Мэри Бэлоу: Someone to Wed

“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 am 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.