Мэри Бэлоу: Someone to Wed

“May I call again?” he asked her.

She would have been a fool to allow it. She opened her mouth to say no. Her emotions were so raw she felt as though she had real, physical wounds. The privacy of her room still felt a million miles away. But the whole of her future life might be hanging in the balance—in the simple difference between yes and no .

Ah, this scheme of hers had seemed so full of hope and possibility when she had concocted it. How could she even have imagined that it was possible?

“Yes,” she said as she saw the coachman outside her door, waiting to open it on a signal from his employer.

Three

The thing was, Alexander thought as he made the same journey four days later, that old dreams had an annoying habit of lingering long after they had no practical place in his life.

He was not made for dreams, for he had always felt compelled to put duty and responsibility before personal inclination, and the two were not compatible. He had put away dreams almost seven years ago when his father died. He had worked tirelessly to set things to rights at Riddings Park even though he had been a very young man at the time. He had made the mistake of reviving those dreams a year or so ago when Riddings was finally prospering, but then he had had to start all over again with Brambledean Court.

This time, however, the task was far more daunting. There were people’s lives and livelihoods at stake. And the only way he could do it was by marrying for money. He had tried to think of other ways, but there were none. Any mortgage or loan would have to be repaid. Any hope of winning a large fortune at the races or the tables would be risky, to say the least. It might just as easily yield a huge loss. No, marriage it would have to be.

The dream, when he had allowed himself to indulge in it, had been the eternal one of the young and hopeful, he supposed—that vision of something more vividly wonderful and magical than anyone else had ever experienced, the grand passion and romance that had inspired the world’s most memorable poetry. It was a bit embarrassing to remember now. He probably would not have found any such love anyway. But there lingered even now a yearning for something different from what he could expect, some … passion. It was not to be, however. Life had other plans for him.

He gazed out at the flowering hedgerows, at the trees whose leaves were still a bright spring green, at the blue sky dotted with fluffs of white cloud, at the sun warming everything below but with the freshness of spring rather than the more somnolent heat of summer. He could smell the good nature smells of the countryside through the open window, and he could hear birds singing above the crunching sound of the carriage wheels and the clopping of the horses’ hooves. Life was good despite everything. He must remember that. One could easily miss its blessings when one wallowed in what might have been. Dreams were all very well in their place, but they must never be allowed to encroach upon reality.

He had been planning to go to London before Easter, though the parliamentary session and the accompanying social Season would not begin until after. The Season was often known as the great marriage mart, and he had planned to shop there this year for a rich wife—ghastly thought, ghastly terminology, ghastly reality. As though ladies were commodities. But all too often they were. He could expect to succeed. He was, after all, a peer of the realm and young. There was, of course, his relative poverty, but it really was only relative . A little over a year ago he had been Mr. Westcott of Riddings Park, a prosperous eligible bachelor. He had been dreading the marriage mart. Was it possible he could be spared the ordeal by finding a wealthy wife even before he got there?

He still did not know exactly why he was making this journey. And why did distances always seem to shorten when one did not particularly want to reach one’s destination? he wondered as the carriage turned onto the driveway to Withington House. Perhaps he ought not to have come again. There was something about Miss Heyden that repelled him. It was not her face. She could not help that, and he fully believed what he had told her, that he would soon become so accustomed to the birthmark that he would no longer notice it. It was not her height either, though the fact that she must have been close to six feet tall might have daunted many men. He was taller. No, it had nothing to do with her appearance.

What repelled him was, paradoxically, the very thing that had brought him back here. Her pain. It was very carefully guarded. It was veiled more heavily than her face was, in fact. It was encased in a coolly poised manner. But it screamed at him from the very depths of her, and he was both horrified and fascinated. He was horrified because he did not want to get drawn into it and because he suspected the pain could engulf her if her poise ever slipped. He was compelled by her, though, because she was human and he had been blessed or cursed with a compassion for human suffering.

But here he was, regardless of all the thoughts and doubts that had teemed through his mind and prevented him from properly enjoying his surroundings. It was too late now not to come. She would probably have heard his arrival, though he was not expected specifically today, and a groom was already coming from the stables. Perhaps she was out, though it seemed unlikely when she was a recluse.

She was not out. She was not in the drawing room either. She came to him there a couple of minutes after he had been shown in, her gray dress looking old and a bit rumpled, her hair twisted up into a simple and rather untidy knot high on the back of her head, her right cheek a bit flushed—and yes, he could see that detail because she wore no veil. She seemed a little breathless, a little bright eyed, and for the first time it struck him that she was more than coldly beautiful. She was rather pretty.

“Lord Riverdale,” she said.

“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I have taken you by surprise. Is this an inconvenient time?”

“No.” She came across the room and offered him her hand. “I was in the study adding up a long column of figures. I shall have to start again when I go back, but that is my fault for not subdividing the column and adding one section at a time. I did not expect that you would come again, and I was so engrossed that I did not even hear your arrival. I hope I have not kept you waiting too long.”

“Not at all.” He took her hand in his and let his gaze linger on her. He had clearly surprised her, and it was taking her a few moments to don her accustomed armor. It was happening, though, before his eyes. Her breathing was being brought under control. The color was receding from her cheek and the sparkle from her eyes. Her manner was becoming cooler and more poised. It was a telling transformation.

Her eyes fell to their hands, and she removed her own. “Well?” she said. “Did you notice today?”

That she was not wearing a veil? But then he realized what she meant— though I noticed the last time and notice 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. “Yes, I did,” he said. “But it is only the third time I have seen you. I have still not recoiled, however, or run screaming from the room.”

“Perhaps,” she said, “you are very desperate for my money.”

He drew a slow breath before allowing himself to reply. “And perhaps, Miss Heyden,” he said, “I will take my leave and allow you to start adding from the top of that column again.”

The color had flooded back into her cheek. “I beg your pardon,” she said. “I ought not to have said that.”

“Why did you?” he asked her. “Do you value yourself so little that you believe only your money gives you any worth at all?”