“Do you wish to give me a definite no, Lord Riverdale?” Miss Heyden asked. “Or a possible maybe? Or a definite maybe, perhaps? Or even a yes?”

But he had not answered her original question. “We all have to learn to live behind the face and within the body we have been given,” he said. “None of us deserves to be shunned—or adulated—upon looks alone.”

“Are you adulated?” she asked with a slight mocking smile.

He hesitated. “I am occasionally told that I am the proverbial tall, dark, handsome man of fairy tales,” he said. “It can be a burden.”

“Strange,” she said, still half smiling.

“Miss Heyden,” he said. “I cannot possibly give you any answer now. You planned this long before I came. You have had time to think and consider, even to do some research. You have a clear advantage over me.”

“A possibly possible maybe?” she said, and he was arrested for the moment by the thought that perhaps she had a sense of humor. “Will you come back, Lord Riverdale?”

“Not alone,” he said firmly.

“I do not entertain,” she told him.

“I understand that this has not been an entertainment,” he said, “despite the invitation and the tea and cakes. It has been a job interview.”

“Yes.” She did not argue the point.

“I shall arrange something at Brambledean,” he said. “A tea, perhaps, or a dinner, or a soiree—something, and I shall invite you with several other neighbors.”

“I do not mingle with society or even with neighbors,” she told him.

He frowned again. “As Countess of Riverdale, you would have no choice,” he told her.

“Oh,” she said, “I believe I would.”

“No.”

“You would be a tyrant?” she asked.

“I would certainly not allow my wife to make a hermit of herself,” he said, “merely because of some purple marks on her face.”

“You would not allow?” she said faintly. “Perhaps I need to think more carefully about whether you will suit me.”

“Yes,” he said, “perhaps you do. It is the best I can offer, Miss Heyden. I shall send an invitation within the next week or so. If you have the courage to come, perhaps we can discover with a little more clarity if your suggestion is something we wish to pursue more seriously. If you do not, then we both have an answer.”

“If I have the courage,” she said softly.

“Yes,” he said. “I beg to take my leave with thanks for the tea. I shall see myself out.”

He bowed and strode across the room. She neither got to her feet nor said anything. A few moments later he shut the drawing room doors behind him, blew out his breath from puffed cheeks, and descended the stairs. He informed the butler that he would fetch his own curricle and horses from the stables.

Two

The Earl of Riverdale was as good as his word. A written invitation was delivered to Withington House two days after his visit. He was hosting a tea party for some of his neighbors three days hence and would be pleased if Miss Heyden would attend. She set the card down beside her breakfast plate and proceeded to eat her toast and marmalade and drink her coffee without really tasting them.

Would she go?

Maude had offered her opinion after he left a couple of days ago—of course. Maude always offered an opinion. She had been Aunt Megan’s maid and Wren’s since last year. But even before then she had never scrupled to speak her mind.

“A right handsome one, that,” she had said after he left.

“Too handsome?” Wren had asked.

“For his own good, do you mean?” In the act of picking up the tray from the table in front of Wren, Maude had pursed her lips and paused to think. “I was not given the impression that he thinks himself God’s gift to womankind. He was certainly not pleased to find himself alone with you, was he? I warned you it was improper when you concocted this whole mad scheme, but you never did heed anything I have to say, so I don’t know why I still bother. The other two were pleased enough to be here, though both of them looked a bit unnerved by the veil. They had probably heard you are worth a bundle and hoped they were onto a good thing.”

“Mr. Sweeney and Mr. Richman were a mistake,” Wren had admitted. “Is the Earl of Riverdale a mistake too, Maude? Though perhaps the answer is irrelevant. It is probable I will never hear from him again. He would not even admit to a possibly possible maybe, would he? And then he threw the challenge back at me with his idea about inviting me to some entertainment that would include others. If you have the courage to come, indeed.”

“And do you?” Maude had asked, straightening up, the tray in her hands. “You never did while your aunt and uncle were alive, and you never have since. If it wasn’t for the glassworks you would be a total hermit, and the glassworks don’t really count, do they? You aren’t going to find a husband there. And even there you always wear your veil.”

She had not waited for an answer to her question about courage. Which was just as well—Wren still did not know the answer two days later as she considered the invitation. A tea party. At Brambledean Court. With an indeterminate number of other guests from the neighborhood. Would she go? More to the point, could she? Maude was quite right—she had been a virtual hermit all her life. In more than twenty-nine years she had not attended a single social function. Her uncle and aunt had entertained occasionally, but she had always stayed in her room, and, bless their hearts, they had never tried to insist that she come down, though Uncle Reggie had tried several times to persuade her.

“You have allowed your birthmark to define your life, Wren,” he had said once, “when in reality it is something a person soon becomes accustomed to and scarcely notices. We are always more aware of our own physical shortcomings than other people are once they get to know us. You may no longer notice that my legs are too short for my body, but I am always conscious of it. Sometimes I fear that I waddle rather than walk.”

“Oh, you do not, Uncle Reggie,” Wren had protested, but he had achieved one of his aims, which was to make her laugh. But he had never seen her before the age of ten, when the birthmark had been a great deal worse than it was now. He did not know what she saw when she looked in her mirror.

It was her uncle who had named her Wren—because she had been all skinny arms and legs and big, sad eyes when he had first seen her and reminded him of a fledgling bird. Also Wren was close to Rowena, her real name. Aunt Megan had started calling her Wren too—a new name for a new life, she had said, giving her niece one of her big, all-encompassing hugs. And Wren herself had liked it. She could not remember the name Rowena ever being spoken with anything like affection or approval or even neutrality. Her uncle and aunt had had a way of saying the new name as though it—and she—was something special. And a year later they had changed her last name too—with her full approval—and she became Wren Heyden.

Her thoughts were all over the place this morning, she thought, bringing them back to the breakfast table. Would she go to tea at Brambledean Court? Could she? Those were the questions she needed to answer, though really they were one. As Countess of Riverdale, he had told her, she would not be able to remain a hermit. He would not allow it. And that was something that needed careful consideration, both the hermit part and the not-allowing part. It was a long time since she had been forced to do anything she did not want to do. She had almost forgotten that according to law, both civil and ecclesiastical, men had total command over their women, wives and children alike. She had not considered that when she decided to purchase a husband.