Мэри Бэлоу: Someone to Wed

She was taking the question seriously, he could see. She was thinking about it. “Yes,” she said.

It was the moment at which he really ought to have taken his leave. It was a devastating answer, and it had not even been given in haste. He could not possibly take on such brokenness, even if she had all the riches in the world to offer. Good God, all because of an unsightly birthmark?

“What happened to you?” he asked her, but he held up a staying hand even as he spoke the words. “No. I have no right to an answer. But I will not marry you for your money alone, Miss Heyden. If you truly believe that you have no more to offer than that, and if you truly believe that I have nothing but marriage to offer in exchange for your money, then say so now and we will put an end to this. I will take my leave and you need never see me again.”

She took a long time answering. She receded even further inside the cool shell of herself, becoming seemingly taller, thinner, more poised, more austere—good God, the woman really did not need a veil except to hide the birthmark. She could hide quite effectively in plain sight. He felt chilled, repelled again. He willed her to say the word, and he prayed she would not.

“I think,” she said at last, “you are a good man, Lord Riverdale. I think you deserve and … need more than I could possibly offer. You have been put in a desperate situation, made worse by the fact that you have a conscience. I cannot bring you anything but money. Go and find someone else—with my sincere good wishes.”

Good God!

She even stepped to one side, her hands clasped at her waist, to give him a clear path to the door.

He drew another slow breath and allowed it out and drew another before he said anything. And why did he not just go? “Do you ever step outdoors?” he asked her. “It is a beautiful spring day out there, even warm in a fresh sort of way. And you have what looks like a sizable and pretty garden. Come and walk there with me, and we will leave behind this tense drama we have been enacting and talk about the weather and the flowers and what is pleasant and meaningful in our lives. We will get to know each other a little better.”

She never said anything in haste, this woman. She regarded him in silence for several moments before answering. “I shall go fetch a shawl and bonnet,” she said at last, “and change my shoes.”

It was indeed a lovely day. Wren stood at the foot of the steps outside the front door, lifted her face to the sky, and inhaled deeply.

“Is it not a strange thing,” he said, “that we need all the dreary rain we get in these often soggy British Isles in order to be able to enjoy the lush beauty of gardens like this?”

“I have seen pictures of lands that get almost no rain,” she said. “Parched vegetation or outright desert. Yet even that appears to have a sort of beauty of its own. Our world is made up of such contrasts, as is life itself. Perhaps we could never enjoy this if there were not also that, or here if there were not also there, or now if there were not also then.”

“Or a perfect right side of a face if there were not also a blemished left,” he said.

She turned toward him in astonishment. He was smiling, and his eyes were laughing. But instead of being offended by his words, she was … arrested. “Perfect?” she said.

“You must have been told that before,” he said.

She had not. But then very few people had seen her. She did not like the direction this conversation was taking. “Come and see the daffodil bank,” she said, turning to her right and striding diagonally across the south lawn.

Her governess had expended much time and effort upon teaching her to take mincing ladylike little steps, and she had learned. She had not marched into the drawing room at Brambledean a few days ago, for example. But she still strode almost everywhere, especially when she was outdoors, her long legs moving in easy rhythm.

He walked comfortably beside her. She did not know many men. She did not know many people, for that matter. But most men she had met were shorter than she. Her uncle had been a whole head shorter. The Earl of Riverdale was a few inches taller, a fact that must put him over six feet.

She really had not expected him to come again, even though he had asked if he might. He had mentioned no specific day and that had seemed significant to her. She wished she were dressed a little more becomingly, but she had scorned to keep him waiting while she changed and restyled her hair. Besides, she was wearing a bonnet now.

“That is a rose arbor beside the house?” he asked, nodding in its direction.

“Yes,” she said. “My aunt’s creation and pride and joy. She loved her garden, and her garden loved her. I could plant a row of flower seeds at the correct distance from each other and at the correct depth and time of year. I could cover them carefully with soil and water them diligently—and never see them again. In the end I suggested an equitable division of labor. She would plant and I would enjoy.”

“Do you miss her?” he asked. “And your uncle? How long exactly has it been?”

“Fifteen months,” she said. “I thought the pain would grow duller with the passing of time. Then I thought that once my year of mourning was over and I put off my blacks, I would also put off the worst of my grief. And perhaps that has happened. But sometimes I think that grief is preferable to emptiness. At least grief is something . I have come to realize, I suppose, that they are not just dead. They are gone . There is nothing there where they were.”

They had walked through the copse of trees and crossed the humpbacked stone bridge, which five years ago had replaced a battered old wooden one over the stream that bubbled downhill and that she could watch and listen to for hours when she was alone. And they came to the top of the long slope that formed the western boundary of the garden. A week or two ago it had been thickly carpeted with golden daffodils and their bright green leaves. Some of them had died back, but there was still an impressive display.

“The rose arbor is lovely in the summer,” she said, “but I have always had a preference for the bank here in spring. The daffodils grow wild.”

“And you prefer wildness to cultivation?” he asked her.

“Perhaps,” she said. “I had not thought about it that way. But there could not possibly be a lovelier flower than the daffodil. A golden trumpet of hope.” She felt decidedly silly then. Golden trumpet of hope , indeed.

“Can we go down?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “They look even lovelier from down there.”

He offered his hand. She hesitated. She did not need assistance. She had been up and down this bank a thousand times. She had sat in the midst of the daffodils, hugging her knees. She had lain among them, arms spread wide, feeling the earth spin beneath her and watching the sky wheel overhead. But if she was going to marry him—and that was a large if on both their parts, it seemed—she was going to have to grow accustomed to his acting the gentleman. Miss Briggs had taught her all about the little details of gentility—how a gentleman was expected to behave toward a lady, how she was expected to behave toward him. She set her hand in his and it closed warmly and firmly about her own as they made their sedate way down, making her feel almost dainty, almost feminine. She usually half ran down the slope. Sometimes she even flapped her arms like wings and shrieked. Would not he be scandalized …

Perhaps, she thought when they had reached the bottom, their backs almost touching the rustic wooden boundary fence, gazing upward—her hand was still in his—perhaps if she wore yellow, or green, or some color other than the gray or the lavender of half mourning, she would recover her spirits more quickly. Perhaps the emptiness would seem less empty. Could the color one wore affect one’s spirit?