Only a Promise (15 page)

It was doubtless an inappropriate response.

And he had been happy enough to make his escape.

“Chloe has never liked her hair,” Sir Kevin Muirhead said. “She has always been annoyed with the ancestor of mine who passed the bright color on to her. And the more it has been admired, the more she has hated it.”

“Red hair does suggest a certain . . . flamboyance of character,” Ralph’s eldest sister, Amelia, observed.

“Then one can understand why the duchess is uncomfortable with it,” Flavian said. “She is reserved and dignified and quite the opposite of f-flamboyant.”

“She does you proud, Ralph,” Hugo agreed. “Since you have persuaded us to stay another day, Vince and I are going to explore the park this morning, if we may. His dog will make sure we do not get lost in all the vastness. Is there any particular feature we ought to see?”

“I could hear what sounded like a waterfall yesterday when we were out at the chapel,” Vincent said. “We will find that, Hugo.”

“There is a lake, is there not?” George asked. “Lady Keilly, Lady Harrison, you must be familiar with the park. Would you care to show me the way while Hugo
and Vincent strike out on what sounds like a more strenuous search for the waterfall?”

Ralph looked with gratitude from one to the other of his friends, who had deflected the conversation away from Chloe and her red hair. He wished there was more time to spend with them than just today and was tempted to ignore his other responsibilities and lead the way to the falls himself. But they were not the only ones who would be gone tomorrow.

The gentlemen rose to their feet as his grandmother, his great-aunt, and Mrs. Nelson came into the dining room.

“Lady Trentham’s maid is at work upon Chloe’s hair,” Great-Aunt Mary reported. “Lady Trentham swears that she is competent with the scissors. The consolation is that the girl certainly cannot make Chloe look worse than she looked when we knocked upon your bedchamber door, Ralph. Someone fetch me coffee before I expire.”

Ralph saw that his grandmother was looking wan but composed this morning. He wondered if the worst was behind her or ahead of her. He strongly suspected the latter and hoped for the former.

“Sir,” Ralph said, addressing Sir Kevin Muirhead, “may I offer you another cup of coffee in the study?”

They discussed the marriage settlement, even though the marriage had already been solemnized. Ralph wanted to assure his father-in-law, and to commit it to writing, that Chloe and any children of their marriage would be well cared for while he lived and properly provided for after his death.

“You have been more than generous, considering the fact that I am able to offer only a modest dowry,” Sir Kevin said when all had been settled. “I have been worried about Chloe for the past several years. I was even more worried when I learned of her hasty marriage, but you have set my mind at ease. At least, I believe you have. Why did you marry her, Worthingham?”

The question took Ralph by surprise.

“I am the last of my line, sir,” he explained. “One would have to climb quite high into the family tree to find a branch upon which there is another male heir. It was my duty to marry and set up my nursery, and my grandfather’s deteriorating health imposed some urgency upon me even though I am only twenty-six. I met your daughter here a couple of weeks ago and . . .” No, he could not bring himself to say he had fallen violently in love with her. It would be a patent lie. “I considered her an eligible wife. She is a little older and more mature than any of the young ladies I had met in London. She is beautiful—not that looks were a primary concern with me. She is a lady of birth and breeding. I asked and she accepted.”

“It all happened very quickly,” her father said. “Did she tell you anything of her . . . past?”

Ralph leaned forward slightly over his desk. “All but the name of the bounder who jilted her so cruelly after your younger daughter eloped with Nelson,” he said, “and who told her she could easily pass for a courtesan. Who was he, sir? Who
is
he?”

“Lord Cornell?” Sir Kevin raised his eyebrows. “I would have refused my permission anyway if he had asked to marry Chloe. I had already suggested to my
wife that she discourage the connection. He was a notorious womanizer. I doubt he would have asked, however. Marriage is too burdensome a leg shackle for gentlemen such as he.”

Ralph had a slight acquaintance with Baron Cornell. A fine physical specimen of manhood, he was said to delight in breaking female hearts and then boasting of his conquests. Poor innocent twenty-one-year-old Chloe had believed him to be a serious suitor for her hand.

“And she told me what happened last year.” Ralph watched the older man closely.

“Ah. That was all most unfortunate,” Sir Kevin said with affected unconcern. “She bore a certain resemblance to a nobly born young lady, I understand, and tongues wagged as tongues will. It is a pity Chloe took fright and ran home, though. Her actions merely fanned the flames of baseless gossip. But she has always been oversensitive to the opinions of others.”

“Sir.” Ralph fingered the edges of the desk blotter. “I wish you will tell me whether there is any truth in those rumors. Is there any possibility, or even a certainty, that Chloe is the natural daughter of the Marquess of Hitching? I assure you your answer will go no farther than this room unless you yourself choose to repeat it. I would appreciate knowing the truth. It will make no difference to my relationship with the duchess, but I would know my heirs’ forebears.”

“Of course there is no truth in them.” His father-in-law sat abruptly back in his chair on the other side of the desk and glared at Ralph for a long moment before his shoulders slumped and he looked downward. There was a rather lengthy silence. “I loved her mother from the
moment I first set eyes upon her, and she had a regard for me. But she was dazzled . . . Well, what young lady would not have had her head turned by the determined attentions of a nobleman who was young and well favored? It was all over very soon. She loved me for the rest of her life. Anyone would tell you the truth of that. But she was honest with me when she came to sit beside me at a concert one evening after avoiding me for a few weeks. She feared she might be with child, she told me. We married a few days later by special license, and Chloe was born a little over seven months after that. She was a small baby. Her birth was premature—or so everyone was happy to believe, myself included, for my wife had not been
sure
. I loved that child when she was in the womb and after she was born. I have always loved her, just as I love Lucy and Graham. It makes no difference to me who provided the seed.”

“Thank you.” Ralph too leaned back in his chair. “You have not told the story quite this way to Chloe?”

“No!” Muirhead spoke quite emphatically. “She must not know that there is any doubt.
She is my daughter
. I do not love her any the less . . .”

“But she knows there is a doubt,” Ralph said. “She has known it since last year. She believes your denials and protestations because she wants to believe them. And yet part of her does not. And she is tortured by the necessity of believing what at heart she fears and suspects is not the truth.”

“She has
told
you this?”

“No,” Ralph said. He did not add more. He did not need to. Muirhead would have to be a fool not to know it himself.

Sir Kevin tipped back his head and covered his eyes with the heels of his hands. He exhaled audibly.

“I cannot tell her, Worthingham,” he said. “It would destroy her.”

“The not knowing is coming near to destroying her anyway,” Ralph told him. “Are you afraid of losing her?”

“No.” Sir Kevin’s hands came down from his face and he looked wearily at Ralph. “
Yes
, of course I am afraid. Can you not see how unfair all of this is? I have been her father all her life and even before she was born. I have provided for her and loved her. I would die for her—for any of my children.”

“Will you not trust her to understand that?” Ralph asked.

“It is better that she does not know,” his father-in-law insisted. “And it is not certain, anyway. Perhaps I
am
her father. Perhaps she
was
prematurely born. Perhaps there
is
a red-haired ancestor in my past.”

There was nothing more to say. But could the man not see that he was losing Chloe anyway? Why did he think she had left home to come and live here indefinitely with her mother’s godmother?

Sir Kevin got to his feet. “You have given me your word, Worthingham . . .”

“I have, sir,” Ralph told him. “And I will keep it.”

“Thank you.” The older man hesitated for a moment and then turned and left the room, closing the door quietly behind him.

*   *   *

Her father was the first person they ran into—almost literally. He was hurrying up the stairs as they were making their way down.

“Pardon me,” he said, glancing up. Chloe stopped at the suddenly arrested look on his face. “Oh, your poor hair, Chloe. It looks very pretty, though, I must say. Very pretty indeed, in fact.”

“You should have seen it an hour ago,” Sarah said, and laughed gleefully.

“Papa.” Chloe set both hands on his shoulders—he was standing two stairs below her—and kissed him on the cheek. He was looking strained, she thought. “You are leaving tomorrow? We must find time to spend together today.”

“Yes, indeed,” he said, “though I expect your new duties as duchess and hostess of a number of guests will keep you busy.”

And he patted one of her hands on his shoulder, nodded to the other ladies, and continued on his way upstairs. Chloe gazed after him for a few moments before resuming her descent with the others. It had seemed almost as if he did not
want
to spend time with her after coming all this way because of her.

Viscount Ponsonby was standing down in the hall with Lord Trentham and Viscount Darleigh. Lord Darleigh’s dog was seated alertly beside him.

“Gentlemen,” Gwen said, laughter in her voice as she made a sweeping gesture with both hands, “allow me to present the new Duchess of Worthingham.”

Chloe felt horribly self-conscious. She felt half naked without the weight of her hair.

“You look very dashing, Duchess, I must say,” Viscount Ponsonby said, extending one hand and then carrying hers to his lips.

“Short hair suits you, lass,” Lord Trentham said, “just
as it does Gwendoline.” He beamed at his wife, lifted one arm as though to set it about her shoulders, looked suddenly sheepish, and patted her awkwardly on one shoulder instead before lowering his arm to his side.

“You look beautiful, ma’am,” Lord Darleigh said, smiling sweetly and gazing almost directly into Chloe’s eyes.

“And how would you know that, sir?” she asked him.

“I chose the wrong verb,” he said. “You
are
beautiful, ma’am. I can tell by your voice. And I am glad. Ralph needs the very best. He has been unhappy.”

Chloe gazed at him in some astonishment. Viscount Ponsonby clapped him on the shoulder.

“We are g-going out, the three of us,” he said, “to find the waterfall. Vince could hear it yesterday from the graveyard. I cannot say I noticed it myself, but then I am handicapped. I do most of my noticing with my eyes. Vince will use his ears to find the f-falls, and Hugo and I will use our eyes to stop him from falling over them and getting wet. Together we make a perfect team.”

“I do not need your protection, Flave,” Lord Darleigh protested, “only your company. I have Shep to keep me safe. He has never let me down yet, have you, boy?”

The dog panted alertly up at him.

“You do not mind our going, Agnes?” Viscount Ponsonby asked his wife.

Chloe could feel any vestige of resentment melt away. She liked these men, her husband’s dearest friends, along with the Duke of Stanbrook and the other two who were not here.

“Even so, Vince,” Ralph said as he came out from the study, “let Hugo and Flave keep an eye on you, will you?
For my sake? The path beside the rapids and the falls is a rough one.”

“What do you think, Ralph?” his sister asked, making the same flourishing gesture toward Chloe that Gwen had made a few moments before.

He stopped in his tracks and took his time about answering.

“It was an inspired decision of yours to cut it off, Chloe,” he said at last. “It is perfect, and you look perfectly beautiful.”

He had an audience, of course. He could hardly say she would have been better advised to cut her head off as well as her hair. But Chloe bit her lower lip and felt warmed through to the very heart. She blinked back tears.

How very idiotic of her!

. . . you look perfectly beautiful.

And then her heart—the very one that had just been warmed by his compliment—turned a complete somersault in her bosom, even if only figuratively.

For he smiled.

Right into her eyes.

L
ater in the afternoon Chloe found her brother out on the terrace with Mr. Nelson and her brothers-in-law, Sir Wendell Harrison and Viscount Keilly. She slid her hand through his arm and listened to the conversation for a while.

“Shall we stroll down to the river?” she suggested for his ears only after a few minutes. She did not want them all to come. She wanted him to herself for an hour or so.

She was dearly fond of Graham. He was a man of principle and integrity, both rare qualities among the gentlemen she knew. There were those who despised his lack of ambition or merely dismissed him as a failure and surely a disappointment to his family. There were those who accused him of being less than manly. He was never swayed by what others said of him. He would not allow hurt feelings to influence his actions, though he certainly did have feelings and could suffer hurt.

“Will you be happy, Chloe?” he asked her when they had walked beyond earshot of the other men. “As a duchess? With this grand place as your home? With Stockwood as your husband—Worthingham, that is? I
really am happy that you are married at last, of course. I know you have longed for marriage and motherhood. I always thought, though, that you would thrive upon quiet domesticity with a husband of modest fortune with whom you enjoyed a mutual affection. I felt your pain when Lucy ruined the Season for which you had waited with such patience and your chance to find both love and an eligible mate. Last year I was hopeful that you might be given another chance. You were still young and still beautiful and you had Aunt Julia’s influence behind you. That was most unfortunate. But there is no point in going back over that.
Will
you be happy?
Can
you be?”

“No one held a shotgun to my head,” she told him. “Or to Ralph’s. We married because we wanted to do so. We did not expect our lives to be turned so topsy-turvy within twenty-four hours of the wedding, it is true. But Ralph’s grandfather was elderly and not in the best of health, and it was to be expected that sooner or later we would be facing all this. I do not regret our impulsiveness, though. I have passed the age of expecting that love and romance, marriage and happily-ever-after are all synonymous terms. I have marriage and I hope I will have motherhood. I expect a life of more or less quiet domesticity in the country. It is what Ralph has promised me.”

Graham was frowning.

“But a spell in London will come first, surely,” he said. “Everyone was agreed at luncheon that you must make an appearance there despite the fact that the old duke died so recently. Noble families, like royal families, are not allowed much time to be alone with their grief. How do you feel about going back to town, Chloe? I know
you found all that foolish gossip rather distressing last year. And there were the events of six years ago.”

The dowager countess, Ralph’s mother, had brought up the subject at luncheon. It was Ralph’s duty, now that the funeral was over, she had said, to present himself in London without delay, to make his bow at court and take his seat in the House of Lords as soon as he received his writ of summons. And it was no less his duty, having married hastily just before his grandfather’s passing, to present his duchess to the
ton
at all the best social entertainments of the Season. She would help Chloe clothe herself suitably—not in mourning, but not in bright, flamboyant colors either. Her eyes had touched upon Chloe’s hair, and she had looked slightly pained.

“Green,” Great-Aunt Mary had said. “She should wear green. I never could wear it myself. It always made me look bilious. I always envied girls who could carry it off.”

“There must be a grand reception at Stockwood House,” the dowager duchess had added. “Perhaps even a ball, Chloe. I do not believe it would be considered disrespectful to my dear Worthingham’s memory. Life must go on.”

“Oh, will Freddie and I be invited?” Lucy had asked, looking wistful.

Ralph had let them all talk without responding, and Chloe had followed his lead. They would not go, of course. He had promised her. It must happen at some time in the future, she supposed. Next year, perhaps, or the year after.

“We will be staying here,” she told Graham now as they came to the river and stepped onto the stone bridge.
“Ralph has said so. He does not allow himself to be ruled by his mother and sisters, and he is tired of London.”

She stopped halfway across the bridge in order to gaze off into the shade of the trees, where she had walked with Ralph just a little over a week ago. It seemed far longer ago than that. What had impelled him to risk a dunking or worse by wading across the rapids to find her a perfect stone? And she would swear he had enjoyed those moments of boyish impulse. The stone was in the top left-hand drawer of her dressing table, on top of her handkerchiefs.

“Graham,” she asked “how has he changed? How is he different from the way he was at school? What was he like there?”

She had heard stories about him at the time, of course, so many, in fact, that she had formed a decided and strongly negative opinion of Ralph Stockwood without ever having met him. But she had not known then that one day he would be her husband. She might have listened more attentively and questioned her brother more closely if she had known.

He rested his elbows on the parapet of the bridge as he squinted ahead.

“They are not easy questions to answer,” he said. “Eight years have passed since we left school. It seems a lifetime. We were boys then and are men now. There are bound to be some pretty significant changes—in both of us. But really fundamental ones? I am not so sure there are any. He was . . . charismatic, Chloe. Quite remarkably so. He was good looking, an early developer physically. He was athletic, intelligent, good in most academic subjects, a reader and a thinker, a natural leader with strong
convictions. But many of the same things could be said of other boys, including his three closest friends. One might have expected with those four that there would have been no real leader, that they would have been equal in stature and influence. But it was not so. The other three admired and deferred to him just as much as everyone else did. I would say they were dominated by him except that the word would not be quite accurate. He did not
dominate
anyone. He was never either a tyrant or a bully. He just . . . He had an energy, an
enthusiasm
that was infectious and quite irresistible to most people. He . . . sparkled. Ah, the English language is a woefully imperfect instrument for the expression of some ideas. Suffice it to say that I have never encountered anyone quite like Ralph Stockwood as he was at school.”

“He
has
changed, then.” Chloe turned away from the water and continued on her way over the bridge, and Graham followed and caught up with her. They walked into the longish grass of the meadow and were soon surrounded by clover and buttercups and daisies. It was sad to think that once her husband had sparkled with an enthusiasm and a fervor for life. She wished she had known the boy he had been.

“I am not sure he has changed all that much,” Graham said. “I still sense a sort of leashed energy in him, though he is admittedly more subdued than he was. Perhaps a natural maturity will do that to any man, though. Perhaps grief is a part of it too. He was very close to his grandfather, was he?”

“Yes,” she said. “I think more than he was to his father. And Graham, he blames himself for the deaths of those three friends of his.”

“Does he?” He was silent for a few moments while Chloe bent to pick some daisies and weave them into the beginnings of a chain. “His passions swept all before him when he felt strongly about something. During our last year at school he had a fascination with Napoleon Bonaparte. At first he admired the man enormously, but the more he learned about him, the more he changed his mind, until he was obsessed by the idea that the man must be stopped if the world was to be saved from tyranny. He could never be content with passionate
ideas,
though. If Bonaparte must be stopped, then it was not enough to expect others to do the stopping. One must be prepared to do it oneself, or at least to do one’s part. He could talk of nothing else for weeks on end. It was his duty to take up arms and an officer’s commission as soon as school ended and to go off to fight in the wars. It was
everyone’s
duty, even men, like himself, who had more reason to stay at home than to face the dangers of war. And if one’s family was opposed to the idea, for whatever reason, then its members must be convinced of one’s greater duty to save the world for freedom. Any reluctance those three might have felt at the start was quickly swept aside and they became as passionately eager as he was to ride into the glory of battle in a righteous cause.”

“And you were accused of cowardice because you would not go too?” she asked him.

He turned his head to smile at her.

“I am not sure he ever pointed a finger directly at me and singled me out for the comment,” he said. “But when I voiced opposing arguments, and eventually I seemed to be the only one who
did,
then he remarked that anyone
who was unwilling to fight for the freedom of his own family and countrymen against a ruthless dictator like Bonaparte was a sniveling, lily-livered coward—or words to that effect. And maybe he was right. If Bonaparte had succeeded in conquering the whole of Europe, as he came perilously close to doing, then he would without a doubt have turned his attention to the invasion of Britain. Would I have held to my pacifist ideals if I had actually witnessed foreign soldiers committing atrocities against women and children, perhaps people I knew personally? It was all very well to hold those beliefs when the English Channel stood safely between me and the reality of ruthless aggression. But if the Channel had been breached? I am not sure, Chloe. I am still a pacifist by principle, but my convictions have never been put to the test. At least Stockwood put
his
to the test.”

She gathered a few more daisies for her chain.

“Life seems so simple when one is very young, does it not?” she said. “Good and evil, black and white—they seem to be polar opposites with no shady areas between. But as one grows older, everything seems to be variously shaded. How can we know what is good and what is evil, Graham, and what is right and what is wrong? Your job must be very difficult. How do you do it?”

“I try not to make judgments,” he said. “What is your good may be my evil. I try just to love—a simple enough concept, though even loving is not simple. Perhaps it merely means accepting people for who they are and respecting their choices and sympathizing with their pain.”

“He
is
in pain, Graham,” she said. And she knew it was true. He was not empty of emotion as she had
thought at first. The emptiness sat upon a seething well of suffering and pain, mainly the agony of guilt.

“I know.” He stopped walking and turned to gaze back toward the house. He spoke softly without looking at her. “So are you, Chloe.”

Her mind denied it. She had been lonely and unhappy and insecure, that was all. Now she was married and she was happy. Well,
contented,
anyway.

“And you?” she asked.

“It is the human condition,” he said. “No one who lives into adulthood can escape it. Even children cannot. It is what we do with the pain, though, how we allow it to shape our character and actions and relationships that matters. But life is not unalloyed gloom. One must absolutely not allow pessimism or cynicism to send one into a deep depression. There is much joy too.
Much
joy.
Can
you be happy with him, Chloe?
Will
you be?”

“We have come full circle.” She laughed and completed her daisy chain before throwing it over his head—it was just long enough to clear the brim of his hat. “
Can
I be happy? Yes, of course.
Will
I be? Who knows? But if I am not, it will not be for lack of opportunity, or for lack of trying.”

He held out one hand, and after looking at it for a moment, she set her own in it and they began the walk back to the house.

“Have you confronted Papa?” he asked her.

“Yes. At Christmas. Before I left home.” She drew a slow breath.

“And?”

“He swore there was no truth in the rumors,” she said.

“You believed him?”

They had crossed the bridge again before she answered.

“Maybe it does not matter what I believe,” she said. “The past cannot be changed, whatever it was. He has always been Papa. If I had not gone to London last year, I would probably never have been given reason to suspect that perhaps he is not also my father. Perhaps the knowing or not knowing is of no importance whatsoever.”

“Perhaps,” he agreed. “Papa
has
always loved you, you know, Chloe, every bit as much as he has loved Lucy and me. And I have always loved you as dearly as I love Lucy.”

“I know.” She squeezed his hand.

Several people were gathered on the eastern terrace, Chloe could see, it being a pleasantly warm afternoon. It looked as if tea was being carried out. She had stolen enough time to be alone with her brother. It was time to take up her duties as hostess again.

Ralph was watching her approach, and unconsciously her footsteps quickened. Was it unnatural and a bit unkind of her to be looking forward to everyone’s departure tomorrow so that they could be alone together at last? So that they could settle into the marriage they had agreed upon? Even his grandmother was leaving. She was going to London for an indefinite stay with Great-Aunt Mary.

*   *   *

It seemed unnaturally quiet in the drawing room on the evening of the following day despite the crackling of the fire. There were just the two of them, Chloe on one side of the hearth, seated in the chair that had always been
Ralph’s grandmother’s, he on the other side, seated in his grandfather’s chair. It all felt . . . uncomfortable.

Her head was bent over a small embroidery frame. She looked elegant in her black dress. Pretty. Her short wavy hair seemed to have stripped several years off her age. And, heaven help him, she was his wife. Until death did them part.