The Wildest Heart

I realized that I could be perfectly honest with him. I shrugged. “Would you have noticed me at all before? I was an ugly duckling before sheer chance, and Sir Edgar transformed me into a swan. I still had the same intelligence you say you admire, but who would have bothered to pay any attention to it then? No, my lord, it is you who are not being logical now. I discovered that in order to be recognized as an intelligent woman, I had first to be noticed as a woman. Would we have met at all if you had not been alarmed that the Prince of Wales might have formed a tendre for me?”

He laughed, and leaned forward to pat my hand.

“Touché, my lady! No, I must confess that it had not entered my head what a disadvantage it might be to be born a female—and an intelligent one, at that! May I wish you good fortune?”

He kissed my hands when we parted, and that was that. Sir Edgar was flattered that the prime minister had noticed me, and I never told him what had transpired between us.

There were other things to think about. I was almost twenty years old, and a grand birthday ball had been planned for me. Had I but known it, my whole life was to be changed again, drastically, following that special occasion.

It was truly an enchanted evening. I had danced every dance, consumed great quantities of champagne, and laughed and flirted the night away. The festivities continued until after six in the morning, when the last of our guests finally went home, fortified by an enormous breakfast.

When, at last, I climbed the stairs to my room, I was so weary that I had barely enough energy left to take off my shimmering satin ball gown. I dropped it on the floor next to my satin dancing slippers, and threw myself into bed.

I slept deeply, dreamlessly, waking only when my maid—or so I thought—drew apart the heavy velvet draperies that covered my window and brilliant sunlight suddenly streamed across my face.

“Did you have to open them all the way, Martine? What time is it? I promised I would go riding in the park this afternoon…”

“Perhaps you could postpone your riding until later. There is a certain individual you should see this afternoon, on a matter that might prove of vital concern to your future.”

I sat up in bed with a jerk, my sleepy, swollen eyes widening with surprise. The last person I had expected to see, in my bedchamber of all places, was my mother.

“I’m sorry if I woke you up,” she said in an expressionless voice. “But the news I have wouldn’t keep. I told Martine she could leave, that I would see you had your hot chocolate. It’s there on the table by your bed.”

I looked at her, bunking to clear the last vestiges of sleep from my eyes. My mother—Lady Fanny. All these months we had existed like complete strangers, passing each other in the corridors of the house without any visible recognition. It was by her avoidance of me that I first sensed she knew very well what had caused my changed position in the house, but like an ostrich, she preferred not to see. I had hated her all the more for it, of course. My mother, the procuress! She had been Sir Edgar Cardon’s mistress while she was still married to my father, and now, in my own twisted way, I was paying her back in her own coin, on my father’s behalf.

We watched each other for a few moments, while I reached slowly for my cup of chocolate.

The morning light was cruel to her face, in spite of the carefully applied powder and rouge she always used. Perhaps she had been pretty once, but her plump blonde beauty was not the kind that lasts into middle age. I saw her suddenly, in the harsh light of the sun, as a fat, aging woman—an object of pity, if I had been capable of pitying her.

As if she could not bear to look upon my face for too long, my mother had walked impatiently over to my dresser, where she stood fiddling with my combs and brushes as she waited for me to finish my drink. All this time I had said not a word to her, but now at last I put my cup down and saw that she had picked up the necklace of sapphires and diamonds which had been Sir Edgar’s birthday present to me.

“Do you like them?” I said idly. “I also have the bracelet and the earrings to match. But the necklace is a beautiful piece, don’t you think?”

She dropped the necklace as if it had suddenly turned red-hot and looked at me with hatred and malice in her eyes. It was just as if a mask had dropped from her face.

“Perhaps you could soon be buying your own jewels, Rowena. That is—if you are sensible.”

“Why don’t you come right out with whatever it is you came here to say, Mother? I’m still too sleepy to find solutions to riddles.”

I swung my legs off the bed, realizing I was naked only when I saw the expression on my mother’s face.

I laughed, reaching for one of the sheer, lace-embroidered robes that Sir Edgar had surprised me with on one occasion. “Heavens! What strangers we are, to be sure! I had no idea that my nudity would appall you.”

“It’s not that…” she began, and then bit her words off short. “Never mind,” she went on quickly. “I did not come here to quarrel with you, but rather—rather to offer you a belated birthday present, you might say.” The short, almost hysterical laugh she gave startled me into looking more closely at her, and indeed, her face bore an almost unnatural flush that underlay the rouge she had applied too heavily, and her plump, be-ringed fingers trembled as she nervously pleated and unpleated a fold of her skirt.

“It’s a little late for recriminations between us, isn’t it, Mother?

” I said equably, and began to brush my hair. “Well?” I went on when she seemed to hesitate. “Aren’t you going to tell me what my belated birthday present is?”

“It must be a secret between us,” she said quickly. “Edgar—I do not want Edgar to know—not yet. He never did like your father, you know. Guy’s name must not be mentioned.”

My hand stopped in midstroke. “My father? What has he to do with it? You’ve never mentioned his name before!”

“Of course I haven’t. Why should I? We are divorced, and all the unpleasantness he put me through… but that no longer matters,” she said hurriedly, when I would have spoken. “The least you can do is to hear me out. It will not take long. Your father—you knew he went to America? When your grandfather died, the lawyers had a difficult time tracing him. No one had an address, and of course, it was out of the question that he should ever return here! Even so, there was the matter of the title. He is the Earl of Melchester now, murderer or not.” A barely suppressed note of bitterness had crept into her voice, and I wondered whether she had begun to regret the fact that she might have been a countess, instead of the wife of a mere baronet.

I repeated, “Why should you suddenly speak of my father now? What are you trying to tell me?”

Suddenly there was a note of triumph in her voice.