Epilogue
From: Nurse Sarah Pleine
Fleet Clinic
Cheapside
To: Jane Millicent Lambert
5 Carnock Road
Manadon
Dear Jane;
Well, my dear, we had our wedding! Our double wedding, I should say, since it was Miss Amelia and her beau, that sweet young man we had at the clinic that I told you about, and Miss Maya and her Captain! I was matron of honor to both of them, and I was that nervous when I saw the native dress that Miss Maya intended to wear, but it was all right, for they gave me a handsome suit and didn't expect me to get all tangled up in one of those 'sorry' things, which is just as well, for you know, I haven't the figure to wear anything that looks like yards and yards of bedsheet! Doctor O'Reilly and Lord Peter Almsley were best man—men?—and oh, I never saw a handsomer set of fellows, and O'Reilly's wife the match for him, a regular Lady of Shallots. Six of the girls and teachers from the London School were maids of honor and half of them wore those 'sorrys'—well, I didn't envy them a bit, no matter that it's twelve full yards of silk and you could make it up into a very nice frock later— and each of them carried one of Miss Maya's pets instead of a bouquet! And the peacock was up at the altar behind the bishop, with his tail spread the whole time and so quiet and good you'd have thought he knew exactly what was going on. . . .
From:
Helene, Duchess of Almsley
To: Her Grace Katherine, Dowager Duchess of Almsley Heartwood Hall
Newport Pagnell
Your Grace, Well, my dear son—your grandson—has done it again with this 'little wedding' he organized for his friends. I shan't be able to show my face in London for months. A circus, a positive circus, not a wedding— women in native dress, animals, creatures straight from a suffragette meeting and criminals and only the Good Lord knows what else in attendance, and as if that wasn't bad enough, for he could have kept it quiet if he had confined his mischief to just those, he has had Bishop Mannering to officiate and everyone from his Club to attend! The humiliation! I can't keep him in order, but he listens to you, surely you. . . .
To: Her Grace, the Dowager Duchess of Almsley
Heartwood Hall
