by Mary Balogh
He smiled and offered an arm to each. “I do apologize for keeping you waiting,” he said.
“Poor lady. I would simply want to die if I were that tall,” Miss Littlewood said, slipping her hand through his arm. “I have heard it said that gentlemen do not like tall ladies.”
“It is a severe misfortune,” her mother said. “One can only feel for her. But where, Lord Riverdale, is her chaperon?”
“I did not ask, ma’am,” he said. “What did you think of the second half of the concert last evening? The best was kept for last, I thought. It is little wonder the cellist is much sought after.”
He had made one firm decision at least during the last few minutes. If he must marry a rich bride this spring or summer, she was not going to be Miss Hetty Littlewood. He was going to have to be more vigilant against the persistent maneuverings of her mother, though it would not be easy.
Why had she come? It was certainly not because she wanted to see some glassware displayed in a few London shops. Had she had second thoughts about Elizabeth’s invitation? About his own? What would he do if she did not call at South Audley Street tomorrow morning? Seek out every gentlewoman’s hotel in London? How many were there, for the love of God?
And why exactly would he do any such thing?
• • •
Wren was a famous maker of lists. They helped organize her thoughts and her time. They increased her efficiency and ensured that everything she needed to do was done in a timely manner. But the ones she had made in her office in Staffordshire had been nothing but a waste of time, for she had made up her mind even before she had started to compose them. Of course she had found more cons than pros. It was her rational mind trying to impose sense upon her emotional self. And since she did not have a close acquaintance with her emotional self, reason had mowed it down with no trouble at all. But the emotional self was the more persistent of the two. It had picked itself up, dusted itself off, and carried on regardless.
She had come.
But she had not come boldly to conquer the world. Rather she had crept in and taken a room at a hotel for gentlewomen. Not that doing so had necessarily been a cowardly move. Having refused two separate invitations to stay at the house on South Audley Street, she could hardly now arrive on the doorstep without warning. The very thought made her cringe.
She had settled herself in her room and decided to step out for air and exercise, flatly refusing Maude’s company since her maid was exhausted and needed to lie down for a while. Wren had told herself that she would pay a call upon Lady Overfield before she lost her courage. But she had lost it anyway. What if they were not at home? What if they had other visitors? What if they looked visibly dismayed to see her? They would not, of course. For one thing, a servant would give them ample warning of her arrival before admitting her to their presence. For another, they were ladies. But what if he was there? She had said a very definite goodbye.
Why, then, had she come all this way?
She had made her way to Hyde Park instead after asking directions. It was a part of London she wished to see, after all—she had made a list. It was one item she would be able to strike off. Tomorrow perhaps she would see St. Paul’s Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London, St. James’s Palace, Carlton House. Were they within walking distance of one another? And there were all the galleries and museums. Perhaps they would fill the next day. And, of course, there were the shops that sold her glassware—she must not forget about them.
What she was, she had decided as she strode into the park, was one abject, cringing, shameful cowardly creature. South Audley Street was at the top of her list—underlined. Was it going to remain there, the one item not satisfyingly crossed out as having been done?
She had found, purely by accident, one of the most famous features of Hyde Park and strolled beside the Serpentine. She had been proud of herself for one thing, at least. It was a crowded area of the park, but she had held her head high and not faltered. Oh, she was wearing a veil, it was true, but even so she was here, out of doors, mingling with others even if she was not stopping to speak to anyone and no one was stopping to take any notice of her. Still, she was doing it.
And then she had both stopped and spoken—to two young children who had run afoul of each other along the bank and were reacting with predictable lack of logic, the one with a shrill scold, the other with wails of protest and anger. Meanwhile the toy boat of the wailer was making its escape. She had caught up the string before it fell completely into the water and had spoken to the children. The girl had stopped scolding the boy in order to ask her if she were a witch—she had looked delighted by the possibility rather than frightened—and the boy had more or less stopped wailing in order to point out that everyone knew witches wore big black hats. Wren had turned away after saying that alas, she was nothing nearly as exciting as a witch, with or without a black hat. She had been feeling pleased with herself and pleased with the world.
And then—
Well, and then she had found herself looking straight into the eyes of the Earl of Riverdale no more than a few yards away. If the earth could have opened and swallowed her whole, she would have uttered no complaint whatsoever.
Foolishly, she had turned to hurry back in the direction from which she had come, her mind at the same moment catching up with her eyes to inform her that he had a young lady on his arm with an older lady in attendance. She had felt a nasty pang of something she did not stop to analyze. But he had come after her anyway and touched her arm and spoken with her, though she could not afterward remember a word of their brief exchange except that he had asked her to call on his mother and sister and she had agreed to do so the next morning. What she did remember with far greater clarity was that the lady on his arm had been very young and very pretty and that the older lady who had coughed twice had done so with a possessive sort of annoyance.
All night, between fitful bouts of sleep, Wren longed to go home to Withington. At dawn, before she slid into another doze, she decided that that was precisely what she was going to do. She relaxed and felt infinitely better.
So of course here she was the next morning walking along South Audley Street, looking for the right house number. Maude was with her this time, and because she was, Wren stopped outside the correct house when she might otherwise have walked on by, pretending not to have seen it. She was such a coward. She climbed the steps with firm resolution and rapped the knocker against the door.
Less than a minute later she was ascending a grand staircase inside the house behind the butler, who had acknowledged her with a bow as soon as she gave her name and had not even gone up first to ascertain if Mrs. Westcott was at home. He admitted her to what was obviously the drawing room after announcing her, and she lifted her veil over the brim of her bonnet. Both ladies were on their feet—there was no one else in the room—and both were smiling. Mrs. Westcott came toward her, right hand extended.
“I am so pleased you came, Miss Heyden,” she said, taking Wren’s hand in a firm grip before letting it go. “Alex told us you are in town on business. It is good of you to give us some of your time. Do come and sit down. I hope you like coffee. That is what is being sent up, but it will be no trouble at all to have a pot of tea brought too if that is what you would prefer.”
“Coffee will be lovely,” Wren said. “Thank you. I do hope I am not keeping you from something more important.”
“Nothing could be more important this morning,” Lady Overfield said as Wren moved toward the chair that had been indicated. And then she startled Wren by kissing her on the cheek—her purple cheek. “May I take your bonnet? Have you been very busy since you arrived in town?”
Wren removed her bonnet and sat down. Mother and daughter sat side by side on a sofa. “I arrived just yesterday,” she said. “I went for a walk in Hyde Park to get some air and exercise after the journey, and met Lord Riverdale there.”
&nb
sp; “Then you must plan to be busy today,” Mrs. Westcott said.
“Yes.” Wren clasped her hands in her lap and then unclasped them and spread her fingers over her skirt. “A few London shops sell my glassware. I thought it would be interesting to see how it is displayed. It sells well, but perhaps I can make some suggestions—” She stopped abruptly. “I did not really come on business.”
“Then you came for pleasure,” Lady Overfield said, smiling warmly. “And there is much of that to be had in London. But allow me to tell you in person, though I did so too in one of the letters I wrote you, how fascinated I was to read about the glassworks. I had no idea how much design planning and skill and artistry are involved and how important sales strategies are. I have a great curiosity to see some of the finished products. Perhaps I may go with you to the shops?”
Their coffee arrived at that moment with a plate of sugar biscuits.
“Where are you staying?” Mrs. Westcott asked after the maid had left the room. “Somewhere comfortable, I hope?”
“At a small hotel for gentlewomen,” Wren told her. “It is quite respectable.” She was beginning to take in the spacious splendor of the drawing room, so very different from that at Brambledean Court. A great deal of money had been spent on this house to keep it fashionable and beautiful as well as comfortable. From what she had learned before she met the Earl of Riverdale, this house had not come to him with his title and estate but had gone with the bulk of the fortune to the former earl’s legitimate daughter—the one who had grown up in an orphanage and then married a duke.
“For gentlewomen. Respectable,” Mrs. Westcott repeated with a grimace. “Is it as dreadful as it sounds?”
Wren bit her lower lip to stop herself from laughing aloud. “My room is like a nun’s cell,” she said, “and the landlady looks like the head nun without a wimple. There is a list of rules posted just inside the front door and on the wall in my room, and rule number one is that no person of male gender is allowed to set foot over the doorstep under any circumstances whatsoever. I amused myself last night with images of persons of the female gender hauling heavy furniture up and down the stairs and cleaning the chimneys. But one thing cannot be denied. It is a very respectable establishment.”
They all dissolved into laughter and Wren felt the paradoxical urge to weep. Her uncle and she had had an eye for the absurd, and her aunt had had a hearty sense of humor. They had laughed frequently. How often had she laughed since their passing?
“It may remain respectable without you, Miss Heyden,” Mrs. Westcott said briskly, offering the plate of biscuits for the second time. “Do not tell me the mattress on your bed is not stuffed with straw, for I will not believe it. You brought a maid here with you this morning? You did not come by carriage, though, did you? We would have heard it.”
“We came on foot,” Wren said, taking another biscuit and biting into it. It was still almost but not quite warm. It was fresh and delicious. Breakfast had been a Spartan meal—toast with the merest scraping of butter already applied and no jam or marmalade, and weak tea.
“Then we will send your maid back with a carriage to pack up your belongings and her own and bring them here,” Mrs. Westcott said. “You will stay with us while you are in town, Miss Heyden.”
“Oh no,” Wren cried in some alarm. “I would not so inconvenience you, ma’am.”
“It will be no inconvenience,” Lady Overfield said. “You were specifically invited, if you will recall, by both Alex and me, speaking on behalf of Mama too. Alex suggested again last evening that we ask you to move in here. We agreed with him that you really ought not to be left languishing on your own at a hotel.”
“But—” Wren frowned. “You cannot really want to have me here. Oh, I beg your pardon. There is only one answer you can possibly give to that because you are ladies, and you are also kind. But you know that before you came to Wiltshire I quite brazenly offered my fortune to the Earl of Riverdale in exchange for marriage. You know that the whole . . . idea of it was abhorrent to him. And you cannot deny—not if you are truly honest—that when you met me at Brambledean you were horrified at the prospect that he might marry me. I recognized the impossibility of it on that day, and I released him from any obligation he might have felt after prolonging our acquaintance for more than two weeks. I said goodbye. You will not deny, I think, even if you are too polite to say it aloud, that you were greatly relieved when he told you.”
The other two ladies sat back in their seats as though to put some distance between themselves and her. There was a brief silence.
“I was,” Mrs. Westcott admitted.
“Mama.” Lady Overfield frowned.
“No, Lizzie,” her mother said. “Miss Heyden is right. There ought to be more honesty between people. How is anything to be communicated if everyone is too polite to speak their real thoughts?”
Lady Overfield inhaled audibly but said nothing.
“I love my children quite passionately, Miss Heyden,” Mrs. Westcott said. “More than anything else in life I want to see them happy. I want to see them married and settled with the right partner and enjoying their own children as I have enjoyed mine. My heart was broken when Lizzie’s marriage turned to nightmare. Now I have her with me again, and I can hope and dream for her once more. My heart was hurt when Alex’s youth was torn from him after his father’s death with the discovery that all was not as it ought to be at Riddings Park. He left behind the life of a carefree young man and returned home to set things to rights.”
“It made him happy, Mama,” Lady Overfield said.
“Yes, I believe it did,” her mother agreed. “But he is thirty years old, Miss Heyden, and last year he began to dream of marriage and love and happiness. And then everything changed—for the whole of the Westcott family. Now Brambledean hangs about my son’s neck like a millstone and neglect is out of the question because Alex is who he is, and loans and mortgages are pointless because they have to be repaid. Everything in me revolts against the idea of his marrying for money, but that is what he feels he must do. Yes, I was horrified, Miss Heyden. Not because of that . . . facial blemish of yours, though that is probably what you believe. And not because you were so uncomfortable when you met us that you appeared stiff and cold and unapproachable. It was because you are rich and he is poor—at least poor as far as his new responsibilities are concerned—and I very much feared there could never be any proper respect or affection between you, not to mention love and happiness. I could not bear the thought that my son would be seen as mercenary.”
“Mama.” Lady Overfield set a hand on her arm.
“No, Lizzie,” her mother said. “Let me finish. I was delighted after you had left, Miss Heyden, and then dismayed when Lizzie decided that she would go to visit you. But then we came here and Alex has been besieged by wealthy, ambitious people who have daughters to be settled. There is not one of those girls who does not fill me with terrible misgivings. Not for themselves—I daresay they are sweet enough girls, who have dreams of their own. But for Alex, who deserves so much more and so much better.”
“I am sorry.” Wren could think of nothing else to say.
“I think, Miss Heyden,” she continued, “that perhaps you have more substance than all those little girls combined. And you have no ambitious parents.”
“No,” Wren said, and it was her turn to sit farther back in her chair.
“Were your aunt and uncle ambitious for you?” Mrs. Westcott asked.
“Not in the way you mean,” Wren said. “They wanted me to be happy. My aunt desperately wanted it, but they always respected my wishes.”
“You still feel their loss,” Mrs. Westcott said.
“Yes.” And something dreadful happened. Wren felt her chin tremble. She spread one hand over the lower half of her face, but it was not enough. She covered it with both hands. Her bonnet was gone, and so was her veil. “Oh, I am so
sorry.” But her voice came out all high and squeaky. She sniffed.
And then Mrs. Westcott was sitting on the arm of her chair, and one of her arms came about Wren’s shoulders, and the other hand held Wren’s head to her shoulder. Wren sobbed until her chest was sore and wept until there surely could be no tears left. A handkerchief and then a linen napkin were pressed into her hand, and she realized that Lady Overfield was kneeling on the floor in front of her chair.
“I am so s-sorry,” she said again.
“Have you wept before?” Mrs. Westcott asked.
“N-no.” She had been very stoical about the whole thing. There was no point in tears, and sometimes her grief had felt too deep for such easy relief.
“There was no one with whom to share your grief,” Lady Overfield said. It was not a question. “But you are among friends. You must not apologize.”
Maybe not. But her words brought on yet more tears.
“No,” Mrs. Westcott said, hugging her shoulders more tightly for a moment, “I am not a friend, Miss Heyden. I am a mother, and I am going to behave like one. It is quite outrageous for you to be staying alone at a horror of a hotel, or at any hotel for that matter. Your aunt would not have liked it. Your uncle would not have allowed it, I daresay, for all that he took you into his business and treated you as an equal. We will have your things brought here immediately, and I do not want to hear any arguments. Now, Lizzie and I will show you up to your room—it has already been prepared—and we will have water fetched so that you can wash your face and look presentable again. You look a fright at the moment.”
Wren laughed—and then wept a few more tears.
“I warn you that it is pointless to try arguing with Mama when she decides to play mother,” Lady Overfield said.
Wren felt horribly embarrassed as she got to her feet. “But the Earl of Riverdale—” she began.