Someone to Wed

“What is your impression of Brambledean?” Wren asked the ladies in an attempt to turn the conversation away from herself. Though even that choice of topic was probably unwise since they could hardly pretend rapture over the house and park, and their very dilapidation would remind them that he was too poor to do anything about it while she had riches untold.

“Clearly it was once a stately home of great splendor,” Mrs. Westcott said. “It may be so again in the future now that Alex is here to pay attention to it. But our focus since we arrived on Thursday has been upon enjoying our time together as a family and taking Alex’s mind off the challenges that lie ahead of him here.”

Wren felt rebuked as the conversation limped onward. The two ladies were perfectly well-bred, but the conviction that their good manners must mask disapproval, even dislike, grew upon Wren. And it was at least partly her fault. She was unable to relax or to cast off the defensive, faintly hostile demeanor with which she had begun the visit. She wished she could go back and start again, but would she behave any differently? Could she behave differently? She found it quite impossible to smile or to sit back in her chair and at least look relaxed. The Earl of Riverdale by contrast was warm, charming, and smiling. It did not seem at all fair.

When she estimated that half an hour had passed, the requisite duration for a polite visit—one of the many social graces her governess had taught her—Wren got to her feet to take her leave, assuring the ladies as she did so that she was delighted to have made their acquaintance. She thanked the earl for the invitation and the tea, and felt a huge surge of relief that it was over, that she had done it, however badly, something she would not have thought even possible just a couple of weeks ago—or even this morning. And it really was over. All over. No one could doubt that, least of all Wren herself. Yet despite her relief, she felt a dull ache of disappointment too.

It had seemed such a simple scheme when she had first devised it.

The ladies made polite noises back at her—she did not really listen to exactly what they said. The Earl of Riverdale accompanied her downstairs in silence and gave the order to the butler to have her carriage brought around in half an hour’s time.

“Half an hour?” she said, frowning at him as he led her out onto the terrace.

“You traveled all this way by carriage,” he said, “and have been sitting in my drawing room since then. Now you have the long journey home ahead of you. At least take a little time for some air and exercise first. Shall we?” He offered his arm.

Did he feel obliged to tell her, then, to put into words what had been glaringly clear up in the drawing room? Well, perhaps he was right. At least she would not then be watching for his curricle or for the arrival of the post every day for the next fortnight or so while telling herself she was doing no such thing. Some things needed to be spoken aloud.

She set her hand in the crook of his arm and felt the pangs of what seemed strangely like deep grief.

Six

They took the opposite direction from the one they had taken the last time she was here. There was a stretch of lawn and then a thick copse of overgrown trees and beyond that what at one time must have been a magnificent alley lined with elm trees. Alexander thought it was still impressive with the trees stretching into the distance in two straight lines and a wide grassy avenue between. The trees needed pruning and the grass needed scything, though it had been done fairly recently. Wooden benches had been placed at intervals across the alley, and a summer house at the end, which from this distance looked to be in better repair than it actually was. He must have the benches removed, Alexander thought, as they were no longer fit to be sat upon, though he liked the idea of them and the suggestion they made of leisurely walks with rests along the way, surrounded by rustling verdant greenery and a sense of remoteness and peace. There were a few daisies growing in the grass in defiance of the gardeners’ scythes. He rather liked them and thought it a shame they were considered a weed.

“This is both pleasant and unexpected,” Miss Heyden said. “I assumed that the trees marked the eastern border of the park.”

“The park is vast,” he said. “Its size is just one more problem to add to the others, as it would take an army of gardeners working full-time to keep it pristine. But eventually it will serve the dual role of offering employment and giving enjoyment.”

“This alley reminds me of a vast church,” she said. “It arouses the same feelings of serenity and awe. But it is different from a church in that it is alive.”

“You favor nature over art, then?” he asked. “I have seen cathedrals that have rendered me speechless because of the artistry that has gone into every detail from flying buttresses to gargoyle heads among the rafters.”

“But there is room for both art and nature,” she said. “We surely impoverish our lives if we forever feel we must choose between apparent opposites. Why should we? I could spend hours in a church just looking and being. And I could spend hours outdoors just breathing in the life of it all and knowing myself part of it.”

This, he thought, was a different woman from the one who had sat on the edge of her seat in his drawing room a short while ago, making labored conversation with his mother and sister. That woman had been stiff, formal, not very likable. He thought of her telling his mother that she ran the glassworks herself, that she did not subscribe to the notion that a woman must remain at home while a man took care of her needs. And he thought of her telling him that she wished to be wed, and—on a different occasion—that she wanted to be kissed. He thought of her sudden laughter when he had briefly lost his temper with her and said damn your face. And he thought of her gazing at the daffodil bank at Withington and calling them golden trumpets of hope.

Here and there must both be appreciated in order to experience life fully, she had said once. This and that. Then and now. Art and nature. Daffodils and roses. The woman who had sat in his drawing room this afternoon and the woman who walked with him now.

Attraction and repulsion. There was another pair of opposites.

They strolled onward, not speaking for a while.

“Thank you,” he said at last.

“For?” She turned her head, eyebrows raised.

“I know it was incredibly difficult for you to come this afternoon,” he said. “I know it was especially difficult to leave your veil behind.”

“They do not like me,” she said.

He frowned. They were not usually either hasty or harsh in passing judgment upon people they had just met, but he knew they had not found the visit easy. She had seemed to have a wall erected about herself in the absence of the physical veil, and it had not been easy, or even possible, to get behind it. He had tried to set her at her ease by appearing to be at his ease. His mother and sister had tried to set her at her ease, and they were normally skilled at doing it because they were both naturally warm, affectionate ladies. But the conversation had limped along, sagging, sinking to banalities, never reaching the point at which it flowed without conscious prompting. It had really been quite ghastly, in fact. The half hour had seemed endless.

“Why would they dislike you?” he asked.

“Because they love you,” she said.

“I have not said anything to them about any possible connection between us except as neighbors,” he told her.

“Ah, but I do not believe either your mother or your sister is lacking in intelligence,” she said.