God Rest Ye Merry Spinster
Page 15
Epilogue
The workings of fate are oft times bewildering, befuddling, and beyond understanding, be you spinster, bachelor, spouse, or spawn. No one understands fate, and no one is safe from it.
-The Spinster Chronicles, 30 December 1815
“Unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable.”
“What is?”
“I am astonished. Astonished, I tell you.”
“Congratulations. Care to share?”
“Apparently, if someone wants to get a husband, they just needed to accompany Elinor to her family’s estate for Christmas!”
Lady Edith Leveson sat up straighter and looked at Charlotte Wright in abject confusion. “What are you havering on about, lass?”
Charlotte waved the letter she was reading in the air, her eyes widening with impatience. “I have a letter here from Elinor. She’s to be married!”
Edith blinked unsteadily, waiting for her friend to laugh after such a fine joke, but the utter disdain in the woman’s face told her that laughter was not to come. “Crivvens,” she whispered. “Truly?”
“Would I make something of this severity up?” Charlotte demanded.
“Well, I dinna ken if you’re aware, lass,” Edith said with some impatience, “but you can be a wee bit on the dramatic side.”
That earned her a raw glare, but Charlotte returned to the letter with a huff of some offense. “ ‘You’ll hardly countenance this’,” she read in a stiff tone, “which she got right, ‘but I am to be married. It will take too long to describe in this letter, but the man to be my husband is Hugh Sterling.’” Charlotte snarled like a rabid dog. “The very idea. What nerve, the idiot girl. ‘He is much changed, and I cannot wait for you to know and accept him as I do.’ Not bloody likely.”
Edith sighed and shook her head as she sipped a rapidly cooling cup of tea. “Is there any chance of getting the information without having the additional commentary?”
Charlotte huffed even louder at the request. “You’re a peculiar friend, Lady Edith, and I’m not sure I appreciate it.”
“Alas, I’m the only one ye’ve got at the present,” Edith replied without concern. “The letter, if you please.”
“Very well,” came the dry response. “Let’s see here… Hmm…. oh, here. ‘As luck would have it, our engagement was not the only one that took place at Deilingh this Christmas. My cousin Barbara is to wed Mr. John Winthrop, brother to Lord Winthrop, and my disagreeable and desperate cousin Letitia has consented to wed my father’s cousin’s son, Rupert Perry, which we all find to be a dreadful idea.’ Well, at least it’s a husband, so well done, Letitia, I say.”
Edith grunted without commitment, disagreeing heartily, but deciding not to go into that. Everyone knew that her marriage had been unhappy, though no one on the earth knew the reasons behind it. It was best that those details remained secret.
For now.
“Oh, and Janet Sterling had her baby!” Charlotte exclaimed, sounding much more delighted by this topic.
“Was she up at Deilingh, as well?” Edith asked, bewildered at the idea.
Charlotte gave her an incredulous look. “Of course not, I’ve only just remembered it. Why in the world would Janet Sterling be at Elinor’s family estate during her confinement?”
“I dinna ken, Charlotte,” Edith sighed heavily, sinking back against the couch. “Tha’s why I asked ye. What else does Elinor have to say?”
“Well, she invites us to the wedding, but I highly doubt I can attend.” Charlotte sniffed as she refolded the letter and set it down, reaching for a biscuit.
Edith eyed her friend with amusement. “Why ever not? Do you have a more pressing engagement?”
Charlotte looked at her, biting hard into the biscuit, her dark eyes flashing. “No, but I am certain I could find one. I highly doubt Mrs. Asheley would look kindly upon me spitting at the groom during the service.”
“I would concur with that.” Edith snickered softly, shaking her head. “Charlotte Wright, you’re a rare one.”
“So I’ve heard,” she replied, breaking a smile for the first time in minutes.
Edith sighed and closed her eyes, resting in the comfort of Charlotte’s parlor. “Well, I suppose Elinor must know what she’s about. She hated Hugh Sterling more’n you did, so if she can marry him…”
“He probably compromised her.”
That earned Charlotte a throw pillow to the head, even as Edith laughed about the idea. “She’d have torn his limbs from his body had he tried any such thing, and ye ken it well!”
“I know, I know,” Charlotte moaned as she propped the pillow behind her head. “It’s only distressing that Elinor Asheley has found herself what she considers to be a suitable match before I have.”
“Aye, I can see how that would trouble you,” Edith allowed, “but, in all fairness, lass, I dinna think you’ve really looked all that hard.”
Charlotte looked rather defiant for a moment, then slumped back in defeat. “Perhaps not. It’s all become a bit of a farce now. A game I play to amuse myself amid the tedium.”
Edith heard true notes of sadness in her friend’s voice and smiled with some sympathy. “I canna speak for all marriages, as ye well ken, but I believe that for the best marriages, you have to be willing to give of yourself in some way. Are you prepared to do that for any man?”
The thought seemed to strike Charlotte, and she looked quite pensive for a moment. “I don’t know,” came the hesitant response. “It never occurred to me that that would be how it should go.”
“Nor I,” Edith murmured, memories racing through her brain with painful clarity. “But it is worth considering.”
“Hmm,” was all that Charlotte said.
Nothing else was said for a moment, and Edith felt herself relax in the solitude.
“I’ll consider it some other time,” Charlotte said with a sleepy yawn. “Right now, I only want a respite and to dream of tripping Hugh Sterling as he walks to the front of the church on his wedding day.”
Edith snickered again as she pictured the scene Charlotte described. “That would be a sight to behold.”
“It would indeed.”
The picture of Elinor’s wedding shifted, morphed, and turned into another wedding day; one with far less amusement.
Faces flashed in her mind, all bearing the same look of resignation. She heard someone crying, but she couldn’t find the source of the tears. A veil fell before her face, faded lace that was yellowed with age, and the sounds of tears grew ever louder.
She was moving, gliding up the aisle, even as she tried to turn back.
She couldn’t do so, couldn’t move. Her arm was held fast, and she was dragged forward.
“Ye’re not getting awee,” her father’s gravelly voice growled in her ear. “Succumb, and say ‘I do’, an’ we can all get along wi’ our lives.”
“Please,” she heard herself whisper. “Please.”
Her arm was released, and she was suddenly before a man, though she could not see him clearly.
No, her mind cried out. No, please.
Her veil was raised, and she faced the man to whom she would be wed.
His eyes met hers, and he smiled, turning her blood cold.
Edith jerked awake with a panicked gasp, though she was not entirely sure she’d been asleep. She dabbed the back of her hand to her brow, wet her lips, and rose from the couch.
“Charlotte, lass, if yer no’ needing me, I think I must be off. I’ll call upon you tomorrow.”
Charlotte nodded even as she nestled further into the confines of the couch. “Forgive me for not bidding you farewell.”
“Of course,” Edith murmured with a smile her friend would not see.
Edith turned from the room and quietly gathered her things from the maid while her carriage was brought round.
She could not keep doing this, she thought as she loaded herself into the carriage. She could not live trapped in her memories and unable to move in her present, on
ly to fear the future.
She would not.
Edith closed her eyes and leaned back roughly against the worn seats of the barely usable carriage. Something would have to change, and it would have to change now.
Or it never would.
About the Author
Rebecca Connolly has been creating stories since she was young, and there are home videos to prove it. She started writing them down in elementary school and has never looked back. She lives in Ohio, spends every spare moment away from her day job absorbed in her writing, and is a hot cocoa junkie.
COMING SOON
The Spinster Chronicles
Book Six
“A spinster by any other name.”
by
REBECCA CONNOLLY