Hamish could not understand his distractible bride-to-be, but he tried to love her anyway.
Her resentful air, strange ideas…She wasn't what he would have chosen. But Mother had already decided years ago, and she was the daughter of his father's business partner. It was a reasonable match.
Of course, he hoped his Mother would teach her better manners. And sometimes he worried at the thought of her taking care of him. She was such a distracted girl, head always in the clouds. Would she know what food to serve him? Would she be able to soothe his ills, bear his children? They had known each other for as long as he could remember, and she hardly seemed capable of looking after herself.
She was so cold.
He did try to win her affection at first. Alice Kingsley wasn't ugly, and in some lights she was nearly beautiful. For a short while he loved her quite more than he'd loved anything. But she spurned him. When he approached her, she pursed her lips as if she were dreading him. And she was always wandering off, melting away like a mist, try as he did to make her stay with him at parties and balls. It was as if she didn't know they were to be married someday.
Mother was not sympathetic. Her only interest was in the marriage itself, and once Alice was Hamish's, it was all over in her mind. To Hamish, marriage seemed like it would be the beginning of his troubles.
"But Mother, what if she doesn't want to have children?" Hamish once asked.
"She will bear children, Hamish." Mother said, her small eyes flashing.
And that was that.
Sometimes Hamish woke up from nightmares. His children all with those reproachful dark eyes and pursed lips, shying away from his touch and clinging to Alice's skirt. Her cold stare reflecting up at him through their large eyes. He dreaded their children.
But he still desired her, faintly. She was to be his, had been promised to him years ago, and yet she eluded him. It sparked a longing that he lacked for anything else in his life. Her untouchable nature drew him. When they were apart, he hardly thought of her. But when he saw her across a ballroom or a parlor…his mouth went dry. Her waist, un-pinched by a corset, lacked the stiff, narrow shape of other girls. Her chest was almost completely flat. When he looked at her, he could see the slight, natural curves of her body, and her naked outline would appear in his head, unbidden. It made him choke a little.
Talking to her was impossible. She was strange. And she humiliated him regularly.
"Would you care to dance?" He would ask.
"Not particularly," she would reply.
Hamish would feel himself twitch. She was so ill-mannered.
"Very well. Good night, Alice."
"Good-night, Hamish." And she would stare at him until he walked away, red-faced and perplexed. Didn't she know that it was rude to decline a dance? Didn't she know it humiliated him to be refused by the woman they all knew he must marry someday?
During parties Alice would sit by herself and openly stare at people, or wander off and be gone for hours while her mother desperately looked for her. Hamish hoped she would outgrow this behavior after marriage.
"Marriage changes women." His father said. He looked at Hamish's mother with an almost sad expression. "She won't always be the way she is now."
This comforted him until he next saw Alice. And then he was afraid again.