Мэри Бэлоу: Someone to Wed

“And do you?” Maude had asked, straightening up, the tray in her hands. “You never did while your aunt and uncle were alive, and you never have since. If it wasn’t for the glassworks you would be a total hermit, and the glassworks don’t really count, do they? You aren’t going to find a husband there. And even there you always wear your veil.”

She had not waited for an answer to her question about courage. Which was just as well—Wren still did not know the answer two days later as she considered the invitation. A tea party. At Brambledean Court. With an indeterminate number of other guests from the neighborhood. Would she go? More to the point, could she? Maude was quite right—she had been a virtual hermit all her life. In more than twenty-nine years she had not attended a single social function. Her uncle and aunt had entertained occasionally, but she had always stayed in her room, and, bless their hearts, they had never tried to insist that she come down, though Uncle Reggie had tried several times to persuade her.

“You have allowed your birthmark to define your life, Wren,” he had said once, “when in reality it is something a person soon becomes accustomed to and scarcely notices. We are always more aware of our own physical shortcomings than other people are once they get to know us. You may no longer notice that my legs are too short for my body, but I am always conscious of it. Sometimes I fear that I waddle rather than walk.”

“Oh, you do not, Uncle Reggie,” Wren had protested, but he had achieved one of his aims, which was to make her laugh. But he had never seen her before the age of ten, when the birthmark had been a great deal worse than it was now. He did not know what she saw when she looked in her mirror.

It was her uncle who had named her Wren—because she had been all skinny arms and legs and big, sad eyes when he had first seen her and reminded him of a fledgling bird. Also Wren was close to Rowena, her real name. Aunt Megan had started calling her Wren too—a new name for a new life, she had said, giving her niece one of her big, all-encompassing hugs. And Wren herself had liked it. She could not remember the name Rowena ever being spoken with anything like affection or approval or even neutrality. Her uncle and aunt had had a way of saying the new name as though it—and she—was something special. And a year later they had changed her last name too—with her full approval—and she became Wren Heyden.

Her thoughts were all over the place this morning, she thought, bringing them back to the breakfast table. Would she go to tea at Brambledean Court? Could she? Those were the questions she needed to answer, though really they were one. As Countess of Riverdale, he had told her, she would not be able to remain a hermit. He would not allow it. And that was something that needed careful consideration, both the hermit part and the not-allowing part. It was a long time since she had been forced to do anything she did not want to do. She had almost forgotten that according to law, both civil and ecclesiastical, men had total command over their women, wives and children alike. She had not considered that when she decided to purchase a husband.

Purchase —it sounded horrible. But that was precisely what she was trying to do. She wanted to wed. She had longings and needs and yearnings that were a churning mix of the physical and emotional. Sometimes she could not sleep at night for the ache of something nameless that hummed through her body and her mind and seemed to settle most heavily about her heart. She had only one asset, however, with which to induce any man to marry her, and that was her money. Fortunately she had plenty of that. She was not much interested in using it to buy worldly goods. She had all she needed. She would use it, then, she had decided, to purchase what she did want, and she had set about making as wise a purchase as she could with no experience whatsoever in such matters. Now she had to ask herself a new question. In giving her person to a husband along with her money, would she be surrendering all her freedom too?

Were most men tyrants by nature? More to the point, was he, the Earl of Riverdale? It would be very easy to be beguiled by his looks. Not that she was beguiled by them. Quite the contrary, in fact. She had not wanted an obviously handsome man, not when she looked the way she did. It would be too horribly intimidating. The earl was more than good looking, though, more than handsome. He was perfection. But that was on the outside. What about on the inside? Was he a petty tyrant who would take her money and tuck her away somewhere out of sight and out of mind? But no. He had said just the opposite, and that was the whole trouble. He would not allow her to be a hermit.

I am occasionally told that I am the proverbial tall, dark, handsome man of fairy tales. It can be a burden. What had he meant by that— a burden ?

Wren tossed her napkin onto the table and got to her feet. There was work awaiting her in her uncle’s study, now hers. There were papers and reports from the glassworks, and since she was now the owner in more than just name, they demanded her immediate attention. She would decide later about the invitation. Perhaps she would simply send a polite refusal and retain her freedom and her money and her aches and longings and yearnings and disturbed nights and all the rest of her familiar life. There was some virtue in familiarity.

And perhaps, just perhaps, she would go.

… if you have the courage …

She looked almost vengefully down at the card beside her plate before snatching it up and taking it with her to the study.

It seemed a little embarrassing to Alexander as a single gentleman without either his mother or his sister in residence to act as his hostess that he was entertaining a group of his neighbors at an afternoon tea, of all things. However, if he was to give the guest of honor, so to speak, a chance to attend, he must consider both her single state and the distance she must travel, and an evening event would not be practical.

A number of his neighbors from the village and its immediate vicinity had already entertained him and had shown a flattering delight that he had come here and a cautious hope that he would make it his principal residence. The men had probed his interest in farming and horses and hunting and shooting and fishing. The ladies had been more interested in his views on parties and fetes and picnics and assemblies. The mothers had asked questions obviously designed to discover just how single he was, and their daughters had blushed and tittered and fluttered. He had found it all surprisingly heartwarming, considering the dreariness of Brambledean itself, and it really was time that he returned their hospitality with some of his own. A tea party was as good as anything, even if Miss Heyden did not come.

He had explained to those whom he had invited, a deliberate twinkle in his eye, that he wished them to see his drawing room in all its faded splendor so that in a few years’ time, after he had done some renovations, they would be able to marvel at the transformation. The house was indeed faded and shabby, though it was not in quite as bad a condition as he had feared when he first knew he had been encumbered with it. The staff had been small when he came here and was still not much larger, but the butler and housekeeper, Mr. and Mrs. Dearing, husband and wife, had kept every room clean despite the Holland covers that had shrouded the furniture in the main rooms. Every surface that could gleam did so, and every faded curtain and piece of upholstery was at least dust free. There were a few structural issues—some crumbling chimneys, some damaged areas of the roof, some water seepage in the cellars, among other things, and the equipment in the kitchens was antiquated. The stables and paddocks were looking sad. Ivy had been allowed to run riot over walls.