The Wildest Heart (3 page)

It was with unutterable relief that Briggs suddenly caught sight of Constable Parsons sauntering up, his eyes curious under his shiny helmet. “Any trouble here, Mr. Briggs?” The girl turned her arrogant blue gaze on the florid-faced policeman.

“Certainly not. I am Rowena Dangerfield, and I am here because my mother and my stepfather insisted I must come.”

“You could have knocked me over with a feather!” Briggs reported with relish later on. “There she stood, giving orders as cool as you please, and you should have seen Parsons's face when she said who she was! Come all the way from Tilbury, she had. And rode all the way through town on a horse—by herself!”

Adams took up the story. “My lady's still lying in her bed with a headache, and Mrs. Mellyn's with her. Prostrated she is, poor thing, and small wonder! Fancy having her own daughter, whom she hasn't seen in years, walk in like that, with never a word sent in advance to say she was coming! No baggage—she'd left it all on the dock. Just that shabby little bag with only a change of clothes. And she just up and walked away from those kind people that took charge of her and brought her all the way from India. I heard her say, as cool as a cucumber, that she did not like them and could not stand another moment of their company!”

“Wonder how she'll get on
here.
Ooh… I expect Sir Edgar was in a fine rage! I could hear his shouting all the way to the scullery, I could.” Mary's mouth was as round as her eyes, and Mrs. Jenks gave her a crushing look. “That's as it may be, but the doings upstairs are none of
our
concern, and you'd be wise to remember that, my girl!”

Subdued, Mary relapsed into silence, although she longed to hear what Mrs. Jenks and that snooty Adams had begun to talk about in low, hushed tones.

Strangely enough, the calmest and most self-possessed person in the whole household was the subject of all the heated discussion that swirled both above- and belowstairs that afternoon.

Her dripping wet hair still wrapped in a towel, Rowena Dangerfield sat before a small fire in the room that had been given to her, a book on her lap. But she was not reading. Her narrowed eyes gazed into the orange and blue flames as her mind went over the confrontation she had had with her mother and stepfather earlier.

It had been an angry scene, with Lady Fanny weeping that she had disgraced them all, and Sir Edgar, red in the face, shouting that she had better learn at the very start that she would no longer do exactly as she pleased.

Rowena, her eyes demurely cast down to hide their expression, had listened in silence, her face unmoved.

At last, when his wife had collapsed into a chair with her handkerchief and vinaigrette held to her nose, Sir Edgar bellowed, “And what do you have to say for yourself now, miss?”

Rowena raised expressionless blue eyes to his face. “What do you wish me to say?” she replied quite equably, taking him so much aback that he could do nothing but stare at her in speechless fury for a moment. He had expected tears, remorse, a quailing before his declaration of authority. Instead, the irresponsible chit with her sun-browned face had the impudence to look him in the eye quite calmly, with one eyebrow slightly raised.

“By God!” he said at last. “Have you understood nothing of what your mother and I have been saying? Do you have no conception of the upset and turmoil your outrageous behavior has caused? I tell you, miss, that you will learn some discipline while you're under my roof! You'll learn some polite manners, and to act like a lady! And you'll do exactly as you're told, by God, or…”

“There is no need to raise your voice in order to make yourself understood, sir,” Rowena retorted in her calm, cold voice, eliciting a gasp from her mother. “Indeed, I had already realized that since I was offered no other choice but to come here to live under your guardianship, I would have to accept whatever restrictions you might insist upon until I come of age. But…” and her eyes narrowed a fraction, “I see no reason to pretend, do you, that either of us is happy with the present arrangement? I do not want to be here any more than you want me here yourselves. But I suppose we'll have to make the best of it!”

Lady Fanny's sobs had risen to an almost hysterical pitch, and Sir Edgar had ranted and raved even louder than before. But in the end, when Rowena had thought he came almost close to striking her, he turned and stamped out of the room, ordering his wife to have her ungrateful child sent upstairs to be made presentable.

How calmness had the power to discompose some people! Rowena shook her hair loose, still staring into the flames, and began absentmindedly to towel her hair dry as she sorted out her impressions.

She had not expected to like her mother, and had found her to be even sillier and too determinedly youthful than she had imagined. Poor Lady Fanny, with her gold hair too elaborately arranged for morning, and her pretty silk gown with rows of ribbon and lace at the neck in an attempt to hide the telltale wrinkles.
Thank God I don't look like her
, Rowena thought, with a shudder of distaste. Sir Edgar, with his curly muttonchop whiskers and protuberant gray eyes had come closer to being the way she had pictured him.

Sir Edgar had left the house to take refuge in his club. And Lady Fanny, declaring she had one of her terrible migraines, now lay in her darkened room with her old nurse, Mellyn, to soothe her.

“You was always a difficult child, and a trial to my poor dear baby!” Mellyn had sniffed disapprovingly at Rowena, and had then left her to the ministrations of a disapproving lady's maid with steely eyes, who had announced that her name was Adams. And even that poker-faced female had closed her eyes in horror when she saw the crumpled cotton gown that Rowena produced so carelessly from the bottom of her battered portmanteau.

“But miss—I mean, my lady—you cannot possibly go down to luncheon wearing that—garment!”

“Oh? But you see, it is all I have, except for the riding habit I was wearing when I arrived here. All the rest of my clothes were packed in my trunk, and that, for all I know, may still be at Tilbury!”

Cool as a cucumber,
Adams thought angrily
. Doesn't care a fig for all the trouble she's caused.

Aloud she said firmly: “If you'll give me the gown, Lady Rowena, I shall have one of the maids press it and starch it for you. But it's hardly the type of garment you could wear in this climate, when it turns cold at night.”

“It was eminently suited for the climate of India, and I had no time to buy other clothes before I left,” Rowena said coolly. With a shrug, she accepted the serviceable-looking wool wrapper that Adams handed her, wondering whose castoff it had been. “Perhaps I could have my luncheon brought up here? Something very light, please, I am not particularly hungry.”

Adams had departed with a stiff bob of her head, and here Rowena sat before the fire, with only a book to keep her company.

Perhaps they will contrive to forget I am here if I keep out of their way, she thought hopefully, but the very next morning she was summoned to her mother's room and informed that her measurements would be taken by Jenks, so that some suitable gowns and underwear could be procured for her immediately.

Lady Fanny, sitting up in bed, appeared a trifle calmer this morning, although her pale blue eyes were still red-rimmed and slightly swollen.

She sighed as she looked at her daughter. Those dark blue eyes, so like Guy's, with their cold and arrogant look. That wild black hair, also his. There is nothing of me in her, Fanny thought; nothing at all. She is his child, just as she was from the very beginning, even before she was born.

“All right, all right! So we've both made a mistake. But it's too late to rectify that—we're married. But give me a child, Fanny, give me my son, and you may go your way. Have all the fun you whine about, do as you please, I'll not care. We'll make a bargain.”

They had made the bargain after all, and she had given him a daughter instead of a son, almost dying in the process. And Guy had kept his word, except that she'd met Edgar, and become careless. The Dangerfields cared more for their precious honor than they did for people and human feelings. And it was this same concept of “honor” that had undone Guy in the end, when he played into their hands.

I
mustn't think about that!
Fanny thought now, almost feverishly.
But why did she have to come? Why must I be saddled with her?
Duty, Edgar had said. People would think it strange and unnatural if they did not take her in.
But I don't want to have a daughter eighteen years old! When I've been telling my friends for years I'm younger than I am.

“My lady, about the clothes for Lady Rowena…” Mrs. Jenk's brisk voice brought Fanny Cardon back to earth. Her daughter still stood in the center of the room, staring at her with those cold eyes that gave nothing away.

With an effort at composure Lady Fanny said lightly, “Do you have any preferences as to color and style, Rowena? Bustles are all the rage now, of course, but if you—”

“Dark colors, please,” the girl said in her infuriatingly cool voice. “I am still in mourning for my grandfather, you know. And as for bustles, I have never cared for them—they look so ugly and unnatural. If I may, I would rather wear simpler clothes—nothing too elaborate or tight-fitting, for I won't wear stays or corsets.”

Mrs. Jenks looked scandalized, and Lady Fanny helpless. If only Edgar were here!

“But, Rowena!” Lady Fanny protested faintly. “Every young woman wears them, if she wants to cut a pretty figure. You'll be going out in public. I cannot have you looking dowdy!”

She sounds as if dowdiness is the worst sin in the world,
Rowena thought viciously. She made her voice sound subdued.

“But I can hardly be expected to make public appearances while I am still in mourning, can I? Even in India, we heard how strongly the Queen feels about a decent period of mourning following a bereavement. My grandfather and I were very close, and I would much rather stay quietly in the house and read, if I will not be in the way, of course.”

“Well, I—I just don't know!” Lady Fanny shrugged helplessly, looking at Jenks for support. The austere housekeeper merely pursed her thin lips. What was
she
expected to say?

Later she told Adams, “False meekness, that's what it was! And Lady Fanny far too kindhearted to see through her. Mourning indeed! If you ask me, that young woman hasn't enough feeling in her to mourn for anyone. Cold-hearted—you can see it a mile off!”

It became the consensus of opinion belowstairs, as the days passed. Lady Rowena Dangerfield was a cold-hearted, arrogant little creature, even though she dressed plainly and dowdily.

“Like one of them popish nuns, dressed all in black, and wearin' those ugly bonnets with thick veils that she chose herself,” the under-footman said.

“More like a Salvation Army lady!” Alice giggled.

“Ah, but she's got all the haughty airs and graces of a grand lady, even though she's got no money of her own—nothing! I heard the master say the Earl of Melchester owned nothing but his title—spent everything he earned living in grand style out in India. Left her nothing but a few pounds, and she soon spent that, didn't she?”

Adams and Jenks exchanged significant looks. Neither of them liked Rowena, who persisted in giving them orders in exactly the same tone she used to the other servants. “She'll get her comeuppance one of these days, just you mark my words!” Briggs said, determined not to be left out of the conversation. “I can tell the master's getting tired of having her moping around the house.” He lowered his voice, so that the parlormaids, sitting at the other end of the long kitchen table, would not hear him. “The other night when the Wilkinsons from Yorkshire came for dinner—you mind when the gentlemen retired to the library for their port?”

Adams sniffed.

“
She
said she had a headache and went upstairs to bed. It made my lady terribly upset, I can tell you!”

Alice, who was allowed to wait on table occasionally, chimed in pertly. “I can tell you what they were talking about at dinner! Mr. Thomas was asking her about India, and she hardly answered him, except to use all kinds of big words I'd never heard of before, and about the Hindu religion being older and wiser than any other, and…” her eyes widened, “the Wilkinsons are
chapel
!”

They were all struck dumb by this shocking pronouncement, except for Briggs, who shook his head in grim disapprobation.

“That's what comes of being brought up in a land of heathens! But I have a feeling Lady Rowena will be brought to heel yet. Sir Edgar's too clever not to see through her, and I can tell you, in the strictest confidence of course,” here he frowned at Alice and the giggling Mary, “that he has
plans
!”

Even Cook looked up from her knitting.

“Do tell, Mr. Briggs!”

“Heard him talking to Mr. Wilkinson senior. And the young Mr. Wilkinson, from the way he sat there grinning, didn't seem to mind what he was suggesting too much. Lady Rowena has a title, and Sir Edgar isn't a man to be stingy with his money. Offered a dowry to go with her, he did. And it's my prediction there'll be wedding bells before long, and Lady Airs-and-Graces, like it or not, will be packed off to Yorkshire with a husband!”

I sit at my window looking out at the hot sunlight reflecting off the sunbaked, pink brick of my patio, and try to imagine myself back in London, and eighteen years old again. Somehow I find that calling up the distant past is less painful than recalling events that happened only a few months ago.

Suddenly I have a compulsion to write—to chronicle everything that happened to me since I arrived, so unwillingly, on the doorstep of my stepfather's house in London. Perhaps I am only seeking excuses to escape into the past as a barrier against the present. Or perhaps I will understand better the whole train of events that led me here, once I set them down and can see them in perspective.

Only a few years have passed since that time, and I am still a young woman. But so much has happened since then, and I have lost a great deal of the arrogance and self-assurance that they used to complain of. “They” were my mother and stepfather, and their large, anonymous household staff.

The opinions of the servants didn't concern me, for I was too occupied with my own thoughts and plans. I took care to stay out of the way of my mother and stepfather, and in all honesty, they were rather kind to me in those early days.

With surprisingly mature logic I came to realize that I had, in effect, been forced upon my mother. I was unwanted. I was not a child of love, but the child of a man she had been compelled to marry. Mellyn, whom my mother still called Nanny, spoke bluntly to me on the subject. “Barely out of the schoolroom, my precious lamb was at the time,” she grumbled. “But they decided that she was ready to be married. He was much older than she was, had money, and the prospect of being an earl some day. I remember how she cried, her eyes turning all red and swollen. ‘I'm not ready to be married yet, Nanny, and he's so old,' she said to me. ‘I want to have fun first, to come out in style and go to parties and balls…' but her feelings were never even taken into account! Guy Dangerfield met her at a house party, and as pretty as she was, he was taken by her, I suppose. He was looking for a wife, to please his father, and she was the one he chose.”

According to Nanny, my father had had nothing to recommend him beyond the money he had made in the gold fields of America. He was a dark, gloomy man, she said, who preferred the country to the city, and would have made a recluse of his wife if he could.

“I suppose he didn't want me to be born either?” I questioned.

“Don't you talk like that, miss! You don't know the whole of it, and that's for sure! Your grandfather turned you against her, I'll be bound, and for all that he'd have nothing to do with Mr. Guy after it all happened. He had a great notion that the Dangerfields were better than anyone else. My poor baby was no more than a child herself when you were born. I ask you, why couldn't he have waited awhile? Why couldn't he have taken her to live in London for a while? But no—he liked the country, he said, and he wanted a child. And he had his way. When you were born, it was just as if my poor Miss Fanny didn't exist for him any longer. He fair doted on you, he did—had your nursery moved into the room next to his, and it was he got up at nights when you began to cry. ‘You take care of your baby, Mellyn,' he'd tell me, ‘and I'll look after mine.' Unnatural, I called it. It was no wonder my lady pined and pined, and finally went off to London by herself. Who can blame her?”

A few new clothes were purchased for me—all in somber colors, in deference to the fact that I was still in mourning. I refused to have my hair done up in tortured coils and ringlets and preferred more severe styles, and on the few occasions when I was dragged out to teas and small evening gatherings I always managed to find myself sitting with the older ladies present, who complimented me on my “old-fashioned looks.” I had none of the accomplishments that young ladies of my status in life were supposed to have. I could not play the pianoforte and I refused to sing; I could not paint a passable watercolor, and I could not dance.

I always scared away the bolder and more persistent young men by showing myself to be intellectual, and better educated than they were. I know that I gained the reputation, in a short while, of being a dowdy bluestocking—a born spinster. My mother despaired of me. Her friends commiserated with her, sometimes in tones loud enough for me to hear.

I do not know how long matters might have gone on the way they were if Sir Edgar hadn't suddenly decided that I must be married off. I had hardly spoken to him since that first day, but I'm sure my mother must have complained to him how recalcitrant I was, and how embarrassed I had made her feel on several occasions. Edgar Cardon had never liked my father, and I'm sure that my presence in his house was a living reminder to him of Guy Dangerfield.

Several months had passed since I had arrived in England, and the dull routine of my days had almost become a habit, when Tom Wilkinson came calling on me one afternoon.

We were already into autumn, and the servants had begun lighting fires every afternoon. I was in the library, desultorily searching through the shelves for a book I had not yet read, as he was announced.

“Mr. Wilkinson, to see Lady Rowena.”

I turned around in some annoyance when Briggs announced him, and then quickly withdrew. I did not like Tom Wilkinson, especially since he was the most persistent of my so-called suitors. “A stout Yorkshire lad,” Sir Edgar had stated bluffly when he introduced us, and indeed Tom was not only stout but short and squat as well—a dark-featured, bumptious young man who was always boasting of his fortune, his father's mills, and the grand house he had built for his future family.

Of all the young men I had met, Tom Wilkinson was so conceited and so full of himself that he ignored—or pretended to ignore—the fact that I had no time, and hardly any conversation to offer him. He implied, in fact, that my quiet demeanor and dowdy way of dressing actually appealed to him. I was obviously not the kind of woman who might give him cause for jealousy, and my reserve and coldness of manner seemed to attract him, instead of putting him off.

On the last occasion we had met I'd
hardly said two words to him, and had thought, thankfully, that I'd seen the last of him—and now here he was, intruding into my privacy, with that annoying, everlasting grin still on his face.

“No need to look at me so haughty-like, Lady Rowena. I've your stepfather's permission to call on you this afternoon. ‘You'll find her in the library,' he said. ‘Just get Briggs to announce you.' And so here I am!”

He looked at me, grinning and licking his thick lips. “Come, lass—no need to pretend you're not glad to see me, eh? They told me you've a habit of hiding yourself in here, but that's a waste! You're a lady, and I know that, but I'm here with the consent of your stepfather—aye, and your mother too. There's no more need to act so priggish and standoffish with me. I've come to offer for you—and I hope you aren't going to be missish and act surprised, for I'm sure you've known what I've had in mind. I may be a blunt Yorkshireman, but I'm proud of it, and I've made up my mind! You're not going to act coy, now, are you? I think you're a sensible lass, with no fuss or frills about you—and that's why I chose you.”

All the time he was talking he kept stalking me around the room, forcing me to retreat, and quite ignoring my angry protests. “Come, now,” he said coaxingly, his pop-eyes looking paler than ever in the diffused light, “I ain't going to hurt you, you know! Haven't I just proposed marriage? All I'm asking is a kiss to seal the bargain. Now, you ain't too shy for that, are you?”

“Mr. Wilkinson—Tom—I do wish you'd stop making a ridiculous fool of yourself!” I protested angrily, but my denial of his suddenly declared passion only seemed to make him more ardent.

I moved backward, and he moved forward. I passed by the window, blinking in the light let in by the partially drawn blinds, and I saw him give a start of amazement.

“You're not wearing those spectacles today! I'll be damned if you don't have pretty eyes, after all. In fact, you'd make a handsome woman, once you're dressed right and proper—damned if you won't! And I'll have the last laugh on all those others, won't I?”

By now I was as much annoyed with myself as I was with him. I stopped running from him and with my hand on the back of a chair, said forbiddingly, “Mr. Wilkinson, you are taking far too much for granted!”

But I think he mistook my annoyance for an attempt to play coy, and shook a finger at me. “Come, come, Lady Rowena—or may I call you Rowena? Surely—yes, we cannot stand on formality now! I respect your shyness and your modesty, but after all, since we are to be engaged, a little kiss at least will not be out of order, would it?”

At any other time I might have found some humor in the situation I now found myself in, but the expression on Tom Wilkinson's face as he followed me around the room made me almost apprehensive.

I retreated. He followed, still grinning, as if we were playing some kind of game.

“Mr. Wilkinson,” I said firmly, “I hardly think it proper for us to be here alone. I've no desire to give rise to belowstairs gossip, and I've nothing to say to you. I'm afraid I must ask you to leave.”

“Ah, but I'm not ready to leave yet, and I'm sure you don't want me to—not till I've said what I came here to say! Come, what's the harm in a little kiss, eh? After all, we are to become engaged.”

“I would not marry you, Mr. Wilkinson, if you were the last man on earth!” I said forcibly.

“Want to play hard to get, don't you? There's no need for all that. I've made up my mind, you see!”

Without warning he made a grab for me, and I found myself clutched in a man's arms for the first time in my life, while he planted wet, repulsive kisses on my averted face and neck.

“Give us a kiss, then, lass! Eh, will you stop struggling? I'll be wanting more than just kisses when we're wed, you know!”

“Will you stop it?”

Forgetting all my coolness I pushed violently against his chest with my hands, and when he still wouldn't let me go, but kept muttering how pretty I was with my hair coming loose and my eyes not shielded by those ugly spectacles, I slapped his face as hard as I could.

He released me and stumbled backward with an expression of shock and bewilderment on his face. I seized this respite to escape to the doorway. I was panting. I hadn't realized until this moment how disgusted and how afraid I had been.

With an effort, I managed to force some semblance of coldness into my voice as I told him I hoped he would manage to find his way out.

His mouth twisted in an ugly fashion. “You bitch! By God, you'll be sorry for what you just did!”

I walked out of the room, and left him standing there, still mouthing threats at me. I heard his voice call after me as I began to ascend the staircase, forcing myself to walk slowly, and not to run from the sound of his words.

“Think you'll ever get yourself a husband, an ugly creature like you?” he shouted thickly. “Why, I'd never have offered for you in a thousand years if Sir Edgar and my da' hadn't cooked it all up between them! Offered to pay off all my gambling debts, they did. No wonder they're anxious to get rid of you!”

I found myself wondering where the servants were—hiding in doorways and broom closets, no doubt, the better to enjoy such a juicy little scene! I wanted to flee from that ugly, sneering voice, but I would not let myself; I was a Dangerfield, and the likes of Tom Wilkinson with his loud, vulgar voice, were beneath my attention.

At last I had reached the head of the stairs, with my hands wet and sweaty, and my back stiff—and at last I heard the distant slam of a door somewhere below me.

When I reached the safety of my room I was shaking. That ugly, vulgar, repulsive little man! How dare they send him to me, deeming him good enough for me? And even he had had to be bribed to make an offer for me!

Ugly—dowdy—frumpish—a born spinster—was there really something wrong with me? Was I some kind of freak, set apart from other females?

For the first time in my life, as I leaned against the door of my room and fought to control my emotions, I was conscious of a feeling of rebellion, of almost overpowering rage and humiliation. I had been brought up to believe that birth and education were enough, that I needed nothing else to make a success of my life. But—and the thought came insidiously, cracking the foundations of all my beliefs—had my grandfather been wrong? Had he deliberately turned me into an introverted bluestocking to protect me from the devil that was said to taint the Dangerfield blood?

“I'm a woman—a woman!” I raged inwardly, and my fingers began to tear viciously at my ugly, constricting clothes. Perspiration had begun to pour from my body, trickling down the back of my neck, down my thighs and between my breasts.

Still panting, hardly conscious of what I was doing, I found myself standing unashamedly naked before my mirror, my clothes strewn haphazardly around the room. My hair hung down about my shoulders and tickled the back of my waist, and my eyes looked enormous in the whiteness of my face. Was this the real Rowena? What had happened to the laughing girl who had worn a sari and an exotic black caste mark between her brows? The same girl who might have married a prince? “Do you think you're living in a fairy tale?” I had chided myself then, proud of my own good sense and practical turn of mind. But I should have married Shiv. I should have stayed in India! I was a stranger among strangers here.

Suddenly, I saw myself as I had been then, viewing my reflection in a polished silver mirror. Perhaps if I wished hard enough Shiv would appear behind me, as he had on that day, striding in with his high, polished boots and fawn jodhpurs, the white silk turban he wore giving him an air of barbaric splendor. Dear Shiv—my brightest memory!

The sari, carefully packed away in layers of tissue paper, emerged like a jeweled treasure from the bottom of my small, battered trunk. It was made of gossamer sheer silk that shimmered when the light caught it—a deep blue-violet shade that Shiv had told me matched my eyes. A design worked in gold covered the material like an intricate spider web, and the
pallau
—the section that was meant to be draped around its wearer's head—was even more resplendent with gold than the rest of the sari.