"Are you in residence, my Lord?" Brantley inquired. Even Brantley, the butler, knew exactly the trouble that waited for them on the other side of those doors.
"We may as well get on with it," the Viscount sighed. He pulled on the hem of his vest to straighten it, as if his appearance didn't already look impeccable. "We are in residence Brantley." Turning to his wife and Mrs. Pickering, "Brace for impact ladies."
He calmed his bride's nerves as the party of guests poured into the grand foyer like bad apples spilling out of a bucket. "Give me some time to speak to her (Winifred). We will offer them dinner and place them in guest rooms overnight. They've come too far to turn them away. It's a long way from London, as you well know; and they didn't travel as we did, by motor car."
She (Abigail) nodded graciously and instructed the housekeeper to see that they would be settled comfortably into two guest rooms. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, Brooke Manor was large enough to accommodate them. The housekeeper, Jenkins, (though Abigail wanted to call her Miss Jenkins in American tradition) did as she was directed most efficiently, taking the two ladies and the aunt up the staircase as a scene began to unfold and erupt from Winifred. Winifred would later join her chaperone in one room, and the remaining two ladies would be placed in another. As they climbed the staircase, a great deal of whispering went on behind their fans, in amazement when Lord Gilmore had introduced Abigail as his wife.
That's when things really began to spiral out of control. Winifred had stopped trying to give orders to her own and Lord Gilmore's servants about which trunks to take where. She suddenly stood stock still in her tracks, her mouth gaping wide. "Your wife?"
A brief excerpt from "Abigail's Melody"
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