Married to a Perfect Stranger

by Jane Ashford

  “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 spe
akers, 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.

  Mary lowered her brush, sat back, and sighed. Apparently, she would never become inured to these disturbances. Who could? Yes, she no longer leaped to her feet and ran, heart pounding, to discover the emergency. But she couldn’t help reacting when Alice the housemaid screamed. It could only be Alice; past forty, and she still delighted in shrieking at the least excuse. Setting her brush in a glass of water, Mary rose and went to see what it was this time.

  She found her Great-Aunt Lavinia, Alice the housemaid, and Voss the aged butler in the morning room, looking down at a shattered vase, a scatter of pink roses, and a puddle of water. The once formidable Lavinia Fleming was wringing her hands and trembling. Humid August air wafted through the open French doors.

  “Drat that boy!” said Voss.

  Mary didn’t question his attribution because…well, there simply was no question about the origin of the disturbance.

  “Something must be done,” Voss added, clearly addressing Mary.

  Mary looked back at him with wry resignation. When she’d first arrived, into this household that had lost its rudder and fallen into chaos, she’d hung back, of course. She was a guest, and anyway she hadn’t known what to do. But then it had risen in her, like a great wave looming from the sea, an irresistible need to set things right. Perhaps it was an inheritance from her mother—not an entirely comfortable thought. But she found she could no more resist than she could alter the deep brown color of her eyes. The household had been like a workbasket jammed with snarled thread. She’d been forced, really, to discover her own way of untangling it. She’d been surprised at her daring and then amazed at how eagerly her intervention was welcomed.

  “Ma’am?” said Voss, waiting for her to solve the household’s most recent problem.

  “I’ll go and speak to him,” Mary said, and she walked into the hall toward the front door of the manor.

  Outside, she scanned the parkland for her quarry. There was no sign of him on the lawn or in the front garden. Mary turned toward the stables, rounded a corner, and there he was.

  Ten-year-old Arthur Windly squatted at the edge of the stable yard, searching for more round pebbles. Here was the one remaining source of mayhem in her great-aunt’s household.

  She walked over to Arthur, who pretended to ignore her. The son of Great-Aunt Lavinia’s supremely competent estate manager, Arthur was a constant conundrum. Mr. Windly was vital to the workings of the manor and must not be offended. He was also a prickly, distant man, especially, Mary had been told, since his wife’s death three years ago. Her attempts to speak with him about Arthur had confirmed this characterization. He’d treated her like a nuisance and a busybody, and she was certain he hadn’t listened to a word she said. Using her own newly discovered skills, Mary came to understand that Arthur was desperate for his father’s attention and that the boy would take a whipping if that was all the notice he could contrive.

  Trailing from Arthur’s pocket was a length of brown cord with a woven pouch in the center, the source of many recent disasters. The local vicar had taken it into his head to show his young parishioners the instrument that had vanquished Goliath. The man had a passion for practical demonstrations of biblical subjects and seemingly no notion of the havoc a slingshot could wreak in the hands of a mischievous little boy. Mary sometimes thought her great-aunt’s entire neighborhood was barmy. She held out her hand. “You’ll have to give me the sling, Arthur.”

  The boy sprang to his feet and glared at her. “No, I don’t.”

  “That was our agreement—the last time.”

  “I never agreed!” Arthur’s lower lip jutted out; his hazel eyes narrowed. Rebellion showed in every line of his skinny little body.

  Suppressing a sigh, Mary stood and thought. She could threaten to go to his father, and Arthur would dare her to do it, and they would repeat a cycle of punishment that accomplished nothing. Arthur wasn’t a bad child. Still, he couldn’t be allowed to break vases, or knock ripening apples from the trees, or crack glass windows on the upper stories. Providentially, a scrap of overheard conversation came back to her. “I understand the hayricks in the north field are inf
ested with rats.”

  “What?” Arthur frowned at the non sequitur.

  “Still, I don’t suppose you could kill a rat with that sling.”

  Arthur stiffened in outrage. “’Course I could.”

  “Really?” Mary strove to look merely interested. “Your father is desperate to be rid of them. Indeed, the idea of a whole colony of rats…” Her shudder did not require much acting. “But it must be much more difficult to hit a moving target than, oh, a vase or a window.”

  “I could, though.” Speculation and hope passed visibly over the boy’s triangular face. “I could do it!”

  “I’m sure everyone would be very grateful,” Mary replied.

  Without another word, Arthur rushed from the stable yard. Mary walked back to the house with some bounce in her step and cautious optimism in her heart.

  Inside, all was quiet once more. Great-Aunt Lavinia dozed on a sofa, the strings of her lace cap fluttering with her breath. Mary returned to her painting to see what could be salvaged but found herself picking up her sketchbook instead. She wanted to capture the image of Arthur sifting through stones in the stable yard, with his intent expression and irrepressible cowlick.

  She opened the drawing pad and came upon a portrait of John, done during their brief honeymoon journey to the shore. For a disorienting moment, memory wavered in Mary’s mind. But that was ridiculous. Of course she remembered her own husband. Here he was. Medium height, wiry, with reddish brown hair, a broad brow, straight nose, and crystalline blue eyes. The direct gaze of those eyes had been one of the first things she noticed about him.