Мэри Бэлоу - Someone to Wed

“This has all been the making of him, then?” Alexander asked dubiously.

“This?” The duke brooded over his answer, his glass tapping against his lips again. “Rather, life is the making or breaking of all of us, Riverdale. We are all tested in different ways. This is Harry’s testing ground.”

It would have seemed a strange answer if Alexander had not already learned that Netherby was not at all as he seemed from the image he projected to the world. He wondered what had been the duke’s testing ground. He knew what his had been—and still was. And if Netherby was right, as undoubtedly he was, there was no single test for anyone. Life was a continuous series of tests, all or some or none of which one might pass or fail and learn from or not.

Wren had lifted the baby to sit on her raised knees and was bouncing her gently. Abby was up on her knees beside her, trying to make the baby smile. Anna was smiling happily.

“Wren has neither seen nor heard anything of or from any of them since her aunt took her away when she was ten years old,” Alexander said. “Her mother was about to commit her to an insane asylum.”

“Because of her face,” Netherby said. It was not a question. “Because it was imperfect and the lady’s very survival depends upon her own beauty and the perfection of everyone connected with her.”

“Yes,” Alexander said.

“Did you want me to come with you?” Netherby asked.

“No,” Alexander said. “But thank you.”

The baby, happy and smiling and bouncing one moment, was suddenly crying. Anna was on her feet, laughing and taking the child from Wren. The baby still howled with what sounded more like temper than pain.

“Ah,” Netherby said, pushing his shoulder away from the tree, “it is time to discover a secluded nook, it seems. We should have named our daughter Tyranny rather than Josephine. Eternally Demanding Stomach would have been too much of a mouthful. And I do believe there was a pun in there somewhere.” He went strolling off toward his family.

“Wren,” Alexander said after following him, “come for a stroll with me?”

They walked among the trees, in a different direction from the one Anna and Avery had taken with Josephine.

“I have never held a baby before,” Wren said. “Oh, Alexander—” But then she felt foolish. All women were silly about babies, were they not? Perhaps that fact ensured the protection of the young of the human race. She had wanted a family of her own, but her thoughts had centered mostly about being married. Now that she was wed, she yearned for motherhood too. Would she never be satisfied?

“Perhaps,” he said, “you will be holding one of your own within the next year or so, Wren.” He disengaged his arm from hers and set it about her shoulders to draw her against his side. Surprised, she set her own arm about his waist. “What do you want to do? Do you want to go home? Do you want to stay?”

“I am home,” she said, and when he turned his head to look at her, their faces were a mere few inches apart.

“In London?” he said.

“Here,” she said, and he tipped his head slightly to one side. She knew he understood that she did not mean here in Richmond Park. “I am not running away any longer, Alexander. I instructed Maude before we left the house to make all my veils disappear before I return. I told her she could sell them if she wished. But she said she would burn them with the greatest pleasure.”

“Wren,” he said, and he kissed first her forehead and then her mouth.

“I am as I am,” she said.

He dipped his head closer to hers. “Those are the loveliest words I have heard you utter,” he said.

Her knees turned weak. I care, he had told her last night. And he did care. Those were the loveliest words she had heard him utter. But she would not say so aloud. She would reveal too much about herself if she did.

She looked up at an old oak tree by which they had stopped. “I have not climbed a tree since I fell out of that one the day I left Roxingly,” she said.

“You are not by any chance planning to climb now, are you?” he asked her.

Many of the branches were wide and almost horizontal to the ground. Some of them were low. And some of the higher branches were easily accessible from lower ones. She was not a child. She had not climbed for twenty years, and even then not often. She was wearing a new sprigged muslin dress. She had the body of an athlete, he had told her. She was afraid of heights. But that unoffending tree suddenly looked like all the barriers that had ever stood between her and freedom. It was silly. It was childish. It would ruin her dress and expose her legs. Her shoes were totally unsuitable. She would probably fall again and break every limb she possessed, not to mention her head. She needed to make pro and con lists.

“Why not?” she said, and took her arm from about his waist, shrugged off his arm from her shoulders, and marched to the tree and up it.

Well, she did not exactly march up. Indeed, she hauled herself onto the lowest branch in a most ungainly fashion and then stepped gingerly up to the next and crawled inelegantly up to the third before looking down. Her rational mind told her she was still pathetically close to the ground. If Alexander below her stretched up an arm and she stretched down a leg, he would surely be able to grasp her ankle or even her knee. Her irrational mind told her she was in danger of bumping her head on the sky before falling from it like Icarus. She turned with great care and sat on the branch. Her legs felt boneless.

He was grinning at her. He had removed his hat and dropped it to the grass. “I daresay,” he said, “it must be almost twenty years since I climbed a tree.”

She grinned back at him before deciding that looking downward was not a good idea. He came up after her until his boot was on the branch beside her and then disappeared upward. He sat on a branch adjacent to her own and slightly above it and draped his wrists over his bent knees.

“I think,” he said, “it is still almost twenty years since I climbed a tree.”

“Do not belittle me,” she said as she edged along to set her own back against the trunk. “I have one question. How do we get down?”

“I do not know about you,” he said. “I intend to climb down the way I came up.”

“I thought so,” she said. “But that is the whole problem.”

“Never fear,” he said. “When teatime comes, I shall fetch you some food.”

And somehow they found the sheer silliness of their exchange hilariously funny and laughed and snorted with glee.

“And maybe a blanket to keep you warm tonight,” he added.

“And breakfast in the morning?” she asked.

“You are very demanding,” he told her.

“Ah, but—” She tipped her head to look up at him. “You care.”

Their laughter stopped. He gazed back down at her, his smile lingering, and she wished she had not said that—although he had said it first. Last night.

“Yes, I do,” he said. “You had better tell me what I can fetch you for breakfast, then.”

“Toast and coffee,” she said. “Marmalade. Milk and sugar.”

“Wren.” He held her gaze. “Are you regretting any of this?”

She closed her eyes and shook her head. How could she regret it? Yes, marriage was vastly different from what she had expected. It had challenged her in unimaginable ways—and they had only been wed for two days. But how she loved it. And how she loved him.

She would not ask him if he was regretting it. It would be a pointless question. If she regretted it, there was something he could do about it. He could take her home and leave her to the hermit’s life to which she was accustomed. If he regretted it, however, there was nothing she could do to make life better for him.