To Win a Wallflower

by Liz Tyner

  She waited, expecting the question, straightening the cloth in her hands.

  ‘It’s as if a weight is off my shoulders,’ he said.

  ‘Have you put your difficulties with your father behind you?’ She folded the cloth, then tightened her hand around it, uncaring that it needed to be cleaned.

  ‘I’m leaving my father to his own devices. If he doesn’t survive, I’ve accepted that. Without me, he would have drunk too much, murdered someone or been murdered. When I left him on his own, even for a short time, he always caused more trouble than I wished to deal with.’

  His father would be a part of Barrett’s life as long as he lived. Her father still talked of his parents and they had been gone a long time. ‘You can’t get away from him completely and stay in London.’

  ‘I know.’ He walked to the window and then back to the place he’d stood an instant before. ‘I could have done this years ago. But it was as if I couldn’t see it until after I left your room. It’s not that I ever cared about him. It’s duty. Instilled in my being. A son to his father. And I am his son. I can’t step away from it, but I don’t have to let it take my life from me. He is my father.’ He shook his head. ‘I suppose it is part of being a man’s heir. The bloodlines connect you even when nothing else does.’

  ‘Or perhaps it really is a love deeper than you can feel.’

  He smiled, whimsy in his face, then his eyes narrowed and he shook his head. ‘No. I know what I feel deeply for him and it isn’t love.’

  Perhaps he didn’t intend to ask her to marry him. In that moment, a proposal stopped mattering to her.

  He looked at her, but she knew he didn’t only see her. He saw too much of his own past.

  ‘I’m not living under his roof any more. I overstayed my welcome from the moment of my birth, or I was just someone he could use.’

  She considered what it would be like to live a life with a man who carried such scars he couldn’t see past them.

  ‘I have treated him fine,’ he said. ‘That doesn’t mean I want to see him every day of my life, or even once a year.’

  She looked down at the cloth, aware of a place where the hem was coming unstitched.

  ‘I had to get out of his house to even consider your being a part of my world. You haven’t learned from birth to avoid the bites. A child raised in the countryside learns what stings, what bites and to watch where it puts its foot down. In London, we learn who to avoid. How to avoid cutpurses. It is second nature. Survival. You learn early or you die.’

  ‘So you learned early what stung and bit.’ He’d mentioned considering her as a part of his world. She didn’t think that counted as a kiss to her slippers.

  ‘I learned early to sting and bite.’

  She waited, the silence ticking in her head along with the grandfather clock in the room.

  ‘I’m thinking of marriage.’ He spoke, each word precise.

  She put her hand to her throat. ‘So am I, by coincidence. Although we may not be thinking of the same marriage.’

  His eyes tightened and his stance widened.

  ‘Do you plan to pick me for the vase on the shelf? The marriage on the ledger books?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’ve told me you learned the movements society expected from you. Perhaps you learned this even from the womb. And I believe you watch others. You mimic the kindness and it works to get what you want. You are every moment the predator, watching the prey. Do you care for me at all? I mean, much like a favourite coat? As much as your man of affairs and his ledger books?’

  * * *

  Annie’s words thundered inside him. He’d expected her to be pleased. To be happy. He had her blasted pin in his waistcoat pocket.

  How could she ask such a thing? Of course he cared for her. He had since he saw her wrist and heard her voice. He reached for her hands and took them in his own.

  ‘I want to watch over you every day. To protect you. I cannot walk away from you. Not even now. I have to see you safe. It is as if you’re in my veins.’

  She stepped back, her hands leaving his, and a cool draught wafting where her touch had been. ‘Um...those veins that carry your father’s blood?’ she asked.

  Her words jabbed into him like a knife.

  He reached a hand out again, hardly believing Annie could say such a thing.

  She took another step away. ‘You see me as a weakling. Just as you did your mother. A helpless person. A person whose life ended badly because she went into a world of evil she didn’t expect. I’m not so weak as you think I am.’

  ‘You must be strong to be in my world.’

  ‘I’m not so sure a woman has to be sturdy to be your wife. Perhaps she needs to be innocent and weak. That way, you can always protect her and keep her in your grasp.’

  ‘I see nothing wrong with wanting to protect you.’ He could not marry anyone he wouldn’t want to protect. ‘I’ve protected Nettie from my father’s rages. I would have protected anyone who needed it.’

  ‘Life is not a battle. Not always.’

  ‘Not for you. Your father and his funds have been between you and the world. Locks on doors have kept you safe. You haven’t been tempered by the fire that strengthens armour.’

  ‘You didn’t marry Madeline. I’ve seen her before. She is perhaps a female version of you. More concerned with what the people around her can do for her than anything else.’

  He looked at Annie. He agreed with her assessment of Madeline. She didn’t need him as Annie did. Annie was so frail she had no idea of how weak she was. Believing herself strong, yet little more than a puff of wind could topple her.

  ‘You think you are doing the honourable thing, by offering marriage and protection,’ she said. ‘I am another person for you to watch over. You took care of your brother, his sister and your father, and now you are planning to take care of me.’

  He walked around Annie and moved to the curtains, only slightly open. He pushed back the cloth. Light washed into the room. He saw nothing beyond the panes.

  He took a quick look over his shoulder and Annie still examined him. He turned his back to her, something he never did when another person was in the room.

  ‘Duty. Honour. I have my father’s honour as well.’

  She waited.

  ‘Yes. Oddest honour. If he blackmails someone and they do as he wishes, he doesn’t expose them. I once asked him why. He said that if he had a reputation as someone who released information after being paid to keep quiet, then his threats would lose their effectiveness.’

  ‘And you? Your honour? What honour do you have? Truly? Inside you?’

  ‘I didn’t want to be a better person than my father. I only wanted to best him.’

  ‘Even in his dishonesty.’

  He untangled the cord at the side of the curtains. ‘I wanted to best him. In all ways. And I must keep out of a gaol to do so.’ He stepped away from the light, letting the shadows surround him. ‘My brother, Gavin, did convince me that, with his help, I would not need to do anything that might warrant investigation into my life. Before his mother died, she had managed to provide for them, but she’d become too ill and could no longer sell her body as she had. The life had worn her down.

  ‘Gavin wanted the respectability. He told me I teetered too close to the edge. A simple stumble and too much would collapse. He told me that my father waited for a misstep. Wanted me to destroy myself. I listened, because he was right. I couldn’t risk stumbling, because then my father would win.’

  ‘Family is not a competition.’

  ‘It is the first competition, perhaps. The competition for a person’s attention who sees you as a parasite who must be weaned away.’

  She didn’t move.

  ‘My family was not like that.’

  ‘I know. Normal. Boring. Your sisters were like litt
le goslings tumbling out of the nest, to be led around with a mother at the front and father at the rear, or something similar. And then they fled the nest.’

  ‘You do not even know what a good man is. You see compassion and all things decent as weaknesses.’

  ‘Life is too short to be good. Success is not for the weak.’

  ‘It isn’t that you’re a prisoner in your father’s world.’ She put her hand on his forearm. ‘You are a prisoner in your own world. There’s only one person in it.’

  Cold chills started at his heart and reverberated inside him. He stepped forward and touched her shoulder, and warmth replaced all the coldness in his body.

  For all that he told her about his uncaring heart and his lack of compunction to do anything but make a profit, this woman did something to him in a way that Madeline never had. Madeline would have been the perfect wife should he ever need a smiling face to help him administer poison in any form—powder, penned or behind the back.

  Annie didn’t even know poison existed. She’d never truly discovered how to manoeuvre and manipulate, which fascinated him and made her an easy target in his world.

  ‘You have now decided to be married,’ she said.

  She dropped the cloth in her hands. Just dropped it to the floor. That was not indicative of a yes to his proposal.

  He had to explain to her just how much he needed her.

  ‘I’ve been alone all that I can remember. Even when my mother was alive, I only saw her in short moments. She wed my father for his money and paid with her life. I would not have a marriage like that, Annie. You would always be safe.’

  ‘I will consider that.’

  He relaxed, but then the inner voice inside him warned him not to.

  ‘I can give you everything, Annie. I can. Easy enough. Marry me. I’m going to have a home. I’ve purchased it already and you can furnish it as you wish.’

  ‘This is easier to refuse than the dance.’ She looked at the spot on the third finger of her left hand and held out her closed hand. ‘I won’t be having time for a marriage.’ She looked inside her hand as she opened it. Still empty. ‘I was thinking about getting a new sofa for the attic room and that will be keeping me busy.’

  ‘I never thought to be refused,’ he said. His eyes flickered. ‘I have never been refused an indecent proposal and the only decent one I’ve made, I am turned down, if I understand you correctly.’

  ‘Well...’ she turned and moved to the door ‘...you do come a close second to a new sofa, but you lose out terribly when compared with the attic.’

  She walked out, shoulders up, chin high, opened the attic door and went up the stairs. She moved over to the warped pillow on the tattered easy chair, and fluffed it.

  She could move back to her own rooms any time. She was sure of that. But the windows gave her a better view of the world as it passed her by.

  She had refused a marriage proposal, if one could call it that. She had doomed herself to spinsterhood. She’d chosen a sofa over Barrett.

  Remembering the wallflowers, she sighed, wondering if she’d regret the refusal.

  Sitting in the tattered chair, she closed her eyes. Love turned her brain to mush, just as she’d feared it would. Just as it had worked on her parents and her sisters. She wasn’t any different than they were.

  But she refused to be a jot on the marriage ledger.

  She pressed her lips together. No man or woman could ever say she’d wed to get out of an attic or out of her parents’ house.

  Without the love she wanted, on her own terms, she would choose to live alone.

  The pain growing in her heart and spreading throughout her body would fade, eventually. Barrett would become a memory and she would refuse to let it grow larger or take up any more room than a speck of dust. He’d been an adventure. A moment of freedom. A chance to dance.

  And if her sisters returned, she would hold her chin high and lead them along a stronger path. They would never know the pain had writhed inside her as well. She’d be their example and push away their suffering while concealing her own. They’d never know.

  Picking up her notebook, she began making a list of all the reasons she could be happy in her attic room the rest of her life...

  None.

  She could not jot down one. Her own ledger book was empty.

  * * *

  When Barrett’s anger faded, he looked at the open book on his new desk. The numbers made no sense, and with good reason. They were not the right ones, or were they? He wasn’t sure. He closed the book.

  What didn’t smell of mildew in the room smelled of paint. The rotted boards would be replaced soon and he’d thought to have that done by the time of his marriage.

  That had not worked out as expected. Perhaps he would have had better luck had he been the third son of a duke and could speak a phrase in six languages.

  His man of affairs chattered away about the new house while sitting on an overturned box.

  He could still imagine Annie’s wrist the first time he’d seen her and the weepy look in her eyes when she looked at him the last time, before her anger flared. Sofa?

  He’d been honest and she hadn’t believed him. If he’d lied, she would have believed it.

  He’d not lied to himself and thought all he did was for someone else. Everything he did was for the last number on the last column at the end of a ledger.

  Money was the root of all power and the only way of keeping Annie secure. Without properties, he could do nothing for her. Without properties, he was nothing.

  Even sending Gavin to university had, in some deep part of Barrett, been the beginnings of gaining a true foothold in the world.

  Thinking back now, he was pleased Annie refused him. His life would be simpler. He would find someone less innocent and be honest with her, and he doubted he’d be refused a second time. He didn’t need such innocence. Another Madeline would suit him well, assuming he could marry her without becoming ill.

  But just the thought of getting a marriage licence with anyone but Annie’s name on it bit into him like lye scalding him from the inside.

  He put his elbow on the table and put his forehead in his palm.

  If he’d never found out about Madeline and he’d married her, then none of this would have happened with Annie.

  But he could never wish it away.

  He would carry this inside him forever and, no matter how alone he felt, the memory of Annie would be with him always.

  He slid his hand down and cupped his head while raising his eyes.

  The man across the room still talked.

  Barrett interrupted. ‘And a sofa.’

  The man’s mouth paused and he stared at Barrett.

  ‘Did we decide on that?’ Barrett asked.

  ‘You said you preferred to go without one for a bit.’

  ‘Two. Muted colours on one for the main sitting room. Do whatever it takes to get flowery print on the other.’

  Then he paused. ‘Just one for me,’ he said. ‘Deliver the other one to Mr Carson’s house. He needs one for the upper storey. The one with the flowery print.’

  The man of affairs wrinkled his brow.

  ‘Yes. The sofa with a flowery print.’ He’d give Annie a gift to remember him by. Flowers. And her sofa. ‘Delicate flowers in some comfortable colour, if such a thing exists. Be sure to send the furniture to the Carson household and be absolutely certain a note is included that it is for the attic room.’ He looked at the pen. ‘Wait. I’ll pen the note now.’

  ‘If this is for a woman,’ the man of affairs inserted, ‘please consider putting a bit more, um, inflection than in the last one.’

  ‘What was wrong with it?’ Barrett raised his eyes. ‘I wrote it and signed it.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Barrett. I watched when you wrote it. But in my courtship, my wife prefer
red something a bit more admiring in the note.’

  He touched the pen to the ink, eyes narrowing in question. ‘With warmest admiration?’

  ‘Well, I suppose we would not want to risk being too sentimental.’

  ‘You saw how Napoleon’s letters were bandied about. Such nonsense.’

  ‘You can trust me that you will never have to worry about that.’

  ‘Fine,’ Barrett said, tossing the pen aside, listening to the clatter. ‘Just find and deliver the sofa.’

  * * *

  Annie lay on the sofa. She ran a hand over the fabric, unable to see the hideous flowers on it in the darkness. Other than the design on the upholstery, she liked the furniture.

  All her life she’d watched other people. Her parents. Her sisters. Cousins. They’d all seemed impulsive. Always acting smitten when they thought they were in love. She just felt betrayed, abandoned and lost. She’d not let her heart rule her head. She’d not expected to feel so miserable.

  She’d thought she was chasing freedom when she left her parents’ house with the old woman, but she’d found it in Barrett’s arms and, just as he’d said, it had turned to dust in the light.

  That mindless world of feelings that she’d always looked down her nose at other people for experiencing had opened inside her. And now she felt it and wanted nothing more than to be with Barrett.

  But not as a jot on a ledger sheet.

  Not as an adventure.

  The mindlessness had invaded her. Lying on the sofa made her feel close to him. She existed just to think of him. Love had hit her, and she didn’t know what to do with it. That mindless insensibility of warmest regards.

  Only something so senseless as love would make her do such a thing as to refuse his proposal. If they’d met properly and he’d danced a few reels with her and then proposed, she likely would have accepted and moved happily into his house and his ledger book.

  Barrett had sent her a sofa when it would have been so much easier for him just to say he loved her. An easy lie.