7

The lines in and out of Collinwood were tied up as William's family in Collinsport, Maine and Ally's family near Towson, Maryland discussed wedding plans for the young couple. The McBeals wanted it at their home, but if the merged family and friends were going to be over three hundred, then it just had to be at Collinwood. Angelique proposed that her son's in-laws come to the estate to plan the ceremony in person and get to know each other in person then for the wedding they'd pay to fly the family to town for the wedding. It was obviously going to be a very big thing. William had been the first child born to the family in years since the birth of his Uncle David in 1957. Everyone had watched him grow from a precocious infant to a little brat to an aspiring teen and then into the insecure young man his parents had turned him into in the present. Since then, Ally had certainly made him into a much more agreeable young man.

"A wedding?" Carolyn Stoddard-Loomis, the matron of the estate, talked to Angelique over her phone. "Of course, Angelique! Holding it here is much more logical than taking everyone down to Baltimore."

"I still can't believe it!" Quentin hovered nearby with his ever-present brandy in his hand. Behind him, his flaming red-haired daughter, Amanda Collins, started to head out of the house then stopped to eavesdrop in the foyer.

"I still can't believe that young boy I used to tell all those ghost stories to as a boy is now a married man." He looked into his brandy. "I am now officially an old man."

"We just have to get the old ballroom restored." Carolyn hung up the phone and spoke of the downstairs ballroom that Jamison Collins had split into guest quarters back during Prohibition.

"All those rooms going unused is ridiculous. We'll hire the same people you got to restore Rose Cottage. We'll take the walls down, clean the windows, redo the walls…"

"Who got married?" Amanda came out of hiding. "Did Sara or Lizzie get herself pregnant or something?"

"No…" Carolyn turned round to face her with Quentin. "William's home, and he brought his wife! He married Ally! Isn't that wonderful!" Coming in the back way through the garden from the garage in at the end of the driveway, Quentin's son, Jameson Collins, and Lizzie Loomis stopped and listened from the back hall to the dining room. Jamison swallowed the sandwich on which he was gnawing.

"Married?" He mumbled out loud. "Why would he do a dumb thing like that?" He looked over the drawing room. "He promised to take me to Hooters in Bangor when he got back!"
Lizzie took offense and smacked his head for being a chauvinist.

"They've barely known each more than two years!" Amanda stood in full view. "I've known him since we were kids!" She looked distraught, her heart broken as her body swayed unconsciously back and forth. She looked as if she was about to break out crying, but her instead eyes rolled back, her hands clutched her heart and with the sound of a rusty gate hinge, her pounding heart and light head allowed her to fell backward in shock. Quentin raced to his daughter, and Carolyn put a pillow under her head on the floor.

"Don't tell me Little Miss Rose Cottage is still in love with William?" Lizzie's sharp venomous tongue spoke as she folded her arms before her tight sweater. "Honestly!"