Emma smiled more broadly than she had yet. “He did tell Joan last night. He told her how violently Hugh had once felt against the Spinsters, and how he had changed since. Hugh said he didn’t care, because he doesn’t need anyone to understand why he feels the way he does now. He doesn’t mind if the whole story comes out, because he is a different man now, and anyone could see that.” Emma paused, then added, “And everyone does.”

Elinor groaned and leaned forward, putting her face in her hands. How could she have been so foolish? She was smarter than this, wiser than to leap to extremes, and yet…

“I don’t know what to believe,” she whimpered, shaking her head. “I don’t…”

“Edmund is a great many things,” Emma interrupted, “but he is no liar. Never has been.”

There was no arguing with that. Her brother was honest to a fault and was well known in the family for it. And he was also fiercely loyal to his sisters, which she had somehow forgotten the day before in all the mess of things.

If Hugh hadn’t been raging against the Spinsters, somehow plotting a long-term strategy for their ruin, then he must have been true to the image he had given her of himself on this trip. That he was changed, that he was not the man he had been, that he admired her, and them, and…

And that he really was the man she loved.

“Oh, Emma,” Elinor breathed, sliding her hands from her face to her mouth. “I should have known; I should have seen…” She shook her head and glanced at her older sister. “What did he do last evening?”

Emma smiled again, this time with sadness. “Well, he was rather downcast, but he was quite polite. He danced with Mama again, and she adored it. And he was so good with Ellen. You know how she can get ignored in our family parties, and it does rankle her so. Hugh was wonderful, and Ellen smiled the entire night.”

Elinor grinned as she imagined the evening, her eyes burning with tears of joy and shame. “He would,” she whispered. “He is very aware of the vulnerable ones. He even played with the children in the library the other day, and they adored him so.”

She wiped away a stray tear that had fallen and shook her head.

“What?” Emma pressed. “Why shake your head?”

“I’ve ruined everything,” Elinor said, her voice hitching in despair. “He’ll never forgive me, not after I said I believed in his change, then went back on it.”

Emma tsked in a motherly tone. “Do you really think a man who has worked so hard to redeem himself and to earn forgiveness would withhold it from others? If you think him so hypocritical, you don’t deserve to love him.”