Any Groom Will Do

by Charis Michaels

  The horse danced and spun. Cassin whipped around, staring at her. Her auburn hair lifted on the breeze. She shaded her eyes with her hand.

  “Until tomorrow, perhaps,” she said.

  Cassin could not find words to say good-bye, so he nodded, promising nothing, denying nothing. Then he kicked in his heels and was gone.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “He won’t be back,” Willow told her maid, Perry, the next morning. “Not this morning. Not ever, in fact.” In the wake of the earl’s departure, reason and reality poured in and Willow’s optimism had dissolved.

  She paced a straight line from her bed to the dressing table and back again. Perry sat in the window seat, sewing a button on Willow’s lavender day dress.

  “Gone forever,” Willow repeated, pausing to look out the window over Perry’s head. “And I cannot believe I didn’t see it. But I do see you, Perry, and I see that delicate purple dress. Absolutely not. I cannot work in the purple dress.”

  Perry shook her head and continued to sew.

  “It’s pointless to make a fuss when no one will come,” Willow went on. “I want practical, not fragile, when I work.”

  “Practical?” Perry sighed, biting off the thread with her teeth. “Pretty is what matters today.”

  “Today is no different from yesterday,” Willow said, cringing at the memory of the plain blue day dress in which she’d received the Earl of Cassin. “And even if he did come—which he will not—my appearance is of little consequence. An arrangement between us could never work. Yesterday I was . . . I was carried away. I did not think. How can I marry an earl?” This had been the first devastating question to come to her. She took a seat at her dressing table and began to work a brush through the wild curls of her hair, more chaotic than usual after a sleepless night.

  “ ’Course you can, my lady,” said Perry, standing up and giving the dress a shake. “You’re the daughter of an earl yourself, aren’t you? So clever and pretty. I think you are very well matched to his lordship.”

  “It makes no difference if we are matched, Perry. We are not a pair of candlesticks. But don’t you see? An earl will require an heir. All men want an heir, but a nobleman absolutely must have one. It was ridiculous of me to carry on as I did yesterday, considering my unsuitability in this regard. If he returns—which, I feel certain, he will not—he will be sure to leave again as soon as I tell him. Of this I am certain.” She held the brush still, watching herself say the words in the mirror.

  “I say he will come.” Perry brought the dress to Willow and began maneuvering it over her head.

  “Yes, but you also believe it will snow on Christmas. And be sunny and warm on Easter.” Willow’s words were muffled through the fabric. Her head emerged. “And it never happens, does it?”

  For once, Perry was quiet, preoccupied with the fifty tiny lavender buttons running the length of Willow’s spine. Or perhaps Willow had convinced her. Now she needed only to convince herself.

  He will not want me, Willow repeated in her head.

  She’d said it a hundred times in the night, and she would say it a hundred more. The Earl of Cassin had seemed too perfect because he was too perfect. Even if a nobleman could overcome the outrageous arrangement of the marriage—a very substantial if—he would never get around the fact that she could not give him an heir.

  It was cruelly ironic that she had devised a plan to produce an unaccountable non-husband husband—someone desperate enough to overlook her barrenness—yet the first viable applicant had literally been born unable to accept. Even for a marriage of convenience. Even for £60,000.

  To Willow’s great frustration, unexpected tears began to close her throat, and she squeezed her eyes shut. Really, what had she expected, given the limitations of her body?

  “Oh, don’t cry, my lady!” trilled Perry. She crouched at Willow’s feet and, grabbing hold of the lavender hem, vigorously fanned Willow’s skirts in and out, like a sail in the wind. Willow yelped and grabbed the bedpost.

  She reminded herself that this was why she had avoided men her entire life—this useless, tearful spiral of self-pity. She never moped or felt sorry for herself when she was occupied and diligent. Rarely, if ever, did she think about men and how much happier she always was for the distance.

  Until now.

  Until the one man, literally among hundreds of men she’d ignored and by whom she was likewise ignored, turned up and reminded her why she never bothered. Until now, when suddenly she wanted to bother very much.

  A knock at her bedroom door yanked her attention from the bedpost,

  “Do you mind, darling?” said her mother’s voice from the corridor. The door swung wide to admit her mother, Lady Lytton. “You won’t believe what’s happened.”

  “My lady,” said Willow, taking two steps toward her. The countess rarely, if ever, came to Willow’s bedroom.

  “Abbott sent a maid to fetch you,” said the countess, “but I sent her away and came myself. It’s not every day a gentleman calls on my daughter.” She waved a calling card in her right hand.

  “I . . . I beg your pardon?” Willow’s voice belonged to someone else.

  “ ‘Brent Caulder, the Earl of Cassin,’ ” her mother read. “Honestly, I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. I thought he’d come about the roan mare, but he made himself very clear. He is here for you, darling. Your father told you that eventually the gentlemen would come. Oh, and you’ve worn the purple. So pretty. I’ll tell him you’ll be right down.”

  Willow stared at her mother. Vaguely, she was aware that Perry had begun to bounce up and down behind her.

  Her mother frowned. “Whatever is the matter with your maid?”

  Willow reached behind her and grabbed Perry’s wrist.

  “Cassin . . . Cassin . . . ” mused Lady Lytton, looking at the card again. “I have not heard of this family, but I shall look them up. When he spoke, his accent suggested somewhere north. Yorkshire, perhaps? However did you meet an earl from Yorkshire?”

  “Ah . . . ” began Willow. A benefit of repelling most every man she met was never having to embellish them. “He is an acquaintance of Tessa St. Croix,” she lied.

  “Ah, yes, of course,” said Lady Lytton. “Their business dealings acquaints the family with a great many gentleman.”

  Willow needed to hear her say it again. “Lord Cassin is here? Now?”

  Lady Lytton laughed again. “But you are overcome with nerves, aren’t you? How charming. Of course he will find you lovely; do not fret. And remember . . . ” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “No one can prove what the doctors say about your—about you. It’s better left unmentioned, to be sure. Such an awkward, indelicate topic. Mark my words.”

  Willow made no answer, and her mother turned away. “I was meant to watch the grooms run a new stallion this morning,” her mother said. “I have him on loan from Enderby, but I shall put it off.”

  “W-why?” asked Willow. If the earl really had come, the last thing the situation needed was her mother’s presence.

  “Do not fret. I shan’t hover. But I can hardly leave the two of you alone in the house, now can I? I shall read the papers over breakfast while you receive him in the drawing room. How is that? And Wilhelmina?” prompted Lady Lytton. “Pray do not stare at the man like a fish on a plate. If only you could see your expression. You look terrified. Honestly, I would not expect this from the girl who has begged for months to relocate alone to London. How correct I have been to forbid it, if this is how you react to one young man. His mount is lovely, by the way—a Lipizzan stallion.”

  “I am not terrified,” Willow said, the only thing she could safely assert, despite its being not entirely true.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Cassin had come to Leland Park to tell her, no, thank you. In person. Face-to-face.

  He came to assure her, also in person, that her advertisement would not be discussed with another living soul. It was the gentlemanly thing
to do.

  If there was time, he would caution her against future trolling for husbands with misleading advertisements on the docks in London.

  After this, he would bid her farewell. Forever. He would not linger in Surrey. They would share no further interaction. And above all, he would not marry her, not even for £60,000.

  That was why he’d come.

  He repeated this reasoning to himself over and over again while he waited again in the blue drawing room. The dogs had returned, crowding in the doorway to consider him. When Willow’s mother strode into the room for an introduction, they’d swept in at her feet. Now the countess had gone and the dogs with her—all except for one, a petite butterscotch-colored puff with a fox’s face. She sat before him and stared up as if waiting for the truth.

  “What?” Cassin asked the dog. “Shall I tell you that I came because Joseph and Stoker have descended into madness? An affliction hidden from me all these years?”

  Instead of laughing at Cassin’s description of W. J. Hunnicut and her outrageous offer, his partners had been intrigued. Aggressively intrigued. Startlingly intrigued.

  What of the girl’s friends? they wished to know.

  How old? How much did their dowries offer?

  Why were they in such a blind rush to leave Surrey?

  Cassin had been dumbfounded by their interest and invoked every logical argument to dissuade it, all to no avail. It was their fault he’d returned—their fault and the fault of his own sense of honor. He would decline her offer in person, and he would go.

  “Careful,” said a female voice from the doorway. “That dog is a known mind reader.”

  Slowly, Cassin looked up. Of all the promises he had made to himself about the call, the most urgent had been not to stare, not to engage her, not to slide into the same unhinged, boggled-mind reaction he’d had the day before.

  Today, he knew what to expect.

  She was a woman—a pretty woman, yes, but she need not be a woman who caused his heart to pound or his mouth to dry. Not today.

  She had not moved from the doorway, and he remembered to stand. She took two tentative steps inside. She wore purple, two shades of it, both bright and unexpected. Not the purple of an iris or hydrangea but the tropical, acrid purple of an orchid. It suited her, he thought. The tart color cast her in a bright, hot glow.

  But now she was blushing, the result of his mute stare, and the thud in his throat took up where it had left off the day before.

  She’d piled her hair on top of her head in a riot of auburn curls that exposed her neck. She wore small, round pearls on her earlobes. There were freckles on her collarbone.

  This is why you came, he thought, his mind otherwise blank. How stupid it had been to make up any other excuse.

  “My mother is a lover of animals,” she told him, “especially dogs and horses. I have grown accustomed to the great many dogs, but I’ve never understood about the horses.”

  He nodded. That voice. Low and husky. She’d talked for nearly an hour yesterday, said outrageous things, impossible things, and he’d hung on every word.

  “I’ve not given much thought to dogs or horses,” he said.

  He looked at the neat purple trim on the collar of her dress. He looked at her delicate, ungloved hands. He scanned the silk of her skirts to the floor and back up. She blushed again, and he felt a proprietary surge of gratification.

  “I did not expect that you would be back,” she said.

  “No? Why not?” Perhaps she knew why he’d come.

  “I . . . I cannot say.” She made her way to him. He held his breath, anticipating the cinnamon scent from the day before.

  “Will you sit?” she said.

  No, he thought, but he held out a hand, inviting her to precede him. He watched her smooth her skirts and settle onto the end of a sofa. He wanted to sit beside her—immediately beside her, thigh-to-skirts beside her—but he took an adjacent chair. The dog jumped into his lap.

  She waited.

  Tell her good-bye, he thought, staring at the dog.

  “Why will you not acquire a husband the traditional way?” he said. “Go to London for a season? Dance, flirt, enter into courtships until you find the right fellow. Or you could marry a well-heeled neighbor or cousin, for that matter. Why . . . this?”

  To her credit, she did not fidget or flinch. There were no I-beg-your-pardons or I-dare-not-says. She nodded to herself.

  “Yes, of course.” A nervous laugh. “How right of you to ask.” She paused, composing herself. “I cannot—or will not—acquire a husband the traditional way because . . . ” Another pause. “I have a medical condition that precludes a traditional marriage.”

  He stopped breathing. “You are . . . ill?

  She shook her head. “No, it’s nothing like that. I was ill, as a girl, almost eighteen years ago. An infection. I almost died at the time, but now I am quite well. Except for . . . ” Yet another pause. “The infection left me barren.”

  “Barren?” Cassin blinked. It was rude of him to repeat her, but he’d been unprepared for such a bald truth. He said, “But surely some man would be willing to—”

  “Don’t,” she said softly. “Please do not offer the solution of ‘some man.’ I reconciled myself to my limitation years ago. It is a private matter, obviously, and I only speak of it with you because we are discussing this . . . arrangement. Honesty is imperative.”

  We are not discussing this arrangement, Cassin thought.

  “I made up my mind as a girl that I should find some other way to lead a fulfilling life, beyond motherhood and marriage. Luckily, I possessed a . . . a desire to create—or to be creative, I should say. I . . . I suppose I might as well explain this now.”

  She smiled at him hopefully and stood up, opening and closing her fists at her sides. He rose with her, but she waved him back to his chair. “I love to create, as I’ve said. And I love beautiful objects, beautiful spaces, paintings, textiles, sculpture.”

  She traced a slender finger up and over the contoured sofa. He followed the swoop of her hand with his eyes.

  She said, “I spent hours of my girlhood sketching or curating miniatures, little . . . oh, I suppose one might call them small windows to little scenes. They were like . . . tiny displays of fabric and tassels, bits of nature—a leaf or feather or pebble. I would arrange them in the box by color or texture or shape. My aunt Mary—the one I hope to join in London—encouraged me. She saw some talent in my little creations—God knows how—and she believed my interests needed only to be cultivated and expanded to ultimately be very satisfying. Before she married her husband and was, essentially, exiled from the family”—Willow made a bitter expression—“she sent books to me about design. We pored over them on her frequent visits, studying the sketches of castles and great estates from around the world.”

  Lady Willow prowled the room, speaking with her hands. Each new statement had a gesture—two fingers rubbed together to show texture, or palms open wide beside her face to show delight. She looked to the side when she was thoughtful. She fiddled with leaves of a potted fern when she revealed some fear or hope. Every minute or so, she shot him a careful glance.

  Tell her, he thought. But he dare not interrupt.

  “After reading and writing and sums,” she went on, “these windowed boxes and my own sketching took up nearly all of my time. On a particularly long visit, Aunt Mary conspired with me to repaint my bedroom and select fabric for new linens. After that, I was off. I remade the bedroom of my governess, the nursery, my brother’s rooms—on and on it went until I had I made changes to every room in the house.”

  Cassin glanced around him at the blue walls and back to her.

  “I’ve redesigned the interior of every room in Leland Park many times over. This drawing room, for instance, I’ve only just finished.” She held out her arms and pivoted, indicating the long, blue room.

  Cassin thought of the cold stone walls of Caldera, his castle in Yorkshire. Ancient tapes
tries had hung on the same walls for what must have been hundreds of years, and portraits of identically posed relatives lined the corridors. A belching fire dusted everything with a whirl of black soot. It had never occurred to him that the rooms should look any other way. His mother and sisters had never shown the slightest interest in bringing in so much as a new footstool. The sturdy antique furniture was as natural to the castle as the towering trees in the garden.

  She was at the mantel now, adjusting the angle of a vase and lacquered box. “I hope this explains, at least in part, my great desire to relocate to this new neighborhood in London. When I am reunited with my aunt and uncle and am in their employ, I can devote every day to the designs of one beautiful new home after another. All the best craftsmen and merchants are at their disposal.” She turned to beam at him. “Leland Park can only be made over so many times,” she said. “A few select Pixham neighbors have taken my advice on a room or two in their homes, but to design every room in every house in an entire London district? It is the opportunity of a lifetime.”

  She looked at him, waiting for some response. The repeat chorus of Tell her scraped at the back of his head, but he could barely hear it.

  She returned to the sofa, and the dog jumped beside her. “It’s why I conceived of the advertisement. I have to get to London, and my mother cannot be persuaded.”

  “Why is your mother so opposed?” The last question, he thought.

  “My mother doesn’t care that I will never have a family or that I should like to fill my life with something I value instead. She will not listen; she never has. And she detests my aunt’s choices for her life. Considering this, I was forced to find a way around her.”

  “So many secrets,” he said.

  “Yes, well, you should try to lead a fulfilling life with lively interests and engaging relationships but absolutely no rights, and you’d see how many secrets you are compelled to keep. Better still, try living at the mercy of others who enjoy unlimited rights. What then? Self-preservation quite literally forced my hand. It sounds drastic, but I grow older with every year. Life is passing me by.” Her voice broke, and she struggled to gain composure.