Mary Balogh - The wood nymph

Mainwaring nodded curtly when the landlord offered to refill his glass of ale. He pushed away from him the half-eaten pie.

He had deserved her rebuff. He could not fully exonerate himself of all she had accused him of. And what could he do now? She had made it clear that she scorned his attentions. But he could not leave her alone. He had to marry her. By God, he had taken her virginity! She would not be able to accept any other man under those circumstances, and how would she explain to her parents her reluctance to choose a husband? She really had no choice but to accept him. And she hated him. Poor Nell!

Mainwaring paid his reckoning and walked out to the stableyard to claim his horse, which was looking refreshed after a feed and a thorough brush-down. He swung himself into the saddle. He would have to win her, prove to her somehow that marriage to him would not be the heavy sentence that she anticipated. He would have to show her that, though no angel, he was a man of integrity and conscience. He would have to try somehow to revive the love that she had given him so freely and so trustingly but a few months before.

It was not going to be easy.

***

Helen was not to be allowed to escape. No sooner had Mr. Mainwaring left the room than the butler was standing in the doorway, bowing and informing her that the countess desired her presence in the drawing room.

Helen sighed. There was no point in trying to avoid the issue. She walked toward the door, which the butler was holding open for her.

"Well," her mother said, rising to her feet as soon as Helen appeared in the doorway of the drawing room, "my own dear child. I knew we would find eligible husbands for you all if we just came to town and if you exerted yourselves. I don't know how it came about, my love, when you met Mr. Mainwaring for the first time only last evening, but such things do happen sometimes, I have heard. And to think Papa and I thought you did nothing but sulk throughout the ball."

"Mama…" Helen said.

"You are really to marry Mr. Mainwaring?" Melissa asked. "I wish you joy, Helen. I rather favored him myself at one time, but I believe I should look around me more carefully before making any choice."

"I think you are very fortunate," Emily added. "Mr. Mainwaring is a very proper sort of man even if he does not enjoy a high rank. Have he and Papa decided when the wedding is to be, Mama?"

"Oh, not too soon, I hope," Melissa cried in alarm. "It would not do, would it, Mama, for Helen to be married before Emmy and me?"

"Well, my love-" the countess began.

"Mama," Helen said, "I have refused Mr. Mainwaring's offer."

There was an incredulous silence for a moment.

"Refused?" the countess said. "But you cannot have done that, child. Papa said that he might marry you."

"But I have said no," Helen said, a slight tremor in her voice. "Papa cannot say that I must marry anyone."

"Helen!" Emily exclaimed. "How ungrateful can you be? Papa has brought us all here at great expense when he would much prefer to have stayed at home for the hunting season. And he has found you a quite acceptable husband. For what possible reason could you have refused?"

"If you consider it so important for us to marry, and if you find Mr. Mainwaring so eligible," Helen blurted, "then do you marry him, Emmy. I have no intention of marrying anyone, now or ever."

The countess had sunk down onto a sofa. "Child," she said now, "what are we to do with you? You are twenty years old; practically on the shelf already, and you behave like a hoyden many years younger. You must marry. What else is there?"

"Mama," Helen said, seating herself beside her mother and taking her limp hand in her own, "I shall stay with you. I cannot marry, indeed I cannot. And I cannot bear Mr. Mainwaring. I should die rather than accept his offer. Please do not try to force me. I shall be a good daughter, I swear. But please do not expect me to enter the marriage mart."

The countess was unused to seeing her youngest daughter so distraught. She patted her hand. "Well, Helen," she said, "I really do not know what is to become of you. And I do not know how Papa will view this. You have made him appear very foolish, you know, child. Mr. Mainwaring had his blessing. I do believe they had even talked about a settlement.” She sighed.

Helen rose to her feet. "May I asked. "I do not feel like any luncheon, Mama. I shall rest in my room."

The countess sighed again. "If only you could be more like your sisters," she said. "Melissa has had two bouquets this morning, and Emily has been asked to drive in the park with Lord Harding and his sister this afternoon."

Helen smiled and made her escape. In her own room she pulled the pins from her head and shook her hair loose about her shoulders. She lay down on her bed and stared at the canopy over her bed.

What had made him come? Why had he made an offer for her? She had certainly given him no encouragement the evening before, and she knew that she had not looked good. She had behaved throughout the evening in a manner calculated to repel any man rather than to attract. Yet he had decided to come this morning, to speak to Papa in a formal offer for her hand, and then to speak to her. How could he have done such a thing?

His reason was obvious, she supposed, and it was one that made her think worse of him than she had already done. He clearly did live by an appalling double standard. The accusation she had made to him in the heat of her anger had been quite justified. He had probably not given her a second thought since leaving her in the summer. A country wench did not merit any concern on the part of a gentleman. It was no barb for one's conscience to have ruined such a girl. But it was a different matter altogether when one knew that that girl was a lady. Only marriage could right such a wrong. It was true that she had done wrong to deceive him. She should not have put his moral values to such a test. But, right or wrong, she had tested him. And she did not like what she had found. She had to despise him for his behavior.

Had he seriously thought that she would accept him, gladly escape to respectability? Had he expected her to so humiliate herself, knowing full well that he offered only because he felt obliged to give her the protection of his name, as he had put it? He must have been confident if he had gone to her father first.

What did he really think of her? Despite his offer, he must really despise her. What woman of her age and rank would have done what she had done? She had given herself quite deliberately to a stranger, when even to have given a kiss should have shocked her. There was no question of seduction. She had entered into the liaison quite as freely as he. It was only now, perhaps, since they had arrived in London that she was beginning to realize even more fully the enormity of what she had done. She saw around her the young girls of the ton, cosseted and guarded at every turn by mamas and chaperons. Most of them probably never had a chance even to be alone with a man until after they were safely married. And she had met a man alone several times and had actually made love with him.

Yes, he must despise her. He must consider her to be a woman of very loose morals. Was she? She supposed she must be. She had suffered and she had been punished for her wrongdoing. She would continue to suffer probably for a long time to come. She could never again live the normal life of a girl of her class. She had accepted almost from the beginning that what she had done was terribly wrong. Yet despite it all, she still could not feel real shame for anything in the past except the deception she had practiced. She should be both ashamed and disgusted to remember that she had given herself to a man who was little more than a stranger. But she was not. The experience had made a woman of her in more than one way, and she would not revert to girlhood even if she could.

Let Mr. William Mainwaring despise her, she thought defiantly. Let him think that she could be as easily persuaded to marry him as to lie with him. She really did not care. If only he did not show to quite such advantage in his city clothes! It did not seem fair that he should have looked so handsome and so distinguished the night before, while she had looked as if she were dressed in someone's cast-off curtains. It was not fair that he had known he would see her this morning and had had the chance to dress in that close-fitting riding jacket of olive green and those buff riding breeches that fit him like a second skin and the highly polished boots. She had felt so dowdy in her brown wool morning dress and her hastily piled hair. And she had felt so unattractive with the extra weight she had put on recently, which seemed to have settled all around her face.

She must avoid him at all costs. She had thought that after seeing him once she would find future meetings easier. But he had made sure that that would not be the case. Now there would be all the acute embarrassment of remembering their interview of this morning. Not that another meeting would have been easy even without that encounter. Seeing him again the night before had only served to remind her of how very attractive a man William Mainwaring was. And disapproving of a man did not take away one's attraction to him, she had discovered with some dismay. She would just have to stay well away from him. The only consolation to her mind was the conviction that he would be just as anxious to avoid her from now on.

Lord Harding appeared to be quite taken with Lady Emily Wade. He was a man in his early forties, a widower. He had spent the years since the death of his wife divided between his home in Richmond and the Foreign Office, where his fluent knowledge of several European languages made him an invaluable asset during the time of the Napoleonic wars. For a long while he had not seemed to feel the need for a new wife. His unmarried sister had moved into his home soon after his bereavement and had looked efficiently to his comforts and acted as his hostess on the rare occasions when he entertained.

But now the sister, at the age of two-and-thirty, had surprised everyone by betrothing herself to a widower, a baronet more than fifteen years her senior, who desperately needed a mature woman to care for his five children. When Lord Harding began to appear at the social events of the ton, therefore, it was rumored that he was finally looking around for a new wife. Lady Emily seemed to be his instant choice, and it was not difficult to see why that would be. She was the daughter of an earl. She was young, yet past her girlhood, elegant and dignified. He was not the sort of man who would be unduly concerned with her lack of humor.

She was invited to attend the theater with him, his sister, and her betrothed a week after the Hetherington ball, a week during which she had driven with him twice and received visits from him on two other occasions. Lady Melissa was also invited to attend in order to even the numbers with a young cousin of Lord Harding's. However, it was Helen who actually did go. She showed almost the only animation she had displayed since their arrival in London when she heard of the good fortune of her sisters.

"You are going to see The School for Scandal?" she said when Emily introduced the topic over tea in the drawing room one afternoon. "Oh, Emmy, I would give my right arm to be in your shoes. I have read the play, you know, and it is enormously witty. I wonder if it will be well-acted. Oh, I do wish I could see it myself."

Melissa pulled a face. "You would not be so eager if you knew what company you would be in, Helen," she said. "Lord Harding, Miss Lane, and Sir Rupert Davies are quite distinguished company, of course, but Mr. Simms! He must be a head shorter than I am, and so thin and youthful-looking that I shall be positively embarrassed to be seen with him."

"Oh, Melly!" Helen retorted. "What possible difference can it make who your companion is to be when you will be watching a play? You will hardly even be called upon to converse with him."

"Then do you go with him," Melissa said crossly. "You would be a more suitable companion anyway, Helen. I am sure the two of you are more of an age, and you probably would not be taller than he."

"Oh, may I, Emmy, do you think?" Helen asked, turning to her eldest sister eagerly. "I promise to be impeccably well-behaved and to smile until my face splits in two."