Page 26 of Runaway Countess (Those Wild Whitbys #2)

Chapter Twenty-Six

“ H ave you a spare thimble?”

Jenny blinked, staring at Elspeth’s worried smile for a moment before she registered what she was asking.

“A thimble. Yes. Of course.” Her own embroidery sat in her lap, utterly untouched. She pushed her entire sewing basket across the table to Elspeth. “Take anything you like. I’m not using it.”

“ Idle hands are the devil’s playthings ,” snapped Aunt Fanny, setting aside her own needlework to give Jenny a glare. Elspeth winced, but Jenny barely noticed the sting of contempt in her aunt’s voice.

How on earth could she be expected to sit and sew and talk about the weather with her aunt and cousin, just as if nothing at all had happened? As though she had never climbed out of her bedroom window, never met Sebastian, never ridden on the rumble seat of a carriage all the way from Plymouth to Whitby Manor…

“Forgive me, Aunt,” she said. “You are quite right. Elspeth, please pass me the pincushion.” Her voice sounded small and sad in her own ears. It was a mouse’s voice, the pathetic little squeak of a tiny creature afraid of being squashed.

She’d spoken that way for years. Had she really been foolish enough to think that the passage of a mere week was enough to change the habits of a lifetime?

Aunt Fanny returned to her book of improving proverbs, and Jenny took out a pin and held it to the light, watching the candlelight catch on its sharp silver point.

“Don’t poke yourself with that thing,” said Aunt Fanny sharply. “Imagine what Lord Beeston will say if his bride has callused fingers!” She snapped her book shut and rose to her feet. “They are taking a frightful long time with our dinner. We cannot sit up all night. Don’t they know you’ll be marrying an earl in the morning?”

Yes, here she was, in another Devonshire lodging house much the same as the last one, trapped in a stultifying sitting room with her aunt and cousin, and preparing once again to marry Lord Beeston, by any means her uncle could use to persuade him.

Just as though she had never run away, never fallen in love, never been kissed…

Jenny stabbed the pin back into the cushion viciously as Aunt Fanny strutted out to berate the innkeeper.

“Jenny,” said Elspeth, her voice an urgent whisper. Her shy hand darted out to clasp Jenny’s for a moment. Elspeth’s eyes were round and shining. “I am so glad you came back.”

Jenny managed a smile. “And I am sorry for frightening you. You must have been terribly worried… Not to mention the fact that I left you to manage your mother and father all alone.”

A shadow passed across Elspeth’s face, but it was soon chased away by a happier thought. “It will all be well now, Jenny. Father will persuade Lord Beeston to marry you after all. It’s only a matter of finding the right price, he says. Then you will be a countess, and Father won’t be angry! Don’t you see? Nothing has been spoiled at all. Only delayed a while.”

Uncle Fitzherbert had no idea at all of what Jenny had done to escape the lodging house in Plymouth. He had no interest in hearing how Jenny had ended up ostensibly working as a maid in Whitby Manor. He had never, in fact, shown any interest in anything Jenny said or thought or did, and he made it quite clear he had no intention of starting now.

For Elspeth’s sake, she’d come quietly to the inn. For her own sake, and Sebastian’s, she’d spoken not a word about her new betrothal. Uncle Fitz was relying on Captain Whitby to speak up on her behalf. To secure Sebastian’s commission, they had to be careful.

Elspeth’s words were true, though not in the way she meant them. Nothing had been spoiled, only delayed. Jenny had run away. She had refused Beeston, she had kissed Sebastian, and she had fallen in love.

It did not matter whether she whiled away the days until her twenty-first birthday working in a greengrocer’s or biting her tongue in her uncle’s house. She would marry Sebastian, and she would never submit to her uncle’s whims again.

“Elspeth,” she said, dropping her voice to the barest whisper, “how would you feel if someone invited you to sail to Malta?”