Amanda stared at him over the top of her reading glasses. “Really, Robert! Have you taken leave of your senses? That was Elizabeth on the phone.”
Dr. Chandler took a deep breath. “Yes, dear,” he said carefully. “I know who the Queen of England is.”
“No! I mean, it was our niece Elizabeth. She wants to get married as quickly as possible.” Noting his blushing reaction, she added quickly, “There you go again! It’s not what you think. Do you remember that young man of hers, the one from Scotland?”
“As well as one can remember someone one has never met,” Dr. Chandler replied, stealing another glance at his book galleys.
“Cameron Dawson. He’s a marine biologist. Well, Elizabeth tells me that he has got invited to some Royal Garden Party that the Queen gives each summer in Edinburgh. They want to get married in time for Elizabeth to go with him. Imagine! An opportunity to meet the Queen.”
“That’s splendid,” he murmured, scribbling a notation in the right margin.
“Yes, I thought so!” Amanda said happily, unaware of her husband’s flagging attention. “I had despaired of Elizabeth at one time. She wanted to cut up dead bodies for a living and she didn’t seem interested in social proprieties at all, but I see that it was only a phase she had to outgrow. I quite approve of her new self. You’ll notice that she knew exactly who to turn to in planning this wedding. The only problem is that Doug and Margaret are in Hawaii for the next two weeks-though they’ll be back in time for the ceremony.”
“Ceremony?” Dr. Chandler looked up. “Where is the ceremony?”
“Why, here, of course!” With a wave of her hand, she indicated that she meant within the house. “I thought perhaps the front hall for the processional. That oak staircase would look very nice in wedding photographs, and the chandelier provides excellent lighting.”
“Er-shouldn’t Elizabeth’s parents have some say in the matter?”
“She’s phoned them, of course, Robert. Margaret has given her the go-ahead. With considerable relief, I would imagine. Naturally, I shall manage the wedding. I am the one with all the social graces in the family. Have I not given a reception for the lieutenant governor of Georgia? All my sister Margaret knows how to do is macramé plant holders and speak bordertown Spanish. Where would she hold the wedding-on their carport?”
Amanda Chandler’s eyes flashed with a sparkle of enthusiasm and her cheeks were flushed. Dr. Chandler noted these details with interest. He had rarely seen his wife so animated since their daughter’s death a few years earlier. At that time, Amanda had become depressed and her long-ignored drinking problem had worsened enough for her to be sent away for private treatment. She had been back for some months, and while she had not resumed her drinking, she was still not her old self. Her bright auburn hair showed streaks of the gray she had concealed for years, and she spent long hours in front of the television watching mindless sitcoms. Dr. Chandler had wanted to get more counseling for her, but she had insisted that nothing was the matter.
“I shall have to get my hair done first thing tomorrow,” Amanda announced, peering at herself in the gilt mirror above the mantelpiece. “And then I’ll start making lists.”
Dr. Chandler smiled to himself. The old Amanda was back.
The Chandler home was exactly the setting that a bridal magazine might choose for a photo layout. Surrounded by acres of forested hills, the brick Georgian-style mansion was set in a grove of oak trees in a white-fenced enclosure at the center of a rolling meadow. The house had been in the Chandler family for four generations, but its present stateliness was largely ascribable to the efforts of its present owner. Dr. Robert Chandler provided the income to finance the improvements, while his wife Amanda scoured Southern Living and various decorator magazines for ideas to refine the simple brick farmhouse. In two decades of relentless renovation, Amanda had demolished the white front porch in favor of a columned portico above the front door, added a one-story family room with sliding glass doors, and replaced the original plaster walls, which showed the age of the house like a wrinkled face. Oak paneling had been installed in the hallways and floral wallpaper adorned every other surface.
The result of these modern amendments was a house that looked like an unspoiled relic of the antebellum South. One could imagine General Sherman halting his mount on a nearby hillside, gazing at the neat brick exterior and well-tended lawn of the Chandler property, and saying, “What a fine house! Let’s wipe our feet before we go in there to loot!” Actually, the late general (referred to by Southern punsters as Edifice Wrecks) was never in the vicinity of Chandler Grove, and if he had been, the Chandler farmhouse in its pre-Amanda simplicity would have been beneath his notice.
Now, of course, the house was an object of lust for every realtor in the country. Modern-day Yankees, without the benefit of artillery to negotiate their property deals, would pay millions for the Chandler place. And it wasn’t even the biggest or most elaborate house in the county. No, that house was across the road from the Chandler mansion, and it was for sale, but the realtors weren’t sure what to do about it. They couldn’t even figure out how to word the advertisement. Realtors shrugged and told each other hopefully that somebody from California would buy it.
“Eizabeth is getting married here?” said Geoffrey Chandler in tones suggesting an outraged Oscar Wilde. “Wouldn’t it be more appropriate for her to do it over there?” He gestured grandly toward the house across the road.
His brother Charles shrugged in completely unfeigned indifference. “I’m just telling you what Mother said, Geoffrey. Besides, don’t you think that getting married in a replica of a Bavarian castle would be tacky?”
“I do indeed,” Geoffrey replied. “That is why I was certain she would leap at the opportunity. Can’t you just see Elizabeth gliding down the aisle in Lohengrin’s swan boat with strains of Wagner in the background?”
Charles shuddered. “Not without a sedative, I can’t. Why don’t they just get a justice of the peace to marry them in the meadow?”
Geoffrey turned away from the window and regarded his brother with a gleam of malevolent interest. “In the meadow,” he repeated, savoring the words. “Flowers in her hair, perhaps? Groom in medieval dress-puffed-sleeve shirt, velvet coat, leather buskins? Processional played on guitar and flute?”
Charles nodded eagerly.
“Write their own vows? Including, perhaps, the odd quotation from García Lorca and The Prophet?
“Yes, exactly!”
Geoffrey smirked. “Just as I thought! Her taste for the gauche is a genetic disorder. And you have it, too! How fortunate that I was spared its ravages.”
“Really? I should have thought you’d want to wear your cloak and doublet to the ceremony.” Charles nodded toward a black velvet costume hanging from a hook on the closet door.
“That is my costume for Twelfth Night” said Geoffrey gravely. “The theatre group is staging it in August. It’s quite an appropriate costume for a Shakespearean production; however, I attend all family melodramas in modern dress. Still, this will be an interesting little comedy no matter what anyone wears. When is this blessed event, anyway?”
“On the first of July, according to Mother.”