Page 66 of The Subtle Craft of Courting Kate

“An old maid!” Rebecca choked on an incredulous laugh. “Kate. You’re seven and twenty. I swear to you, you have got plenty of good years left.”

But she hadn’t felt like it. She’d lived out those dreams she’d surrendered in the romantic novels she’d borrowed from Longthorpe Manor’s library and convinced herself that she had needed nothing else. She had always known that Elliot would go on to marry a lady of his status, someone who was more than the daughter of a country vicar. She’d always known that Elliot—who had always been just hers—would find some other woman to belong to.

She just hadn’t realized how painful she would find it. How much of her heart had belonged to him long before she had even known it. How wretched it would feel to give him into the keeping of another, how much worse to select the woman who would become his wife for him. How far into the depths of despair she would sink, knowing she had learned it all too late. That somehow she would have to dredge up a smile for him on his wedding day, because still she wanted his happiness above all else.

Plenty of good years left. But how many had she wasted already? How many had Elliot wasted upon her, wasted his love upon a woman who had been oblivious to it? Had it hurt him, her ignorance of his feelings?

Her heart ached for him—and burned, at the same time, for his manipulation of her. His deception. She hadn’t ever played with his feelings with intention, but it certainly felt as though he’d played with hers.

But this was Elliot, she thought, as she dragged herself out of the tub and dried herself off with a towel. Her dearest friend in all the world. He would never have hurt her by design. He had never been cruel, or mean-spirited, or in the least unkind.

Rebecca brandished a brush as Kate, clothed once more in her dressing gown, rounded the screen. “Sit,” she instructed. “We have got to do something about your tangles.” And then, as Kate sat upon the edge of the bed, she added, “But don’t you feel at least a little better?”

She did. Cleaner, certainly. A little more put together. A little more capable of sorting herself out once again. Like that chaos which had seethed within her head had become almost…manageable. Kate let her hands fall into her lap, and her bare toes curled into the carpet beneath her feet. “Could you please fetch me my notebook? It’s in my reticule, just there.”

“Certainly,” Rebecca said, and she popped up to cross the room and grab the little bag that Kate had left lying upon the top of the dresser. She pulled the notebook out and tossed it into Kate’s lap. “What did you want it for?”

“Just to see something.” A sneaking suspicion that had come upon her only now, only in retrospect. All of the remembered frustrations of his wife-hunt, all of his patently ridiculous specifications, which he had continued refining over the weeks they’d been in London to her increasing chagrin.

Now, with fresh eyes upon those first pages, she could see it at last. This list of all the qualities he wanted in a wife, and which she had dutifully inscribed here—they all described her. Every last one of them.

Amelia Applegate wasn’t Elliot’s ideal wife. She was. She always had been. The truth of it had always been there—just as Elliot had been—waiting silently, unobtrusively, for her to finally notice.

Chapter Twenty Six

Elliot could feel the coming rain in the air. The shift in the pressure and the increasing humidity. The sky had been threatening it all day, the clouds shifting between a dismal, gloomy grey to nearly black. There had been ominous rumbles of thunder and the occasional flicker of lightning from within those heavy, ponderous clouds; the sort that had made most reasonable people trudge inside hours ago, lest they be caught in what promised to be an exceptionally violent storm.

Elliot rather preferred it that way. It meant there were few other people sharing the street with him, and still fewer to dodge as he walked. And walked. And walked. Aimlessly, listlessly, with little attention to his direction or surroundings.

He’d waited upon the steps of Devon’s townhouse all the night through and well into the afternoon. He’d waited past Drew rudely nudging him awake from his awkward sprawl and flatly informing him that he’d spilled Elliot’s closest-held secret to Kate. He’d waited past Hodges refusing him at the door when at last a proper calling hour had arrived.

It hadn’t been until Rebecca had turned up and pointed out that being seen in such a disheveled state and still in last night’s eveningwear besides could not be helpful to Kate’s reputation—or his own—that he had at last conceded the point and gone back to his own lodgings.

A quick bath and a bit of a nap, he’d thought, and he’d try again to call upon Kate later in the day. Only that short nap had turned into a dead slumber, and by the time he’d woken again, it had been well past visiting hours and into the evening.

He’d been meant to attend a dinner party with Kate this evening, but the probability of that—or any future engagements—seemed so vanishingly small as to be laughable. Worse still was the likelihood that he’d ruined his most cherished friendship. That Kate might well never speak to him, nor see him, ever again.

And it would be devastating. Kate had been the biggest part of his life for years and years. What was he to do without her? Would he even be able to return to Northampton? Because Kate would be there, and if their paths should happen to cross and she turned away from him as if they had suddenly become nothing more than strangers…possibly his heart would break on the spot.

Possibly it had already broken, it ached so severely. And he had no one to blame for it but himself.

A single drop of rain fell upon his cheek, hard and heavy, as aggressive as a slap, and then slid down his face like a tear. Elliot paused in his tracks, closed his eyes, and turned his face upward to what promised to be a deluge.

It didn’t come. There wasn’t even the faintest patter of rain upon the pavement. The air was still thick and humid, and the clouds continued to swirl above, stubbornly resisting the shedding of their cargo.

He couldn’t even manage to get himself caught in a storm properly.

Elliot heaved a sigh, opened his eyes to proceed once again on his aimless journey, and found himself startled to realize that the raindrop which had snapped him out of his restless wandering had done so directly outside of Devon’s townhouse.

He’d walked halfway across town, and had still ended up here. Because his heart had always led him directly to Kate.

Christ. It was full dark already, and even if he had his calling cards upon him—which he did not—Hodges would certainly turn him away at the door based solely upon the hour at which he’d arrived.

Probably a single raindrop could not be called a sign, but it had certainly felt like one. It had stopped him in his tracks right here, after all. Right where he most wanted to be. And if he couldn’t hope to persuade Hodges to let him in, then perhaps…perhaps he could appeal to Kate directly.

∞∞∞

As Kate returned to her room after having bid goodnight to Mama—who was still under the weather, but had recovered herself enough to enjoy a hot toddy and a little chat before she had retired for the evening—a plink sounded against the window pane.