Rags-to-Riches Bride. Mary Nichols

Diana could say another word, she was on the pavement outside the house and the door had been firmly shut. ‘Mr Harecroft. Stephen. Let me go, will you? You are hurting my arm.’

      He released her. ‘I am sorry. But I had no idea how you lived. You kept it very quiet, didn’t you?’ It was said with a flash of anger.

      ‘Perhaps because I knew what your reaction might be. We had no choice, it was the best we could afford and now I haven’t even got that.’

      ‘You can stay at Harecroft House.’

      ‘I cannot do that, it would be an imposition.’

      ‘Nonsense. It will be an opportunity to get to know each other properly and it will help you to decide to accept me.’

      ‘Why do you want to marry me?’

      They had reached the gig and he turned to face her. ‘Why does anyone marry? To live together, to make a home and a family…’

      ‘No, I meant…why me?’

      ‘Because you are exactly the wife I have been looking for, someone I would be proud to have on my arm, to entertain my guests, be a mother to my children, someone to work beside me like Great-Grandmother did for Great-Grandfather, patient, efficient, not giddy or given to the vapours. Does that answer you?’ He held out his hand to help her up. ‘Come, there will be time to talk about our future when you have settled in at Harecroft House.’

      He had not mentioned love, she noticed, and he had reeled off the list of her attributes as if he had learned them by rote. ‘Supposing I do not want to come.’

      ‘Oh, do be sensible, Diana. Where else can you go at this time of night?’

      ‘Mrs Beales might change her mind…’

      ‘You know she will not. And in any case, I am not letting my future wife live in a place like that. It is a slum.’

      ‘I have no nightgown and toiletries or a change of linen.…’

      ‘None of which matters. Mama will find something for you until your own things can be fetched.’

      ‘Stephen, you are bullying me.’

      ‘I am sorry for that, my dear, it was not intended, but we could have stood arguing with that dreadful woman all night if I had not done something. Now, please get in the tilbury.’

      The dog, who had been trotting beside her, jumped up into the gig and seemed to make up her mind for her. ‘What about Toby?’

      ‘He can go to the stables. The grooms will look after him.’

      She knew she had no choice; it was too late to go searching for a bed and, being a woman on her own, no good-class establishment would entertain her. ‘Very well, just for tonight.’ She stepped up into the gig and he seated himself beside her and they set off. Neither spoke.

      She was too worried and angry with him to make conversation. He had manoeuvred her into a corner. Why did a man so disgusted with the way she lived want to marry her? Unless he, too, was being manipulated. But why? What did she have to offer that dozens of others in more advantageous circumstances did not? She had been worried about losing her job when the Harecrofts found out about her father and where she lived; she had not dreamt she would be prised out of her home and carried off, because that was what it amounted to.

      ‘Why?’ she demanded suddenly. ‘Why, when you discovered where I lived, did you not turn your back on me?’

      ‘I am not fickle, Diana. I do not like your circumstances, but that does not mean I feel any differently about you. You are still you, still the person I have come to know and regard with great affection. And I would be less than a gentleman if I did not try to do something to improve your situation. Please give me a chance to do so.’

      It was not a declaration of love, but perhaps he found it difficult to express his true feelings. She had known him long enough to know he was not the effusive kind. He had always been quiet and stiffly correct; it was his way. She ought not to yearn for anything else. But, oh, how she longed to be enfolded in someone’s arms, to be comforted and told that she need no longer worry about anything, that she was loved. If she married Stephen, the responsibility of looking after her father would be lifted from her shoulders and perhaps love would come. At the moment, with Papa in hospital fighting for his life, no home to take him to when he recovered sufficiently to be discharged and Toby trying to lick the skin off her face, she could not think clearly.

      The first person they saw when they entered the house was Richard. He had apparently just come in because he was handing his top hat to a footman. ‘Miss Bywater, you are back again.’