Chapter 460 Lori's Wonder:>81

• The days whirled by madly, hardly enough hours in the day to suit Sophie. She dealt with everything, from fittings, to planning and tying everyone down for the rehearsal, getting the chapel decorations just right, planning the music, the cake, the reception, place-cards, working out who could sit where, who was feuding with who, and where the girls most likely to cause trouble or try and upstage me, but for various reasons couldn't be excluded, could be shunted to keep them out of the way and out of trouble. (As a sidebar to all this, the girls were astonished at how much Sophie looked like Mom; they couldn't get over how she looked, spoke, even laughed, like Mom; Josie was intrigued to the point she went so far as to speculate that Mom and Sophie had to have had some kind of familial connection; no two random strangers could be so similar, there had to be more to it. As it happens, she was right, but more of that later).
• In the midst of all this, Richard and Hugo were called away to crisis meetings in Hong Kong, so Jimmy and Sophie's gardener were drafted in to stand in for them during the endless practice runs, and fittings, fittings, fittings, as Sophie redesigned the bridal party's dresses pretty much every day.
• At the peak of all this chaos, the boys returned, their business in Hong Kong concluded, and Sophie breathed a sigh of relief. We were in the sitting room in my home, Josie, Sara, Rosie, and I all standing on footstools, chatting and giggling as Sophie and the dressmaker remodelled our dresses yet again, our backs to the door and not seeing Richard and Hugo, until a soft "I'm sorry, we didn't mean to interrupt anything...' caused both girls to whirl around and freeze, transfixed, staring at the boys while they stared right back, all four of them suddenly playing statues.