by Mary Balogh
But Miss Briggs had left when she was eighteen, and ten years later her aunt and uncle had died. She had been left isolated from the world and had come up with the brilliant idea of using her wealth to purchase a husband. It had seemed a wonderfully practical idea. It was almost embarrassing to realize with what naïveté she had conceived it and put it into execution. She would choose her candidates with care, she had decided—there were always people from whom to gather information—and then interview each until she found the one she wanted. She would make her offer, be accepted, and proceed to the wedding. And yes, in her imagination it was a wedding with only two people present apart from the requisite number of witnesses, to be succeeded by a married life that involved only the same two people for the rest of their days.
It was more than almost embarrassing. How could anyone who prided herself upon her intelligence and good sense have been so foolishly ignorant?
First he had invited her to tea with his neighbors.
Now he had invited her to tea with his mother and sister.
What next? The whole Westcott family? The relatives on his mother’s side of the family? She had not even asked about them yet.
“I am not sure I can do it,” she said when Maude must have thought she was not going to answer at all. “I am not sure I want to do it.”
“You are going to let yourself turn into an eccentric old maid, then?” Maude asked.
Wren smiled without opening her eyes. “I already am an eccentric old maid,” she said. “I am almost thirty, Maude.”
“You are going to allow her the victory, then, are you?” Maude asked.
Wren stiffened. She did not doubt for a moment to whom Maude referred. Aunt Megan had told her the story. Wren had even overheard them once when she was still a young child. Taking her bodily away from the woman was one thing, Mrs. Heyden, Maude had been saying, but what was the point if you cannot also take her out of the child’s mind? She is going to be destroyed forever. That is what is going to happen. Mark my words. You need to force her out in the world a bit so she knows the world is not her enemy. Both of them had ended up in tears while Wren had crept away and diverted her mind from what she had heard with some unremembered game or activity.
“I am my own person,” Wren said now. “I run my own life, Maude, and have not sought your advice.”
Maude clucked her tongue.
“I am sorry,” Wren said, opening her eyes at last and turning her head. “I know you care for me. So which am I to do? Go and meet his mother and sister or proceed to live eccentrically ever after?”
Maude adopted a deliberately mulish expression, crossed her arms, and stared at the back of the seat opposite.
Wren laughed. “Oh very well,” she said. “You win. I shall go.”
“I have not uttered a word,” her maid protested.
“You did not need to.” Wren laughed again. “That look and the folded arms are eloquent enough, as you very well know. I shall go and make you proud, though you would not admit it even under torture. But, Maude, I wish he were not so handsome. He predicts that after he has met me a few times he will not even notice my birthmark. Do you think that after a few times I will not notice his good looks?”
“Whoever would want not to notice them?” Maude asked, exasperated. “I could gaze at him all day long and never grow tired of the sight.”
Wren sighed and closed her eyes again. And she could see him standing against the trunk of that oak tree, looking both elegant and relaxed, his arms crossed over his chest, and so gorgeous that her insides had clenched up and made her feel quite bilious. She could hear herself telling him that she wanted to be kissed and she could imagine him doing it.
She wanted it. Very badly.
But he could not possibly ever want to kiss her. Her face . . .
Damn your face.
She smiled again at the memory. His words, his outburst, had been so very unexpected. And so strangely endearing.
Oh, she must not, she must not, she must not fall in love with him.
Five
Mrs. Althea Westcott, Alexander’s mother, and Elizabeth, Lady Overfield, his sister, arrived at Brambledean Court early in the afternoon two days later. Alexander heard the carriage and hurried outside to hand them down and hug them warmly amid a flurry of greetings.
“So what do you think?” he could not resist asking, gesturing with one arm toward the house and about the park. “Do I dare ask?”
“Too late. You just did,” Elizabeth said, laughing. “It must all have been quite breathtakingly magnificent once upon a time, Alex. Even now it has a faded splendor.”
“Ah, but wait until you see the inside,” he warned her.
“Poor Alex. But at least the roof does not appear to have caved in,” their mother said, taking his arm as they went up the steps into the hall.
She stopped inside to glance about, her eyes coming to rest upon the faded and chipped black-and-white tiles underfoot. “It is a good thing I never warmed to Cousin Humphrey, your predecessor. I would have felt sadly deceived by him. He was one of the wealthiest men in England and one of the most selfish. He totally neglected his responsibilities here. Then they landed upon your shoulders with the title while all the money went to Anastasia, whom I am not blaming for a single moment, bless her heart. Humphrey ought to have been shot at the very least. He ought not to have been allowed to die peacefully in his bed. There is no justice.”
“At least the house is fit to be lived in,” Alexander said. “Just. I have never yet found myself being rained upon through the ceiling while I sleep or anything equally dire. Of course, I have never slept in either of the two guest rooms that have been prepared for you.”
Elizabeth laughed again. “But we will spend Easter together,” she said. “We did not relish the thought of celebrating it in London while you felt obliged to remain here a while longer.”
“And it must be admitted, Alex,” their mother said, “that we felt a curiosity to see for ourselves what you are facing here.”
Alexander introduced them to the butler and the housekeeper, and Mrs. Dearing offered to take them to their rooms to freshen up before tea. They followed her up the stairs, looking curiously about them as they went.
“Have you met any of your neighbors yet, Alex?” his mother asked later when they were settled in the drawing room with tea and scones and cakes. “But you surely have. You have been here for a while and they must have been burning with eagerness to meet the new earl and discover if you mean to settle here and marry one of their daughters.”
“I have met a number of them,” he said, “and all have been both amiable and kind. I have been entertained at dinner and tea and cards and music, and I have been kept standing outside church for an hour after service each Sunday and bowed and curtsied to on the street. I have even entertained here. If I waited until the house was more presentable, I might not entertain for the next twenty years. I invited a number of people to a tea party one afternoon and was gratified that everyone came. They were curious, I suppose, to see just how shabby the inside of the house is. And yes, of course, almost everyone has asked about my plans. I have assured them that I intend to make this my home even though my parliamentary duties will take me to London for a few months each spring.”
There was a beat of silence. “You intend to make your home at Brambledean,” his mother said, her cup suspended a few inches from her mouth.
“You will abandon Riddings Park to live here?” Elizabeth asked with more open dismay. “But you love Riddings, Alex. It is home, and you worked so hard and so long to restore it to prosperity. This is . . . dreary, to say the least. You have hired a new steward you described to us as hardworking and conscientious. Why do you feel the need to be here yourself? Oh, but you need not bother answering. It is because of your infernal sense of duty.” She set her cup down none too gently in the saucer. “I a
m sorry. How you conduct your life is none of my business. And we came here to cheer you, not to scold you, did we not, Mama? I feel compelled to say, though, that I care for you and about you and long to see you happy.”
“You do not see me unhappy, Lizzie,” he assured her. “But there are some things I need to do here in person, not least of which is giving the people dependent upon me the assurance that I care about them, that I empathize with them, that we are all in this struggle together. I am hoping Bufford and I together can find ways to make the farms more prosperous this year even without the input of too much new money. I want to put some into much-needed repairs to the laborers’ cottages and into an increase in their wages—small, perhaps, but better than nothing. Bufford wants to put money into new crops and equipment and more livestock. Together we complement each other, you see. But enough of that. I have no wish to put you to sleep. Tell me about your journey.”
They did so, and they all laughed a great deal, for Elizabeth in particular had a ready wit and an eye for the absurd. What had probably been a tedious journey, as most were, was made to sound as though it had been vastly entertaining. But his mother had something else on her mind too and got to it before they rose from their tea.
“Do you intend making a serious search for a wife during the Season, Alex?” she asked. “It worries me that you are thirty years old but have never given yourself a chance to enjoy life. Last year you admitted that finally you were looking about you, but then came the wretched family upset and you set aside all thought of your personal happiness again.”
“I shall certainly give myself the pleasure of escorting you and Lizzie to various entertainments when the Season begins, Mama,” he told her.
“Which is no answer at all,” she said.
“Alex.” His sister was hugging her elbows with her hands as though she were cold, and was leaning slightly toward him. “You are not going to be looking for a rich wife, are you?”
“There is something inherently wrong with a rich wife?” he asked, grinning at her. “Wealthy young ladies are to be excluded from consideration upon that fact alone? It seems a little unfair to them.”
She clucked her tongue. “You know exactly what I mean,” she said. “And the very evasiveness of your answer speaks volumes. It would be so very typical of you to do it. You have never ever put your own happiness first. Do not do it. Please. You deserve happiness more than anyone else I know.” There were actually tears brimming in her eyes.
“Money is not an evil, Lizzie,” he said.
“Oh, but it is when it is given precedence over happiness,” she told him. “Please, Alex. Do not do it.”
“You may save your breath, Lizzie,” their mother said, looking sharply from one to the other of them. “You know your brother cannot be shifted once he has decided upon something. It is what is always most annoying and most endearing about him. But I do hope you will not marry just for money, Alex. It would break my heart. No, forget I said that. I would not impose yet one more burden upon you. Whomever you choose—and I hope you choose someone soon, for I am very ready to be a grandmama and drive you to distraction by spoiling your children quite outrageously. Whomever you choose I will welcome with open arms, and I will absolutely insist upon loving her too.”
“And so will Alex, Mama,” Elizabeth said. “He is like that. But will she insist upon loving him? That is the question that concerns me. There will be any number of candidates for the hand of the Earl of Riverdale, but will they see Alex behind the title?”
“I promise not to marry anyone I hate or anyone who hates me,” he said, smiling from one to the other of them. And perhaps he ought to leave it at that for now, he thought. But Sunday afternoon would have to be mentioned and explained soon. Perhaps he ought to have invited several other neighbors too. But that would have been grossly unfair to her. “I have invited one of my more distant neighbors to join us for tea on Sunday afternoon.”
“On Easter Sunday? Oh, that will be lovely, Alex,” his mother said, brightening. “But only one? Who is he?”
“She, actually,” he said. “Miss Heyden. She lives at Withington House, eight or nine miles from here.”
“And she is coming alone?” his mother asked. “But who is she?”
“Her uncle was Mr. Reginald Heyden, a gentleman who made his fortune in fine glassware,” he explained. “His workshops and headquarters are in Staffordshire, but he purchased Withington ten years or so ago as a country home. He was married to Miss Heyden’s aunt. She lived with them until their deaths within a few days of each other a little over a year ago.”
“And he left her the house?” Elizabeth asked.
“And everything else too,” he said. “He and his wife adopted her. They had no children of their own and apparently no other close relatives either. Miss Heyden owns and takes an active part in the running of the business.”
“She must be an extraordinary woman,” his mother said.
“Yes,” he said, “I believe she is.”
There was another of those beats of silence, so pregnant with meaning. “She is unmarried?” his mother asked. “How old is she?”
“She is close to my own age,” he said. “She has never been married.”
“And she is coming to tea on Sunday. With no other guests.” She was looking intently at him.
“No others,” he said.
“Oh, Alex, you provoking creature,” Elizabeth cried. “Tell us the rest of this story before I come over there and shake it out of you.”
“But there is very little to tell,” he protested. “I called upon her a couple of weeks ago—a courtesy call, you will understand, since I hope to become acquainted with all the families within a ten-mile radius of Brambledean. I invited her to the tea I mentioned earlier. We have each called upon the other once since then.”
“You are courting her,” his mother said.
“I am making her acquaintance, Mama,” he said, frowning. “She is making mine. It happens, you know, among neighbors.”
Elizabeth got to her feet. “We must not subject poor Alex to any more of an interrogation, Mama,” she said. “He is not going to admit that there is something significant about inviting a single lady of his own age to take tea with his mother and sister in his own home, the provoking man. We will have to wait until Sunday, then, to see for ourselves. I would love to view the rest of the house, Alex. At least, I think I would. Will you give us the grand tour?”
“It would be my pleasure,” he said, jumping to his feet, greatly relieved. “Shall we start with the ground floor and work our way upward? Mama, will you come too, or would you rather rest here or in your room until dinner?”
“Oh, I am coming too,” she assured him. “I am not quite in my dotage yet even if I do have two children past the age of thirty. Goodness, is it possible?”
She took his offered arm.
• • •
Wren liked attending church and did so regularly. It was somewhere she could be alone yet in company with other people. It was a place where no one bothered her or looked askance at her veil, yet almost everyone nodded in recognition and some even smiled and wished her a good morning. She always sat close to the back, where her aunt and uncle had sat. With their stature and wealth, they might have made a point of sitting at the front, but they had never done so.
She never paid particular attention to the words of the service and often allowed her thoughts to drift during the homily. She rather liked the way the vicar droned on in his kindly way without any fiery rhetoric or fervent appeal to the emotions of his congregation. She was not even sure she believed all the teachings and doctrines of her religion. But there was something about the church itself—and most churches she had visited—that brought her mind and her emotions and her very being, it seemed, to a point of stillness, and she wondered if that was what her religion would call the Holy Spirit. But she did not
wish to give it a name, whatever it was. Names were confining and restrictive. Though they could also be freeing. Wren, with its suggestion of wings and wide blue skies, had somehow set her free of Rowena when she was ten years old. Heyden instead of the other name had completed the transformation.
The church was particularly lovely on this Easter Sunday, filled as it was with lilies and other spring flowers, the somberness of Good Friday flung off. But it was neither the flowers nor the joyfulness of the occasion that made Wren happy. It was that stillness, that sense of calmness at her center, that conviction that somehow, through all the turmoil of life, all was well and always would be well. It was something she needed today, for this afternoon she was going to do something she had never done before. She was going to a social event—tea at Brambledean Court—with two people she had never met before, the Earl of Riverdale’s mother and sister, and she was going without her veil.
She definitely was going, though the cowardly part of herself, which could be very vocal at times, kept loudly insisting that no, she did not need to, that if he had an ounce of feeling he would not have asked it of her, that she ought to just move on to the fourth gentleman on her list and forget all about the too handsome, too demanding Earl of Riverdale.
She went. She sat with rigid spine and raised chin and clenched hands beside Maude in the carriage. They traveled in silence after her maid had informed her that she looked as if she were on the way to her own execution and Wren had snapped back at her that when she wished for her maid’s opinion she would ask for it—a not very original setdown. She went without even the muted comfort of a gray or lavender dress of half mourning, but instead in her sky blue dress, the one that was embroidered at the hem and wrists and high neckline with the same color silk. It had been her favorite before she cast it aside for her blacks. And she wore with it a straw bonnet from which she had removed the veil—she had not wanted to be tempted by its presence upon the brim. She went with the sick feeling that whatever peace she had found at church this morning, she had also unfortunately left there. She could not be feeling more naked if she actually were unclothed. Well, perhaps that was a bit of an exaggeration. She tried to feel amused and failed.