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Her aunt considered her for several seconds then said, “Unless you allow for certain liberties to happen, my dear, you can never tell where it might lead. If I recall it correctly, Robert and I had shared at least a dozen delightful kisses before he made his offer.”
Mina stared at her aunt, unable to reconcile with her stance. Her aunt was usually very much the voice of reason and restraint. She was fairly telling Mina to allow the earl’s kisses…and perhaps even more. A flush worked through her entire body, as if her heart sensed it had received the permission it needed to be brazen. “Kissing the earl may not assuage my loneliness,” she said softly, still at a loss at their topic of discourse.
One whisper of impropriety with the earl and her hopes of maintaining her respectability and business would be dashed. She had worked very hard to be proper after one hellish indiscretion which had almost cost Mina her reputation. It was her aunt who had loved her enough to overlook that dark blot, and now the very woman was encouraging her to be scandalous.
And a part of Mina understood why. Her aunt was telling her that she had an extremely unexciting existence, if one were to forget her past scandal of course. Her aunt pitied her. Mina was without friends or any companion that shared the same interests. She was not invited by anyone to balls and musicales or even picnics or riding to the park. No gentleman ever courted her or sent her poems and flowers. This had not happened because they knew of what happened in Hertfordshire; this was simply because her aunt did not have the money and connections to help position Mina favorably in society. Nor was she an outstanding beauty that might captivate some gentlemen to overlook those obvious flaws.
Mina was simply…Mina.
And what of your future…what do you have to look forward to?
As she climbed the stairs to her chamber, those soft words from her aunt haunted her steps. Pausing on the stairs, she gripped the banister. Was she truly merely enduring life instead of living it?
Mina shook her head and squeezed her eyes closed for a brief moment. Her future was taking the money earned from her business and letting a lovely cottage by the seaside, so that her aunt could live with her in comfort and…
And what else?Something frightening inside her heart asked.
“And what else?” she muttered, swiping away the tears that unexpectedly rolled down her cheeks. “I’ll take long walks in the morning with my aunt. Some by myself. I’ll…I’ll attend church on Sundays, and I’ll read a lot. Perhaps I’ll write another book.”
She felt as if something cracked inside her chest, the pain great enough where she shuddered. Mina lowered her hand from the banister and sat on the top step of the stairs. Mina saw those days by the beach and the idyllic cottage spread before her…days, then weeks, then months, and years. Instead of feeling comforted or any measure of happiness, fright swept through her for she also saw the loneliness and the ache of wanting more but unable to ever attain it.
Unless she was brave and adventurous enough to live a little bit.
