Мэри Бэлоу - Someone to Romance

“Start at the beginning,” she said. “Tell me about your first nineteen years, Mr. Thorne.”

“I lived with my father until I was nine years old,” he told her. “My mother died giving birth to a stillborn daughter when I was two. I have no conscious memories of her. My father was always inclined to be sickly. He was a clergyman, devoted to his books and his parishioners. And to me. He was far less devoted to his health. There was very little money, but I was unaware of being poor. I was never hungry and I was always adequately clothed. I had a happy enough early boyhood. He taught me all a boy should learn at a young age and gave me a lasting love of books. He died after neglecting a chill he had taken from visiting an ailing parishioner in a distant cottage during a rainstorm. After, I was taken to live with his elder brother, an uncle I had never met before he turned up for the funeral. I lived with him for the next ten years.”

“Just him?” she asked.

“And my aunt too,” he said. “All four of their children were considerably older than I. One of their daughters was already married and living some distance away. The other two married soon after I went there and also moved away. Then it was just my uncle and aunt and their son. And my aunt’s sister.”

“You had some companionship, then,” she said. “Were you close to your cousin, your uncle’s son?”

“No,” he said. “He was ten years older than I.”

“Was,” she said. “What happened to him? I assume this is the uncle who has recently died and left you property and fortune. Your cousin must have predeceased him, then?”

“By one day,” he said. “There was an outbreak of typhus. My aunt died too.”

“Oh,” she said. “I am so terribly sorry. You really had no expectation of inheriting, then, did you? But if your cousin was ten years older than you, he must have been in his forties when he died recently.”

“He had no sons,” he said.

This was the family situation that had forced him to come home, then? But he did not offer further explanation, and she did not ask. He was not wearing mourning. But despite the family falling-out that had sent him running off to America, he must surely be feeling some pain at such a sweeping loss. She had intruded enough upon his privacy, however. It was not, after all, as though she intended to marry him.

Yet she had vowed to herself that she would marry someone this year. Mr. Rochford, perhaps? He would be a good match for her. And he was young, perhaps even younger than she. He was handsome and personable.

Or perhaps after all she would marry no one. Now that it had come to the point, she found that it was not easy to make a rational, purely practical choice when she would be stuck with it for the rest of her life. As all women were when they married.

Could Mr. Thorne offer something more attractive? But what?

They had paused to look at the smaller pond a short distance from the path, but they walked on after nodding to a group of six people, who were in a merry mood and acknowledged them with smiles and greetings and comments upon the loveliness of the weather. It must have been their laughter Jessica had heard several times in the last half hour. The group continued on its way toward the Pen Ponds.

There were many other questions she could ask. What exactly had happened to cause him to run away and stay away? Had he had any contact with his family since? But if not, how had he discovered recently, thirteen years after leaving, that his uncle and aunt and cousin had all died, leaving him to inherit property and fortune? Why did he feel it necessary to marry? And why her in particular?

“It must have been distressing for you when you heard about your loss,” she said.

“I did not wish any of them dead,” he said. “I did not want to return.”

There was something a bit chilling about his response. It was as though he had grieved not for his three dead relatives but only for the obligation their passing had put upon him to return. The trouble with questions, of course, was that the answers merely aroused more.

“Perhaps,” she suggested when they came to a fork in the path, “we should make our way back to the curricle.” The sun had dipped behind a rather large cloud and the air had cooled as a result.

They turned onto a path that would eventually circle back to where he had left the curricle. It wound through trees, with an occasional glimpse of the lakes.

“Why have you not married before now, Mr. Thorne?” she asked him. “By my estimation you must be thirty-two.”

“I have never felt any strong inclination to give up my freedom,” he told her. “And I have been busy. I have had an active social life too, but I have never met that one woman who stands out from the crowd.” He was almost smiling when he glanced at her, no doubt remembering what he had said to her earlier about her court of admirers.

“Yet,” she said, “almost immediately after you set foot upon English soil you saw a stranger at an inn where you were putting up and decided that you would marry her?”

He thought about it for a moment. “Yes,” he said.

“Why?” she asked. “Did you fall violently in love with me at first sight?” She lifted her chin and frowned at him. She was feeling angry, because the answer was very obviously no. She did not even wait for his answer. “I know why. You have come into an inheritance that cannot be ignored. Property. A house? An estate? A stately home, perhaps, situated within a park? And a fortune upon which to live there in some luxury?”

“All of those things, yes,” he admitted.

“So,” she said, “you came back to England in order to live the privileged life of an English gentleman. You came to take on the responsibilities of running your estate and tending to the needs of all who are dependent upon you. I daresay there are a number of servants and laborers. And tenant farmers, perhaps?”

“Yes,” he said. “All of those.”

“And you decided that all this could be far more effectively accomplished if you had a wife,” she said. “Someone to see to the smooth running of your home, someone to manage the indoor servants and to be an accomplished hostess to your neighbors. Someone to ensure that there are sons to inherit your property and fortune when you die. Someone with the experience you lack because you have been gone so long. Someone whose lineage is impeccable and whose consequence will not be questioned by those with whom you must deal after a thirteen-year absence.”

There was nothing so abnormal about what he had set out to do. She felt chilly, almost as though the blood were running cold in her veins. Would that cloud never pass over?

“Yes,” he said.

Had his vocabulary been reduced to one word? But at least he was not trying to beat about any bushes. He was not trying to pretend that he really had fallen violently in love with her.

“You have approached the issue as you would any business matter, in other words,” she said. “In a measured, dispassionate way. In a typically masculine way.” She ignored the fact that she had been contemplating marriage in just such a way herself. “What was your aunt like, Mr. Thorne?”

“My aunt?” His eyebrows rose at the apparent non sequitur. “She was quiet, sweet, unassuming, and unassertive.”

“And totally dominated by the men in her life, I suppose,” she said.

He thought about it. “It would have been hard not to be dominated by my uncle,” he said.

“As I thought,” she told him with a curt nod. “Your life has been very lacking in females, has it not, Mr. Thorne? Your mother died when you were no more than a baby. Your aunt was unassertive. Your female cousins married and moved away soon after you went to live with your uncle. Your kinsman in Boston was a widower without children. Your business partner is a man.”