by Mary Balogh
It would have seemed a strange answer if Alexander had not already learned that Netherby was not at all as he seemed from the image he projected to the world. He wondered what had been the duke’s testing ground. He knew what his had been—and still was. And if Netherby was right, as undoubtedly he was, there was no single test for anyone. Life was a continuous series of tests, all or some or none of which one might pass or fail and learn from or not.
Wren had lifted the baby to sit on her raised knees and was bouncing her gently. Abby was up on her knees beside her, trying to make the baby smile. Anna was smiling happily.
“Wren has neither seen nor heard anything of or from any of them since her aunt took her away when she was ten years old,” Alexander said. “Her mother was about to commit her to an insane asylum.”
“Because of her face,” Netherby said. It was not a question. “Because it was imperfect and the lady’s very survival depends upon her own beauty and the perfection of everyone connected with her.”
“Yes,” Alexander said.
“Did you want me to come with you?” Netherby asked.
“No,” Alexander said. “But thank you.”
The baby, happy and smiling and bouncing one moment, was suddenly crying. Anna was on her feet, laughing and taking the child from Wren. The baby still howled with what sounded more like temper than pain.
“Ah,” Netherby said, pushing his shoulder away from the tree, “it is time to discover a secluded nook, it seems. We should have named our daughter Tyranny rather than Josephine. Eternally Demanding Stomach would have been too much of a mouthful. And I do believe there was a pun in there somewhere.” He went strolling off toward his family.
“Wren,” Alexander said after following him, “come for a stroll with me?”
• • •
They walked among the trees, in a different direction from the one Anna and Avery had taken with Josephine.
“I have never held a baby before,” Wren said. “Oh, Alexander—” But then she felt foolish. All women were silly about babies, were they not? Perhaps that fact ensured the protection of the young of the human race. She had wanted a family of her own, but her thoughts had centered mostly about being married. Now that she was wed, she yearned for motherhood too. Would she never be satisfied?
“Perhaps,” he said, “you will be holding one of your own within the next year or so, Wren.” He disengaged his arm from hers and set it about her shoulders to draw her against his side. Surprised, she set her own arm about his waist. “What do you want to do? Do you want to go home? Do you want to stay?”
“I am home,” she said, and when he turned his head to look at her, their faces were a mere few inches apart.
“In London?” he said.
“Here,” she said, and he tipped his head slightly to one side. She knew he understood that she did not mean here in Richmond Park. “I am not running away any longer, Alexander. I instructed Maude before we left the house to make all my veils disappear before I return. I told her she could sell them if she wished. But she said she would burn them with the greatest pleasure.”
“Wren,” he said, and he kissed first her forehead and then her mouth.
“I am as I am,” she said.
He dipped his head closer to hers. “Those are the loveliest words I have heard you utter,” he said.
Her knees turned weak. I care, he had told her last night. And he did care. Those were the loveliest words she had heard him utter. But she would not say so aloud. She would reveal too much about herself if she did.
She looked up at an old oak tree by which they had stopped. “I have not climbed a tree since I fell out of that one the day I left Roxingly,” she said.
“You are not by any chance planning to climb now, are you?” he asked her.
Many of the branches were wide and almost horizontal to the ground. Some of them were low. And some of the higher branches were easily accessible from lower ones. She was not a child. She had not climbed for twenty years, and even then not often. She was wearing a new sprigged muslin dress. She had the body of an athlete, he had told her. She was afraid of heights. But that unoffending tree suddenly looked like all the barriers that had ever stood between her and freedom. It was silly. It was childish. It would ruin her dress and expose her legs. Her shoes were totally unsuitable. She would probably fall again and break every limb she possessed, not to mention her head. She needed to make pro and con lists.
“Why not?” she said, and took her arm from about his waist, shrugged off his arm from her shoulders, and marched to the tree and up it.
Well, she did not exactly march up. Indeed, she hauled herself onto the lowest branch in a most ungainly fashion and then stepped gingerly up to the next and crawled inelegantly up to the third before looking down. Her rational mind told her she was still pathetically close to the ground. If Alexander below her stretched up an arm and she stretched down a leg, he would surely be able to grasp her ankle or even her knee. Her irrational mind told her she was in danger of bumping her head on the sky before falling from it like Icarus. She turned with great care and sat on the branch. Her legs felt boneless.
He was grinning at her. He had removed his hat and dropped it to the grass. “I daresay,” he said, “it must be almost twenty years since I climbed a tree.”
She grinned back at him before deciding that looking downward was not a good idea. He came up after her until his boot was on the branch beside her and then disappeared upward. He sat on a branch adjacent to her own and slightly above it and draped his wrists over his bent knees.
“I think,” he said, “it is still almost twenty years since I climbed a tree.”
“Do not belittle me,” she said as she edged along to set her own back against the trunk. “I have one question. How do we get down?”
“I do not know about you,” he said. “I intend to climb down the way I came up.”
“I thought so,” she said. “But that is the whole problem.”
“Never fear,” he said. “When teatime comes, I shall fetch you some food.”
And somehow they found the sheer silliness of their exchange hilariously funny and laughed and snorted with glee.
“And maybe a blanket to keep you warm tonight,” he added.
“And breakfast in the morning?” she asked.
“You are very demanding,” he told her.
“Ah, but—” She tipped her head to look up at him. “You care.”
Their laughter stopped. He gazed back down at her, his smile lingering, and she wished she had not said that—although he had said it first. Last night.
“Yes, I do,” he said. “You had better tell me what I can fetch you for breakfast, then.”
“Toast and coffee,” she said. “Marmalade. Milk and sugar.”
“Wren.” He held her gaze. “Are you regretting any of this?”
She closed her eyes and shook her head. How could she regret it? Yes, marriage was vastly different from what she had expected. It had challenged her in unimaginable ways—and they had only been wed for two days. But how she loved it. And how she loved him.
She would not ask him if he was regretting it. It would be a pointless question. If she regretted it, there was something he could do about it. He could take her home and leave her to the hermit’s life to which she was accustomed. If he regretted it, however, there was nothing she could do to make life better for him.
“We will stay in London, then, until the end of the session, will we?” he asked. “And then go home to Brambledean? And perhaps to Staffordshire?”
“You would come there with me?” she asked him.
“Of course,” he said. “I have no plans to be apart from my wife for longer than a few hours at a time. Besides, I may need to hold your hand when you meet your team of managers and designers and artisans for the first time without a veil.”
<
br /> Ah, she had not thought of that. “Yes, we will remain here,” she said.
“But not literally here,” he said, and he climbed down from his branch to hers and the one below just as though he were descending stairs in the house. “Give me your hand. I promise not to let you fall.”
And she set her hand in his and knew somehow that he never would.
Twenty
Alexander discovered what he wanted to know early the following afternoon when he called in at White’s Club. Lord Hodges’s rooms were within easy walking distance, though it would have taken a very long horse indeed to span both places. Fortunately for him, he discovered when he rapped the knocker against the door, the man was at home. A servant conducted him upstairs and left him in a square, well-appointed room, tastefully decorated and furnished. Lord Hodges joined him there within five minutes.
And yes, Alexander decided, Netherby was almost certainly right, just as was his own impression from having seen the baron a few times before. He was surely only in his mid-twenties. He was tall and good looking, youthfully slender, with blond hair cut short. He looked at his visitor with polite curiosity as he greeted him and shook his hand.
“To what do I owe the honor?” he asked as he indicated a chair.
Alexander sat. “I believe,” he said, “you must be Colin Handrich rather than Justin?”
A brief frown creased Lord Hodges’s brow. “My brother died ten years ago,” he said. “Three years before my father.”
“You have three sisters,” Alexander said.
“Lady Elwood and Mrs. Murphy,” the young man said. “I had a third sister, but she died as a child about twenty years ago. I beg your pardon, Riverdale, but what is the purpose of these questions?”
“I am glad of one thing at least,” Alexander said. “You did not know. I must enlighten you: Your third sister is not dead. She is the Countess of Riverdale, my wife.”
Hodges stared blankly at him, laughed slightly, then frowned again. “You are mistaken,” he said.
“No,” Alexander said. “What do you remember of her?”
“Of Rowena?” Lord Hodges sat back in his chair. “She was sickly. She rarely came out of her room. She never came into the nursery or the schoolroom or downstairs with the rest of us. She had a great . . . strawberry swelling covering one side of her face and head. I think it must have killed her, though the swelling had started to go down and lose some of its color. My aunt took her away to a doctor who said he could cure her. But she died. I am sorry for the misunderstanding. You have married someone else. I read your wedding announcement a day or two ago. Please accept my congratulations.”
“Thank you,” Alexander said. “But you were given the wrong information. Your aunt took your sister to London and called upon a former employer of hers, a Mr. Heyden, hoping he could help her find employment. He married her instead and they adopted your sister and changed her name to Wren Heyden. They raised and educated her. Sadly they both died last year, within days of each other, leaving Wren alone and very wealthy.”
“The Heyden glassware heiress,” Hodges said softly, as though to himself. “That was how your wife was described in the announcement.”
“She has a home not far from Brambledean Court,” Alexander said. “I met her there earlier this year and married her three days ago.”
The young man stared at him. “You must be mistaken,” he said.
“No,” Alexander said.
Lord Hodges gripped the arms of his chair. “Does my mother know?” he asked.
“She may have drawn her own conclusions when she saw my wife across the theater two evenings ago,” Alexander said.
“My aunt kidnapped Rowena?” Lord Hodges asked.
“There were plans to send your sister to an insane asylum the following day,” Alexander told him. “I would use the word rescued rather than kidnapped. Besides, your mother saw them leave and did nothing to stop them.”
“God.” Hodges had turned noticeably pale. His hands were white-knuckled on the arms of his chair. “But I remember her well enough to know she was perfectly sane, even though she could not read or write. Did they believe she was not? Was that why she was kept locked up most of the time?”
“I think,” Alexander said, “it was her appearance.”
Lord Hodges lurched to his feet, crossed the room to a sideboard, picked up a decanter, changed his mind and set it down again, and came to stand facing the fireplace, one hand gripping the mantel above his bowed head. “I was only five or six when she was taken away,” he said. “I remember so little about the events surrounding it. I know I cried when I heard she had died and lost faith in the power of prayer and healing. I used to kiss her face better whenever I went to see her and pray for a miracle. I am sorry. That is an embarrassing childhood memory to blurt out. It was her appearance, then? The strawberry mark? It was for that she was locked away and to be sent to an asylum?”
They were not questions that called for answers. Alexander did not offer any. But he did say something. “Perhaps your childhood prayers were answered,” he said. “Do you remember your aunt?”
“Not really,” Lord Hodges said. “I remember that she came and then took Rowena away to the doctor a few days later. I cannot recall anything else about her. She was kind to Rowena?”
“She and her husband showered her with love and acceptance,” Alexander said, “and saw to it that she was properly educated. When she showed an interest in the glassworks, her uncle trained her to take his place and left the business to her in his will. She is a superbly successful businesswoman.”
Lord Hodges said nothing. He had his eyes closed.
“You do not live with your mother,” Alexander said.
“No.” The young man opened his eyes.
“Has she mentioned the evening at the theater?” Alexander asked.
“Not to me,” Lord Hodges told him. “I do not see a great deal of her. I do not see her at all, in fact, except when I run into her by chance at some entertainment. But I will say no more on that subject. It is a family matter.”
“I understand,” Alexander said.
“A family matter.” Lord Hodges laughed suddenly. “You are family, are you not? You are my brother-in-law.”
Yes. Alexander had not thought of that until now.
“Keep her away from my mother,” Lord Hodges said, his voice low. “Does she still have the mark?”
“The purple remains of it,” Alexander said. “She is beautiful.”
The young man half smiled and turned away from the fireplace. “My mother will not like that,” he said. “She will allow only unmarred beauty in her orbit, and that beauty she will enslave if she is given the chance. Keep Rowena away from her.”
“For your mother’s sake?” Alexander asked.
Lord Hodges drew breath to speak but released it and waited a few moments. “My father escaped by dying,” he said. “My elder brother escaped into alcohol and died as a result when he was younger than I am now. My eldest sister is a shell of the woman she might have been. My middle sister married an Irishman when she was seventeen, escaped to Ireland with him, and never returned. I stayed with an uncle and aunt during school holidays after my father died and in Oxford while I was at university. I moved here to these very rooms afterward. Rowena was rescued by Aunt— God, I do not even recall her name.”
“Megan,” Alexander said.
“By Aunt Megan,” Hodges said. “Keep her away from my mother. That is dashed unfilial, Riverdale, and I always try to preserve decorum, even inside my own head. Honor your mother and father and all that. But Rowena is my sister and you are my brother-in-law. Keep her away.” He returned to his chair and sank down onto it while Alexander regarded him silently. “Is it true, then? Is she really alive? Has she been alive all these years?”
“Will you come and meet her?” Alexander aske
d.
“Oh, God,” Lord Hodges said. “She must hate me.”
“She remembers you,” Alexander told him, “as the only person in her first ten years who ever showed her kindness. She remembers the kisses on the damaged side of her face. She remembers you turning the key in her door and coming in to play with her. She remembers playing outside with you once.”
“I was told I must never do it again.” The young man was frowning in thought. “I had forgotten. I was told she was ill and must not go out. I remember reading stories to her because she could not read herself. I must have only just learned.” He looked at Alexander. “Will she hate me?”
“No.” Alexander got to his feet. “I am going home now. Will you come with me? I cannot promise she will be there, of course.”
“I will come.” Lord Hodges stood too. “I was on my way out somewhere, but I cannot for the life of me remember where. I will come. God. Rowena.”
Alexander had no idea if he was doing the right thing. He would find out, he supposed.
• • •
Viola and Abigail were to return home the following day, taking Harry with them. Today Wren had gone to see the Tower of London with Viola and Lizzie while her mother- in-law called on her brother and sister-in-law and Abigail went to spend the morning with Jessica and to see the baby—her niece—once more. Harry was borne off by the Duke of Netherby to practice some light swordplay in an effort to get the strength back in his arm, which was otherwise healing nicely. They were all back home by the middle of the afternoon, however. Jessica had come with Abigail and was going later with her and Viola and Harry to dine with the dowager countess and Cousin Matilda.
Wren was feeling a bit exhausted, as she did much of the time these days. She had gone out unveiled but not unnoticed. And at home she seemed always to be surrounded by people—well-meaning people, it was true, people of whom she was growing increasingly fond, but people nonetheless. Elizabeth and her mother were to attend a soiree this evening. Perhaps, Wren thought hopefully as the drawing room about her buzzed with cheerful teatime conversation, she would have the chance of a quiet evening alone with Alexander. How blissful that would be. And she did not believe he would mind. He had told her that for several years he had hardly come to London at all but had spent his time at Riddings Park. He still preferred the quiet of country life to the bustle of life in town.