God Rest Ye Merry Spinster Page 10

  Joan’s face was turning an uncomfortable shade of red, and others in the room were now averting their gaze, though none moved from their places.

  It seemed that Hugh would be able to make whatever sermon he wished without interruption or contradiction.

  How mysterious were the twists of fate.

  Hugh turned then to look at Elinor, and his expression somehow softened, yet became more determined.

  She couldn’t have looked away even if she had tried.

  She didn’t try.

  Didn’t want to.

  “And in my admittedly limited experience,” he murmured, his voice lowering, “Elinor could not associate with a more worthy circle of women, and she is well worthy of them in every respect. Miss Ellen would do well to emulate any of her sisters, including Elinor.”

  Lord, he could have asked her to marry him in that moment, and she would have accepted, fully and freely.

  Somehow, he must have known that, seen that. If not that, specifically, then at least that her heart had entirely blossomed for his picking. His smile told her he knew something had changed, and that he was quite pleased by whatever he saw.

  She smiled at him in return, her heart warming and sending a beacon towards him that would have drawn her close had she any power to move.

  “Beyond all of that,” Hugh murmured, his eyes darkening in a tempting manner, his smile forming adorable creases at the corners of his eyes, “one of the Spinsters has married my cousin, Captain Sterling. I have grown to respect and admire Georgiana, Mrs. Ramsay, and her position in my family has only improved us, I can assure you. My cousin is a most fortunate man, and a wise one.”

  Joan fidgeted in her seat, Elinor could see it out of the corner of her eye, but she dared not look away from Hugh.

  Hugh, who was stealing her breath and her ability to think.

  Hugh, who had sent the most pleasant jolts of heat into the tips of her fingers and the arches of her feet.

  Hugh, who made her lips tingle in anticipation of… something…

  She exhaled a stuttering breath, not entirely sure when she had inhaled.

  Lord, he was handsome.

  And that was a paltry thought indeed.

  “I do apologize, Mr. Sterling,” Joan all but whispered, seeming to tremble where she sat. “I had no idea that… that your family… That you were so connected with them. I meant no offense to you or to your family, certainly.”

  Hugh’s smile turned a touch ironic, and he slowly drew his gaze away from Elinor to glance at Joan. “I mention my family only for context, Mrs. Ramsay, not out of offense. My concern in this matter centers on Elinor and the views her family holds of her. It is she who deserves any apologies you might wish to offer, though I daresay she expects none.”

  Elinor bit her lip hard, biting back a laugh that would not help anyone at all.

  Hugh surprised her further still by turning to Barbara and bowing. “Miss Asheley, if you would be so good as to show me to the library, I would be honored to have a recommendation from you on what I might read during my unoccupied hours here.”

  Barbara looked surprised, but beamed quite freely up at him, her almost awkward brown ringlets seeming to dance a jig as she rose. “I would be p-pleased to, Mr. Sterling.”

  “Winthrop, weren’t you wishing for a good book yourself?” Hugh asked, giving Mr. John a pointed look.

  No man had ever smiled with such luminescence in history. John Winthrop leapt to his feet, nodding excessively. “By Jove, you have an excellent memory, Sterling. Do let us be off, then. I’ve a fiendish desire for a good book.”

  The three of them left the room without much of a word, and Elinor fought down a desperate fit of giggles. A “fiendish desire” for a book? John Winthrop either knew the exact way to Barbara’s heart or he was the most unexpected scholar on the planet.

  And Elinor was well aware that Hugh knew full well where the library was, as he had played with the children there only yesterday.

  But that would remain her secret, as his actions were blessedly heroic under the present circumstances. No need to disillusion the company or Barbara.

  The room remained silent for a moment, and then Lavinia, without any hesitation, said, “Well, I feel rather an idiot, don’t you all?”

  Ellen snorted loudly once. “I don’t, but I’d wager Joan does.”

  “Ellen,” Elinor choked out, her restrained laughter beginning to make her chest ache.

  “What?” her sister asked with all the innocence of a fifteen-year-old.

  Elinor only shook her head, feeling rather fond of her impetuous sister, despite her shortcomings.

  “I’d like to hear that apology Mr. Sterling mentioned,” Mr. Partlowe said almost as an afterthought.

  Elinor wrenched her gaze to her usually stoic, propriety-focused brother-in-law, staring at him as though she had never seen him before.

  He met her gaze with the fondest smile she had ever seen him bear. “I believe Elinor deserves it.”

  “So do I,” Emma replied, glaring at Joan with a fierceness that would make any sister proud. “After all, the women you rage against, Joan, were my friends before they were hers. I wonder how you spoke about me before I married.”

  “I’m not the only one with these opinions,” Joan protested, flinging her arm out to include a majority of the others. “Any one of the others could have said the same.”

  “True,” Elinor murmured, speaking up for the first time, and eyeing her cousin with some sympathy, knowing only too well how it felt to be the center of such an attack. “And only the other day, all of the others were.”

  Joan looked at Elinor almost in fear, while her sisters and cousins looked uncomfortable with themselves.

  Elinor sighed, weary of the entire conversation now, and desperate to be gone. “I need no apology, despite Partlowe’s kindness to suggest it. May we please simply not discuss it any further, and leave my friends out of our conversations?”

  “Yes,” Joan immediately said, seizing upon the option with evident relief. “Yes, we may, absolutely.”

  “Excellent.” Elinor rose, smiling just a little at the room. “If you’ll all excuse me, I feel the need for a walk.” She curtseyed, winked at Ellen, then strode from the room quickly, her steps filled with an agitation she couldn’t properly express.

  Oh, to be forced to spend more time in the company of people who thought so little of her! She’d never regretted her friendship with the Spinsters, though she had some regrets about her behavior within them. She had never found friends her own age with whom she had wished to associate closely, finding them to be silly and ignorant.

  In the last year or so, she had found a couple of girls that defied that judgment, but she had only become friends with them because of the Spinsters.

  She was who she was because of the Spinsters.

  That was not going to change, no matter how her puffed-up cousins despaired.

  Hugh’s elegant speech and Partlowe’s change of heart were not going to change the opinions of her relations, if only those opinions were discussed. It would be difficult to go on either way, knowing what she now did.

  If she married, she would know that she surprised her cousins and they will have thought her cured of such an influence.

  If she did not, the cloud of their cruel opinions and sickening pity would hang low over her at every family occasion.

  “Damned if I do,” she muttered as she walked further into the depths of Deilingh. “And damned if I don’t.”

  “Oh, I’d be hard pressed to consider you damned no matter which way the wind blows.”

  Elinor stopped suddenly and looked around, unsure where the voice came from.

  “Sorry,” Hugh said as he stepped into the light provided by one of the sconces in the corridor. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “You didn’t,” Elinor managed, breathless yet again in the face of a man who had defended her so perfectly.

  How could candlelight p
ossibly improve a man who was already impeccable in looks in daylight?

  More mysteries, more unanswered questions.

  Less interest in finding the answers.

  Hugh smiled and folded his arms, leaning against the wall. “And what, exactly, do you consider yourself damned about, Elinor?”

  It was strange, she couldn’t remember ever giving him permission to call her by her given name, but that, too, was mattering less and less. More than that, she loved hearing him say it.

  Her name, his lips, his voice.

  Perfection again.

  A shiver raced down her spine, and she shook her head. “Oh, being a Spinster. Capital S,” she added, seeing the question in his eyes. “After that, I’ll never know if their opinions have changed if I marry or if I don’t. They all want me to be more like Emma, who, as you know, was an unfortunate spinster, but then married for comfort rather than for anything silly such as romance.”

  Hugh was silent as he stood there, which was a blessing.

  She did not wish for a commentary on the things she was about to reveal.

  “The truth of the matter is,” she told him with a sigh, “that I am afraid of being like Emma.”

  “Afraid?” he asked softly. “Of what?”

  “Of settling for comfort as she did.” Elinor swallowed and her fingers began to play together anxiously. “Not that Partlowe is a horrid man. On the contrary, he is rather good. He can be stuffy, pretentious, dull, and, until a moment ago, I didn’t think he quite liked me, but he is rather good.”

  Hugh chuckled to himself, and it made her smile to hear it.

  “Emma is happy, I suppose,” she went on. Then she shook her head. “Well… content, perhaps. I don’t know if that’s enough for me. I don’t need the grand sweeping romance that Charlotte is seeking and throwing away excellent candidates for, but I don’t know that I could be happy with simple contentment, either. I shudder at the idea of a convenient marriage, especially if one might have a hope of something deeper and more sincere.”

  Elinor lifted a shoulder in a weak imitation of a shrug. “I thought that if I surrounded myself with women of similar ideals, I might benefit from their influence and find what I secretly sought. Instead, I find those women ostracized, and though I lack the same number of years, I feel the same ruthless banishment, even within my own family. I cannot give them up, as I have come to value them and their friendship beyond what I can express, but in declaring myself a Spinster with a capital S, I seem to have also declared myself the lowercase version, as well. And everybody in London agrees with it.”

  Hugh said nothing to this, the moment hanging heavily between them

  She could not stand the awkwardness. She looked up at him with a bland, but playful smile. “Hence the application of the expression, you see.”

  He nodded in understanding. “I do see. Don’t understand, but I see.”

  “You would have understood not all that long ago,” she pointed out without malice. “Enthusiastically. When you were… a different man.”

  His eyes seemed to brighten, even in the diminished light around them. “You see it, then? The change?”

  Elinor laughed quietly, the eager note in his voice giving her more joy than she should rightly have. “Of course, I see it, Hugh,” she murmured, mirroring his pose against the wall. “I’d have to be blind not to.”

  His grin would have lit a ballroom with a brilliance beyond compare. “I cannot tell you what that means, Elinor. I cannot…” He shook his head, then cleared his throat. “I have hope, then.”

  “Hope?” she repeated. “Hope for what?”

  “The future,” he replied, his voice dipping, “and whatever it holds.”

  A tightness began in her chest, and rippled down the length of her, forcing her to push away from the wall and turn to continue walking, but not before turning to him, invitation in her expression, posture, and soul.

  She didn’t want to flee from him, only from her impulse to do something from which she could not retreat.

  He took the hint and came with her, the two of them walking side by side, no particular direction in mind.

  “So, what happened to Barbara and Mr. John?” Elinor asked, forcing her voice to be light.

  Hugh chuckled with real delight. “Oh, they are in the library still. I have my recommendation for reading from her, but John required a bit more discussion. A voracious reader, that one. He’ll need quite the list, I fear.”

  “Lord,” Elinor laughed. “Must I rush to the library to ensure my cousin’s virtue?”

  “Not at all,” he replied. “Your cousin Fredericka happened to appear after checking on her children, so they are quite suitably supervised. I think I could quite like Fredericka, if I knew her better.”

  “I like her myself,” Elinor commented without hesitation. “She’s a bit more pious than the rest of us, but that cannot exactly be faulted. Particularly at Christmas. And she has a great deal more sense than a lot of the others.”

  “And she is wed to… Mr. Tyson?” Hugh queried, wincing as he asked.

  Elinor hummed in pleasure and nodded. “Very good, Mr. Sterling. They have three children, one of which is Phoebe.”

  “Ah, my favorite little friend.” He chuckled and looked at Elinor. “She reminds me of you, you know.”

  Now it was Elinor who laughed. “Does she? I would have thought Amelia more like me.”

  Hugh made a soft sound of consideration. “You may have a point there.”

  Elinor jabbed her elbow hard into his side, making him stumble slightly even as his laughter continued.

  “You suggested it,” he reminded her. “I only agreed.”

  She rolled her eyes, shaking her head. “Impossible man. Not particularly gallant, are you?”

  Hugh stopped and took her arm gently, but with enough pressure that she stopped as well. “Is that what you want, Elinor? Gallantry?”

  Something in his words sent her heart skittering and swallowing became deuced tricky.

  Still, she had to manage something.

  “Sincerity,” she half-whispered, meeting his eyes. “I don’t need flattery or gallantry, or even chivalry if it comes down to it, though that would be nice.”

  “Find me a puddle,” he murmured as his thumb began to gently rub against her arm. “I’ll lay my coat across it for you.”

  That was oddly adorable, and she smiled at it. “There’s no need,” she told him. “After what you said in the drawing room in front of all my family? I have never seen or heard anything so glorious in my life, and I cannot see myself as worthy of it.”

  Hugh took a small step closer. “How could you not be?” he asked her, his look becoming something hot and intense.

  Her cheeks flamed under such a look. “I raged against you, Hugh,” she breathed, her eyes fixed on his. “I said… so many things. Unspeakable, vile things, all upon you and anyone that associated in the same circles as you. I cannot take any of them back, nor can I change to whom they might have been said. You are trying to restore yourself to a life you can be proud of, and the blame for any difficulties in doing so may be laid squarely at my feet and upon my shoulders.”

  “Elinor…”

  She shook her head, swallowing hard. “I am so sorry, Hugh. I didn’t know this man lay beneath that one. I was too proud and foolish to look.”

  He exhaled, his thumb still moving temptingly against her, the layers of fabric seeming to burn away under his touch. “I don’t blame you,” he whispered. “I fully earned every curse your lips could ever utter, and then some. You saw me for what I was, and I admire such honesty of sight.”

  “I should have been more generous with my opinions and thoughts,” she countered, her fingers reaching out for the edge of his jacket, trembling with hesitation. “I should have been more like Izzy, or Prue, or Grace…”

  Hugh’s hand was suddenly at her cheek, silencing her at once. “I would not wish you to be anyone other than Elinor Asheley, madam. If you please
. Is that understood?”

  A pounding began in Elinor’s ears, beating a steady cadence that drowned out everything else but the less steady breathing of her lungs. “Yes,” she somehow heard herself whisper, not entirely sure what question she was answering.

  He smiled a perfect, gentle smile at her, and his thumb stroked her heated cheek. “Good.” He glanced up then, and his mouth curved with some amusement before his eyes were back on hers. “Your favorite plant, Elinor.”

  “What?” She looked and saw, ironically, a bunch of mistletoe hanging just above them.

  Of course, it was.

  “What do you mean by that, I wonder?” Hugh mused.

  Her eyes fell back to his, her heartbeat picking up. “Did I say that out loud?”

  He nodded slowly. “You did. I wonder what tone you wished those words to have.”

  His thumb caressed her cheek once more, and she shivered at it.

  He seemed to laugh without actually laughing. “No one is here but us,” he pointed out. “No one would know if you walked away.”

  Walked away? When the moment was so delicious?

  She wet her lips, and Hugh’s eyes darted there before slowly dragging back up to hers with new interest. “You’re not walking away.”

  “No,” he whispered, stepping closer. “No, I’m not.”

  They stood there, a breath apart, her skin only growing more heated beneath his touch, the moment suspended between them. Tradition dictated they kiss.

  Her heart yearned to obey. Her lips tingled further still, waiting.

  The kiss was there, hovering on the air.