Мэри Бэлоу: Someone to Wed

“I believe it is time to proceed with the dancing,” Avery said at last. An elaborately jeweled quizzing glass was halfway to his eye. “I must congratulate you and thank you effusively, Wren. This third ball at Archer House during my tenure as duke is clearly destined to be as sad a squeeze as the other two. Such success can only enhance my reputation.”

Wren laughed, as she was intended to do, she realized from the keen, amused glance he cast her way. And she turned her laughing face to Alexander, who had somehow contrived to look even more handsome than usual tonight in his black tailed evening coat and silver satin knee breeches and silver embroidered waistcoat with white stockings and linen and elaborately tied neckcloth and lace at his cuffs.

“The first act of the drama is over,” she said. “Now for the second—the dancing.”

“It is always worth remembering,” he said just before he led her out onto the floor to form a set for the first country dance of the evening, “that most other people will be dancing too and focused upon their own little world, and that those who are not dancing will be either engrossed in conversation with one another or watching any of a hundred or so of the other dancers. We always tend to believe that everyone is watching us. It is very rarely so.”

“Ah.” She laughed. “A timely lesson in humility.” Even so, she was not convinced. Alexander must have drawn more than his fair share of eyes wherever he went, and so, surely, would she tonight for a variety of reasons. The ball was in her honor. She was the new Countess of Riverdale but unknown to the ton . Word must have spread about her facial blemish, and, even if it had not, everyone would have had a good look at it tonight. She was unusually tall. She had been described in the morning papers the day after her wedding as the vastly wealthy Heyden glassware heiress. She was the newly discovered sister of Lord Hodges. Therefore, she must be the daughter of the famous—or infamous—Lady Hodges. Oh, there were any number of reasons to be skeptical of the comfort Alexander had tried to offer. But no matter. She was here and she was not going to take two steps back now—or even one. She was not even going to continue to stand in the same spot. She stepped forward on her husband’s arm, her spine straight, her chin raised, a smile on her face, and—lest the smile look too much like a grimace—a sparkle in her eyes.

The worst was over. Everyone had seen her.

No, it was not. The dancing was yet to come. And she could not remember a single dance or what steps and figures went with the dances she could not remember. Her legs felt wooden, her knees half locked, her feet too large for the ends of her legs.

“Wren,” Alexander said, setting his free hand over hers on his sleeve, “I do admire you, you know. More than I have admired anyone else in my whole life.”

But how was that going to help?

Netherby would certainly be able to boast that his third ball at Archer House was as successful as the other two, Alexander thought as the evening progressed, and undoubtedly would do so at the end of the evening just to get a smile out of Wren. Not that smiles needed to be coaxed out of her tonight. She had not stopped smiling since the first guest appeared in the doorway of the ballroom. And it was not just a sociable smile. It sparkled. She looked like the happiest person at the ball, her shoulders back, her head high. And she danced every set—with him, with Sidney, with her brother, with one of her brother’s friends, with Netherby, with strangers to whom she had been introduced for the first time in the receiving line. And she danced with precision and apparent enjoyment. She went in to supper on Uncle Richard’s arm.

Perhaps only he understood just how much courage it was taking her to get through the evening. Or perhaps not. His mother and Lizzie surely understood. So, he suspected, did Anna and Netherby and … well, all his family. So did Hodges. He even came to talk about it with Alexander during the break between two sets after supper.

“How can Roe be such a smashing success tonight after being a hermit for twenty years?” he asked. “Where does she find the poise and courage, Riverdale? I honestly do not feel worthy to be her brother.”

“Or I to be her husband,” Alexander said with a laugh. “Her uncle gave her the name Wren apparently because she looked like a caged bird. I think she has finally discovered that the door of the cage has been open all these years, and she has fluttered outside and found that freedom is worth fighting for.”

“Yes,” her brother agreed. “She is fighting, is she not?”

“Oh yes,” Alexander said. “This ballroom is her battleground.”

“I have engaged Miss Parmiter’s hand for the next set,” Hodges said. “I must go and claim her. It is a waltz and she has only this week been approved by one of the patronesses of Almack’s to dance it.”

Wren had been granted no such approval, though several of the patronesses were present this evening and doubtless would oblige if asked. But she was almost thirty years old and the Countess of Riverdale and did not need anyone’s approval for anything. She had already waltzed this evening with her brother, and it had pained Alexander not to partner her himself. But etiquette decreed that he dance with his wife no more than twice this evening and he had preferred to wait for the waltz later in the evening—now, in fact. He had danced every set with different partners, but this was the one for which he had waited. He had reserved it with her. It would have been disastrous to arrive at her side only to discover that someone else had claimed it.

She smiled when she saw him come. To a casual observer it would have seemed that her expression had not changed, for she had smiled all evening. But he could see a greater depth to her eyes, a warmth of regard she reserved for him alone. And it was time, surely, for both of them to acknowledge what had happened since that first ghastly meeting at Withington, since her withdrawal of her offer on Easter Sunday, since his sensible, rational offer in Hyde Park. For something had happened. Everything had happened, in fact, and he was sure it could not have happened just to him.

“Ma’am,” he said, reaching for her hand and bowing over it as he kept his eyes on hers, “this is my dance, I believe.”

Elizabeth, beside her, was fanning her face and looking amused.

“Sir,” Wren said, “I believe it is. And I can almost promise,” she added after he had led her onto the floor, “not to tread all over your feet. I did not tread on Colin’s even once earlier.”

“Wren,” he said as one of the violinists was still tuning his instrument and other dancers gathered about them, “you have done it. You have stepped out fearlessly into the world and proved that you can do anything you choose to do.”

“Ah, not fearlessly,” she said.

“Courageously, then,” he said. “No courage is needed if there is no fear, after all, and you are the most courageous woman—no, person —I have ever known.”

“And I do not believe I could swim across the English Channel to France,” she said.

“But would you choose to try?” he asked.

“No.” They both laughed.

And the music began. They waltzed tentatively at first, concentrating upon performing the correct steps and finding a shared rhythm. Then he twirled her into a spin and she raised a flushed, smiling face to his. Her spine arched inward with the pressure of his hand at her waist. Her left hand rested on his shoulder while her right hand was clasped in his. And the world was a wonderful place, and happiness was a real thing even if it welled up only occasionally into conscious moments of joy like this one. His family—and hers—and friends and peers and acquaintances danced around them with a shared pleasure in this celebration of life and friendship and laughter. And his wife was in his arms and they were at the very beginning of a marriage that would, God willing, bring them contentment and more on down the years to old age and perhaps even beyond.