Page 51 of A Modest Independence

It left Jenny feeling oddly off-kilter, awash in emotions she couldn’t begin to understand.

She didn’t hear Tom approach. Suddenly he was just…there, standing at her side, a great wall of masculine warmth. It took all of her will not to lean into him. Not to burrow back into his arms like some desperate, affection-starved spinster.

“Forgive me,” he said.

“For what, precisely?”

“My lack of foresight. When it comes to matters of importance, I usually plan things out a bit better.”

“Is kissing me important to you?”

“Everything about you is important to me. I’d have thought that would be obvious by now.”

“Not to me it isn’t. That is—” She broke off. “I know you care for me, but…I don’t like to assume anything more.”

He brushed a curling lock of hair back from her face, tucking it behind her ear with gentle fingers. “You’re so full of fire. So capable and confident. Sometimes I forget just how innocent you are.”

She huffed, even as she quivered at his touch. “I’m not a child, Tom.”

“I didn’t say you were a child. I said you were an innocent.”

“I’m not—”

“You are. The worst sort. The kind that doesn’t even realize how innocent she is.”

Jenny did look at him then. How could she not? “I know I’m inexperienced. Dreadfully so. That’s what all this is about. This journey so far from home. I mean to broaden my understanding. To have experiences out of the common way. But I don’t intend to make myself ridiculous in the process.”

Tom’s gaze held hers. “I see.”

“I don’t know that you can.” Her hands gripped the rail as she tried to explain. “There’s a kind of woman in my world. An unmarried female of a certain age. The sort who imagines that every gentleman who does her the smallest service is in love with her. People laugh at her behind their hands. Such a sad, dried-up old dear with her foolish romantic fancies.”

Tom didn’t say anything. Didn’t give any sign he objected to her characterization—or agreed with it, either. His silence prompted her to continue.

“There’s an opposite to that pathetic spinster. A young lady whose fate is far more common. She gives in to the expectations of her family—of society—and signs her life away in marriage.” A gust of wind off of the sea rustled Jenny’s hair and skirts, filling her lungs with the scent, the very taste, of an adventure that lay just beyond her grasp. “I feel I’ve spent all of my life caught between those two poles. Struggling to maintain some semblance of independence. But society’s expectations are a powerful force. Almost as powerful as the romantic fancies of a spinster.”

“You fear you’ll succumb.”

“More than anything.”

“There’s only one problem.”

She cast him a glance. “Which is?”

“Your whole concept is wrongheaded. You’re no more likely to make yourself ridiculous over a gentleman than you are to bow to the dictates of society.”

“Oh, but I am. Indeed, I already have. Do you remember the first letter you wrote to me? It wasn’t even truly a letter, only a note to fix the time and day we’d meet to discuss Mr. Thornhill’s matrimonial advertisement. There was nothing at all familiar about it. And yet I kept it as surely as any love token.”

He gave her a look that was hard to read. “Did you?”

“After we first met face-to-face, I couldn’t bring myself to discard it. How kind he is, I thought. Surely the attention he paid me must be out of the ordinary. Surely he was as moved by me as I was by him.” She smiled bitterly. “A spinster’s yearnings.”

“But I was moved by you. I fancied you from the first moment I set eyes on you.”

“Perhaps that’s only because bachelors of a certain age are subject to a similar tension.”

“Societal pressure versus private desperation? Rubbish. You’re putting too much thought into this. And that’s coming from me, a fellow who puts too much thought into everything.”

Jenny opened her mouth to respond, but there was no opportunity. Another shout from Mrs. Plank put an end to their conversation, this time for good.