Someone to Wed (Westcott 3)

All night, between fitful bouts of sleep, Wren longed to go home to Withington. At dawn, before she slid into another doze, she decided that that was precisely what she was going to do. She relaxed and felt infinitely better.

So of course here she was the next morning walking along South Audley Street, looking for the right house number. Maude was with her this time, and because she was, Wren stopped outside the correct house when she might otherwise have walked on by, pretending not to have seen it. She was such a coward. She climbed the steps with firm resolution and rapped the knocker against the door.

Less than a minute later she was ascending a grand staircase inside the house behind the butler, who had acknowledged her with a bow as soon as she gave her name and had not even gone up first to ascertain if Mrs. Westcott was at home. He admitted her to what was obviously the drawing room after announcing her, and she lifted her veil over the brim of her bonnet. Both ladies were on their feet—there was no one else in the room—and both were smiling. Mrs. Westcott came toward her, right hand extended.

“I am so pleased you came, Miss Heyden,” she said, taking Wren’s hand in a firm grip before letting it go. “Alex told us you are in town on business. It is good of you to give us some of your time. Do come and sit down. I hope you like coffee. That is what is being sent up, but it will be no trouble at all to have a pot of tea brought too if that is what you would prefer.”

“Coffee will be lovely,” Wren said. “Thank you. I do hope I am not keeping you from something more important.”

“Nothing could be more important this morning,” Lady Overfield said as Wren moved toward the chair that had been indicated. And then she startled Wren by kissing her on the cheek—her purple cheek. “May I take your bonnet? Have you been very busy since you arrived in town?”

Wren removed her bonnet and sat down. Mother and daughter sat side by side on a sofa. “I arrived just yesterday,” she said. “I went for a walk in Hyde Park to get some air and exercise after the journey, and met Lord Riverdale there.”

“Then you must plan to be busy today,” Mrs. Westcott said.

“Yes.” Wren clasped her hands in her lap and then unclasped them and spread her fingers over her skirt. “A few London shops sell my glassware. I thought it would be interesting to see how it is displayed. It sells well, but perhaps I can make some suggestions—” She stopped abruptly. “I did not really come on business.”

“Then you came for pleasure,” Lady Overfield said, smiling warmly. “And there is much of that to be had in London. But allow me to tell you in person, though I did so too in one of the letters I wrote you, how fascinated I was to read about the glassworks. I had no idea how much design planning and skill and artistry are involved and how important sales strategies are. I have a great curiosity to see some of the finished products. Perhaps I may go with you to the shops?”

Their coffee arrived at that moment with a plate of sugar biscuits.

“Where are you staying?” Mrs. Westcott asked after the maid had left the room. “Somewhere comfortable, I hope?”

“At a small hotel for gentlewomen,” Wren told her. “It is quite respectable.” She was beginning to take in the spacious splendor of the drawing room, so very different from that at Brambledean Court. A great deal of money had been spent on this house to keep it fashionable and beautiful as well as comfortable. From what she had learned before she met the Earl of Riverdale, this house had not come to him with his title and estate but had gone with the bulk of the fortune to the former earl’s legitimate daughter—the one who had grown up in an orphanage and then married a duke.

“For gentlewomen. Respectable,” Mrs. Westcott repeated with a grimace. “Is it as dreadful as it sounds?”

Wren bit her lower lip to stop herself from laughing aloud. “My room is like a nun’s cell,” she said, “and the landlady looks like the head nun without a wimple. There is a list of rules posted just inside the front door and on the wall in my room, and rule number one is that no person of male gender is allowed to set foot over the doorstep under any circumstances whatsoever. I amused myself last night with images of persons of the female gender hauling heavy furniture up and down the stairs and cleaning the chimneys. But one thing cannot be denied. It is a very respectable establishment.”

They all dissolved into laughter and Wren felt the paradoxical urge to weep. Her uncle and she had had an eye for the absurd, and her aunt had had a hearty sense of humor. They had laughed frequently. How often had she laughed since their passing?

“It may remain respectable without you, Miss Heyden,” Mrs. Westcott said briskly, offering the plate of biscuits for the second time. “Do not tell me the mattress on your bed is not stuffed with straw, for I will not believe it. You brought a maid here with you this morning? You did not come by carriage, though, did you? We would have heard it.”

“We came on foot,” Wren said, taking another biscuit and biting into it. It was still almost but not quite warm. It was fresh and delicious. Breakfast had been a Spartan meal—toast with the merest scraping of butter already applied and no jam or marmalade, and weak tea.

“Then we will send your maid back with a carriage to pack up your belongings and her own and bring them here,” Mrs. Westcott said. “You will stay with us while you are in town, Miss Heyden.”

“Oh no,” Wren cried in some alarm. “I would not so inconvenience you, ma’am.”

“It will be no inconvenience,” Lady Overfield said. “You were specifically invited, if you will recall, by both Alex and me, speaking on behalf of Mama too. Alex suggested again last evening that we ask you to move in here. We agreed with him that you really ought not to be left languishing on your own at a hotel.”

“But—” Wren frowned. “You cannot really want to have me here. Oh, I beg your pardon. There is only one answer you can possibly give to that because you are ladies, and you are also kind. But you know that before you came to Wiltshire I quite brazenly offered my fortune to the Earl of Riverdale in exchange for marriage. You know that the whole … idea of it was abhorrent to him. And you cannot deny—not if you are truly honest—that when you met me at Brambledean you were horrified at the prospect that he might marry me. I recognized the impossibility of it on that day, and I released him from any obligation he might have felt after prolonging our acquaintance for more than two weeks. I said goodbye. You will not deny, I think, even if you are too polite to say it aloud, that you were greatly relieved when he told you.”

The other two ladies sat back in their seats as though to put some distance between themselves and her. There was a brief silence.

“I was,” Mrs. Westcott admitted.

“Mama.” Lady Overfield frowned.

“No, Lizzie,” her mother said. “Miss Heyden is right. There ought to be more honesty between people. How is anything to be communicated if everyone is too polite to speak their real thoughts?”

Lady Overfield inhaled audibly but said nothing.

“I love my children quite passionately, Miss Heyden,” Mrs. Westcott said. “More than anything else in life I want to see them happy. I want to see them married and settled with the right partner and enjoying their own children as I have enjoyed mine. My heart was broken when Lizzie’s marriage turned to nightmare. Now I have her with me again, and I can hope and dream for her once more. My heart was hurt when Alex’s youth was torn from him after his father’s death with the discovery that all was not as it ought to be at Riddings Park. He left behind the life of a carefree young man and returned home to set things to rights.”