Perhaps she was that desperate to marry. Though desperate was an unkind word. Eager, then. Perhaps her wish to find someone to wed—to use her own phrase—took precedence over all else. The possibility made her seem more human and perhaps even a little more likable.
He offered a hand to help her into his carriage and was a bit surprised when she took it.
He had sent Maude home with her carriage. Perhaps as her presumptive betrothed he had not felt the necessity of observing the proprieties. Was he her presumptive betrothed? He had done and said nothing during that ghastly tea to suggest any such thing. There had been no hint to his neighbors, several of whom had been acquainted with her aunt and uncle and had commiserated with her on her loss and expressed pleasure at meeting her. None had really seemed delighted, though. But perhaps that was her fault. Undoubtedly it was, in fact.
It had been by far the worst afternoon of her life—since the age of ten anyway. She settled on the seat of Lord Riverdale’s carriage, made room for him beside her, and longed for her own conveyance. She had been waiting for what seemed like forever but was actually less than two hours for the ordeal to be over so that she might collapse into it and close her eyes and feel the comfort of Maude’s presence beside her. She could not do this. She simply could not. He was too male and too handsome and the world was too vast a place and too full of people.
She wanted to curl up into a ball, either on the seat or on the floor. She did not know how she was going to keep panic at bay for … How long did it take to travel eight miles? She could not think clearly.
“Will you lift your veil?” he asked her as the carriage moved away from the front doors.
Did he not understand? What she needed was an extra veil to throw over the first—to throw over the whole of herself. She wanted desperately to be alone. But there was no point in directing her anger against him. She was the one who had set this nightmare in motion. Was she going to draw back now? She had made the decision and had planned her course with cool deliberation. She raised her hands and lifted the veil back over the brim of her bonnet. But she turned her head slightly toward the window on her left side as she did so.
“Thank you,” he said. And, after a few silent moments, “Have you always been a recluse, Miss Heyden?”
“No,” she said. “As the owner of a thriving business, I do not merely sit at home all year long, gathering in the profits while other people make the plans and the decisions and do the work. I learned the business from my uncle and spent long hours with him at the workshop with the artisans and in the offices with the administrative and creative staff. I am a businesswoman in more than just name.”
Her uncle and aunt had indulged many of her whims and respected her basic freedom, but they had been very insistent that she be properly educated— something she had certainly not been to the age of ten. They had hired Miss Briggs, an elderly governess who had appeared to be a cuddly old dear. In some ways she was, but she had also imposed a challenging academic curriculum upon her pupil and not only encouraged excellence but somehow insisted upon it. Miss Briggs had also taught manners and deportment and elocution and social skills, like making polite conversation with strangers. She had finally been let go the day after Wren’s eighteenth birthday with a comfortable pension and a small thatched cottage, to which Wren’s uncle had gone to the expense of bringing her beloved sister from halfway across the country to live with her.
Wren’s real education, though—or what she considered her real education—had come at the hands of her uncle himself. One day when she was twelve he had realized after taking her with him to the glassworks that a passion for his life’s work had been sparked in her. I could hardly get a word in edgewise all the way home, he had told Aunt Megan later. And I lost count of the number of questions she asked after the first thirty-nine. We have a young prodigy here, Meg.
“Did you live with your aunt and uncle all your life until their passing?” the Earl of Riverdale asked.
“Since I was ten,” she said. “My aunt took me to his home in London—that was before he sold it—and they were married a week later.”
“You have his name,” he said.
“They adopted me,” she told him. She had not been sure it was a legal adoption until after her uncle’s death, when she had found the certificate among his papers. Her father’s signature had been upon it—a stomach-churning shock at the time.
There was another short silence. Perhaps he was waiting for a further explanation. “You have a way,” he said at last, “of turning your eyes toward me as you speak but not your face. It must be hard on your eyes. Will you not turn your head too? I saw the left side of your face when I visited you, and if you will recall, I did not run from the room screaming or grimace horribly or have a fit of the vapors.”
She wanted to laugh at the unexpectedness of his words, but turned her face toward him instead. Would she ever be able to do it with ease? But would there be another occasion? She was still not at all sure she wished to continue with this—or that he did.
“It really is not horrible, you know,” he said, after letting his eyes roam over her face. “I can understand that it makes you self-conscious. I can understand that as a young lady you must lament what you consider a serious blemish to your looks. But it is not altogether unsightly. Anyone looking at you will of course notice it immediately. Some will even avoid any further acquaintance with you. Those are people who do not deserve your regard anyway. Most people, however, will surely look and then overlook. Though I noticed the first time and have noticed again now, I would be willing to wager that after seeing you a few more times I will not even see the blemish any longer. You will simply be you.”
Will, he had said, not would. He expected to see her again, then? She drew a slow breath. Her uncle used to say much the same thing as Lord Riverdale had just said. What birthmark? he used to say if ever it was referred to, and then he would pretend to start with surprise as he looked at her and noticed it. And sometimes he would ask her to look at him full face, and he would frown as he glanced from one side of her face to the other and say something like Ah yes, the purple marks are on the left side. I could not remember.
“And what about before you were ten?” the earl asked when she said nothing. “Did your parents die?”
“My life began when I was ten, Lord Riverdale,” she said. “I do not remember what came before.”
He looked steadily at her, a slight frown between his brows. He did not press the question further, however.
It was time to turn the tables on him, since it seemed she could not simply curl up in a ball on the floor and she would not give in to the panic that still clawed at her insides. “And what about your life before you inherited your title?” she asked. She knew some basic facts, but not details.
“It was a dull but happy life—dull to talk about, happy enough to live,” he told her. “I had both parents until seven years ago, and I have one sister, of whom I am dearly fond. Not all people are so fortunate in their siblings. My father was devoted to his hounds and his horses and the hunt. He was hearty and well liked, and rather impecunious, I am afraid. It took me a good five years after his passing to set Riddings Park on a firm financial footing again. By that time my sister had been released from an unfortunate marriage by the untimely passing of her husband and was living with my mother and me again, and I was settling into the life I expected to continue with very few changes until my demise. There was only one slight bump of unease on my horizon, and that was the fact that I was heir to a twenty-year-old boy earl, who could not be expected to marry and produce an heir of his own for a number of years. But it seemed a slight worry. Harry was a healthy and basically decent lad. You took the trouble to learn some facts about me. You no doubt know exactly what happened to bring my worries to fruition.”