A Passionate Endeavor Read Free

murmur of agreement, the two
figures, one portly and old, the other small and young,
disappeared, shutting the door to keep out the growing crowd of
curious servants.
    “And now, you must fulfill your end of our
bargain,” he said, looking up at her.
    She looked back at him sheepishly. “I had
hoped you had forgotten,” she said, while picking an invisible
piece of lint from her sleeve.
    “I never forget.”
    “It’s quite rude to ask a lady her age.”
    “But I am confused. Your stature and
physiognomy suggest a woman not past her girlhood. But your eyes
speak differently.”
    “I am past my prime, if you must know. Soon
to be past seven and twenty to be exact.”
    He was shocked. And now embarrassment flooded
him for having forced a spinster to reveal her age. No gentleman
beyond leading strings would have dared to stretch the barriers of
society’s unwritten rules of behavior toward the gentler sex.
    She was looking at him. “I’m sorry to have
embarrassed you.”
    He forced himself to form some words. Any
words. “No, no, it is I who must apologize. I should never have
presumed to ask.”
    “It’s all right. Now you do not have to worry
about shocking me. I am quite the old maid.”
    “Certainly not—”
    She interrupted. “No, you misunderstand. I am
not asking for you to refute the fact—just explaining that I have
no maidenly airs to worry about. My work with my father has taken
away any silly sensibilities I might have had in my youth.”
    There was a tap on the door.
    “Enter,” Nicholas called out.

Chapter Two
     
     
    “ A woman of seven and twenty can never
hope
    to inspire affection again .”
     
    —Sense and Sensibility
     
     
    CHARLOTTE Kittridge knew she was just as
firmly on the shelf as the book she tugged in vain. She was the
fool who had overstuffed these inadequate shelves in the small
front parlor just two weeks ago. Charlotte looked down lovingly at
the tonsured crown of her father and the full head of black hair of
her only brother as they sat before a roaring fire meant to
displace the early morning darkness. She smiled with good
humor.
    She realized with a small shrug that she also
had only herself to blame for her ill-natured thoughts about her
station in life. Charlotte had read a novel, for the first time,
during the trip from London to Wiltshire, much to her father’s
horror and her brother’s laughter. It was all about Elinor and
Marianne Dashwood, and it had filled her mind with heretofore
unknown thoughts. Given that Charlotte felt Elinor so akin to
herself, she wondered whether that practical lady or the author
herself, a mysterious “Lady,” would have approved of Lord
Huntington, he of the wild hair, arresting green eyes, and
impossibly broad shoulders. Surely not. There was not a trace of
the subtle gallantries of Edward Ferrars in the novel Sense and
Sensibility . Lord Huntington had a compelling presence that
made her feel unaccountably awkward when he spoke to her. A feeling
that happened but rarely in her small, familial world.
    Charlotte would have liked to be surrounded
by lots of sisters and a mother of the Dashwood ilk, but fate had
chosen a different course for her.
    Her father, seated in the worn leather chair
near the hearth, turned and peered at her over his spectacles. “So,
my dear, did Lord Huntington survive despite the dreaded chamomile
tea and infusion?”
    Charlotte gave one last yank and finally
dislodged the massive volume. “Yes, Father, when I left him two
hours ago, he was sleeping. His Grace was also resting
comfortably,” she said. “But, the son is very weak and the fever
continues. I thought a restorative draught might help. I’ve
searched through the English texts, and am now into your books from
Paris. What do you think?”
    “Methinks it is a good idea. Let us try the
one I have been administering to His Grace.” He lowered his book
and got up to help her down the last rung of the small stepladder.
He kissed the top of her