“Come inside, darling,” Aunt Millie bid her, “and take that wet coat off. Come, come.” With one hand she closed the door behind Elinor. With the other, she waved for a slack-jawed serving woman to leap into action. “I’m certain my niece has an excellent reason for her extraordinary arrival,” Aunt Millie assured the maid, hustling Elinor into the foyer. “Bring tea, very hot. Oh, and send Charlie out to see to her man and the horses.”
“Thank you,” Elinor said numbly as she shrugged out of her coat and delivered it to her aunt’s outstretched hand. Tea sounded divine.
Aunt Millie tossed the sodden fleece across the back of a chair, then ushered Elinor into a nearby parlor. “Sit,” she commanded, pushing Elinor onto a couch. “I’ll have the fire made up as soon as the tea is brought in. Why on earth are you here now? It’s Christmas morning.”
So it was. Elinor had almost forgotten that, in her hurry to be away from that dissipated man and his equally, if not more, dissipated friends. “I thought you were dying?” she tried by way of feeble explanation.
Aunt Millie sat beside her. She pulled Elinor’s frigid hands into her warm ones and began rubbing the life back into Elinor’s fingers. “We all are, darling. Death is but the last act. For everyone.”
Elinor had never heard anything so profound. She studied her handsome aunt with no small amount of wonder, until she realized that bit of philosophy didn’t answer her question at all. “But you are dying. We’ve been worried about you.” Even as she said the words aloud, she became aware that her energetic aunt didn’t seem to be ailing in the least.
“Ohhhh,” Elinor breathed. Not again! How silly could she be? Aunt Mildred wasn’t dying.
Her ears rang. “I think you must be wonderfully naïve.” She squeezed her eyes tight. Goodness, but Grantham’s verbal pat on the head seemed all the more true when she was faced with the fact that she’d accepted yet another blatant fabrication without question. And she’d set out on this journey believing herself the clever one!
Aunt Millie’s gaze fell to Elinor’s hands. As if she’d just remembered what she was doing, she returned to rubbing Elinor’s fingers, this time with extra vigor. “She let you worry? How very like her. When she might have explained it all.”
Elinor gripped her aunt’s hands to keep them from rubbing her skin clean off. “She? You mean Mama? Truly, I haven’t the patience for more games. Have out with it or I’ll leave.” She surprised herself with her conviction.
Aunt Millie, on the other hand, didn’t seem to notice Elinor’s sudden assertiveness. Her wide blue eyes, framed by just a touch of crow’s feet, seemed to stare into the past. “Madge never did approve of me. I thought all these years you children were just waiting to come of age so you could visit me, but now I see she truly didn’t want anyone to know.”
Elinor scarcely waited for her to continue before she prodded impatiently, “Know what?”
Aunt Millie sighed as though her thoughts were far away indeed. “I’m an actress. Was an actress.”
Elinor gaped at her elegant aunt. “That cannot be true!”
Aunt Millie’s languishing expression transformed into the striking, self-assured visage of a woman who’d experienced the world and found it to her liking. And while her low, throaty chuckle was too similar to Mrs. Fawcett’s purr to be of any comfort, it did lend credence to her claim.
Elinor jumped away. “But you must be very scandalous, then!”
“Indeed, child.” She reached over and patted Elinor’s hand. “I assumed you knew.”
Elinor didn’t know what to think. Why would her mother have allowed her to come if she knew her sister had such a shocking reputation?
Did Gavin know?
“I cannot credit it,” Elinor said. “My mother sent her love with me. Why would she have let me come if…?” She fumbled to comprehend Mama’s mind. Unless…unless Mama had finally accepted what Elinor and her sisters had always told her: in a village as small as theirs, with no available bachelors and no dowry to lure one anyhow, Elinor was as unmarriageable as a young woman who’d been ruined. She was condemned to be a spinster forever, even if she did keep her virtue intact.
She rose so fast her shin hit the low table in front of her. “Good heavens, I’ve been cast off!”
Her aunt sat straighter. “Be calm and don’t carry on so, child. Madge never was one for theatrics.”
Elinor couldn’t be calm. She went to the window and pulled back the curtain. For several shaky breaths, she stared at the wintery wonderland with unfocused eyes. She’d thought she’d been doing her part to earn her room and board as a spinster, but now she knew how her mother truly felt about her failure to marry. She was a mouth to feed that they couldn’t afford, and an expendable one at that. Now she was marooned here with her scandalous aunt. What a dirty trick!