“Why not?” Anna raised up her chin. “I was in support of the matches that you all found for yourselves, one way or another, because I knew, deep down, that you were all more like me than you cared to admit. You all wanted love, in some way, though you claimed not to. But Matilda began this club of ours. Matilda believes in it and has always desired to be a spinster, and that is why I cannot tolerate this.”
Matilda smiled sadly. “It is bitterly ironic, is it not?”
“I detest that cousin of yours,” Anna grumbled, apparently stuck in her ferocious mood. “I have hated him since he came to this house and called it his. I have hated him since he thwarted your first petition with the Royal Court. I hate him even more, now that he has done this. I might… I might… I might go out into the gardens, find as many ants as I can, and put them in his bed!”
Even in vengeance, she is gentle.Matilda could not help but admire the youngest member of the Spinsters’ Club—the only other member to still be unmarried. In three weeks’ time, she would be the sole spinster.Thatwas bitterly ironic, for Anna was the only one of the five who had never actually wanted to be a spinster, who dreamed of romance with her whole heart.
“Let us pay the debt, Matilda,” Leah urged.
Matilda sat back in her armchair, the leather worn threadbare by the years she had spent in that very spot with her friends and her father, respectively. “I cannot ask you to do that. It was, of course, one of my potential schemes, but I realized the debt would be too great.” She hesitated. “My father always said you should never mix friendship with money, and I would have no way of paying you all back.”
“You would not need to pay us back!” Olivia protested. “It would be a gift.”
Matilda shook her head. “It would be a wedge between us. I would feel compelled to pay what I owe, and it would eat me alive if I could not. I would be too ashamed to show my face, to think of the money I had taken from you, from your children, from your households when I have spent all my life proclaiming the singular importance of independence. I will not make myself a hypocrite. I would lose myself.”
It was the solemn conclusion that she had come to, surrounded by scrunched up balls of paper, scrawled with her fruitless ideas and escape strategies. She had known her friends would offer help and had known that, in the end, it would go against everything she believed in if she took it.
Glancing around at her beloved friends, she could see that they had also come to the same conclusion. They knew how stubborn she could be and that, on matters of grave moral importance, she was immoveable.
“I must do what I always do and make the best of it,” she said. “In truth, I am surprised he accepted, for he did not seem like he wished to be married to me either.”
Anna raised her hand. “Does he have no merits?”
“Yes, tell us about him,” Olivia urged. “You have barely said ten words about him.”
Phoebe nodded. “Would he be a good companion, at least? Does he seem… unsavory?”
“He was… intriguing at times,” Matilda relented, “but not intriguing enough to change my initial impression of him. He is rough, he is rude, he is coarse, he is… strange, and he spoke very discourteously to me. I know nothing of him beyond what I have witnessed, and that isnotcompelling.”
Leah pursed her lips in thought. “Is he handsome, at least?”
“Before he began his ducally gallivanting, I imagine he was,” Matilda replied. “Now, he resembles a brawler. Not like your darling husband,” she hurried to say, glancing at Leah, “but a true brawler. Covered in scars. His hands were terrible, his knuckles almost callused—they must have been used so often to punch his inebriated opponents.”
Phoebe raised an eyebrow. “How do you know he is a brawler? Is there not some other way he might have gained such scars? Indeed, if he was such a brute, he would have had his name in the scandal sheets a time or two, yet I have never heard of him. The Duke of Whitecliff. The title, the name—it is entirely unknown to me.”
“I suppose there could be other explanations,” Matilda conceded, feeling that burn of shame in her chest once more—the same burning sensation she had experienced when Albion had called her “judgmental.” “Regardless, his entire demeanor was rough and uncouth, and as he is my cousin’s choice, he cannot be a good man.”
Olivia clicked her tongue. “But he gave your cousin money to cover a considerable debt. That has some merit, surely.”
“And put a huge amount of interest upon it!” Matilda protested. “It was not done from generosity; Idoknow that much.”
She was beginning to feel hemmed in, her chest tightening, her skin flushed with feverish heat that prickled and itched. It was not a comfortable position to be in, having questions thrown at her that she did not know the answer to, and she was floundering.
In truth, she had felt like she was being slowly uprooted and losing confidence in herself for most of the past year without her father at her side, and this was proving to be the final gust to knock her sideways.
Anna unleashed a great sigh that drew everyone’s attention. “The conclusion is there is to be another wedding and soon. Matilda’s mind is made up. What the man is like is of little consequence when the decision has been made. All we can hope is that heisdisinterested in the endeavor, and you live separate lives after you are married.” A second sigh seemed to shake her entire body. “Another wedding, and then… I suppose we shall have to change the name of our club.”
“Anna, no,” Phoebe said softly. “We shall always be the Spinsters’ Club.”
Anna smiled thinly. “And I shall always be a spinster.”
“Have faith, my dear friend,” Matilda urged, dispensing with her own fears as she looked into the watery eyes of their youngest member. “Do not wish for something like this. Wish for love to come when it is ready and when it is real.Ihave faith that it will happen for you, for there is no one more dedicated to the cause of romance, nor anyone more deserving.”
Anna turned her face toward the French doors and the rose gardens beyond. “I am sorry. I did not mean to be selfish.” Her voice hitched. “Iwouldtake your place, though, if you asked it of me. You know I would, do you not?”
“My darling girl, that is something I would never do,” Matilda said, her heart breaking for her friend. “But I do know you would, for you are the bravest of us all. Indeed, I do not think there is anything braver than being a romantic woman in a bitter world, and one day, when that softness is rewarded, I shall be at the front of the church, cheering so loudly that the reverend will boot me out.”
“As will I and Caro too,” Olivia said, brushing away a tear.
