Forced Offer (3 page)

"I am sorry I ever thought of inviting that woman to our table," said Mrs. Presleigh when Mrs. Cavendish had left, for the first time that afternoon directing her words to Belinda. "I cannot conceive of a worse Friday-face than her. Imagine saying such things to me when I mentioned that Roselle had a cold. And comparing Roselle's slight cold to that girl, that—"

"Mary Jane Hersonel," provided Belinda. Although Mrs. Presleigh was making light of Roselle's illness, 
she 
was not. Belinda could not shake the woman's words from her mind, as she looked out the carriage at the afternoon, which had become even gloomier as it advanced.

"I think I am done for the day," said Mrs. Presleigh, slumping back against the cushions, "I am completely fagged."

"We'll soon be there, Mama," said Belinda, realizing that her mother's gray look meant that she had taken Mrs. Cavendish's words very seriously.

Mrs. Presleigh closeted herself with Mr. Presleigh for close to an hour after they arrived and when the door opened, Mr. Presleigh summoned one of the footmen, giving him directions to another physician's house. He, too, seemed very worried. It seemed that while Belinda and her mother had been out, Roselle had gone into fever and her face was hot. Mrs. Presleigh summoned their physician, Dr. Casper, to London.

Pneumonia was diagnosed one day and measles the next. Not one but three doctors met to discuss what to do. Yet they could do nothing. The combination proved deadly.

* * * * *

Roselle died three weeks after their arrival in London. Mrs. Presleigh went about the house like a ghost, unable to believe or accept it.

It had all happened so fast that the dwellers of the house had not been properly prepared. Mr. Presleigh buried himself in his books and papers.

Belinda felt immense guilt for feeling little emotion. She felt numbness more than anything. Roselle had always seemed like a porcelain doll in a glass case to her. She had been since birth the undisputed queen of the house on whom everyone doted.

The servants, taking a cue from Mrs. Presleigh, had favored the elder daughter to the exclusion of the younger one. Roselle seldom spoke to Belinda, considering her of little importance and not worth her notice, so Belinda had hardly known her sister Roselle.

One must know a person before one can mourn them properly.

So unexpected was this blow that it threw the family into confusion.

For several weeks after the funeral, Belinda's parents were paralyzed by shock. Incomprehension was of such magnitude that it muted them so that they could hardly speak, even to each other.

Such a pall hung on the house as to make even callers unwelcome. Often, Mrs. Presleigh, unable to bear even speaking of her loss and drowning in choking waves of grief, would turn away even her own close relatives.

Finally, they decided to return. The whole purpose of the purchase of the house and the trip had been to launch Roselle in her first London Season. Without Roselle, there was no point to remaining in a city that now seemed hostile and stark.

So the family removed once again to the road.

And this time, Belinda kept the drapes of the carriage tightly shut to the sight of the gibbets as they passed them by.

Chapter 3

Once at home after the long journey where little had been spoken, Belinda was glad that she could escape to the surrounding countryside. And when before she had taken up little notice, she took up even less now as her mother went into deep mourning. Her father, as always, buried himself in his study.

The war raged on, and though Napoleon's battles may be stark reality to many people, to Belinda, locked away in her little world, they were only distant murmurs.

She often spent most of the day on the grounds, taking with her a book of poems to read under the shade of a favorite elm. This tree was beyond her father's property and deep into Winterhill, the adjoining estate, into which she often trespassed. But the only one she ever saw there was the gamekeeper, a large, kindly fellow who stopped now and then to have a word with her.

"How are they at the house?" She would sometimes ask him, merely to make conversation, for her family had the thinnest acquaintance with the family, which consisted of an invitation to the Winterhill annual ball and nothing at all during the rest of the year.

Belinda knew that her mother had tried countless times to get closer to the Berringtons, but to no avail. She had harbored hopes of an attachment between the heir, Lord Berrington, and her daughter Roselle. Her trip to London had been full of hopes in this direction, for it was rumored that Lord Richard was to be back from the Peninsula in time for the London Season. He had been away for several years.

The gamekeeper would invariably answer her question thus: "Lord Berrington still out at war, Miss Belinda, and Lady Berrington a bit under the weather."

"Sure hope Lord Berrington come back soon or he ain't going to find his mother alive." He had said a few weeks later.

"Oh, but is she so ill?" Belinda had asked alarmed. How had Lady Berrington passed from "a bit under the weather" to such extreme illness in a few weeks? Then Belinda remembered how Roselle had become sick from one day to the next and in a matter of three weeks was gone forever.

"Well, what is the matter, then?" she asked him.

"The colic they call it, Miss Belinda, and the doctors ain't doing much for her."

"I am very sorry to hear that," said Belinda, "Perhaps I should ask Mama to visit her… "

"She ain't receiving callers anymore, Miss Belinda," said the gamekeeper quickly. "Only relatives have been let in."

Well, thought Belinda, 
her 
mother certainly would not be allowed in. Lady Berrington was never "in" for Mrs. Presleigh when she had been in full health, much less now that she was in extreme illness. She would tell her mother, when she returned to the house, in any case. But her mother was still too distressed by her loss. It would be better to leave her be.

But Belinda had no occasion to do so when she returned to the house late that afternoon, because her Aunt Jenny, her mother's only sister, had arrived for an extended stay and there was an unusual excitement in the air. Belinda was glad for this, for her mother had taken a long time to come out of her grief over Roselle's death. Perhaps Aunt Jenny could help lift her spirits.

Aunt Jenny had been comfortably established in the household for several weeks now and she and Mrs. Presleigh were now inseparable.

On her thirteenth birthday, which had been forgotten by everyone, including her mother, Belinda went out to enjoy a beautiful day very early one bright summer morning.

She sat against the trunk of a tree, hidden by some tall bushes and breathed deeply, happy to be alive and to enjoy such a fine day, her book of poems idle on her lap as she gazed at her surroundings. She glanced at a group of linden trees that were blossoming, their heart-shaped leaves and fragrant, yellow buds opening up under the hot sun. She felt her own body changing like the blossoms of the linden trees and puzzled at these changes, a fear of the unknown suddenly gripping her. Shy by nature and solitary by circumstance, the slight swelling of her bosom presented a fearful change. She wished it were last year and these changes in her body not yet begun. They had been unnoticed by everyone, in any case, and for this at least she was thankful. She would never be a beauty like Roselle, she knew very well, and these changes, in the body of an ungainly girl such as she were even embarrassing.

She brushed these unsettling thoughts from her mind and glanced at the fragrant laurel that swayed gently under the soft breeze. In future she would think of something else immediately that thoughts of her body invaded her mind as they were doing now. Better to ignore it than to be so terribly wracked by it. Of what good was it, anyway? She could do nothing to alter it. Better to take pleasure in her surroundings, which gave her such joy, than to dwell on unsettling thoughts.

She was glad she could wring such joy from nature as she did, sometimes almost to the point of ecstasy. Yet she could see that most of the things she loved: books, poems, flowers, trees, water, sky, birds, sunshine, clouds, streams, music, art, etc., had not the same effect on many other people that they had on her.

She lay on her stomach; the easy cut of styles brought about by the influence of the Napoleonic court, making this easy. A decade before, such freedom of movement would not have been possible with the stays, corsets and petticoats that women had now tossed aside, led by the Empress Josephine. However at war they may be with France, the latest fashion still came from there and it was followed slavishly.

Belinda hardly heard a horse as its gait cut softly into the woody stillness. But a snort from the horse suddenly pierced her dreamy consciousness so that she sat up in alarm. She then crept up to the bushes and parting them a little saw Lord Richard Berrington stripping.

Completely nude, he now walked to the stream nearby and as Belinda stared at him transfixed she saw his broad muscled back and well-formed legs and buttocks, unable to look away.

She saw him dive into the deep part of the stream and swim across it. And as he emerged from the water she saw him shake the water loose from himself and put his clothes back on his wet body.

Unable to pull her eyes away from his frontal nudity as he pulled his clothes on and feeling suddenly hot all over, she looked for the first time at his face as he did this and felt her breath burning down her throat. She saw his features clearly. Dark brown eyes, dark hair, well-formed lips, and an air of self-possession. He wore only a white shirt, brown breeches, and black boots to the knee.

Belinda was never to look at another man again and see him as she saw Richard Berrington that morning. His face had been seared on Belinda's soul, as with a branding iron.

That same day, her mother had announced at the table that Lord Berrington had returned from the front, summoned in great haste because of his mother's extreme illness. She had also stated the obvious facts: that he was still single, and an earl, for he had attained his majority during his first year in the Peninsula.

No one had noticed the blush that stole up Belinda's neck as her mother's words brought an instant image to her mind of the young Earl of Berrington completely naked.

She had known him the instant she saw him at the stream. Although she did not yet go to balls or soirees, her mother and Roselle had pointed him out two years before when he had come back on leave at the death of his father. And now he had returned to stay. It was rumored that his mother had not long to live. He would stay and take care of the estate, they said. He had spent more years at war than anyone expected the son of an earl to do.

Lady Berrington died a few days after Lord Berrington returned from war, but this too, the Presleighs heard only as gossip carried to them by neighbors or friends. He was now twenty-four years old and sole heir to a vast fortune and guardian to his young stepsister. Belinda saw him now and then, at church or in the village, but he never looked her way. She, on the other hand, glanced guardedly at him whenever she had the chance.

* * * * *

One afternoon, coming back into the house through the back part, Belinda heard her mother and aunt talking about her and she stopped in her tracks. The door to the back sitting room where her mother and aunt often sat to sew and to have their tea was ajar.

"Poor Belinda, she will never be even passably pretty," said her mother, her voice nervous. "She hasn't even a hundredth part of the beauty that my darling Roselle had."

"Belinda is young still," her aunt had said kindly, "there may yet be…"

"No." her mother had said with hurtful finality. "Dear Jenny, are you blind? There is nothing in Belinda that can ever 'develop'". What is there is there. What you see is what there is and 
all 
there is."

"Surely her eyes…" Aunt Jenny insisted. "She has very unusual eyes."

"Nothing at all," her mother insisted. "Do recall her pitiful face, dear—thin and angular to the point of the grotesque. She is tall and ungainly and moves with not the slightest grace. Oh, and her 
hair.
My dear, there is nothing to be done with hair that is as thick as a horse's tail. It cannot be curled and is best left tied back and out of the way. You cannot imagine how I have struggled with it. Such a contrast to Roselle's angelic golden tresses."

"Belinda is still very young," Aunt Jenny insisted.

"Young yes, she'll be fifteen come next spring, and a less promising prospect for a London Season I have never before seen. Do you recall Caroline Sethly-Baring?"

"The pimply girl with the lank hair and droopy chin, daughter of Baronet DePauling?” asked Aunt Jenny, "yes—what of her? She married at least. Though one cannot name as a conquest Ronald Sethly-Baring. He is with the Regiment in India, is he not?"

"Yes. They are both out there now," said Mrs. Presleigh, and now added, "I would call Caroline pretty compared to Belinda."

"Surely you exaggerate," said Aunt Jenny. "Belinda's face at least has character, the comparison is unkind."

Belinda retreated the way she had come, making sure she made no noise and once reaching the back door ran out once again to the woods, the only place to hide after the sentence she had just received. She had always suspected she was not pretty, but now her mother's words had congealed it in her mind like nothing else had. She was homely, and she would always be that. Her mother's words rang in her mind over and over—loudly, stridently and ruthlessly.

She said out loud that she hated her mother and then quickly asked God to forgive her for having said it. Then she wept for two hours in loud gulps heard only by the birds and squirrels, and then with swollen eyes she crept back to the house and up to her room. She would say she was sick and not come down to dinner. They would see her red, swollen eyes and think she had caught something. Maybe she could die like Roselle.

And she had thought that some day she would start getting prettier, as she got older, and Richard Berrington would finally start noticing her. The death of this hope was the most violent, like the death of a newborn chick torn between the talons of a hawk.