by Mary Balogh
“Ah,” she said, “I was afraid you might be having a nap. We neglected to tell you, I believe, that you must feel free to use the drawing room or the library or any of the other day rooms at any time. You must not feel obliged to remain here when we are out. Although neither are you obliged to leave here if you do not wish.”
She smiled and her eyes twinkled. “It is late for tea, but we are going to have some anyway. Alex has returned from Archer House with us and we have also brought young Jessica—one of our second cousins. She is eighteen years old and had a serious case of the blue devils. She made her debut into society this year—with great success, it must be added. She could probably be married thirty times over by the summer if she chose and if it were allowed. But she is desperately unhappy nevertheless, as only the young can be under such circumstances. Her cousin and dearest friend is unable to be here with her. That is Abigail, whose illegitimacy was discovered last year. Jessica wants to go home and bury herself in the country, and the whole family has been thrown into consternation. For she has reminded the rest of us that all is not well in one segment of the family and we really ought to do something about it—if anything can be done, that is. But I am rambling. We invited Jessica to come here with us for an hour or so. We told her we had a visitor staying with us, and I hope you will come down. But you must not feel obliged to.”
It was very easy sometimes to believe one was the only person who had ever suffered troubles, Wren thought, especially when one totally isolated oneself. But here was a clear reminder that in reality everyone had, even presumably pretty, well-connected eighteen-year-olds who had the world spread at their feet.
“Lady Overfield,” she said, “I believe you are very sly.”
The lady looked taken aback for a moment and then smiled again. “If you meet one person at a time,” she said, “eventually you will have met the whole world. But I mean it when I say you do not have to come down. No one will think the worse of you.”
Wren got to her feet. Yes, she did have to go. She was a guest here. “I never did mingle, you know,” she said as she smoothed out her dress and touched her hair to make sure everything was in place. “Whenever my aunt and uncle entertained at home, I remained in my room even though they never seemed to tire of inviting me and occasionally trying some gentle persuasion.” She turned to her hostess then and smiled. “Lead the way.”
But Lady Overfield did not immediately open the door. “I would love to have you call me Elizabeth,” she said, “or, better yet, Lizzie.”
“Lizzie,” Wren said. “I am Wren.”
“Wren?”
“Like the bird,” Wren said. “My uncle called me that when he first saw me, and it stuck. I was Rowena before then, but never since.”
“Wren,” Lizzie said again. “It is pretty.” And she led the way down to the drawing room.
The first person Wren saw there was the Earl of Riverdale. He was standing not far inside the door, looking tall and handsome in a formfitting coat of dark green superfine with dark pantaloons and gleaming Hessian boots and very white linen. His gaze met hers with smiling eyes—he shared that look with his sister. Wren offered a hand and he took it in a warm clasp and she felt a bit as though it were her heart he had clutched. She had forgotten how . . . masculine he was.
“Lord Riverdale,” she said. “I must thank you for inviting me to come here and for moving out so that I would not feel too awkward about staying. It was very thoughtful of you.”
“As soon as you mentioned a gentlewoman’s hotel,” he said, “I knew it must be my mission in life to rescue you. I had an instant vision of brick mattresses and bars upon the windows and a massive landlady with a large bundle of keys jangling at her waist.”
“Oh, it was not quite as bad as that,” Wren assured him. “I do not remember the keys jangling.”
He laughed and she slid her hand free of his before it got irredeemably scalded. She had forgotten his laugh.
She had not forgotten his kiss.
“Allow me to introduce my cousin,” he said, “or second cousin, to be quite accurate. Lady Jessica Archer is the daughter of the late Duke of Netherby and half sister to the present one. Miss Heyden, Jessica.”
The young lady was pretty and fair haired and youthfully slight and graceful in build, though her loveliness was somewhat marred by a slightly scowling face and a petulant mouth.
Wren smiled. “I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Lady Jessica,” she said.
“How tall you are,” the girl said. “I am very envious. I suppose you tower over most men, but sometimes I think that would be wonderful. There are some men I would dearly like to look down upon.” And surprisingly, considering the fact that she had delivered the greeting with the near scowl still on her face, she suddenly smiled dazzlingly and laughed with girlish glee. “Are you not envious too, Elizabeth? Of course, Alexander does not have to fear having any woman look down upon him.”
“Being tall would certainly make it easier to look distinguished and elegant,” Lizzie said. “However, it would be harder to hide in a crowd, and that can be a very handy thing to do on occasion.”
And that was done, Wren thought as she took a seat to one side of the fireplace. The world was being conquered one person at a time. The girl had not run screaming from the house at the sight of her.
Lady Jessica sat close by while Lizzie and her mother sat on a love seat some distance away. The earl was standing beside them, ready to hand around the cups of tea his mother was pouring. Lord Riverdale brought their tea and then retreated to stand by the love seat again and converse quietly with the other two ladies. Wren had the feeling that the positioning was deliberate, that the others were giving their young relative a chance to recover her spirits with a new acquaintance, someone from outside the family. And perhaps they were giving her the opportunity to meet someone else without the comfort of her veil. As she had said upstairs, Lady Overfield—Lizzie—was very sly. All three of them were. She felt a rush of unexpected affection for them.
“You lost your uncle and aunt last year, I heard,” Lady Jessica said. “Did you live with them?”
“I did,” Wren said. “I was terribly fond of them.”
“And there is no one else?” Lady Jessica asked.
“No,” Wren said without hesitation. “Just me.”
“Sometimes,” the girl told her, “I think it would be lovely to be all alone, to have no relatives. It is not because mine do not love me, Miss Heyden, and it is not because I do not love them. Love is the whole trouble, in fact. I adore my half brother. Yet he married someone I hate, though I love her too. She was my uncle Humphrey’s only legitimate daughter, but no one knew it until last year. Even she did not. Do you know what happened?”
“Some of it has been explained to me,” Wren said, but her young companion continued anyway.
“My uncle’s other three children—my cousins—were dispossessed,” the girl said. “They even lost the legitimacy of their birth. Can you imagine anything more horrible? Anastasia inherited everything except Brambledean, which is just a heap anyway, and Avery married her. They love each other dearly, and they have the most adorable baby, and I both love and hate her—Anastasia, that is. I wish I loved her entirely. I try to. It makes no sense whatsoever, does it?”
“It makes perfect sense to me,” Wren told her, and it did. “You were close to your other cousins?”
“I love them,” Lady Jessica assured her. “Well, Camille was always a bit starchy and humorless, though I was fond enough of her. Harry—he was very briefly the Earl of Riverdale after my uncle’s death, you know, or perhaps you did not know—is gorgeous, though he is only my cousin and was never my beau or anything like that. And Abby has always been my very best friend in the world. She is a year older than I and she was disappointed last year that my uncle’s death prevented her from making her come-out. I was secretly a bit gl
ad, for that meant we could make our debut together this year. It would have been the best thing ever. But now she can never have a Season of her own or marry anyone respectable, and my heart is dead inside me. Sometimes I wish it had happened to me instead of to her. It would be somehow easier to bear. If I had no family, you see, I would not be unhappy. There would be nothing to be unhappy about. Am I talking nonsense?”
Wren set a hand over one of hers and patted it. At the same time she caught the eye of the Earl of Riverdale, and it seemed to her that there was concern, even perhaps . . . anxiety in his look. But was the concern for her or for his cousin? He was looking directly at her, though, until he turned his head to reply to something Lizzie had said.
“Perhaps you have heard the old saying about the grass always looking greener on the other side of the hedge,” Wren said.
“It is probably no better to be without relatives, is it?” the girl said. “I am sorry. You must be wishing you could punch me in the nose for ingratitude and insensitivity and lots of other things. Why have you not married?”
“I was perfectly happy with my life until just over a year ago,” Wren said, not pausing over the girl’s lightning- fast change of subject. “And even now I am content. I am always busy. I am a businesswoman, you see. I own a large and prosperous glassworks in Staffordshire and am extremely proud of our products, which are designed more to be works of art than merely to provide a practical function. I was involved in the business before my uncle died, but I immerse myself even more in it now. I do not want anyone to get the idea that I am a helpless woman and must rely upon my male employees to make all the decisions and do all the work.”
Lady Jessica’s eyes were shining. All signs of petulance were gone. “How absolutely splendid!” she exclaimed. “Now I envy you even more. You are very tall and you are a businesswoman. I have never heard of such a thing.” She laughed again, that same youthful, happy sound. She was facing away from her three relatives, all of whom looked briefly their way and smiled. “Is that a bruise? Or is it always there?”
It was her first mention of the blemish, and now it was almost an offhand remark.
“I have been stuck with it from birth,” Wren said.
“That is unfortunate,” Lady Jessica said, looking closely and frankly at the left side of Wren’s face. “I suppose you curse it every day of your life. I know I would. It is fortunate that the rest of your face and even this side if you ignore the color is so beautiful. Oh, dear, Mama would be looking very pointedly at me if she were here now, and quite rightly so. I ought to have pretended I had not noticed, oughtn’t I? I am so sorry.”
But Wren found herself unexpectedly smiling. “I wear a veil almost wherever I go where strangers are likely to see me,” she said. “Even indoors.”
“People must really look at you then,” the girl said. “They must see you as a lady of mystery. How splendid! Especially when you are so tall.” Her laughter had turned to girlish glee.
“Some London shops sell my glassware,” Wren said, raising her voice slightly and looking up to include the other occupants of the room. “Lizzie—Lady Overfield—and I are going to find some of them tomorrow morning to look at the displays. Would you care to accompany us? If your mother will permit it, of course.”
“Oh, I should like it of all things.” She clasped her hands to her bosom and turned her head to look across the room at the others. “Will you mind my coming too, Elizabeth? And, Cousin Althea, may I please stay here tonight so that I will be ready to go in the morning and Elizabeth and Miss Heyden will not have to come to Archer House and wait forever for me? There is a horrid soiree tonight that I have no interest in attending and I have told Mama so. Please may I stay?”
“We must ask your mama,” Mrs. Westcott said. “I shall write a note and Alex will take it to Archer House on his way back to Sidney’s. If the answer is no, I daresay he will bring word back to us and escort you home.”
She got to her feet and went to the escritoire at the far side of the room to sit and write her note, and Lady Jessica fairly bounced across the room to suggest some of the wording. The Earl of Riverdale came to take her vacated chair beside Wren.
“You have made my mother and sister happy by coming here to stay,” he said. “And we all appreciate your listening to Jessica’s woes and helping take her mind off them. You appear to have been very successful.”
“Lady Jessica is very young,” she said, “and clearly hurting on her cousin’s behalf. Sometimes it must seem almost worse to watch loved ones suffer than to suffer oneself. One must feel more helpless.”
“You will be busy with Lizzie and probably Jessica too tomorrow morning,” he said. “I shall be at the Lords. Will you come walking in the park with me in the afternoon, weather permitting? There are paths that are less public and in many ways more picturesque than the one by the Serpentine.”
Kind courtesy again? Or . . . what? She searched his eyes but found no answer there. She ought to say a polite no. What might have been between them had ended on Easter Sunday. She did not want to revive it—it had been somehow too painful. And surely he did not want to. She knew he had not warmed to her during those weeks of their acquaintance, and she knew equally well that her fortune in itself would be no inducement to him.
So why exactly had she come?
Why exactly had he invited her here yesterday and even asked his mother to persuade her to stay here?
“I would like that,” she said. “Thank you.”
Ten
Alexander spent a thoroughly enjoyable bachelor evening with his cousin Sidney. They dined at White’s Club and moved on to another club, where they had a few drinks with friends and he won three hundred pounds in a card game, and then on to a private party, where he lost two hundred and fifty. By the time they returned to Sidney’s rooms rather too long after midnight, they had done a great deal of reminiscing and laughing, not to mention drinking. But times had changed, they both agreed, and such evenings as this, though pleasant, were not to be craved as a regular diet as they had been ten years ago.
Alexander’s mother and sister were awaiting the arrival of Cousin Louise and Jessica when he entered Westcott House early the following afternoon. They were going to a garden party together. His mother had written to invite Cousin Viola and Abigail to come to London for a week or two, she told him.
“I am not at all sure they will come,” she said. “There is no definite event we can dangle before them as an inducement, as there was last year when we all went to Bath to celebrate Cousin Eugenia’s seventieth birthday. Her seventy-first would not sound nearly as special an occasion, would it?”
“Probably not,” he agreed. “How does Miss Heyden feel about their coming here?”
“She insists she will not be staying longer than a week,” his mother said, “and it is very unlikely they would arrive so soon. Really, though, Alex, the more I think about it, the more I despair of their actually coming. We are living in what was their home, after all, and you bear the title that was Harry’s all too briefly.”
“Wren’s glassware is absolutely exquisite, Alex,” Elizabeth told him from her position by the window. “I swear Jessica and I both gaped when we saw the display in the first shop this morning. Every piece is a work of art. I am going to wheedle an invitation to Staffordshire the next time she expects to be there. I want to watch the whole process.”
“You are going to be friends, then, are you?” he asked.
“We already are,” she said. “Here is Cousin Louise’s carriage, Mama.”
Alexander went back down with them to hand them into the vehicle and exchange greetings with the dowager duchess and Jessica.
Miss Heyden was coming downstairs as he stepped back inside. She looked elegant in a slim, high-waisted walking dress of a light blue. The brim of her straw bonnet was decorated with a veil of the same color. It did not yet cover her face.
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“We are close to the park,” he told her after bowing and bidding her a good afternoon. “I hope you do not mind walking rather than riding. One is confined largely to public areas with a carriage.”
“But it was to a walk that you invited me,” she said as the butler opened the front door and she reached for her veil.
“Will you leave it raised?” he asked her. “We are not likely to encounter many people face-to-face, and the veil is really quite unnecessary anyway.”
Her hands remained in the air for a moment before she sighed and lowered them. “Very well,” she said, and they stepped out onto the street. She took his arm, and he was reminded as they set out along the street of how very comfortable it felt to walk with a woman so close to him in height and with a stride to match his own. “I am sorry to have kept you from a garden party on such a beautiful day.”
“I was not planning to attend,” he told her. “I would prefer the alternative anyway.”
“You are gallant,” she said, and frowned as a gentleman hurried past them with a nod for Alexander and the touch of a hand to his hat brim for Miss Heyden.
“Lizzie told me you found some of your glassware on display,” he said.
“Yes, indeed.” Her voice warmed noticeably. “In two shops, on Bond Street and Oxford Street. I found it really quite exciting. I am familiar with the designs, of course, and see the finished products all the time in the workshops and the visitor shop attached to them. But they looked somehow different and more impressive displayed here among other, competing wares. They were not by any means overshadowed. I even had the pleasure of witnessing a gentleman purchase one of our vases for his wife.”
“I hope you made yourself known to him,” he said.
“I did not.” She winced slightly. “But Lady Jessica did. It was terribly embarrassing.” But she laughed suddenly. “And really rather gratifying too, I must admit. He shook hands with me, as did the shopkeeper, who assured me that our glassware items never remain long on his shelves.”