Мэри Бэлоу: Someone to Wed

“Miss Heyden,” he said, coming to a stop beneath a huge old oak tree and setting his back against the trunk while he folded his arms over his chest. “My motive for considering marriage with you is perfectly obvious. But what about yours for marrying me? You appear to have everything you could possibly need, including that rare commodity for a woman—independence. Why give it all up to a virtual stranger? You told me you wished to be wed. But to just anybody? And will you please pull back your veil?”

She hesitated and then did so. He had felt that he was talking with a mirage, he realized. Now at least she looked human. “I have grown up with a strong sense of myself as a person,” she said. “My uncle and aunt are largely responsible for that. In addition to providing me with a strict governess, who instructed me in everything both academic and social that a lady ought to know, my uncle exposed me to all the work of running a prosperous and successful business, and my aunt encouraged both him and me. Although in many ways the bottom fell out of my world a little over a year ago, I was able to stop myself from tumbling to the depths of despair by taking the reins of the business into my own hands. I am very much in charge of it even when I am here in the country, though I have a competent manager.

“Most women, in contrast, grow up to acquire a sense of themselves as women . They see themselves in the expected roles of daughter, wife, mother, and hostess, devoted to the care of the men in their lives and of their dependent children. I suspect many if not most of them never really see themselves as persons, though I suppose some must. My aunt did, even though she took upon herself the roles of wife and mother and performed them consummately well and was very happy for the last eighteen or nineteen years of her life. If I must choose between being a person and being a typical woman of our times, Lord Riverdale, I would choose personhood without hesitation. Having experienced it, I could not easily give it up. But why can I not be both? This is what I have asked myself recently. Why can I not be a woman as well as a person? Why cannot I marry?”

He remained as he was and looked at her for long moments after she paused, her eyebrows raised, awaiting his reply. She stood a few feet away in the sunshine, tall and slender, proud, chin raised, making no further attempt to hide her face. Yes, he thought, that was what it was about her he had been unable to define thus far. She was not typically feminine. She was more a person than a woman—a strange thought he would have to ponder at his leisure. And yet … could she not be both? Could a woman with a strong sense of herself as a person not also be as attractive as her peers who had been raised for marriage and motherhood—and dependence?

“What if I—or another man—turned out to be different from what you expected?” he asked Miss Heyden. “What if I were as you see me now when I am sober but turned ugly when I had been drinking and turned that ugliness upon my wife and children?” It had happened to his sister, though there had been no children.

She considered the question. “Life is fraught with risks,” she said. “All we can do to guard against them is make considered choices. Or we can make no choices at all and remain static in life. Even that is not really possible or without danger, though. Life changes about us and for us whether we wish it or not. I did not wish for my uncle and aunt to die. You did not wish to inherit all this.” She gestured about her with both hands.

“But if you make the wrong choice of husband,” he said, “you will have lost everything—your independence, your money, your happiness.”

“Oh, no, Lord Riverdale,” she said. “I would not turn all my money over to you with my person on our marriage. I am not an utter fool, or a fool at all. We would both sign a carefully worded contract before we wed.”

Sometimes he found her chilling. Often he found her chilling. But would he be feeling so chilled if this were a man speaking? Her father or uncle or guardian? And what did it say about him that the answer was no? He would expect to negotiate and sign a marriage settlement with a prospective father-in-law, after all. He would expect that man to guard the future interests of his daughter.

“You would keep hold of the purse strings, then?” he asked her. “And dole out money as you saw fit?”

“Absolutely not.” She turned and began to make her way back toward the house with her characteristic manly—though somehow not inelegant—stride. “How would I be able to tolerate a marriage in which I had made my husband my pensioner or my slave? I would not, just as I would not be able to tolerate one in which I had been made my husband’s slave. No man would marry me if I did not have money and lots of it, Lord Riverdale, but I have no wish whatsoever to buy a husband and then hold him in thrall for the rest of his life.”

They proceeded some distance in silence. “You have explained that you wish to marry because you want to be a woman as well as a person,” he said. “What does being a woman mean to you, Miss Heyden?” It was perhaps an unfair question. He would not have dreamed of asking it of anyone else. But she was different from every other woman he had met, and he was, God help him, considering marrying her.

She drew a breath, let it go, drew another. “I want to be kissed,” she said primly, on her dignity. “I know almost nothing of what lies beyond kisses. But I want it. All of it. And I want a child. Children. I received warmth and love in abundance from my aunt and uncle, but perversely I longed for other children. Siblings. Friends. Now everything has gone with them. I want human warmth again, but I want more than warmth this time. I want … Well, I do not know quite how else to put it into words. I am naive and probably sound pathetic, but you asked the question, and you have the right to an answer.”

“Yes,” he said. “Thank you.”

Baldly put, she wanted sex. She had decided to buy what she wanted, in the belief that she could not have it any other way because of that damned facial blemish. A man could buy it easily enough whenever he wished without also saddling himself with marriage. But she was not a man despite the fact that she was a proud, wealthy businesswoman. Besides, it was not only sex she wanted. It was human warmth in the form of a sexual relationship. She wanted far more than she seemed to realize. She wanted love, and, heaven help her, she thought it could be bought.

He felt chilled—again. How could he possibly offer her a fair exchange for what she would bring him? He could appreciate her beauty and elegance despite the blemish, and he could admire her independence and intelligence. But … where was the attraction? He could feel none. She wanted to be kissed. Even that he could not imagine doing.

“Where do we go from here, Lord Riverdale?” she asked as they approached the house. “You have seen me. I have seen your house and part of the park and learned something of your whole estate. We have conversed and become somewhat acquainted. Will it now be your turn to visit me and then mine to come here again? Time is of value. We will both need to get on with the job of finding other partners if we are not to find them in each other. Is there some point to proceeding, or is there not?”

So she was going to press the issue, was she? But she was quite right about time. When he had come here, to see how his new steward was settling, to assess with him what needed doing and what might be done with his limited resources and what must be given highest priority, he had intended to stay only until the end of this week. He had planned then to go to London, where his mother and sister were to join him for Easter. But he had already made the decision to delay his departure until next week, after Easter, and had written to his mother. He had even added that he was not quite sure about next week. He had not explained the reason because he had not known if it was one worth sharing. He had written something vague about the press of business, and in a sense he had not been lying. It was his business to marry a wife who would give him heirs and bring him funds. It was a ghastly way to look upon his own future and that of the young lady he would marry, and for a moment he was engulfed in self-loathing.