Chapter 11 #2
Eleanor knew. Not in any vague or theoretical sense, but in ways that were far more specific and far less easily set aside.
Marriage had seen to that with a thoroughness she had not entirely anticipated, and the understanding it had brought had been as surprising as it was compelling.
What she knew now had not been learned through careful explanation or gradual instruction, but through experience, through moments that had unfolded with a warmth and intensity that had caught her entirely unawares and left her with a far greater appreciation for such matters than she had ever thought to possess.
And that, she realized, was precisely the difficulty, because what she understood could not be easily separated from how she had come to understand it, being bound up as it was in sensation, in reaction, and in the quiet astonishment of discovering just how much more there was beyond what she had once assumed to be the full extent of such intimacy.
There had been nothing orderly about it, nothing that could be neatly arranged into explanation without stripping it of the very things that made it meaningful, and she found herself suddenly aware that what she knew best was not how to describe it, but how it felt.
More to the point, she had no wish to shock Caroline, nor to frighten her, and the reality of it, delivered without care, might very well do both, which left her in the rather inconvenient position of possessing knowledge she could not easily share and being asked, quite directly, to do precisely that.
“Well,” she began at last, though the word carried more uncertainty than she might have wished, “it is not so very complicated. There are… natural progressions to such things. A kiss is not an end in itself, but rather a beginning, and from that beginning one is led, quite gradually, to further—”
“To further what?” Caroline asked at once.
Eleanor faltered, the sentence trailing despite her intention to complete it. “Further intimacies,” she finished.
“That is not, I think, as illuminating as you intend it to be,” Caroline replied.
“No,” Eleanor admitted. “I rather suspect it is not.”
“And yet you persist in speaking as though I ought to understand it.”
“I persist because I do not know how else to explain it,” Eleanor returned. “A kiss does not remain merely a kiss. It deepens. It leads.”
“Leads to what?”
Eleanor let out a breath. “To closeness. To familiarity. To… a greater willingness to remain rather than withdraw.”
“That still sounds like the same thing said three different ways.”
“Yes,” Eleanor said, with a faint, rueful smile. “Because I am, quite evidently, failing to explain it properly.”
“You are explaining just enough to make me wish for more clarity.”
“And I am discovering that clarity, in this instance, does not lend itself particularly well to conversation,” Eleanor returned, with a small, unladylike huff. “This is absurd. I am explaining nothing at all.”
“Not nothing,” Caroline said. “Only not enough.”
“Which may be worse,” Eleanor replied, though there was humor in it still. She studied Caroline then, more carefully, taking in the earnestness of her expression, the uncertainty she was attempting—and failing—to conceal, and something in it tempered her amusement into something more thoughtful.
“I have suspected for some time,” she said then, more deliberately, “that my brother’s regard for you was not of the ordinary sort.”
Caroline stilled. “You have?”
“It is not something he would ever say,” Eleanor continued, “but it has been evident nonetheless. In the way he watches you. In the way he is never quite unaware of you, even when he makes every effort to appear otherwise.” She paused, then added, “And it was not so very long ago that I began to suspect that you might return those feelings, though you seemed determined not to acknowledge them.”
Caroline drew a slow breath. “I suppose I was.”
“That, I think, was the greater obstacle,” Eleanor said lightly. “Not his regard, but your reluctance to see it.”
“And now?” Caroline asked.
“And now,” Eleanor replied, allowing a trace of her earlier amusement to return, “you are asking me what comes after a kiss.”
Caroline could not quite suppress her smile. “When you put it so plainly, it does sound rather obvious.”
“It is obvious,” Eleanor said. “At least to me.”
“That is because you understand it.”
“Yes,” Eleanor said, and then, after a brief pause, “but not, it seems, in a way that can be easily explained.”
“Then I am left with no better understanding than I had before.”
“Not entirely,” Eleanor countered, her tone gentling. “Because you have already experienced the beginning, and that is rather more than you possessed yesterday.”
“That is not especially comforting.”
“No,” Eleanor agreed. “But it is progress.”
Caroline hesitated, then asked, more quietly, “And the rest of it?”
Eleanor held her gaze. “The rest of it is something Julien must show you himself,” she said. “Because I rather think it would be far more easily conveyed by demonstration than by any description I might attempt to provide.”
Caroline’s breath caught.
“I know my brother,” Eleanor continued, more firmly now.
“And I have every confidence that his intentions toward you are entirely honorable. He would not presume upon your ignorance, nor would he lead you into anything that might cause you distress, and so I think it may be safely said that nothing which occurs between the two of you, if it is founded upon such regard and such anticipation of a future together, could ever truly be called improper.”
The words had scarcely left her lips before Eleanor became aware of the implication they carried, and she drew in a quiet breath as the realization settled with a clarity that might once have given her pause.
She had, in effect, advised her dearest friend to place herself in a position no well-brought-up young lady was ever meant to consider, much less embrace.
Under any other circumstance, she might have attempted to soften the statement, to retract it, or at the very least to temper it with some measure of caution, which she had so conspicuously failed to provide.
But this was not any other circumstance, because this was Julien, and if there was one thing Eleanor understood with complete certainty, it was that her brother would never act without purpose, nor would he place Caroline in any position that did not lead directly and irrevocably toward marriage.
Indeed, if anything, such a course—however improper it might appear in theory—would remove any lingering uncertainty that might otherwise exist, though she suspected there was very little of that left even now.
Whatever had begun between them had not sprung from impulse alone, but from something long-standing and deeply rooted, something neither of them had fully acknowledged until it could no longer be ignored.
In that light, what she had said did not feel reckless so much as inevitable, and perhaps, in its own way, necessary, because Caroline deserved more than she had been offered thus far.
More than tolerable affection and empty assurances.
She deserved certainty. She deserved to be chosen without hesitation, without interference, and without the faintest shadow of doubt, and Julien—whatever else he might be—was at least a man capable of loving her, which was more than could ever be said of William Sutton.
Eleanor let out a slow breath, the last of her hesitation settling into something steadier, and though she did not amend her words, there was a quiet resolve in her tone when she spoke again. “You need not fear what comes next,” she said. “Not with him.”