4

By the next morning a bright sun shone down from a sky miraculously cleared of clouds. But the sunshine did not miraculously help poor Elinor to recover from her case of the sniffles. She came down to breakfast with eyes red-rimmed, nose sore, and throat tight. Nevertheless, she greeted her guests with a warm smile.

The brilliant sunshine also failed to melt the veneer of snow that covered the landscape, for the air was icy cold. Everyone remarked on it. Julian, however, did not think the weather too cold for riding. “It’s been five years since I last had a winter-morning canter,” he said, peering out of the morning room window longingly.

“Then, by all means take out one of the horses,” Lady Selby urged. “Samuel will mount you. I’m sure that both horse and rider will benefit from the exercise.”

Julian happily accepted the offer and rose from the table. But before departing to change to his riding clothes, he asked Felicia and Elinor to accompany him. They both refused, Elinor explaining that she still had too many tasks to perform before his parents arrived that evening.

“But you have no such excuse,” Julian said to Felicia. “Why won’t you come with me? A bit of fresh air is bound to do you good.”

In the end Felicia succumbed to his urging. Later, Elinor, who was watching from an upstairs window as the two of them made their way to the stables (leaving a trail of matched footsteps across the white lawn), found herself overwhelmed with a feeling of chagrin. Her betrothed hadn’t spent half as much energy trying to convince her to ride with him as he had her cousin. No, she admitted to herself, she was more than chagrined. She was jealous, hurt, and angry.

But these were ugly feelings, feelings that were quite new to her and that she’d always considered beneath her. Giving way to them was not up to her standard of conduct, and the knowledge that she’d done so made her feel small.

The situation was depressing. She’d spent several sleepless hours that night trying to face the fact—and with every passing moment that fact was becoming more obvious—that Julian was infatuated with Felicia.

Painful as it was, Elinor was at last ready to accept the truth. The problem now was what to do about it. She could, of course, pretend not to notice that her betrothed no longer cared for her. She could close her eyes and mind to Julian’s faithlessness and simply go ahead with the wedding. She would not be the first woman to take herself a reluctant bridegroom. But she had too much pride to choose that option. Besides, her nature was too generous and giving to wish to make him unhappy. For the sake of her pride and his happiness, she had to release him.

To that end, after luncheon that very day, she drew him into the upstairs sitting room and asked him to sit down. “Julian, my dear,” she began, seating herself on the edge of the chair facing his and twisting her fingers together nervously, “I think we should … er … reconsider our situation.”

“Situation?” His brows lifted uncomprehendingly. “What situation?”

“Our arrangement.” She dropped her eyes to her clenched fingers. “Our … betrothal.”

“Our betrothal?” He seemed to stiffen. “What are you saying? What is there to reconsider?”

“A great deal. We haven’t laid eyes on each other for five years. That is a very long time, and … and we were so much … younger then.” Here she couldn’t keep her voice from trembling. “We c-could not have realized … I mean—”

“Are you saying you wish to break our troth?” he asked bluntly.

“Yes,” she admitted, not looking up.

He stared at her bent head for a long moment and then got slowly to his feet. “This is because of what happened yesterday, isn’t it? Because I didn’t see you at first and mistook your cousin for you?” He knelt beside her chair and took her hand. “Please, Elinor, don’t refine on the incident too much. I’m sorrier than I can say about spoiling our reunion. I can’t imagine what came over me. But it was a foolish mistake, not a significant one.”

“It’s not only that, Julian.” She lifted her eyes and gave him a level look. “What is significant is that we’ve both changed.”

“Not in our feeling for each other!” he insisted.

“Especially in that,” she replied, more blunt than he.

He rose from his knees and began to pace about the room, his brow furrowed and his lips pressed together in a worried frown. “What have I done, other than that one slip, to make you believe such foolishness?” he demanded. “Have I been distant, or cold, or withdrawn? Have I offended you in some way?”

“You’ve behaved in every way the proper betrothed.” She threw him a quick glance. “Perhaps too proper.”

“Too proper?”

“Lovers should, I believe, feel a greater sense of … of intimacy than we’ve been able to show toward each other.” To her embarrassment, she had to blow her nose at this point. The sniffle into her handkerchief made her statement seem pathetic, and pathos was not at all the emotion she wished to convey.

Julian put a helpless hand to his head. “Perhaps we’re suffering a strain because of having been separated for so long. But we’ll recover that feeling of intimacy in time. After all, I’ve been back less than two days.”

“There was more intimacy between us during the two days after we first met, when we were comparative strangers, than there is now, after months of closeness and five years of frequent correspondence.”

“Damnation, Elinor, you know that correspondence is no substitute for propinquity. We need time together!”

She waited for a moment before speaking. The silence made him pause in his pacing and peer at her. She met his eye. “Be honest with me, Julian,” she urged. “If we had met this week, instead of five years ago, would you have been attracted to me?”

“Yes, of course I would!”

She lowered her head. “I think not. And certainly not enough to offer for me.”

“That is silly supposition. I have offered for you!”

“Yes, years ago, when I was twenty, with the bloom of youth still glowing on my cheeks.”

“Do you really believe me to be such a dastard as to wish to renege on that offer now, just because that bloom has go—I mean, because the bloom has ripened into lovely maturity?”

She laughed, for she rather liked his little stumble into honesty and the embarrassment that followed it. But at the same time she was abruptly struck with an understanding of the reason why he seemed reluctant to accept her offer of release: accepting it would make him a dastard in his own eyes!

She was both touched and amused by his naive sense of honor. He truly believed that a manly man could not accept such self-sacrifice from a woman to whom he’d pledged his word. “It would not be dastardly,” she explained gently, “to admit that our feelings are not what they were. We are only betrothed, after all. We are not wed.”

“My feelings are what they were,” he said stubbornly.

She took a deep breath. It was obvious that she would have to take stronger measures. “Well, mine are not,” she lied, bravely going to this extreme for his sake, to ease his guilt.

He stopped in his tracks. “I don’t believe you! I haven’t seen a single sign of change in your feelings—”

“Women are good at dissembling.”

“Elinor!” he gasped. “You can’t mean it! Are you saying that … that there’s someone else?”

“Yes.”

He peered at her as if he’d never seen her before. “Who?”

“I hardly think it matters who—”

“It matters to me. Is it someone I know?”

She shifted awkwardly in her chair. Lying was something she never could do easily. “I believe you may have met him.”

“Tell me his name.”

“I don’t see why. What difference will—?”

“I shan’t be able to believe a word of this until you tell me his name.”

“You are behaving like a jealous lover, Julian,” she declared, drawing herself up proudly. “It’s a role that ill becomes you. Suffice it to say that there’s someone to whom I believe I’m better suited, just as, I suspect, there is someone to whom you feel you are better suited.”

His face immediately tightened into an expression of complete denial. “There is no one to whom I—!”

She faced him squarely. “I am speaking of my cousin Felicia.”

“Oh.” His eyes fell. “Was I—? Have I … er … shown interest in that direction?”

“I think you know the answer better than I.”

Lowering his head like a guilty schoolboy, Julian took a quick turn about the room. “It was only that she is so like my memory of you,” he mumbled at last.

“I know, Julian,” she said gently. “I feel no bitterness. Perhaps we were fortunate to have been separated all these years. If we hadn’t, we might have wed and spent all these years being miserable. Now, however, you’ll be able to make a more suitable match and live happily ever after.”

Something in her tone arrested him. “I will not live happily ever after,” he declared suspiciously, “if I suspect you are doing this for my sake rather than your own.”

“I’ve already assured you that it is for my sake, too.”

“Then why will you not tell me his name?”

“Because there is nothing fixed between the man and me. My being betrothed, you see, prevented—”

“I understand that, of course. I assure you, Elinor, that I’ll not say a word to anyone else. But if I knew who he was and truly believed he would make you happy, I could go my way with a freer conscience.”

“Drat your conscience,” Elinor snapped, feeling cornered by her lie. “His name is … is Endicott,” she burst out, rising from the chair and turning her back on him, unable to face him. “Miles Endicott. There! I’ve told you! I hope you’re satisfied.”

“Endicott?” Julian blinked, trying to place the name that had a familiar sound. Then his eyebrows rose in amazement. “I say, it’s not that fellow with the eggs, is it? He’s a bit old for you, isn’t he?”

She wheeled round to face him. “Haven’t you just admitted that I’m a bit ‘ripe’ myself? Miles Endicott is the perfect age for me!”

“All right, you needn’t bite my head off.” His face relaxed for the first time since this interview began. “Endicott, eh? He seems a good enough sort.” A smile, broad and charming and full of happy relief, made a slow appearance on his face. “All I can say, Elinor, is that I wish you happy.”

His conciliatory smile made her anger die. “Thank you,” she mumbled awkwardly. “And I wish you the same.” But she could not manage a matching smile.