Married to a Perfect Stranger (2 page)

Before her mother could object again, Mary flipped open the sketchbook and put two drawings side by side before her.

The first was a watercolor portrait of a middle-aged woman. The face gazed out at the viewer with calm authority. Determination edging toward stubbornness showed in the lines bracketing her lips; pride and imagination in the fashionable cut of her gray curls. Mary had caught a subtle twinkle in the blue eyes, a persistent curiosity in the tilt of the head. More than the sum of its parts, the painting conveyed the essence of a strong personality.

The second portrait showed the same woman, and yet not the same. In this one, the sharp eyes had blurred; though painted, they seemed to shift with uncertainty under the viewer's gaze. This woman's mouth looked ready to quiver with doubt. The skin sagged not just with greater age, but with an uncomprehending anxiety as well. Around this face, the well-kept gray hair and modish lace cap seemed incongruous.

Mary looked from one image to the other, her heart aching for her great-aunt.

“Yes, very well,” said her mother. “You've drawn Aunt Lavinia. What do you wish me to say? That it is a good likeness?”

“Can you
really
look, Mama? Please? Try?”

The pleading in her voice seemed to reach her mother at last. She considered the pages again. Her stare went from one portrait to the other. Back again. Gradually, she began to frown.

And Mary felt freed to speak. “She's very forgetful, even of familiar people's names or her own history. The servants were at their wits' end when I arrived.” It had been daunting, to be tossed into a floundering household, suddenly surrounded by people looking to her for leadership. She'd had to fumble her way to the idea that she could take charge, if she did it in her own way. “I believe we must find her a companion. Someone who is more than a housekeeper, though she will have to manage the household, too. Someone…patient and kind. We should pay quite well, I think, well enough to attract just the right sort of person.” She would fight for this plan, Mary thought. Great-Aunt Lavinia deserved the best.

“We?” said her mother.

“Well, it would come out of Aunt's income, naturally. But as she is not really capable of approving the expenditure, I thought I should speak to you. As her only close relation.”

Her mother was looking at her oddly. “You have considered this.”

Now that Mary had begun, the words poured out. “I drafted an advertisement that sets forth just what we need.” She took the folded paper from the pocket of her gown. “The butler says there is an agency in London that provides ladies' companions. We must be very clear that we require someone…special.” Mary unfolded the page and extended it. She was pleased to see that it did not shake in her hand.

Her mother took it and read. “Well expressed,” she commented, sounding surprised.

“I thought, if you agreed, we could send it right off.”

“Perhaps I should talk to Aunt Lavinia before…” Her mother paused, looked down at the portraits again. “No. That is, I
shall
talk to her. But I daresay you are right. You may put it in the mail.” She looked up. “Or…what do you intend to do with the replies?”

“I…I thought I would invite the best candidates here for a visit.” Mary faltered a bit under her parent's close examination. “Unless you would prefer to interview…?”

Her mother cocked her head. “You would have to pay their coach fares.”

Mary nodded.

“They must be asked about their previous positions and show a complete set of references.”

“Yes, Mama.”

“Do you really think
you
can find the proper person?” Years of doubt tinged her tone.

Mary sat straighter and met her skeptical gaze. “I do.”

The pause that followed went on longer than Mary would have liked, but at last her mother said, “Very well. I shall let you try.”

“Th-thank you, Mama,” Mary replied, her spirit swelling with triumph.

“I'll give you a list of important questions,” her mother added sharply. “And I shall expect a full report on each possibility before the final decision is made.”

Mary nodded, her elation a little dimmed. How odd that this success made her feel more lonely, rather than less so.

* * *

John Bexley strode down the gangplank onto the Southampton dock and paused to look over the busy port town. For the first time since he'd left English shores in February 1816, everything felt familiar—the shape of the buildings, the faces and dress of the people, the sounds and scents and voices. And yet, they also felt strangely changed. His twenty-month journey to the other side of the world had reduced England to just one corner of a vast globe. A noble corner, without doubt, a corner with a proud history and admirable ideals, but still just a smallish island among continents. And so his home looked not only natural and welcoming but also a bit…constricted.

Speaking of constricted, John wiggled his shoulders, trying to get more comfortable in a coat that no longer fit. He'd gained more muscle than his clothes could accommodate. The binding cloth contributed to the mixed emotions of this moment. He'd outgrown his raiment. What about his old routines, or the wife he'd left behind?

John looked at the English faces on the docks around him, pale even under the August sun. For almost two years, he and Mary had led separate lives—his active and public, hers domestic and small. So many things had happened to him that she would never comprehend. And a thousand domestic details that newly married persons usually shared had gone by on opposite sides of the world.

Worse, John wondered now whether he'd done the right thing, giving in to his family's plan for him. The young man he'd been before this voyage had let his family urge him into a lifetime bond without really thinking. If the foreign secretary's letter about the China mission had come a few weeks sooner, would he have offered for Mary? The answer was too uncomfortable to contemplate.

John looked out over the town. His world of two years ago seemed like a dream to him now, pale and insubstantial, the people distant shadows. Swept away on a grand journey, he'd found inner continents as surprising as the discoveries of ancient explorers. The impulses that had risen in him and answered the challenge of storm-wracked seas still burned—more vibrant perceptions, fiercer ambition, a determination to make his mark.

But a suitable wife—one with important connections and social skills—was practically required for advancing through the ranks of the Foreign Office.

A bale of silks rose from the ship's hold, pulley creaking as the navvies hauled on the rope. The heavy cargo swung out over the dock and plunged down just as a street urchin emerged from between two stacks of crates. John took three steps, snatched the boy from its path, and pulled him well out of the way. “Careful there,” he said.

Pale and wide-eyed, the grimy child nodded his thanks and scampered away.

The planks of the dock vibrated as the bale thumped to the boards. A brawny dockworker rounded the corner of a warehouse and hefted it—no easy task, John knew. He should head into town, find transport, and begin the last sixty miles of his journey. To Mary. But his tumbled thoughts kept him standing near the ship.

He remembered his first sight of her at the Bath assembly. Neither of them came from the sort of grand families who went to London for the Season; Bath was the center of their social world. She'd stood with her mother by the wall—a small, delicate girl with chestnut brown hair and huge dark eyes; a full lower lip that seemed made for kissing; pretty little hands. She'd looked as sweet and timid as a sparrow. In that moment—which now seemed long ages ago—his family's mandate that she was the wife for him had seemed no burden at all. He'd walked over, been presented. Mary had smiled at him…

After that, events were a bit of a blur. They'd danced, walked the streets of Bath together, taken teas and dinners at their families' tables. He had offered for her; that moment had been between the two of them. At the time, it hadn't seemed as if he had a choice. But once the words were spoken and she had accepted, their mothers had swooped in and taken over. He didn't remember being consulted about a single item after that. He was simply told things. Mary's father had lectured him about how the combination of their two inherited incomes would allow them to live very comfortably, as if John couldn't work that out for himself. His brothers had teased him relentlessly, as usual. He'd overheard his parents agreeing that this was a good enough match—for him, for Mary—and for some reason, incomprehensible to him now, he'd made no remark.

There'd been a whirl of a wedding and a seaside week in Weston-super-Mare, with dolorous rain and intimacies that had been clumsier than he'd have liked. Then the Foreign Office summons had arrived to take over his thoughts and change his life.

John sighed. His life, not Mary's. What would a little sparrow like Mary think of the intricacies of Foreign Office etiquette? What would she think of him, now that he'd…come alive? He took a deep breath of the seaside air. That's how it felt—as if he'd been half-asleep for years and finally woken. Now, he intended to plunge into the drive for advantage and jostling rivalries he'd generally ignored in his three years on the job. Work was going to occupy much of his time. Where did Mary fit in all this?

John loosened his shoulders, chafing at the tightness of his coat once again. Done was done. Mary was his wife. She would have to fit. She was young, unformed, eager to please. Though she didn't have the family connections that were so useful in government work, she was a taking little thing. She'd welcome his guidance. Indeed, she would probably be awed by his new sophistication. There was a curiously attractive notion.

John fell into a pleasant reverie. In the long months at sea, men had talked, and inevitably one of their topics had been women. John had heard a lot of nonsense and endured a load of empty boasting. But some of it had been eye-opening and, when one winnowed through the sources and considered the characters of the speakers, quite intriguing. He looked forward to trying out some of the…

“Ah, here he is!”

John stiffened at the sound of that affected voice. He'd thought he was the last passenger off the ship.

“Bexley can deal with the trunks,” the voice drawled on. “It's just the sort of thing he's good at.”

John turned to face the two men stepping off the
Lyra
's gangplank. Beside Lord Amherst's admirable, capable private secretary sauntered the recent bane of John's existence, the Honorable Edmund Fordyce.

Since the shipwreck, Fordyce had made it his mission to harass John. Before that, they'd had little to do with each other, despite the smallness of their party. Fordyce, equally junior in the diplomatic group, had pursued more exalted company. A foppish, supercilious son of an earl—as John had learned in recent weeks—Fordyce had constantly dropped names and attempted to reminisce with Lord Amherst about lavish country house parties and fashionable town balls.

But following their encounter in that narrow gangway of a sinking ship, the man had focused almost obsessively on John. He'd created opportunities to highlight the difference in their backgrounds or cast doubt on John's abilities. It was wildly irritating. And ridiculous. What did he think John was going to do—run and tattle about his cowardice like a sniveling schoolboy? Try to tell their superiors that he, John, had made sure the
Alceste
was clear? That Fordyce had misrepresented his own behavior? There was no way to initiate such a conversation, even if he wished to.

John had even tried to say something like this to Fordyce, with no effect. It was as if the fellow didn't even hear him. By this time, the mere sound of his voice affected John like the screech of tortured metal.

“If you wouldn't mind, Bexley,” said the secretary. His expression showed a certain amount of sympathy. “I must follow Amherst to London immediately, and there are a number of confidential items still in the hold.”

“John will be happy to play footman,” said Fordyce. “Won't you, John? Oh, I didn't think. Are you familiar with footmen? They stand about front halls in
important
houses, waiting to run errands and carry packages, that sort of thing.” He smiled, the picture of toothy falsity.

Fordyce laced his arm with the secretary's as if they were bosom friends. The secretary didn't quite shake him off. But John read distaste in his face, which took some of the sting out of Fordyce's words. Confidential items required careful handling, by someone who could be trusted. The task was significant, whatever Fordyce's silly prejudices. “Certainly, sir,” John said.

The secretary nodded his thanks as the two men moved off down the dock. “See you in London, Bexley,” he added.

John's spirits rose at this acknowledgment. More than his own inner landscape had changed with this voyage. He was known now; from among the vast army of junior functionaries in the Foreign Office, he'd been noticed. His future prospects were immeasurably brighter than they had been before this journey. That, and Fordyce's sour expression, considerably lightened the job of seeing that each trunk was properly labeled and sent off with a reliable carrier to its correct destination.

* * *

Sitting at her easel in the back parlor of her great-aunt's house, Mary was swept by a wave of loneliness so strong it made the brush tremble in her hand. How long was this “visit” to go on? she wondered. It already felt eternal. In this household, she had no one to talk to or laugh with. No one within a decade of her age. Instead of a house of her own with a husband and perhaps by now a tiny addition to their family, she had a group of elderly…charges. There was no other way to look at it.

A shriek rent the air. Mary's brush twitched. A streak of yellow flicked across the painted face, muddling one eye, slashing across a cheek like war paint.