CHAPTER 11
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LUCIA:
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IF I HAD BEEN ASKED to give a report to my mother or Aunt Merry, Celeste, Frankie, Belle, or any number of our acquaintance back in New York, I could have drawn them a glowing picture of England in the blossoming summer, of a procession towards a bucolic fairy-tale wedding in Oxfordshire, of a London that was not a chaotic snarl of noise and wares and foul mechanical smells and uniform gray weather but a lively theater of people and leisure and fashion coming into the height of the Season.
It would have been truthful, entirely believable, and a deliberate misrepresentation.
“Tessa’s wedding and a London Season to start our Grand Tour and foraging for a suitable husband in the undergrowth. Plenty to occupy our time.” Charley gave a smile of limpid i
