Patricia Wentworth - Beggar’s Choice

Peter honey, everything has come right. Isn’t it just perfectly splendid? It all happened so quick I’m still taking long breaths and pinching myself to see if I’m awake. Cousin John and Car are friends again. Anna Lang has run away with a dreadful man called Arbuthnot Markham. And Car is going to marry Isobel, and I am going to marry you. So now you know why you are “Peter Darling.”

You see, Car got engaged to Isobel, so I couldn’t have him. And then I got your letter, and it did sound as if you were just rather fond of me, and then I felt terribly homesick and kind of alone in the world, so I sent Poppa a cable-a real, long cable-and I’m not going to tell you what I said. And Poppa cabled back-and I’m not going to tell you what he said either, but we’re engaged.

I hope you will like being engaged. Isobel and Car are perfectly sweet together. He looks at her as if she was the sun and the moon and the stars and everything beautiful you can think of. I don’t suppose you’d want to look that way at me. If you would there will be just time for you to write and tell me about it. Car and Isobel are getting married at the end of October and as soon as the wedding is over I am coming home. I was just going to write “I am coming home to you,” but then I thought I wouldn’t, because you don’t know about being engaged to me yet. Of course you will know it by the time you get this far-so perhaps I’ll say it after all.

Peter darling, I’m coming home to you.

Your

Corinna

Born in Mussoorie, India, in 1878, Patricia Wentworth was the daughter of an English general. Educated in England, she returned to India, where she began to write and was first published. She married, but in 1906 was left a widow with four children, and returned again to England where she resumed her writing, this time to earn a living for herself and her family. She married again in 1920 and lived in Surrey until her death in 1961.

Miss Wentworth’s early works were mainly historical fiction, and her first mystery, published in 1923, was The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith. In 1928 she wrote The Case Is Closed and gave birth to her most enduring creation, Miss Maud Silver.