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T he first rays of afternoon sunlight that struck the tall west-facing Gothic parlor window cut a knife-edged swath across the brilliantly-colored carpet.

Motes glittered and danced in the sun like a sprinkling of fairy dust in the air.

There was a lazy stillness to the house, to the room.

Indeed, for Jane, such calm was a long-forgotten treat, redolent with memories.

Sir Helmsdon was gone, the Willoughbys off jaunting, Mr. Burry napping, Millicent still keeping to her room, and Lady Serena somewhere, it didn’t matter, anywhere but in Jane’s vicinity.

The children had coaxed Cook into preparing another picnic.

Nurse Twinkleham was resting easily while Elsbeth worked in the stillroom.

The marquis and the earl were closeted in the earl’s room, playing cards and blowing a cloud.

A sense of peace settled into Jane, smoothing the faint traces of tension in her brow, at the corners of her lips, in the set of her shoulders.

She sat on one of the long settees, her shoes off, her feet drawn up under her, an open book lying forgotten under her hand.

She savored the stillness for its implicit, ephemeral nature.

It gave time and space for her thoughts to settle and expand.

Since she’d heard Lady Serena and Millicent were to visit, her mind had been buzzing and darting about, frantically and to no purpose, a bee seeking nectar from all the wrong flowers.

For almost three years they had been manipulating her life. Three years! Not directly through explicit actions, but by the continuing canker on her soul—the canker formed by her naiveté and their deceit.

She leaned her head back against the upholstery, willing her body to relax. She let her thoughts melt and flow.

The manipulation of her life had begun with David Hedgeworth.

Or had it? Had it actually begun then, or with the death of her mother? Yes, the history of their interference went back further.

She remembered herself as a fragile child, burdened with myriad uncertainties, which Lady Serena and dear Cousin Millicent fed.

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 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 necessarily any wiser, she ruefully conceded.

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 clearly 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 a 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 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 desired, 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 loathing 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 a drunk 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 and cry.

Fortunately for Jane, she’d been sleeping restlessly.

Finally, in disgust, she rose and, putting on her wrapper, descended the great staircase to the ground floor.

She made her way soundlessly to the library.

She stayed there an hour, perusing the Bridlingtons’ books and mementos.

Finally, chosen book in hand, she turned to go back to her room.

The sound of shouting voices echoed in the Great Hall, their words indistinct. She hurried upward. Outside her room stood Lady Serena, Millicent, Mr. Hedgeworth, and some others Jane did not know. She remembered her aunt’s words.

“He’s in there! I tell you, I saw him go in there as bold as brass not five minutes ago. My poor niece, she’s ruined!”

The door to her bedchamber opened then, and out stepped the inebriated gentleman, swaying gently. "That’s not my room,” he lisped softly.

Lady Serena wailed at Jane’s misfortune.

She turned to Mr. Hedgeworth, offering sympathy for his ill luck.

It was then that Jane made her presence known by requesting to know what was happening.

Millicent shrieked as if she saw a ghost. Lady Serena demanded to know what she was doing there.

Confused, Jane told them of her lack of sleep and her trip to the library over an hour ago.

“And you’ve been there ever since?” queried Lady Serena.

When she responded affirmatively, she noted her aunt’s dissatisfied expression.

Mr. Hedgeworth, after only a moment’s hesitation, came over to her to squeeze her hand and tell her how glad he was.

Catastrophe averted and no spice for the scandal broth, everyone wandered back to their rooms. Jane locked her door.

Later in the night, Millicent found herself in Mr. Hedgeworth’s room.

Claiming and cursing sleepwalking, she began sobbing hysterically.

He tried to soothe her and shoo her out of his rooms. He was too late.

Lady Serena flew in, dressed in affronted matronly dignity.

So Millicent won Mr. Hedgeworth by arranging a compromising assignation with him for herself.

Horrified at the gossip and rumors that would circulate society, he quickly proposed marriage.

Instead of traveling to Speerford Hall with Jane, he left the Bridlingtons’ for London to place a notice in the Morning Gazette and to arrange a suitable and proper wedding. His chief concern was to scotch talk.

He scarcely said another word to Jane, for he said it wouldn’t be proper.

The Honorable Miss Millicent Tipton and Mr. David Hedgeworth were wed less than a month later.

Out of duty, Jane attended the ceremony.

She attended it enveloped in her new society cloak, designed to protect her from harm.

It was not long afterward that the sobriquet Ice Witch began to circulate in polite society.