The New Year's Quilt (Elm Creek Quilts Novels) Read Online Free PDF Page B

and led her in a playful, sweeping bow. She blew kisses to the crowd as she guided Sylvia from the dance floor while the musicians struck up a slow foxtrot and the couples resumed dancing. To Sylvia’s chagrin, Elizabeth made her way directly to the far side of the room, where Henry waited beside one of the tall windows overlooking the elm grove and the creek, invisible in the darkness. He had eyes only for Elizabeth as they approached.
    “You’ve been practicing,” he remarked, smiling at her with fond amusement.
    “I have to do something to keep myself busy when I’m bored and lonely back home in Harrisburg and you’re tending the farm up here. Did you think I sat home every night pining for you?”
    “I had hoped so.” He slid his arm around Elizabeth’s waist and pulled her close. Sylvia tried to keep hold of Elizabeth’s hand, but her cousin’s slender fingers slipped from her grasp. Elizabeth laughed and kissed Henry’s cheek. He murmured something in her ear, and Sylvia was struck by the certainty that she had been entirely forgotten.
    Unnoticed, she slipped away from the couple and searched out her mother. Mama’s face lit up at the sight of her. “I had no idea you were such a fine dancer,” she said, pulling Sylvia into a hug.
    “Elizabeth taught me.” And now that they had shown everyone what Bergstrom girls could do, Elizabeth had returned to Henry. Sylvia had done her best, but anyone could see that Henry was her cousin’s favorite dance partner, no matter what she had declared as they practiced in the nursery.
    Sylvia climbed onto her mother’s lap and watched the dancing for a while, her eyelids drooping. When her mother offered to take her upstairs to bed, Sylvia roused herself and insisted that she meant to stay up until midnight, like everyone else. She went off to find Claudia, who demanded that Sylvia teach her the Charleston. Sylvia showed her the few steps she knew, but dancing with Claudia was not as much fun as performing with Elizabeth, and she soon lost interest. When she spotted Great-Aunt Lucinda carrying a tray of her delicious Pfannkuchen to the dessert table, she hurried over and took two of the delicious jelly-filled doughnuts. Licking sugar from her fingertips, she considered taking a plate to Elizabeth, but her lovely cousin was once again circling the dance floor in Henry’s arms. He was not much of a dancer, Sylvia observed spitefully. He knew the steps well enough but he seemed to be going through the motions without a scrap of enjoyment. But Elizabeth was having a wonderful time, and Sylvia could not pretend otherwise.
    She finished her dessert and went off to find a dance partner. She would show Elizabeth that she, too, could have just as much fun with someone else.
    Her father was pleased by her invitation to dance, as was her grandpa after him. Claudia found her and they made up their own dance, holding hands and spinning around in a circle until they became so dizzy they fell down. When they had come too close to crashing into dancing aunts and uncles too many times, their mother begged them to find some other way to amuse themselves. At that moment the musicians took a break, and Great-Aunt Lucinda called everyone to the fireside for Bleigiessen . “See what the New Year will bring you,” she joked. “Unless you’d rather not know.”
    Only Grandma, who found fortune-telling unsettling, declined. “I’d rather have another jelly doughnut than a prediction of bad news,” she said, settling into a chair near the dessert table, waving off the others’ teasing protests that she should not assume that the news would be bad.
    Sylvia, who had seen lead pouring on other New Year’s Eves, knew that the game would almost certainly promise good fortune to everyone, since the funny shapes were rarely so obvious that the observers could reach only one conclusion. She darted through the crowd and found a seat on the floor close to the fireside. Great-Aunt Lucinda went