The Arrangement (11 page)

“Has no one ever told you that you are pretty?” he asked.

“I would only have to look in the nearest glass,” she said, “to know that they lied.”

He did one of those silent stares again.

“Take a blind man’s word for it,” he told her, “that you have a pretty voice.”

She laughed. She felt absurdly, pathetically pleased.

“
Will
you marry me?” he asked.

Suddenly she was engulfed in a tidal wave of temptation. She gripped harder. She would be leaving permanent indentations in the arms of the vicarage chair if she was not careful.

“I cannot do that,” she said.

“Why not?”

Only for a thousand reasons. At least.

“You must know,” she said, “that the whole village is buzzing with talk about you. I have not heard much of it, but I have heard enough. It is said that you left home a while ago because your relatives were trying to make you marry a young lady you did not really
wish
to marry. It is said that they have set their minds upon finding you a wife. Everyone here has been speculating about who, if anyone, will suit you among the young ladies with whom you are familiar. And, of course, my uncle and aunt made a determined effort last evening to catch you for Henrietta. You are set about by people who are scheming to get you married, though their motives differ widely. I will not add to that crowd, Lord Darleigh, by marrying you just because you are kind enough to feel responsible for me. You are
not
responsible. Besides, you told me yourself last night that your dream does not include a wife.”

“Do you have any active aversion to marrying me?” he asked her. “My blindness, for example?”

“No,” she said. “The fact that you cannot see
is
a handicap, but you do not seem to treat it as one.”

She did not know him. But he really did look fit and well muscled. She knew he had been blind for several years. If he had sat in a chair or lain on a bed most of that time, he would not look as he looked now. His face was weather-bronzed too.

“Nothing else?” he asked. “My looks? My voice? My … Anything?”

“N-no,” she said.

Except that he was a titled, wealthy, privileged gentleman despite the blindness, and lived in a mansion far larger than Barton Hall. And that he had a doting mother and sisters. And twenty thousand pounds a year. And that he was handsome and elegant and made her want to cower in a corner, worshiping from afar—even from within her mouse hole. Actually, that would make a splendid cartoon, except that she would have to capture his splendor without satire and she was not sure she could do that. Her charcoal almost always viewed the world through a satirical eye.

“Then I beg leave to press my suit,” he said. “Miss Fry, please marry me. Oh, very well. We are both young. We both admitted last night that we dream of independence and of being alone to enjoy it, unencumbered by spouse or children. But we also recognized that dreams are not always reality. This is reality. You have a frightening problem; I feel responsible for helping solve it, and I have the means of solving it. But our dreams need not completely die if we marry. Quite the contrary. Let us come to some sort of
arrangement
that will benefit us both in the immediate future and offer us both hope for the longer term future.”

She stared back at him. Temptation gnawed at her. But she did not understand quite what he offered.

“In what way,” she asked him, “would marriage to me benefit
you,
Lord Darleigh, either in the shorter term or the longer? Apart from soothing your conscience, that is. It is perfectly obvious how it would benefit me. There is not even any point in making a list. But what would such an arrangement, as you call it, offer you? And what do you mean by that word—
arrangement
? How does it differ from just plain marriage?”

Marriage to her would offer him absolutely nothing whatsoever. That was what. Again, there was no point at all in making a list—there would be nothing to put on it. It would be a blank page with a wistful little mouse gazing up at the emptiness from a bottom corner.

He felt behind him for the arms of the chair to which the Reverend Parsons had led him and sat down at last. He looked a little less intimidating. Or perhaps not. For now there was an illusion, as there had been last evening, that they were just two friendly equals having a cozy chat. Yet … Well, there was nothing equal about them except a basic gentility of birth.

“If one considers the facts purely from a practical and material perspective,” he said, “ours would be an unequal match. You have nothing and no one and nowhere to go and no money. I have property and fortune and more loving relatives than I know what to do with.”

And that was that. There was really no more to be said.

She stared into the abyss and felt as though her stomach had already descended into it.

“There is no other perspective,” she said.

“Yes, there is.” He was silent again for a few moments. “I ran from home six weeks or so ago, as you have heard. I have not made a good start on my life as Viscount Darleigh of Middlebury Park. I have allowed myself to be ruled by all the well-meaning people surrounding me there. And now they have decided it is time I married, and they will not be satisfied until the deed is accomplished. I want to change things, Miss Fry. How much easier it would have been if I had asserted myself three years ago. But I did not, and there is no going back. So where do I start now? Perhaps in taking a wife home with me. Perhaps I will have the courage to start again and start differently if I have someone at my side who is undeniably mistress of Middlebury. Perhaps it is the very thing I need. Perhaps you will be doing me as great a favor as I will be doing you. If I can persuade you to agree, that is.”

“But to choose a stranger,” she said.

“It is precisely what my relatives wished me to do six weeks ago,” he said. “She had been brought to Middlebury by parents who needed to marry her well. She had no personal wish to be there. We had no previous acquaintance. She was a sacrificial lamb. She told me she
understood
and she
did not mind
.”

“Ah,” she said. “But clearly she did?”

“Would
you
mind?” he asked her.

“Marrying a blind man? No,” she said. But what was she saying? She was not agreeing to marry him. “But I would mind forcing you into something you do not want to do, with someone you do not know and someone who could bring nothing into the marriage except, perhaps, that she really
would
not mind.”

He ran the fingers of one hand through his hair and looked as though he was searching for words.

“Was this the
arrangement
you spoke of?” she asked. “That you offer me material comfort and I offer you the courage to become the master of your own domain?”

He exhaled audibly.

“No,” he said. “Remember our dreams.”

“Our impossible dreams?” She attempted a laugh and then wished she had not when she heard the pathetic sound she made.

“Perhaps not so impossible.” He sat forward suddenly, and his face looked earnest and eager and boyish. “Perhaps we can have both them
and
marriage.”

“How?” They seemed mutually exclusive concepts to her.

“Marriages,” he said, “perfectly decent ones, are undertaken for all sorts of reasons. Especially marriages of the upper classes. Often they are alliances more than love matches. And there is nothing wrong with an alliance. Often there is a great deal of respect, even affection, between the partners. And often they live lives that are quite independent of each other even while the marriage survives. They see each other from time to time and are perfectly amicable with each other. But they are free to live their own lives. Perhaps we could agree to such a marriage.”

The very idea chilled her.

He was still looking eager.

“You could eventually have your cottage in the country,” he said, “with your flowers and your chickens and cats. I could eventually prove to myself that I can be master of Middlebury and of my life alone. We could have a marriage now, when we both need it, and freedom and independence and a dream come true in the future. We are both young. We have plenty of life ahead of us—or we can hope for plenty.”

“When?” She still felt chilled—and tempted. “When could we move from the one phase of our marriage to the other?”

He stared past her shoulder.

“One year?” he said. “Unless there is a child. It is a real marriage I propose, Miss Fry. And the begetting of an heir is a duty I must look to sometime. If there is a child, our dream will have to be postponed, at least for a while. But a year if there is no child. Unless you would rather make it longer. Or less. But I think we would need a year to establish ourselves as Viscount and Viscountess Darleigh of Middlebury Park. And we ought to do that. Would you agree to a year?”

She had not agreed to anything. She felt a little as though she were about to faint. She could be married
and
have her life of quiet contentment? Could the two coexist? She needed time to think, and lots of it. But there
was
no time. She lowered her chin to her chest and closed her eyes.

“It would be madness,” was all she could think to say.

“Why?” He sounded anxious. Anxious that she would say no? Or that she would say yes?

She could not
think.
But one thought popped free.

“What if there was a child,” she asked, “and it was a girl?”

He thought about it and then … smiled.

“I think I would rather like to have a daughter,” he said, and then he laughed. “Another female to rule my life.”

“But what if?” she persisted. “What if you were still without an heir?”

“Then … Hmm.” He thought again. “If we became friends during our year together, and I see no reason why we should not, then we would not have to be strangers for the rest of our lives, would we? We would not be
separating,
only living apart because it suited us to do so. Perhaps we would both be quite happy to come together again from time to time.”

For enough time to have a child? Or
another
child?

She still felt light-headed. She tried to think rationally.

“What if the time should come, Lord Darleigh,” she asked, “when you wished to marry someone with whom you had fallen in love?”

“I am unlikely to meet any such person at Middlebury,” he said. “I hope to become less reclusive than I have been for the past three years—indeed I am determined to be—but it is a quiet village. Besides, it is a risk run by everyone who marries, is it not? The danger that one will meet someone one wants more? When one
does
marry, however, one pledges one’s loyalty to the person one marries and that is that.”

There had to be a hole in that argument large enough to drive a stagecoach and four through. And she thought of one. Men had
needs,
did they not? She had learned that during the years she had lived with her father and his friends. What about Lord Darleigh’s needs? According to the arrangement he suggested, she would be leaving him when he was twenty-four unless she was increasing.

How would he satisfy his needs after that? Mistresses?

She opened her mouth and drew breath, but she could not bring herself to make the point.

He made it for her.

“We could get together occasionally anyway,” he said. “We need not be strangers. Provided it was by mutual consent, of course.”

There was another of those short silences.

“What if
you
should meet someone and fall in love?” he asked her.

“I would turn away from it,” she told him. “I would be loyal to my marriage.”

And by her answer had she crossed the line into seriously considering his proposal?

Oh, she
must
not take it seriously.

But what was the alternative?

She hugged her hands about her arms, as though she were cold.

“You do not even know me,” she said, realizing too late that she did not need to make that point if she was
not
considering saying yes. “I do not know you.”

He did not immediately reply.

“What happened to you?” she asked.

“To my sight, you mean?” he said. “My mother’s brother came home from long years in the Far East. He is a merchant and a businessman, very prosperous. My father was not very long deceased at the time and my mother was struggling harder than ever to make ends meet. My uncle wanted to take my sisters to London to find them eligible husbands, which he actually did with great success, and he wanted to take me into the business. But the thought of sitting behind a desk all day, even if only for a few years until I had earned promotions, depressed me. I begged him to purchase a commission for me instead, and I went off to war with an artillery regiment at the age of seventeen. I was bursting with pride and eagerness to prove myself, to show that I was as brave, as resourceful, as steadfast as the most seasoned of veterans. In the first hour of my first battle in the Peninsula, I was standing beside one of the great guns when it was fired. Nothing happened, and I stepped slightly forward, as though I thought to see the problem and set it right and win the whole war then and there for the allies. The gun fired, and the last thing I saw was a bright flash. I really ought to have been blown to glory. There ought to have been so many pieces of me raining down upon Spain and Portugal that no one would have found and identified a single one of them. But, when I was carried off to a field hospital, I was perfectly intact except for the fact that when I recovered consciousness I could neither see nor hear.”

Sophia gasped in horror.

“Hearing returned after I had been back in England awhile,” he said. “Sight never did, and never will.”

“Oh,” she said. “What was it like—”

But he had held up a staying hand, and the other, she noticed, had curled tightly about the arm of his chair, just as her hands had about the arms of hers a few minutes ago. His knuckles were white.

“I am sorry,” he said, and his voice sounded unaccountably breathless. “I cannot talk about that, Miss Fry.”