Mrs. Althea Westcott, Alexander’s mother, and Elizabeth, Lady Overfield, his sister, arrived at Brambledean Court early in the afternoon two days later. Alexander heard the carriage and hurried outside to hand them down and hug them warmly amid a flurry of greetings.
“So what do you think?” he could not resist asking, gesturing with one arm toward the house and about the park. “Do I dare ask?”
“Too late. You just did,” Elizabeth said, laughing. “It must all have been quite breathtakingly magnificent once upon a time, Alex. Even now it has a faded splendor.”
“Ah, but wait until you see the inside,” he warned her.
“Poor Alex. But at least the roof does not appear to have caved in,” their mother said, taking his arm as they went up the steps into the hall.
She stopped inside to glance about, her eyes coming to rest upon the faded and chipped black-and-white tiles underfoot. “It is a good thing I never warmed to Cousin Humphrey, your predecessor. I would have felt sadly deceived by him. He was one of the wealthiest men in England and one of the most selfish. He totally neglected his responsibilities here. Then they landed upon your shoulders with the title while all the money went to Anastasia, whom I am not blaming for a single moment, bless her heart. Humphrey ought to have been shot at the very least. He ought not to have been allowed to die peacefully in his bed. There is no justice.”
“At least the house is fit to be lived in,” Alexander said. “Just. I have never yet found myself being rained upon through the ceiling while I sleep or anything equally dire. Of course, I have never slept in either of the two guest rooms that have been prepared for you.”
Elizabeth laughed again. “But we will spend Easter together,” she said. “We did not relish the thought of celebrating it in London while you felt obliged to remain here a while longer.”
“And it must be admitted, Alex,” their mother said, “that we felt a curiosity to see for ourselves what you are facing here.”
Alexander introduced them to the butler and the housekeeper, and Mrs. Dearing offered to take them to their rooms to freshen up before tea. They followed her up the stairs, looking curiously about them as they went.
“Have you met any of your neighbors yet, Alex?” his mother asked later when they were settled in the drawing room with tea and scones and cakes. “But you surely have. You have been here for a while and they must have been burning with eagerness to meet the new earl and discover if you mean to settle here and marry one of their daughters.”
“I have met a number of them,” he said, “and all have been both amiable and kind. I have been entertained at dinner and tea and cards and music, and I have been kept standing outside church for an hour after service each Sunday and bowed and curtsied to on the street. I have even entertained here. If I waited until the house was more presentable, I might not entertain for the next twenty years. I invited a number of people to a tea party one afternoon and was gratified that everyone came. They were curious, I suppose, to see just how shabby the inside of the house is. And yes, of course, almost everyone has asked about my plans. I have assured them that I intend to make this my home even though my parliamentary duties will take me to London for a few months each spring.”
There was a beat of silence. “You intend to make your home at Brambledean,” his mother said, her cup suspended a few inches from her mouth.
“You will abandon Riddings Park to live here?” Elizabeth asked with more open dismay. “But you love Riddings, Alex. It is home, and you worked so hard and so long to restore it to prosperity. This is … dreary, to say the least. You have hired a new steward you described to us as hardworking and conscientious. Why do you feel the need to be here yourself? Oh, but you need not bother answering. It is because of your infernal sense of duty.” She set her cup down none too gently in the saucer. “I am sorry. How you conduct your life is none of my business. And we came here to cheer you, not to scold you, did we not, Mama? I feel compelled to say, though, that I care for you and about you and long to see you happy.”
“You do not see me unhappy, Lizzie,” he assured her. “But there are some things I need to do here in person, not least of which is giving the people dependent upon me the assurance that I care about them, that I empathize with them, that we are all in this struggle together. I am hoping Bufford and I together can find ways to make the farms more prosperous this year even without the input of too much new money. I want to put some into much-needed repairs to the laborers’ cottages and into an increase in their wages—small, perhaps, but better than nothing. Bufford wants to put money into new crops and equipment and more livestock. Together we complement each other, you see. But enough of that. I have no wish to put you to sleep. Tell me about your journey.”
They did so, and they all laughed a great deal, for Elizabeth in particular had a ready wit and an eye for the absurd. What had probably been a tedious journey, as most were, was made to sound as though it had been vastly entertaining. But his mother had something else on her mind too and got to it before they rose from their tea.
“Do you intend making a serious search for a wife during the Season, Alex?” she asked. “It worries me that you are thirty years old but have never given yourself a chance to enjoy life. Last year you admitted that finally you were looking about you, but then came the wretched family upset and you set aside all thought of your personal happiness again.”
“I shall certainly give myself the pleasure of escorting you and Lizzie to various entertainments when the Season begins, Mama,” he told her.
“Which is no answer at all,” she said.
“Alex.” His sister was hugging her elbows with her hands as though she were cold, and was leaning slightly toward him. “You are not going to be looking for a rich wife, are you?”
“There is something inherently wrong with a rich wife?” he asked, grinning at her. “Wealthy young ladies are to be excluded from consideration upon that fact alone? It seems a little unfair to them.”
She clucked her tongue. “You know exactly what I mean,” she said. “And the very evasiveness of your answer speaks volumes. It would be so very typical of you to do it. You have never ever put your own happiness first. Do not do it. Please. You deserve happiness more than anyone else I know.” There were actually tears brimming in her eyes.
“Money is not an evil, Lizzie,” he said.
“Oh, but it is when it is given precedence over happiness,” she told him. “Please, Alex. Do not do it.”
“You may save your breath, Lizzie,” their mother said, looking sharply from one to the other of them. “You know your brother cannot be shifted once he has decided upon something. It is what is always most annoying and most endearing about him. But I do hope you will not marry just for money, Alex. It would break my heart. No, forget I said that. I would not impose yet one more burden upon you. Whomever you choose—and I hope you choose someone soon, for I am very ready to be a grandmama and drive you to distraction by spoiling your children quite outrageously. Whomever you choose I will welcome with open arms, and I will absolutely insist upon loving her too.”
“And so will Alex, Mama,” Elizabeth said. “He is like that. But will she insist upon loving him? That is the question that concerns me. There will be any number of candidates for the hand of the Earl of Riverdale, but will they see Alex behind the title?”
“I promise not to marry anyone I hate or anyone who hates me,” he said, smiling from one to the other of them. And perhaps he ought to leave it at that for now, he thought. But Sunday afternoon would have to be mentioned and explained soon. Perhaps he ought to have invited several other neighbors too. But that would have been grossly unfair to her. “I have invited one of my more distant neighbors to join us for tea on Sunday afternoon.”
“On Easter Sunday? Oh, that will be lovely, Alex,” his mother said, brightening. “But only one? Who is he?”
“She, actually,” he said. “Miss Heyden. She lives at Withington House, eight or nine miles from here.”
“And she is coming alone?” his mother asked. “But who is she?”
“Her uncle was Mr. Reginald Heyden, a gentleman who made his fortune in fine glassware,” he explained. “His workshops and headquarters are in Staffordshire, but he purchased Withington ten years or so ago as a country home. He was married to Miss Heyden’s aunt. She lived with them until their deaths within a few days of each other a little over a year ago.”
“And he left her the house?” Elizabeth asked.
“And everything else too,” he said. “He and his wife adopted her. They had no children of their own and apparently no other close relatives either. Miss Heyden owns and takes an active part in the running of the business.”
“She must be an extraordinary woman,” his mother said.
“Yes,” he said, “I believe she is.”
There was another of those beats of silence, so pregnant with meaning. “She is unmarried?” his mother asked. “How old is she?”
“She is close to my own age,” he said. “She has never been married.”
“And she is coming to tea on Sunday. With no other guests.” She was looking intently at him.
“No others,” he said.
“Oh, Alex, you provoking creature,” Elizabeth cried. “Tell us the rest of this story before I come over there and shake it out of you.”
“But there is very little to tell,” he protested. “I called upon her a couple of weeks ago—a courtesy call, you will understand, since I hope to become acquainted with all the families within a ten-mile radius of Brambledean. I invited her to the tea I mentioned earlier. We have each called upon the other once since then.”
“You are courting her,” his mother said.
“I am making her acquaintance, Mama,” he said, frowning. “She is making mine. It happens, you know, among neighbors.”
Elizabeth got to her feet. “We must not subject poor Alex to any more of an interrogation, Mama,” she said. “He is not going to admit that there is something significant about inviting a single lady of his own age to take tea with his mother and sister in his own home, the provoking man. We will have to wait until Sunday, then, to see for ourselves. I would love to view the rest of the house, Alex. At least, I think I would. Will you give us the grand tour?”
“It would be my pleasure,” he said, jumping to his feet, greatly relieved. “Shall we start with the ground floor and work our way upward? Mama, will you come too, or would you rather rest here or in your room until dinner?”
“Oh, I am coming too,” she assured him. “I am not quite in my dotage yet even if I do have two children past the age of thirty. Goodness, is it possible?”
She took his offered arm.
Wren liked attending church and did so regularly. It was somewhere she could be alone yet in company with other people. It was a place where no one bothered her or looked askance at her veil, yet almost everyone nodded in recognition and some even smiled and wished her a good morning. She always sat close to the back, where her aunt and uncle had sat. With their stature and wealth, they might have made a point of sitting at the front, but they had never done so.
She never paid particular attention to the words of the service and often allowed her thoughts to drift during the homily. She rather liked the way the vicar droned on in his kindly way without any fiery rhetoric or fervent appeal to the emotions of his congregation. She was not even sure she believed all the teachings and doctrines of her religion. But there was something about the church itself—and most churches she had visited—that brought her mind and her emotions and her very being, it seemed, to a point of stillness, and she wondered if that was what her religion would call the Holy Spirit. But she did not wish to give it a name, whatever it was. Names were confining and restrictive. Though they could also be freeing. Wren, with its suggestion of wings and wide blue skies, had somehow set her free of Rowena when she was ten years old. Heyden instead of the other name had completed the transformation.
The church was particularly lovely on this Easter Sunday, filled as it was with lilies and other spring flowers, the somberness of Good Friday flung off. But it was neither the flowers nor the joyfulness of the occasion that made Wren happy. It was that stillness, that sense of calmness at her center, that conviction that somehow, through all the turmoil of life, all was well and always would be well. It was something she needed today, for this afternoon she was going to do something she had never done before. She was going to a social event—tea at Brambledean Court—with two people she had never met before, the Earl of Riverdale’s mother and sister, and she was going without her veil.
She definitely was going, though the cowardly part of herself, which could be very vocal at times, kept loudly insisting that no, she did not need to, that if he had an ounce of feeling he would not have asked it of her, that she ought to just move on to the fourth gentleman on her list and forget all about the too handsome, too demanding Earl of Riverdale.
She went. She sat with rigid spine and raised chin and clenched hands beside Maude in the carriage. They traveled in silence after her maid had informed her that she looked as if she were on the way to her own execution and Wren had snapped back at her that when she wished for her maid’s opinion she would ask for it—a not very original setdown. She went without even the muted comfort of a gray or lavender dress of half mourning, but instead in her sky blue dress, the one that was embroidered at the hem and wrists and high neckline with the same color silk. It had been her favorite before she cast it aside for her blacks. And she wore with it a straw bonnet from which she had removed the veil—she had not wanted to be tempted by its presence upon the brim. She went with the sick feeling that whatever peace she had found at church this morning, she had also unfortunately left there. She could not be feeling more naked if she actually were unclothed. Well, perhaps that was a bit of an exaggeration. She tried to feel amused and failed.
If raw terror could ever be a tangible thing, then she was it.
The journey seemed endless and was over far too quickly. She felt Maude’s cool fingertips patting the back of her hand as the carriage turned onto the driveway leading to Brambledean. “You look lovely, Miss Wren,” she said. “If you would just believe that, your whole life would turn around.”
Wren opened her mouth to snap back yet again. Instead she startled herself and her maid by leaning closer and kissing her cheek. “I love my life just as it is, Maude,” she said not quite truthfully, “and I love you.”
Her maid had no response but to gape.
The Earl of Riverdale must have been watching for her. The main doors opened as the carriage drew to a halt, and he came down the steps and reached the carriage door before her coachman could jump down from the box. He opened it, set down the steps, and extended a hand to help Wren alight, a smile on his face. But she would be willing to wager he was feeling far less at ease than he looked. What man would look forward to introducing her to his mother, after all? Had he been hoping she would lose her courage and not come?
“You have made good time,” he said. “Happy Easter to you, Miss Heyden.”
“And did you notice today?” she asked him almost defiantly when she was down on the terrace beside him.
His smile deepened, and his eyes seemed to turn bluer, and she wondered what on earth she was doing even considering marrying him. He could have any woman on earth, even a few as rich as she or richer. He could not possibly want to marry her.
“I have noticed the elegance of your dress and the vividness of the color, which suits you perfectly,” he said. “I have noticed that your straw bonnet suggests summertime, as the weather itself does. I have noticed that there is no veil in sight. And—ah, yes, now that I look more closely I notice that you seem to have some slight blemish on the left side of your face. The next time or the time after that I daresay I will not notice it at all.”
Some slight blemish indeed. And the next time or the time after that, indeed. “And happy Easter to you too, Lord Riverdale,” she said rather sourly, though she had been warmed by his humor.
“Come and meet my mother and sister.” He offered his arm. “They are in the drawing room.”
She wondered if they knew, if he had warned them. She told him as they made their way upstairs, just because she was unnerved by their silent progress, how lovely the church had looked this morning with all the lilies, and he told her that there had been as many daffodils as lilies in their church.
“Golden trumpets of hope,” he said, and she grimaced.
“I felt very foolish after saying those words aloud when we were on the daffodil bank,” she said.
“But why?” he asked her. “I will always see daffodils that way from now on.”
The butler had gone ahead of them and was opening the drawing room doors, both of them, with something of a flourish. Wren felt her knees turn weak and heard a voice in her head—her uncle’s. He had spoken the words when she was ten years old and her aunt had taken her to his house in London and lifted the heavy veil from her face and he had looked at her for the first time. Straighten your spine, girl, he had said, not unkindly, and raise your chin and look the world in the eye. If you are cringing or dying on the inside, let it be your secret alone. All her life until then she had hunched and cringed and tipped her head to one side and tucked her chin into her neck and tried to be invisible. Now she straightened her already straight spine, raised her already lifted chin, and looked directly at the two ladies who were standing a short distance apart halfway across the room.
Everything seemed unnaturally bright. But of course, there was no veil between her and the harsh, real world.
“Mama, Lizzie,” the Earl of Riverdale said, “may I present Miss Heyden? My mother, Mrs. Westcott, and my sister, Lady Overfield, Miss Heyden.”
“Oh, my dear.” The older lady clasped her hands to her bosom and took a few hurried steps closer, frowning in concern. “You have burned yourself.”
“No,” Wren said. “I was born this way.” He had not warned them, then. She extended her right hand. “How do you do, Mrs. Westcott?”
The lady took her hand. “I am very relieved that you did not suffer the pain of a burn,” she said. “I am pleased to meet you, Miss Heyden. I have never been to Brambledean before even though my husband’s cousin owned it all my married life and it has been Alex’s since last year. It was a pleasure to meet some of his near neighbors at church this morning and it is a pleasure to have the chance of a longer visit with you this afternoon. Friendly connections are very important when one lives in the country, are they not?”
She was a slight, dark-haired lady with an amiable face and a gracious manner. She was of medium stature and must have been a beauty in her day. It was easy to see where her son had got his looks, if not his height. Her daughter was taller, though still more than half a head shorter than Wren. She was fairer of coloring too and pretty without being dazzlingly lovely. She was probably a few years older than her brother. She offered Wren her hand.
“I am pleased to make your acquaintance too, Miss Heyden,” she said. “And may I offer condolences on your double loss just a little over a year ago? It must have been quite devastating.”
“It was.” Wren shook her hand. “Thank you.”
The earl directed her to a chair and they all sat down. The tea tray and plates of food were carried in almost immediately, and Mrs. Westcott poured while Lady Overfield passed around the drinks and pastries. Wren took two of the latter, struck by the thought that she was free to help herself to food today since there was no veil to make eating near impossible.
“Do you spend much time at your home in the country here, Miss Heyden?” Mrs. Westcott asked. “Withington House, I believe Alex called it. Wiltshire is a particularly scenic county, is it not?”
“It is,” Wren agreed. “My uncle chose it after some deliberation and much consultation with my aunt when they decided a number of years ago to buy a country home. There is another house in Staffordshire, close to the glassworks I inherited, but it is in a more urbanized area than Withington House and not as attractive. I do spend time there, however, sometimes for weeks at a time. I run the business myself, you see, though admittedly the manager there, who was with my uncle for years as his trusted right-hand man, could proceed very well without me. I do not subscribe to the notion, however, that a woman must remain at home and rely upon men to take care of everything beyond its bounds.”
There. She was speaking with what even to her own ears sounded like belligerence, like throwing down a gauntlet, as though she needed to make clear to them that she was not out to snare their son and brother merely in order to cling to him for the rest of her life. That had never been her intention. She wished to wed, yes, but marriage could never be all in all to her, as she guessed it was for most women of her class. Perhaps they did not think she was out to snare him at all, however. He was, after all, an earl and an extremely handsome man, while she was … Well. Some people had described her uncle a little contemptuously as a cit despite the fact that he had been a gentleman. Members of the upper classes often frowned upon alliances with such people.
“Oh, I do applaud you, Miss Heyden,” Lady Overfield said with a laugh that had a pleasant gurgle to it. “But how you must scandalize the ton.”
“I know nothing of the ton,” Wren said. “My uncle was a gentleman, and my aunt was a lady. I am a lady. But though my uncle had a home in London before he married my aunt, he sold it afterward and always declared that he did not miss the life he had had there. I have never craved it. We divided our time between Staffordshire and here.”
“You never had a come-out Season, then?” Mrs. Westcott asked.
“No,” Wren said. “I never wanted one or any entrée into high society. I still do not. I am quite happy with my life as it is.” Except that I proposed marriage to your son because I want someone to wed.
She was being a bit obnoxious, Wren realized, and more than a bit stiff in her demeanor. Miss Briggs would be tutting and shaking her head and making her practice a relaxed, gracious social manner again and again and yet again. She was feeling hostile for no apparent reason, for neither lady was looking at her disapprovingly or with any haughty condescension. They were very polite—as all ladies were trained to be. But surely they must have been inwardly cringing as they asked themselves why their son and brother had singled her out for this invitation to tea. They must have come to the inevitable conclusion, and they must have been horrified. They would surely pour outrage into his ears when she was gone.
“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.