Мэри Бэлоу: Someone to Wed

A whole pile of money needed to be poured into the place before it could become the stately home it was meant to be, and a great deal needed to be done to make the park a worthy setting for such a grand edifice, but both could wait—and must despite the fact that they would offer employment to a large number of people who were currently unemployed or underemployed. There were more important things to be done first. The farms were not prospering, either in cultivated land or in livestock or in buildings and equipment. Those who were employed to work them were suffering as a result. Their homes were hardly better than hovels and their wages had not been raised in ten years or more—when they had been paid at all, that was. Their children were poorly clothed and uneducated. Their wives tended to look haggard.

There were more than enough problems here to overwhelm him, but he had cast them all aside for one afternoon in order to host a tea party—which might, just possibly, lead to an ultimate solution to those very problems. That faint hope would come to nothing, of course, if Miss Heyden failed to come. But he was really not sure he wanted her to.

He had not warmed to her on the occasion of his visit to Withington House, and it was not because of her looks. He had found her whole manner cold and … strange. Her veil and the shadowed part of the room in which she had sat without once getting to her feet had had him thinking a little hilariously of witches and witches’ dens. And her marriage proposal had offended him. It had seemed all wrong, even outrageous. He had asked himself again on the long drive home in his curricle, of course, if he found it so because it was she who had offered, not he. Why would it be fine for him to make a proposal based almost entirely upon monetary considerations but was not for her? The admission that he was applying a double standard had done nothing to endear her more to him, however. She just did not seem feminine to him, whatever the devil that meant.

How wealthy was she, anyway? Very wealthy, according to her, but very was not a precise word, was it? He hated the fact that it mattered, that he might overlook all his misgivings about her personally if the money was sufficient. He hated what that fact suggested about him. He hoped she would not come. But a brief note arrived the day before the tea, accepting his invitation.

She was one of the last to arrive. There were eleven people already in the drawing room apart from Alexander himself, a few of them seated, most of them still on their feet, frankly looking around the room or out through the windows, all warmly cheerful and animated and happy to be there. One young lady had just executed a pirouette in the middle of the floor, her hands clasped to her bosom, and declared that the room would be perfect for an informal dance if only Lord Riverdale would consider using it as such. Her mother was just reproving her, but with a laughing look cast Alexander’s way, when Dearing announced the twelfth guest, and Miss Heyden stepped past him and stood just inside the doorway. Alexander strode toward her, his hand outstretched, a smile on his face.

He had still been half hoping she would not come.

She was remarkably tall for a woman—only a couple of inches shorter than his own six foot one—and willowy and slender. She was doing nothing to minimize her height, as tall women tended to do. She held herself very erect and kept her chin high. She was dressed with simple elegance in a lavender high-waisted dress and a small-brimmed silver-gray bonnet with matching facial veil. A few of the other ladies had retained their bonnets too, so hers did not look totally out of place. The veil did, however. Her face was visible through it, but not the birthmark. She looked haughty and cold and remote, and it seemed to Alexander that the temperature of the room dropped a few degrees. Even her hand when she set it in the one he held out toward her—slender and long fingered—was chilly.

“How do you do, Lord Riverdale?” she said in that low voice he remembered with its very precise diction.

“I am delighted you came, Miss Heyden,” he lied. “Do you know any of my neighbors?” He was fully aware that she did not—he had been careful not to invite either Sweeney or Richman. “Allow me to introduce you.”

Conversation in the room had all but hushed. That was partly understandable, of course. A new face was always of great interest to people who spent the bulk of their lives in the country with the same few friends and neighbors. Even more intriguing, though, was a face that ought to be at least partly familiar, since she lived no farther than eight miles or so away but was in fact not familiar at all. Of course, no one was seeing a new face even now. She did not raise the veil as Alexander took her about the room, introducing her to everyone as they went. He watched all his neighbors being polite to her but leaning back from her an almost imperceptible half inch or so, clearly disturbed by the anonymity of her appearance and the aloof arrogance of her manner despite the fact that she repeated their names and had a polite word for each of them.

There was something … other about her, Alexander thought. He could think of no more definite a word.

His neighbors resumed their hearty, good-humored conversation over the next hour and a half, during which time they were joined by the remaining three guests. Clearly they were all gratified to have been invited and were happy to see the inside of his home, to judge for themselves how shabby it was, to see him in his own proper milieu. They had come to please and be pleased, to be amiable, to make a friend of him. Brambledean Court and the Earl of Riverdale were, after all, at the heart of their neighborhood, and his arrival here had raised their hope of a more vivid, more elevating social life than they had enjoyed for years, or a whole lifetime in many cases. They sat or stood and moved about freely while partaking of the feast Mrs. Mathers, Alexander’s cook, had produced with great enthusiasm and ingenuity with her ancient equipment.

Miss Heyden sat in their midst the whole while. At first, she was with the vicar and his wife and a retired army colonel and his wife. Then others took their place, clearly curious about her and kind enough not to leave her isolated. She did not move from the chair to which he had directed her after introducing her to everyone. She was not unsociable. She spoke when spoken to and listened with a certain poise and grace. She sipped her tea beneath her veil but ate nothing.

It was hard, Alexander discovered, not to be aware of her at every moment. It would be unkind to say that she was the one discordant note in an otherwise warm and harmonious party. She was not. But everyone who approached her somehow became overhearty in her presence, and no one stayed beside her for longer than a few minutes. It would have been inaccurate to describe her manner as cold. It was not. She was neither taciturn nor supercilious nor anything else a guest ought not to be. She was just … other . And it was the veil. Surely it was the veil. It all felt a bit like being at a party one of the guests had mistaken for a masquerade, and no one liked to tell her she had been mistaken. Everyone seemed a little embarrassed. Everyone made a point of not noticing the shrouded face.

One of his tenant farmers and his wife were the first to take their leave. It was the signal for everyone else, though most people seemed flatteringly reluctant to go.

“I took the liberty,” Alexander said when Miss Heyden too got to her feet, “of having your carriage sent back to Withington, Miss Heyden. I shall do myself the honor of escorting you home in mine.”

She looked steadily at him through the veil before sitting again without a word of reply and clasping her hands loosely in her lap.