Spinster Ever After (The Spinster Chronicles #7) - Rebecca Connolly Page 0,99
eyed their hands and raised a brow at Kitty. “Kitty Morton, have you come to tell us something to explain the glow in your cheeks?”
The girl blushed further, but her beaming smile could have rivaled the sun. “Perhaps.”
Izzy and Sebastian pushed forward, Izzy clasping her hands under her chin. “Well?”
Kitty and Henshaw looked at each other, smiles both tender and adoring, then Kitty looked at her brother and sister-in-law. “Lieutenant Henshaw has made me an offer of marriage, and I have accepted him.”
“Thank God,” Cam said without any hesitation whatsoever. “Has anyone been waiting for this as long as I have?”
Several hands raised, and Henshaw glared at each of them in turn. “Marvelous help you all were here, thank you.” He looked at Charlotte with a quick grin. “I win, my dear.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You are not married yet, Hensh. But you do have my profound congratulations.” She smiled at them both, then stepped out of the way in order to let the others through. She sank into a nearby chair, exhaling a weary, heavy sigh.
“I know that sound all too well, my dear.”
Charlotte turned her head to look at Lady Hetty, quietly sitting in her chair and surveying the room as a whole. “Why do I believe that?”
Lady Hetty’s smile, rarer in sight than even Lord Radcliffe’s, was almost whimsical on her wrinkled face. “I know a little something of being the last, Charlotte. I know the pain of seeing those you hold dear happy and thriving in all the ways you would wish and not having the same yourself.”
In an instant, Charlotte’s eyes began to water, and she bit her lip. “It seems so simple, in a way. And yet the path of it is hidden from me.”
“Oh, you’re well on your way; I heard them.” She lifted her chin towards the group and winked at Charlotte. “A handsome man, and no mistaking it. Good catch.”
Charlotte sniffled, laughing at the comment. “I haven’t caught him yet. And I don’t even know why I bothered wanting marriage at all. You of all people know what I would sacrifice. Perhaps this pain is proof that I shouldn’t do this.”
Lady Hetty thumped her walking stick against the ground hard. “Charlotte Wright, do you think I have chosen my life out of fear or surrender?”
“No…” she said at once, more out of defense than a true response. “Of course not, I simply…”
“A wealthy spinster is still a spinster, my child,” Lady Hetty interrupted. “I have remained so because I never had reason enough to marry. I was like you, popular and sociable. Well sought after and the envy of several. Fortune hunters had no chance with me if I did not like them for themselves. And, as it happened, I did not with most of them. I do not regret the path my life has taken, but that does not mean it is to be envied.”
Charlotte frowned at that. “Would it make me a fraud? To proclaim in our Chronicles that there are worse things than being a spinster, and then to marry?”
Lady Hetty’s eyes narrowed, and she exhaled as she studied Charlotte. “Would you be marrying to avoid remaining a spinster? Or would you be marrying for love, affection, comfort, or any other sensible reason that an heiress would choose to do so of her own will?”
Charlotte’s eyes immediately shifted back to the dance floor, where Michael and Janet still danced, laughing merrily together. “It would be because I love him,” she admitted in a whisper. “And because I could not bear to lose him.”
“Then I would say you are practicing what you preach, my dear.” Lady Hetty patted her hands twice, then squeezed them. “And if that idiot boy doesn’t snap you up, I invite you to come live out your days with me. I’ll even leave you the house in my will. Make a spinster fortress in my name.”
Charlotte laughed at the images her mind was conjuring, then turned to the older woman and pressed a fond kiss to her cheek, surprising them both. “I quite adore you, my lady, and I don’t care a fig for what anybody else says about you.”
Lady Hetty’s eyes turned misty, and she pinched Charlotte’s cheek. “Everybody else is jealous, girl, make no mistake. And if you manage to marry before that Henshaw fellow, I’ll give you a barouche as a wedding present.”
“Deal, my lady,” Charlotte agreed with a laugh too loud for polite company, but not caring a fig for that,