Мэри Бэлоу - Someone to Wed

There was another short silence. Perhaps he was waiting for a further explanation. “You have a way,” he said at last, “of turning your eyes toward me as you speak but not your face. It must be hard on your eyes. Will you not turn your head too? I saw the left side of your face when I visited you, and if you will recall, I did not run from the room screaming or grimace horribly or have a fit of the vapors.”

She wanted to laugh at the unexpectedness of his words, but turned her face toward him instead. Would she ever be able to do it with ease? But would there be another occasion? She was still not at all sure she wished to continue with this—or that he did.

“It really is not horrible, you know,” he said, after letting his eyes roam over her face. “I can understand that it makes you self-conscious. I can understand that as a young lady you must lament what you consider a serious blemish to your looks. But it is not altogether unsightly. Anyone looking at you will of course notice it immediately. Some will even avoid any further acquaintance with you. Those are people who do not deserve your regard anyway. Most people, however, will surely look and then over look. Though I noticed the first time and have noticed again now, I would be willing to wager that after seeing you a few more times I will not even see the blemish any longer. You will simply be you.”

Will, he had said, not would . He expected to see her again, then? She drew a slow breath. Her uncle used to say much the same thing as Lord Riverdale had just said. What birthmark? he used to say if ever it was referred to, and then he would pretend to start with surprise as he looked at her and noticed it. And sometimes he would ask her to look at him full face, and he would frown as he glanced from one side of her face to the other and say something like Ah yes, the purple marks are on the left side. I could not remember.

“And what about before you were ten?” the earl asked when she said nothing. “Did your parents die?”

“My life began when I was ten, Lord Riverdale,” she said. “I do not remember what came before.”

He looked steadily at her, a slight frown between his brows. He did not press the question further, however.

It was time to turn the tables on him, since it seemed she could not simply curl up in a ball on the floor and she would not give in to the panic that still clawed at her insides. “And what about your life before you inherited your title?” she asked. She knew some basic facts, but not details.

“It was a dull but happy life—dull to talk about, happy enough to live,” he told her. “I had both parents until seven years ago, and I have one sister, of whom I am dearly fond. Not all people are so fortunate in their siblings. My father was devoted to his hounds and his horses and the hunt. He was hearty and well liked, and rather impecunious, I am afraid. It took me a good five years after his passing to set Riddings Park on a firm financial footing again. By that time my sister had been released from an unfortunate marriage by the untimely passing of her husband and was living with my mother and me again, and I was settling into the life I expected to continue with very few changes until my demise. There was only one slight bump of unease on my horizon, and that was the fact that I was heir to a twenty-year-old boy earl, who could not be expected to marry and produce an heir of his own for a number of years. But it seemed a slight worry. Harry was a healthy and basically decent lad. You took the trouble to learn some facts about me. You no doubt know exactly what happened to bring my worries to fruition.”

“The young earl’s father had married his mother bigamously,” she said, “with the result that the earl was illegitimate and no longer eligible for the title. It passed to you instead. What was—or is—your relationship to him?”

“Second cousin,” he said. “Harry and I share a great-grandfather, the venerable Stephen Westcott, Earl of Riverdale.”

“You did not want the title?” she asked.

“Why would I?” he asked in return. “It brought me duties and responsibilities and headaches in return for the dubious distinction of being called Earl of Riverdale and my lord instead of plain Alexander Westcott, which I always thought a rather distinguished name.”

Many men would have killed for such a title, she thought, even without a fortune to go with it. She was intrigued to discover that it meant little to him. The deference, even awe, with which his neighbors had treated him during tea was clearly not important to him. He would rather be back at his precious Riddings Park, where his life had been dull but happy enough, to use his own description.

Before she met him she had expected him to be a toplofty, conceited aristocrat—that was why he had been third on her list instead of first. She had expected it even more when she first set eyes upon him.

She realized suddenly how very alone they were in the close confines of his carriage, and she felt again all her unease at his gorgeous masculinity. For it was not just his perfect looks. There was something else about him that somehow caught at the breath in her throat and wrapped about her in an invisible but quite suffocating way. It was something she had never experienced before—but how could she have done?

“Did you ever consider marriage before you inherited the title?” she asked him.

He raised his eyebrows but did not answer immediately. “I did,” he said.

“And did you have anyone specific in mind?” She hoped the answer was no.

“No,” he said, and she did not believe he was lying.

“What were you looking for?” she asked him. “What sort of … qualities?” It was none of her business, of course, and his answer—if he did answer, that was—could only bring her pain or discomfort. He would hardly say he had been searching for a reclusive, awkward beanpole of a woman with a ruined face and an unladylike involvement in business—and almost thirty years old, could he?

“None in particular,” he said. “I merely hoped to meet someone with whom I might expect to be comfortable.”

It seemed a strange answer from a man who looked as he did and had had so much to offer before he inherited Brambledean. “You did not look for love?” she asked him. “Or beauty?”

“I hoped for affection in my marriage, certainly,” he said. “But beauty as an end in itself? There are many kinds of beauty, many of them not immediately apparent.”

“And could you be comfortable with me?” she asked him. “Could you ever feel affection for me?” She would not ask, of course, if he could ever find her beautiful.

He gazed at her for so long that she had to make a very concerted effort not to turn her face away. Would this dreadful afternoon never end? “I can only be honest with you, Miss Heyden,” he said at last. “I do not know.”

Well, she had asked for it. Had she expected him to lie? At least he had been gentleman enough to give a diplomatic answer. If this journey did not end soon, she would surely scream. But she could not leave it alone. “My money would come at too high a price?” she asked.

“There is great pain behind those words,” he said. “It is your pain that makes me hesitate, Miss Heyden.”

She felt a little as though he had punched her in the stomach with a closed fist, so unexpected was his answer. What did he know about pain? Specifically her pain? “It is too unattractive a quality?” she asked with as much hauteur as she could muster. She turned her head away.

“Oh no,” he said. “Quite the contrary.”

She frowned in incomprehension. But he did not explain and there was no chance for further questions. At last, at last, the distance between Brambledean and Withington had been covered and his carriage was drawing to a halt outside her own door.