Someone to Wed

Everything suggested a grand occasion, and it was all in her honor.

And there was the ballroom itself. Wren had seen it on an earlier visit and had been awed by its size and magnificence. Now it looked unfamiliar in all the splendor of banks of flowers and chandeliers and wall sconces in which hundreds of candles burned and a freshly polished floor that gleamed in the candlelight and chairs upholstered in dark green velvet arranged in a double row around the perimeter.

She had never in her life felt more intimidated. Just three months ago she had been living the life of a virtual recluse, carefully veiled on the rare occasions when she ventured beyond her own home. Even indoors she had worn her veil when any stranger intruded. She had lifted it to a stranger for the first time in almost twenty years when the Earl of Riverdale came to Withington at her invitation. Was it possible that was only three months ago? How could she possibly have come from that to this in so short a time? And why was she doing this? It was everything she had been quite adamant she would never do.

She had moved a few paces into the ballroom while all the others—her own family group, Avery and Anna, Cousin Louise and Jessica, Cousins Mildred and Thomas, the dowager countess and Cousin Matilda—were clustered outside, talking while they awaited the appearance of the first guests. Why was she doing it? No one had pressured her. Indeed, no one had even suggested a ball in her honor—they had all respected her desire for privacy. Even Alexander had not been suggesting it that afternoon in the carriage. Was it her mother, then? Had her mother goaded her into doing something beyond her wildest imaginings? Had seeing her again and listening to her made Wren believe that the only way to be free of her past was to open wide the door of her childhood prison and step out into the widest of wide worlds? Was a ton ball the most blatant way it could be done? And would she then be free? Was she now free?

She supposed not. But miracles did not always come in a single flash of time. Sometimes they came with every step forward one took when every instinct urged two steps back. Sometimes they came with the simple courage to say no longer, no more. She raised one hand to touch the side of her bare, unveiled face and felt the stirrings of panic. And so she took one step farther into the room.

An arm came through her own on her right side, and almost simultaneously another arm linked itself through hers on the left.

“I wonder,” Anna said, “if you are feeling the sort of paralyzing terror I was feeling in this very room last year, Wren. I daresay you are, though you look as cool and poised as you always look.”

“It is a good thing we wear our skirts long,” Wren said. “You cannot see my shaking knees.”

“If it is any consolation to you,” Anna said, “I will add that my first ball here will always be one of my most treasured memories.”

“You were right about the colors, Wren, though I was dubious,” Elizabeth said. “Your gown is perfect. As Mama said before we left home, you look like a piece of both springtime and summer.”

“And I was right about Alexander, Lizzie,” Wren said. “He did recognize the reference to daffodils without having to be told.”

And then, long before she was quite ready—but would she ever be?—the guests began to arrive and it was time to form the receiving line while the uniformed majordomo stepped into place beyond the ballroom doors to announce the guests as they came to the top of the stairs. Anna and Avery stood inside the doors, Wren and Alexander next to them, Elizabeth and her mother beyond them.

And Wren stood there, smiling and inclining her head, shaking hands, even presenting her cheek for the occasional kiss for a whole hour while close to three hundred of the crème de la crème of society filed past and greeted her and took a good look at her. She made no attempt to hide the left side of her face. She behaved as though there were no damage there at all. There were several lingering looks, a few raised eyebrows, one raised lorgnette, and two open grimaces. That was all. Everyone else greeted her with smiles and polite remarks. Several were even warm in their greetings. The raised lorgnette, Wren realized only after it had passed into the ballroom with its owner, belonged to the older of the two ladies who had been walking by the Serpentine with Alexander on the day of her own arrival in London.

“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.