Read Ever After for Free Online Page B

a big south room with six french windows on to a Virginian garden, and the portraits of Grandfather St. John and Grandmother Regina looking down from the walls.
    It was all gone now, and even the exquisite Regina’s portrait was ashes. All gone, except these grandchildren of his own, dancing in the Sprague parlour in England Street while Melicent played waltzes for them on Fitz’s new grand piano. Ransom’s clear, far-seeing eyes followed the drifting couples with interest; Miles and Virginia, Bracken and Phoebe, Fitz and Sue, Eden and Sedgwick,Cabot and Charl—odd how they paired off, with Dabney sitting beside Melicent at the piano. Wasn’t Miles going to dance with anybody but Virginia all evening? What would Phoebe think? Virginia wasn’t for bookish, bedazzled Miles….
    “How long does it take to get presented at Court?” Miles was asking jealously.
    “About three minutes. You place your right hand four inches below the Queen’s and kiss the air four inches above it, bending very low meanwhile in a Court curtsey—and then you retire backwards , contriving not to trip over your train, and dipping curtseys as quickly and gracefully as possible to all the other members of the Royal Family who happen to be present, as you go. You must on no account touch Her Majesty’s hand with your own, or with your lips. She hates that.”
    “And what then?” asked Miles.
    “Then you either go in a dizzy splendour to somebody’s train-party —that means one given specially for débutantes after their presentation—or else, if you haven’t a strong constitution, you go straight home in a state of total collapse and have a hot bath with ammonia in it and go to bed for the rest of the day to recuperate.”
    Miles opened his eyes.
    “From what?”
    “Excitement. Of course I don’t expect it to prostrate me like that, but Marietta says the tension on the staircase and in the Picture Gallery—that’s the last room before the Presence Chamber—is really devastating, particularly if the Queen herself is receiving the presentations. She doesn’t always. Usually it’s the Princess of Wales or Princess Christian, deputizing. In that case you don’t kiss her hand, you only curtsey.”
    “It sounds very complicated,” Miles puzzled. “Why is it so important?”
    “Oh, Miles, really, what a heathen you are! It just is , that’s all! No English girl is anybody at all until she has been presented, and most of them come straight to it from the schoolroom and almost die of stage-fright. Of course it won’t be so bad for me,” Virginia added a little complacently, “because I’ve already seen something of the world in New York. At least I don’t expect to chuck the bunny in the corridor, like one poor girl the year Marietta made her début.”
    Miles was horrified.
    “You mean—?”
    “Right at the feet of a gentleman-at-arms!”
    “B-but what did they do?”
    “Well, the girl felt better, of course—pretty shaky, but definitely improved. And everybody sort of made a screen by turning theirbacks and pretending not to notice, while a tactful footman in powdered hair and white gloves came and tactfully mopped it up with a tactful cloth and tactfully retired. And everybody said it always happens at least once, and drew a breath of relief that now it was over.”
    “I should think she would have just died in her tracks,” said Miles.
    “Well, if she had, a powdered footman would have tactfully removed the corpse, and everyone would have moved up one place,” said Virginia. “It’s the waiting that destroys you. The Diplomatic Circle goes in first, and that keeps the rest of you hanging about for hours with your train over your arm.”
    “Can’t you sit down?”
    “Part of the time, if you’re lucky.”
    Miles pondered it, as they danced. It was to him another world. He was beginning to feel as though he held Royalty itself in his own arms.
    “Will Bracken go too?”
    “Oh, Bracken goes to the levee and