Under the Kissing Bough by Shannon Donnelly

congratulations tonight.
    From the ballroom, Lady Terrance and her daughter, Harriet, stepped into the hall. The sound of music and the swell of voice faded as the door closed behind them again. But Eleanor could hear their voices all too clearly.
    "...sorry for the poor, little thing," Lady Terrance was saying, her shrill voice quite recognizable.
    "Really, mother. She is going to be a countess. What is to be sorry for there?"
    "Titles do not come for free, my dear. And she will have to pay a steep price for that one. I caution you, Harriet. It is one thing to marry without love. But it is quite another to marry a gentleman who loves elsewhere. That is always disaster."
    Eleanor's skin iced as their words flowed over her. A gentleman who loves elsewhere? She had no doubt of whom they spoke, but she had the strongest sensation that Lady Terrance's reference applied to something more than the gossip over Lord Staines's casual affairs.
    A gentleman who loves elsewhere.
    Lady Terrance and her daughter began to move toward the front door, and Eleanor leaned forward, her curiosity driving her to listen, even though she knew that eavesdropper never heard well of themselves.
    "Do you think she knows?" Harriet asked, her voice eager.
    "How can she not? Her mother must have cautioned her that Staines's heart had been given to another and rejected. But did I tell you what I heard Lady Davenport say about how he…"
    The voices faded into the shadows of the hallway, and Eleanor let them go. A hollow emptiness lay inside her, as if she were a doll whose stuffing had been pulled out.
    Now she understood that wounded look that sometimes appeared in his eyes. And she understood the bitterness behind his words. He could teach anyone how to have a hard heart, because he had learned how to shield his own from everything.
    No wonder he thought her a suitable choice. A sensible choice. A wife who would not demand a heart already given elsewhere.
    Slowly, Eleanor emerged from her hiding place, a curious numbness spreading across her skin as if she had stood for too long in the cold. Why had he not been able to marry the woman he loved? Had she died? She could not imagine any woman being unable or unwilling to return his love.
    She started for the servants' stairs so that she could slip to her room unnoticed. And one thought kept repeating itself in her head. How utterly awful to love someone and know that love cannot be returned.
    She knew exactly how awful it did feel.
    * * *
    By the time dawn lightened to reveal a dull sky and a depressing drizzle that slicked the pavement and streaked the windows of the Glover's townhouse with jagged slashes of wet, Eleanor had made up her mind.
    She had thought it over from every angle, and she had decided that Lord Staines—Geoffrey—had been right about this from the start. She would think up something sensible to ask for, and she would settle into a comfortable marriage.
    Didn't people do that all the time?
    It was a marriage to an earl's heir, after all. A handsome gentleman. A kind man. Most young ladies would regard this as a Christmas wish come true. And that would be how she viewed it from now on.
    Today they started for Westerley. So, as of today, she would stop weaving fantasies around him. She would stop reading more into his actions than existed. She would be happy with what she had.
    With that attitude fixed in her head, she dressed in a sensible dark blue traveling dress and while her maid laced the back she struggled with what she could ask for that would be so perfectly sensible.
    Her imagination proved to be as blank as that card that lay on her dresser, as empty and barren as a snow-iced field.
    Eleanor let out a deep sigh.
    "Don't you like it, miss?" the maid asked, her voice high and anxious as she finished doing Eleanor's hair into a simple, upswept knot.
    "Oh, no, it's fine," Eleanor said with an automatic smile and not even glancing at herself to see if it was, for it never was. Her