With This Ring by Carla Kelly

Kitty
that when she does make a suitable alliance this spring, that they
honeymoon on Elba.”
    “ I’m certain that would be a
wonderful idea, Mama,” Lydia replied, thinking to herself how loud
Major Reed would laugh to hear Mama. I will tell him tomorrow, and
he will go into whoops, she thought.
    Mama gave her a kindly smile.
“Lydia, it is so pleasant when we are in agreement on something.”
She took the dress from Lydia’s lap. “I do think, however, that you
need to offer Kitty an apology for delaying this mending and
sending her into spasms.” She left the room, closing the door
quietly behind her for a change.
    I would rather pull out my
fingernails one by one than apologize to Kitty, Lydia thought as
she took off her dress, sniffed it, and removed it to a far corner
before she lay down. She closed her eyes in exhaustion. I have had
a lifetime of Kitty this, and Kitty that. I can scarcely remember a
time when I have not fetched and carried for my little sister, and
all because she is a beauty, and I am not.
    She pressed her hands to her stomach
when it began to growl, reminding herself that luncheon at St.
Barnabas had been a bowl of gruel, eaten on the fly. I am hungry,
and it makes me cranky, she thought. Perhaps when I have eaten, I
will feel more charitable toward my own family.
    To her chagrin, she discovered
during dinner that her charity was finite. Famished, she ate
steadily, enduring Mama’s remarks about young women who eat too
much and never find husbands. My waist is as small as Kitty’s, she
thought as she took another helping of fricassee. She glanced
sideways at her sister, who was dabbling with the sole in front of
her. There are soldiers who would take her leftovers without a
qualm. They need more than gruel and bread to recover, and we will
only throw out course after course nibbled around the edges or
ignored entirely. And do you know, Kitty, she thought, I rather
believe my bosom is quite as elegant as yours. She
smiled.
    “ I do not see how you can sit there
and shovel in food with both hands, and smile about it,” Mama
snapped.
    “ It was a long day, Mama, and I ate
only a bowl of gruel,” she explained. She looked at her mother. Now
I should be silent and hang my head, but I think I shall not.
“Mama, tell me, what happens to the food that we do not eat at the
table?”
    “ It goes to the servants, of
course,” Mama said.
    “ And if they do not want it? I know
they have their own meals.”
    Mama rang her bell vigorously to
summon the footman, who was standing right behind her. She shrieked
when he leaned over to remove her plate. “They throw it out!” she
exclaimed, her face red.
    “ Mama, could I take it with me
tomorrow?” She indicated the laden table. “This is the kind of food
that strong men need to recover from their wounds.”
    The silence around the table was
monumental. Papa seemed to shrink in his chair, and Kitty’s eyes
grew wide with disbelief, and then disdain. Mama glared at her. “I
would not dream of even you taking table scraps to those
uncouth men! Come, Kitty, it is past time to get ready for
Almack’s. Really, Lydia, you have tried me to the limit. If it were
not for this attention from General Picton and what it can mean to
Kitty, I would put you on the mail coach back to Devon!”
    That was certainly a snit, Lydia
thought to herself as she returned her attention to the plate
before her. Say what you will about her pretensions, Mama keeps a
good table. How I would like to put Battery B around it, she
reflected as she finished her own dinner, and leaned over to fork
the sole from Kitty’s abandoned plate. Major Reed would fill out
and probably look almost handsome. Poor man. He should be on his
way home to Northumberland, where people probably love him, instead
of worrying about his men in a moldy chapel. It seems
unfair.
    “ Papa, have you ever been to
Northumberland?” she asked suddenly as the footman cleared the
table and brought in the port