Someone to Wed

She came to Brambledean two days later, bringing her maid for propriety’s sake. It was a gloomy, blustery day, a fact that ought not to have mattered for as long as they remained indoors, but did. The maid was taken to the servants’ quarters, and he showed Miss Heyden about the house. Shabby, unlived-in rooms looked even more gloomy with heavy gray clouds beyond the windows. He showed her all of it—the ancient library to which no new book had been added for half a century or more, or if one had, Alexander had not discovered it yet. He showed her the visitor salons and offices, all on the ground floor. He bypassed the drawing room on the first floor, since she had seen it already, but showed her the so-called music room next to it, though there was not a single musical instrument there. He even showed her all the rooms for which there was no specific description, as well as the dining room and the ballroom, in which it was doubtful anyone had danced for a century. He showed her some of the guest chambers and the portrait gallery on the second floor. The gallery was sadly out-of-date, and all the paintings and their heavy frames were in dire need of cleaning and restoration. He took her down to the kitchens, where Mrs. Dearing and Mrs. Mathers said nothing about the many deficiencies of equipment that had not been updated in goodness knew how long.

They tramped about the inner stretches of the park to the west of the house, though he gave her the option of staying indoors and taking tea in the drawing room. She had brought a heavy cloak with her and wore stout walking shoes. She also wore a bonnet, which she had kept on indoors, the veil pulled down over her face, presumably for the benefit of servants she did not know. She glanced about her as they walked, not saying a great deal, and she turned frequently to look at the house from various vantage points. She was looking critically, he could see—at the roof, at the chimneys, at the ivy on the walls. Her eyes moved to the stables and carriage house. The park was vast, not quite wild, but failing to please either as a cultivated garden or as a deliberate piece of unspoiled wilderness. It was not the sort of space in which one felt drawn to stroll for relaxation.

“It is shabby and neglected,” he said, “though the gardeners work long hours and do the best they can. There are just not enough of them.” And there was not enough money to hire more, he might have added, though that must be obvious to her.

“Tell me about the farms, the crops, the livestock, the laborers,” she said. “How progressive are the methods used here?”

They were brisk, businesslike questions, matched by her manner. She was studying everything with an appraising eye, he realized, and listening with an attentive ear. She was, in fact, interviewing him—as she had every right to do. He would not have invited her here, after all, if he had not been considering her offer, and she would not have come if the offer had already been withdrawn. He would have expected to have this sort of meeting and to answer these sorts of questions with the father of any lady for whom he offered, though not with the bride herself. It felt strange and wrong, and deuced embarrassing, even humiliating. But there was no reason why she should not do business on her own account. She was obviously intelligent, and just as obviously she saw no reason to hide it, to simper and gaze at him with wide, worshipful eyes and pretend to be helpless. Picturing her behaving that way was a bit amusing, in fact.

“It is a Herculean task that faces me,” he said at last. “Do you wonder I did not want the title?”

“No, I do not,” she said. “But you have it and that is that. I can see that you have a clear choice to make. You can either go away from here and forget all about it while your steward does his best—or his worst—to keep things rolling along as they have for many years past. Or you can marry a rich wife. But I know that with you it is no real choice at all, for you are a man with a conscience. I suspect it is not so much the house and park or even the farms that concern you, but the people involved. Actually, I more than suspect. So a rich wife it must be. But even in that you are hampered by your conscience. You could have seized the offer I made you ten days or so ago, despite my appearance, and thus have solved all your problems. But you could not do that. You would not—will not—marry me unless I know exactly what I am facing. Now I believe I do. And you will not marry me unless you can be sure that you can at least respect me. Do you? Respect me, that is?”

She was the strangest woman he had ever known, and that was a vast understatement. She was the strangest person of either gender, actually. She was so very direct in her speech and manner that there was no hiding from her; there was no social smoothing of edges, no gentle way of being tactful. But he was irritated by the fact that she was frank and open about business but entirely closed up about herself.

“Miss Heyden,” he said, coming to a stop beneath a huge old oak tree and setting his back against the trunk while he folded his arms over his chest. “My motive for considering marriage with you is perfectly obvious. But what about yours for marrying me? You appear to have everything you could possibly need, including that rare commodity for a woman—independence. Why give it all up to a virtual stranger? You told me you wished to be wed. But to just anybody? And will you please pull back your veil?”

She hesitated and then did so. He had felt that he was talking with a mirage, he realized. Now at least she looked human. “I have grown up with a strong sense of myself as a person,” she said. “My uncle and aunt are largely responsible for that. In addition to providing me with a strict governess, who instructed me in everything both academic and social that a lady ought to know, my uncle exposed me to all the work of running a prosperous and successful business, and my aunt encouraged both him and me. Although in many ways the bottom fell out of my world a little over a year ago, I was able to stop myself from tumbling to the depths of despair by taking the reins of the business into my own hands. I am very much in charge of it even when I am here in the country, though I have a competent manager.

“Most women, in contrast, grow up to acquire a sense of themselves as women. They see themselves in the expected roles of daughter, wife, mother, and hostess, devoted to the care of the men in their lives and of their dependent children. I suspect many if not most of them never really see themselves as persons, though I suppose some must. My aunt did, even though she took upon herself the roles of wife and mother and performed them consummately well and was very happy for the last eighteen or nineteen years of her life. If I must choose between being a person and being a typical woman of our times, Lord Riverdale, I would choose personhood without hesitation. Having experienced it, I could not easily give it up. But why can I not be both? This is what I have asked myself recently. Why can I not be a woman as well as a person? Why cannot I marry?”

He remained as he was and looked at her for long moments after she paused, her eyebrows raised, awaiting his reply. She stood a few feet away in the sunshine, tall and slender, proud, chin raised, making no further attempt to hide her face. Yes, he thought, that was what it was about her he had been unable to define thus far. She was not typically feminine. She was more a person than a woman—a strange thought he would have to ponder at his leisure. And yet … could she not be both? Could a woman with a strong sense of herself as a person not also be as attractive as her peers who had been raised for marriage and motherhood—and dependence?

“What if I—or another man—turned out to be different from what you expected?” he asked Miss Heyden. “What if I were as you see me now when I am sober but turned ugly when I had been drinking and turned that ugliness upon my wife and children?” It had happened to his sister, though there had been no children.