She’d never thought of marriage or romance or the like. She did not care about courtship, and she was desperately tired of the wasteful young men she had seen come and go in Society. Surely young ladies deserved better, and if nothing else, the Spinsters could help encourage them in such straits.

Some ladies did wish to marry, though Elinor had never seen any reason to. They should be able to marry the best quality of men, if such a thing existed, and someone ought to ensure that such men, whoever they were, could be easily identified somehow.

Why, there could even be a collection of information about appropriate suitors with details of their natures and their prospects and the like. What a useful and wise endeavor that would be!

And with that, those who did not meet the mark would never have a chance of ensnaring young women who were too naive or too ignorant to understand the dangers they were putting themselves in.

Whoever engaged in such a work would surely be a champion of virtue and feminine rights.

But, if nothing else, she could be part of a paper and a cause that would be far more exciting and invigorating than sitting around at home mucking up needlework or plunking away at the pianoforte.

That would also suit.

“Well,” Emma sighed as she tied her bonnet ribbons over her fair curls, still less than pleased to be toting Elinor along with her, “shall we go? I don’t know what Charlotte and the others will make of it, but I’ll assure them it will not be a regular occurrence.”

“Of course,” Elinor demurred with a sly smile as she fetched her own bonnet. “Not at all regular.”

Chapter One

There is nothing like family at the holidays. Truly. Nothing at all.

-The Spinster Chronicles, 4 December 1819

Christmas at Deilingh was at once the best and worst time of her life.

It would be one thing if the sprawling, near-crumbling estate contained only her siblings and her parents, and the accompanying spouses and children, naturally. It was quite another when the twenty-seven bedrooms were entirely filled with cousins, cousins by marriage, aunts, uncles, two great-aunts, and Uncle Dough, though no one was quite sure how he fit into the family schematic.

Elinor had tried to have her father explain to her why everybody retreated to Deilingh for Christmas in Derbyshire when the estate belonged to her uncle Howard, her father’s eldest brother, who wasn’t even in England this year, but it was no use. It had been a longstanding Asheley tradition to all gather together for Christmas at Deilingh, and so they continued to do so.

Uncle Howard might have been the most fortunate member of the family, as he had left for Canada in the early autumn to look into some intriguing investment opportunities, whatever that meant, and had opted to remain there until spring. The house, therefore, and its running, went to Elinor’s father, as Uncle Howard only had daughters, and six of them at that.