“Are you here to see Ellie?” she asked.“Yes. I can hear the noise from the nursery all the way down the staircase.”
“All the children are excited to be with their cousins again.”
“I recall we were that way, at their age.”
She had lived for the times he had joined their large family gatherings. His father’s close friendship with her uncle Edward had enabled him to practically grow up with her and her cousins, at least until he went to sea. He had never known how much she cared for him, how she had pined for him with girlish tears. She was a girl no longer, but she still felt remnants of that wistful longing for him, that little gasp of excitement in her chest when he looked at her.
Gerard would never know. He must never know.
—From The Spinster's Christmas
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