Nicola couldn’t really extoll over her good fortune in front of her fiancé’s sister—not when Honoria hadn’t a beau, or even a hope of one, of her own. But Eleanor had had some exciting news as well: Sir Hugh had, like the God, proposed, and been accepted. The couple would have to wait two years before the nuptials could take place—how Nicola pitied her friend!—but were otherwise ecstatically happy. As Sir Hugh had five thousand a year and a manor house in Devonshire—not to mention a seemingly endless supply of clean white cravats—Nicola approved of this match for her friend, in spite of the mustache.
    But her surprise that her friend did not quite return the feeling where Nicola and the viscount were concerned was considerable.
    â€œIt’s only,” Eleanor explained, when Nicola demanded to know just what she meant when Eleanor made the astonishing admission that she wasn’t