Purchase—it sounded horrible. But that was precisely what she was trying to do. She wanted to wed. She had longings and needs and yearnings that were a churning mix of the physical and emotional. Sometimes she could not sleep at night for the ache of something nameless that hummed through her body and her mind and seemed to settle most heavily about her heart. She had only one asset, however, with which to induce any man to marry her, and that was her money. Fortunately she had plenty of that. She was not much interested in using it to buy worldly goods. She had all she needed. She would use it, then, she had decided, to purchase what she did want, and she had set about making as wise a purchase as she could with no experience whatsoever in such matters. Now she had to ask herself a new question. In giving her person to a husband along with her money, would she be surrendering all her freedom too?

Were most men tyrants by nature? More to the point, was he, the Earl of Riverdale? It would be very easy to be beguiled by his looks. Not that she was beguiled by them. Quite the contrary, in fact. She had not wanted an obviously handsome man, not when she looked the way she did. It would be too horribly intimidating. The earl was more than good looking, though, more than handsome. He was perfection. But that was on the outside. What about on the inside? Was he a petty tyrant who would take her money and tuck her away somewhere out of sight and out of mind? But no. He had said just the opposite, and that was the whole trouble. He would not allow her to be a hermit.

I am occasionally told that I am the proverbial tall, dark, handsome man of fairy tales. It can be a burden. What had he meant by that—a burden?

Wren tossed her napkin onto the table and got to her feet. There was work awaiting her in her uncle’s study, now hers. There were papers and reports from the glassworks, and since she was now the owner in more than just name, they demanded her immediate attention. She would decide later about the invitation. Perhaps she would simply send a polite refusal and retain her freedom and her money and her aches and longings and yearnings and disturbed nights and all the rest of her familiar life. There was some virtue in familiarity.

And perhaps, just perhaps, she would go.

… if you have the courage …

She looked almost vengefully down at the card beside her plate before snatching it up and taking it with her to the study.

It seemed a little embarrassing to Alexander as a single gentleman without either his mother or his sister in residence to act as his hostess that he was entertaining a group of his neighbors at an afternoon tea, of all things. However, if he was to give the guest of honor, so to speak, a chance to attend, he must consider both her single state and the distance she must travel, and an evening event would not be practical.

A number of his neighbors from the village and its immediate vicinity had already entertained him and had shown a flattering delight that he had come here and a cautious hope that he would make it his principal residence. The men had probed his interest in farming and horses and hunting and shooting and fishing. The ladies had been more interested in his views on parties and fetes and picnics and assemblies. The mothers had asked questions obviously designed to discover just how single he was, and their daughters had blushed and tittered and fluttered. He had found it all surprisingly heartwarming, considering the dreariness of Brambledean itself, and it really was time that he returned their hospitality with some of his own. A tea party was as good as anything, even if Miss Heyden did not come.

He had explained to those whom he had invited, a deliberate twinkle in his eye, that he wished them to see his drawing room in all its faded splendor so that in a few years’ time, after he had done some renovations, they would be able to marvel at the transformation. The house was indeed faded and shabby, though it was not in quite as bad a condition as he had feared when he first knew he had been encumbered with it. The staff had been small when he came here and was still not much larger, but the butler and housekeeper, Mr. and Mrs. Dearing, husband and wife, had kept every room clean despite the Holland covers that had shrouded the furniture in the main rooms. Every surface that could gleam did so, and every faded curtain and piece of upholstery was at least dust free. There were a few structural issues—some crumbling chimneys, some damaged areas of the roof, some water seepage in the cellars, among other things, and the equipment in the kitchens was antiquated. The stables and paddocks were looking sad. Ivy had been allowed to run riot over walls.

A whole pile of money needed to be poured into the place before it could become the stately home it was meant to be, and a great deal needed to be done to make the park a worthy setting for such a grand edifice, but both could wait—and must despite the fact that they would offer employment to a large number of people who were currently unemployed or underemployed. There were more important things to be done first. The farms were not prospering, either in cultivated land or in livestock or in buildings and equipment. Those who were employed to work them were suffering as a result. Their homes were hardly better than hovels and their wages had not been raised in ten years or more—when they had been paid at all, that was. Their children were poorly clothed and uneducated. Their wives tended to look haggard.

There were more than enough problems here to overwhelm him, but he had cast them all aside for one afternoon in order to host a tea party—which might, just possibly, lead to an ultimate solution to those very problems. That faint hope would come to nothing, of course, if Miss Heyden failed to come. But he was really not sure he wanted her to.

He had not warmed to her on the occasion of his visit to Withington House, and it was not because of her looks. He had found her whole manner cold and … strange. Her veil and the shadowed part of the room in which she had sat without once getting to her feet had had him thinking a little hilariously of witches and witches’ dens. And her marriage proposal had offended him. It had seemed all wrong, even outrageous. He had asked himself again on the long drive home in his curricle, of course, if he found it so because it was she who had offered, not he. Why would it be fine for him to make a proposal based almost entirely upon monetary considerations but was not for her? The admission that he was applying a double standard had done nothing to endear her more to him, however. She just did not seem feminine to him, whatever the devil that meant.

How wealthy was she, anyway? Very wealthy, according to her, but very was not a precise word, was it? He hated the fact that it mattered, that he might overlook all his misgivings about her personally if the money was sufficient. He hated what that fact suggested about him. He hoped she would not come. But a brief note arrived the day before the tea, accepting his invitation.

She was one of the last to arrive. There were eleven people already in the drawing room apart from Alexander himself, a few of them seated, most of them still on their feet, frankly looking around the room or out through the windows, all warmly cheerful and animated and happy to be there. One young lady had just executed a pirouette in the middle of the floor, her hands clasped to her bosom, and declared that the room would be perfect for an informal dance if only Lord Riverdale would consider using it as such. Her mother was just reproving her, but with a laughing look cast Alexander’s way, when Dearing announced the twelfth guest, and Miss Heyden stepped past him and stood just inside the doorway. Alexander strode toward her, his hand outstretched, a smile on his face.

He had still been half hoping she would not come.