The Heart's Companion - By Holly Newman Page 0,60

uncertainties, which were fed by Lady Serena and dear Cousin Millicent. Then, as she grew older and began displaying a sense of her own self, there were the carefully contrived insults and snubs followed disorientingly by warm solicitation and advice. Lady Serena often told Jane that she could not be blamed for her defects. Serena’s actions and words were all so insidious—wispy, like smoke in the wind. There was not a specific action or set of words that could be pointed to and declaimed. That was why the history of their influence in her life eluded Jane so. That, and the lack of motive. Why?

Somehow, by clinging tenaciously to her mother’s memory and hearing again her words, even if only in her own mind, she'd matured. If not unscathed, then honed. She was the quintessential homely child turned beautiful on maturity. More importantly, she grew strong, though not, she ruefully conceded, necessarily any smarter.

Then there was Mr. David Hedgeworth. She remembered she met him at eccentric Lady Oakley’s annual ball. It was early in the season. He was new in town, returning to England after two years spent between the West Indies sugar plantation he stood to inherit, and traveling about the Americas. The War of 1812 with the United States had brought him back to England.

He was a tall, slender young man of some five and twenty years. An easy smile and a chivalrous nature made him popular throughout London. It was odd, but all she could distinctly remember was his distinctive lopsided smile. She supposed, when she thought of it long and hard, that his hair and eyes had been brown—light brown. But she could not conjure a face to put with that hair, or to his name. It made her feel oddly guilty. She shook her head bemusedly.

That season, Jane was often in his company. Their interests had ostensibly been the same. They visited London like tourists, she with guidebook in hand, dutifully reading some historical or architectural note while her companion trailed after them, muttering of her blistering feet. Theirs was a comfortable relationship and she, with the ice of aloneness still in her soul, craved—nay, loved!—comfort. Dreams of a lifetime of comfort began drifting, like gossamer threads in the wind. It was mesmerizing. She began mental plans, gentle dreams, for their future.

Then came the Bridlingtons’ house party.

It was held at the end of the season, and she stopped there on her way home to Speerford Hall. Mr. Hedgeworth was to accompany her. It was understood between them that he would speak to her father before making his declaration to her. That was why he was coming to Speerford, to catch Sir Grantley while he yet remained in England, and secure his consent before he approached Jane. Mr. Hedgeworth was a stickler for conventions, for adhering to society’s rules. Once, when she’d made some mention of that fact, he answered solemnly that he liked order in his life. After experiencing the disorder of the Americas, he craved England’s ordered life.

He was not a man society gossiped about. There was nothing in his nature that would generate gossip. He was a quiet, comfortable man. Excesses of emotion were alien to his nature. Jane smiled in remembrance. He certainly was not one to drive her to the anger the Earl of Royce could engender. Nor, that she recalled, had she felt any of the strangely exciting prickly tingles she experienced in the earl’s company.

Perhaps Millicent had not been so fortunate, after all.

The thought drifted, unbidden into Jane’s mind. Annoyed, she angrily shunted it aside. It was beneath her! Mr. Hedgeworth was everything she had desired in a man.

Once, amended that gentle voice.

Perhaps Mr. Hedgeworth’s staid disposition (for there could be no other word to describe it) was the reason Millicent now pursued livelier game. Jane squirmed and shifted in her seat, her thoughts embarrassing.

Lady Serena considered Mr. Hedgeworth a good marital catch. She early identified his passion for propriety, his abhorrence for romantic intrigue. She decided to use his characteristics to her and her daughter’s advantage. Her first effort was to compromise Jane with another man. Failing that, to arrange for an embarrassing situation that would give Mr. Hedgeworth a disgust of Jane. In that she all but failed.

Serena arranged for an inebriated young man to take a wrong turn down the rabbit warren halls of Bridlington House and to find himself in Jane’s room. The plan was that she would discover him there and raise a hue