“I wish, as well as everybody else, to be perfectly happy; but, like everybody else, it must be in my own way.”
—Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
“The kitchen’s not very large.”
So saying, Harriet Ferrars-Holland glanced with disdain at the worn linoleum and the plain oak cupboards, at the wallpaper that had seen better days, and frowned. “It’s actually very poky. And disappointing.”
“But there’s a garden view,” her brother Edward pointed out. “And the bay window in the breakfast nook lets in plenty of light. You can sit and watch the sunrise while you drink your morning coffee.”
“I don’t drink coffee, I prefer tea,” Harriet replied, “and I have very little use for sunrises. You know I seldom get up before nine.”
Her statement made Marianne Holland, seated nearby with her mother and her sister Elinor at the dining room table, bristle.
“What bollocks! She sleeps until noon because she stays up every night binge-watching The Real Housewives of Cheshire and knocking back a half bottle of wine. Thomas told me so.”
“You shouldn’t say such things about our sister-in-law, even if they’re true,” Elinor whispered back. “Harriet might hear you.”
“I wish she would. Then she’d know exactly how much I despise her.”
Mrs Holland cast her daughter a glance of warning, and Marianne crossed her arms against her chest and subsided into silence.
With
