Read On the Way to the Wedding for Free Online

agreed to sponsor her, and so here they were, still together.
    Which was lovely, really, except for the always-present (in spirit, at least) Mr. Edmonds. Lucy had made his acquaintance only once, but it certainly felt as if he were always there, hovering over them, causing Hermione to sigh at strange moments and gaze wistfully off into the distance as if she were committing a love sonnet to memory so that she might include it in her next reply.
    “You are aware,” Lucy said, even though Hermione had not indicated that she was finished reading her missive, “that your parents will never permit you to marry him.”
    That was enough to get Hermione to set the letter down, albeit briefly. “Yes,” she said with an irritated expression,
    “you’ve said as much.”
    “He is a secretary,” Lucy said.
    “I realize that.”
    “A secretary,” Lucy repeated, even though they’d had this conversation countless times before. “Your father’s secretary.”
    Hermione had picked the letter back up in an attempt to ignore Lucy, but finally she gave up and set it back down, On the Way to the Wedding
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    confirming Lucy’s suspicions that she had long since fi nished it and was now in the first, or possibly even second, rereading.
    “Mr. Edmonds is a good and honorable man,” Hermione said, lips pinched.
    “I’m sure he is,” Lucy said, “but you can’t marry him.
    Your father is a viscount. Do you really think he will allow his only daughter to marry a penniless secretary?”
    “My father loves me,” Hermione muttered, but her voice wasn’t exactly replete with conviction.
    “I am not trying to dissuade you from making a love match,” Lucy began, “but—”
    “That is exactly what you are trying to do,” Hermione cut in.
    “Not at all. I just don’t see why you can’t try to fall in love with someone of whom your parents might actually approve.”
    Hermione’s lovely mouth twisted into a frustrated line.
    “You don’t understand.”
    “What is there to understand? Don’t you think your life might be just a touch easier if you fell in love with someone suitable?”
    “Lucy, we don’t get to choose who we fall in love with.”
    Lucy crossed her arms. “I don’t see why not.”
    Hermione’s mouth actually fell open. “Lucy Abernathy,”
    she said, “you understand nothing.”
    “Yes,” Lucy said dryly, “you’ve mentioned.”
    “How can you possibly think a person can choose who she falls in love with?” Hermione said passionately, although not so passionately that she was forced to rouse herself from her semireclined position on the bed. “One doesn’t choose.
    It just happens. In an instant.”
    “Now that I don’t believe,” Lucy replied, and then added, because she could not resist, “not for an instant.”
    “Well, it does,” Hermione insisted. “I know, because it 3
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    happened to me. I wasn’t looking to fall in love.”
    “Weren’t you?”
    “No.” Hermione glared at her. “I wasn’t. I fully intended to find a husband in London. Really, who would have expected to meet anyone in Fenchley ?”
    Said with the sort of disdain found only in a native Fench-leyan.
    Lucy rolled her eyes and tilted her head to the side, waiting for Hermione to get on with it.
    Which Hermione did not appreciate. “Don’t look at me like that,” she snipped.
    “Like what?”
    “Like that. ”
    “I repeat, like what?”
    Hermione’s entire face pinched. “You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
    Lucy clapped a hand to her face. “Oh my,” she gasped.
    “You looked exactly like your mother just then.”
    Hermione drew back with affront. “That was unkind.”
    “Your mother is lovely!”
    “Not when her face is all pinchy.”
    “Your mother is lovely even with a pinchy face,” Lucy said, trying to put an end to the subject. “Now, do you intend to tell me about Mr. Edmonds or not?”
    “Do you plan to mock me?”
    “Of course not.”
    Hermione lifted her