Only a Promise (16 page)

For the first time it seemed fully, starkly real.

Ralph was tempted to get abruptly to his feet, hurry from the room and the house, saddle a horse, and gallop away into the night so that he could have himself to himself again. There was nothing to stop him from acting upon the impulse, of course, except that . . . Well, such a move would give merely the illusion of freedom, for he would have to come back.

He was the Duke of Worthingham—something he had hoped not to be for years and years yet. He had a wife, a duchess—something he would have liked to postpone for at least a decade.

Whoever had said that one was free to do what one wished with one’s life?
Had
anyone said it? Or had no one ever been that foolish? Or that untruthful? Or that self-deluded? Yet he had thought it true in those long-ago days of his boyhood when he knew nothing about anything but thought he knew everything about everything. He had thought he was free to pursue his dreams and his convictions. And he had thought himself invincible. Youth was a dangerous time of life.

He closed his book without marking the page—he had not been concentrating upon what he read anyway—and set it aside. He got to his feet and crossed before the fireplace before moving past Chloe’s chair to stand half
behind it. She raised her head and smiled briefly at him before returning her attention to her embroidery.

She was the very picture of placid domesticity. He felt a purely unreasoned impatience and resentment toward her. Was he going to be looking across his own hearth at
embroidery
for the rest of his life?

“You must have been sorry to have to say goodbye to your family and friends so soon,” she said.

“Yes,” he agreed. “And you had all too short a visit with your father and your brother and sister.”

Everyone had left this morning. Everyone except the two of them.

“Will your grandmother stay away, do you think?” she asked him.

“It is hard to say,” he said. “Great-Aunt Mary has always been exceedingly fond of her, and she has been lonely since my great-uncle died a few years ago. And Grandmama has always been inordinately fond of
her
. But who knows whether she will decide to remain away from here or decide to return after a while? This has been her home for a very long time. It embodies most of the memories of her marriage, and that was, I believe, a happy one. But the choice is hers. We both assured her that this will always be her home. Thank you for joining your voice to mine on that.”

Chloe had even shed tears over his grandmother this morning.

“But it
is
her home,” she protested. “I have been sitting here feeling like a usurper although I know I am not. I miss her already—and your grandpapa.”

“Your father is going to be staying in London too for a while,” he said. “Did he
say
anything before he left?”

Chloe and her father had strolled out to the old oak tree together while the carriage was being loaded with baggage and Freddie Nelson was delivering himself of a bombastic speech to Hugo on the topic of his newest unfinished play.

“Only that he hopes we will be happy,” she said.

Ah. He had not told her, then.

Ralph looked at the work she was doing. She was embroidering an exquisitely fancy
W
across one corner of a large handkerchief of fine linen. W for Worthingham?

“For me?” he asked her.

“Yes.”

He felt immediate shame for his irritation with her.

“Thank you,” he said, and briefly he squeezed her shoulder.

He wondered if he would ever feel perfectly at ease in her company—or she in his. Her hand, he noticed, was trembling ever so slightly as she tried to find the right place for her needle. He was making her self-conscious. He dropped his hand and made his way back to his chair. She had followed him with her eyes, he noticed after he sat down, her needle suspended above her work.

He sighed out loud.

“Tell me about you, Chloe,” he said. Though he did not know why he had asked. He did not want to know any more about her than she had told him two nights ago. He did not want a relationship. But now the question had been asked—in the vaguest of vague terms and not even phrased quite as a question. “Tell me about your childhood. About your mother.”

He both felt and heard her draw a slow breath. And he watched as she threaded her needle through the edge
of the handkerchief and set her work down on top of a pile of colored silks in her workbag.

“Papa always told me he loved me,” she said. “Always. And I never doubted him. He used to take me riding and fishing even when Graham and Lucy did not want to go. He taught me how to bounce stones across water—yes, with a special flick of the wrist. I used to think sometimes that I was his favorite, though it was a wicked thought because he loved us all equally.”

It was interesting that she had chosen to begin with her father.

“And your mother?”

“She loved us too.” Her eyes were directed downward to her fingers, which were pleating the fabric of her dress. “But I always worried—or
irritated
—her more than the other two did. Lucy was always perfect. I grew far too quickly and was thin and awkward among other things. I think Mama despaired of my ever looking even halfway pretty. I was not sunny-natured or sociable either and would always prefer to disappear into the barn to play with the baby animals when there
were
some or merely to read in the hayloft than to play with the neighborhood children who were sometimes brought to visit. When I
did
converse, I wanted to talk about fascinating things I had read in my books even though Mama kept drumming into my head that girls must never appear intelligent in company, especially male company. She was so beautiful herself, so vibrant, so sociable, so easy to love. I was a severe trial to her. She was, I know, afraid for my future. She so hoped to see me settled during that one Season I spent in London.
Half
a Season.”

Ralph had tipped back his head and stretched out his
legs to the fire. He gazed across at her through half-closed eyelids and imagined her as she must have been as a girl—gawky and awkward and showing little promise of the beauty to come, while her mother and sister were both exquisite dark beauties. And riding and fishing with her father rather than playing with other girls. Bouncing stones. A bit unhappy, aware that she was a disappointment to her mother, that she could not compete with her younger sister in looks or charm. Playing with the farm animals. Reading. Losing herself in her own imaginative world. Being called a carrot top and even a rabbit and carrot all in one by the neighborhood children who ought to have been her friends.

And all this he did not want to know.

He did not
need
to know. For in the knowing he felt a sadness for that lonely girl and for the man who gave her a father’s unconditional love despite the fact that she was not his own. And he felt a sharp anger against the dead woman who had not loved her firstborn as she ought, perhaps because that child reminded her of her own shame and embarrassment.

“Oh, she did love me,” Chloe was saying as though she could read his thoughts—or perhaps merely to reassure herself. “I hope I have not suggested that she did not. She took me to London for a come-out Season when really she ought to have remained at home. She had been very ill, and she was ill again after we returned. I daresay she forced herself out of sheer willpower to appear healthy when we were there. And then she died. She wanted to see me well settled first. Married. She wanted to see me happy. It is all Papa has ever wanted for me too—that I be happy.”

“What did you tell him earlier,” he asked, “when he said just that—that he hoped you would be happy?”

She sank her teeth into her bottom lip for a moment, and her cheeks colored.

“I told him he must not worry,” she said. “I told him I
was
happy.”

“And are you?” he asked. It was a very unfair question. It was, moreover, another question he did not want answered. But it was too late now to recall it.

She was smoothing out the creases she had just made in her skirt.

“Happiness is just a word,” she said. “It is like love in that way. There are many definitions, all of them accurate, but none of them all-encompassing. I am not sorry I married you.”

“And that,” he said, “is one definition of happiness, is it? That you are not sorry for something you have done?”

She raised her head and looked back at him—and laughed softly. It was a beguiling sight and sound.

“I am a married lady rather than a spinster,” she said. “My present and my future are respectable and secure. I have experienced the marriage bed. Perhaps soon, within the next few months, I will be with child. Perhaps there will be more children after the first. You promised that you would show me respect and courtesy, and you have kept the promise. You promised me a quiet home in the country, and you have given me just that, even though this is a far larger home than the one I expected. Why would I
not
be happy?”

He closed his eyes. Did she realize that she had not answered his question—
are you happy
? After listing a number of reasons why she should be happy, she had
summed up with a question of her own:
Why would I
not
be happy?

But she was right in saying there was no satisfactory definition of the word
happiness
. All definitions, or all attempts to give the word meaning, merely revolved endlessly about an empty center, a core of indefinable nothingness. As a boy he had known what happiness was without any need of words, and he had forged his way toward it with confident, unfaltering strides. Happiness in those days was doing what was right against all the odds and all the naysayers. It was accomplishing a noble goal through the efforts of his own body and mind and will so that he could see the world set to rights forever after. Happiness was about certainties.

Foolish, idealistic boy. He had accomplished the exact opposite of what he had intended, and he had destroyed life and happiness and certainty in the process. He had destroyed innocence.

The light from the fire, low in the hearth, was flickering off her face when he opened his eyes. She was looking steadily back at him.

“Have I said something wrong?” she asked him. “I do not expect you to give me happiness. It is something I will draw for myself out of the conditions of my life. Any happiness I achieve will be my own, with no obligation upon you to provide it or to pretend to share it. Is it not better that I be contented than that I be miserable? We did not promise each other misery.”

She made him sound like a coldhearted monster, though such was not her intent, he knew. She was not far wrong, though, was she? Could she possibly find any sort of happiness with him? And why could he not . . .

He got abruptly to his feet again. For a moment he stood gazing down into the dying fire, troubled by that familiar sense of yearning, the kind he could never explain to himself in words but only feel to the marrow of his bones.

She had risen too, he realized when he felt her hand light on his arm.

“I do not want to be miserable,” she said. “I do not want you to be miserable either. Surely we are allowed—”

His arm came about her waist and drew her to him, and his mouth descended upon hers all in one swift movement, cutting off the rest of what she was saying. The fingers of his free hand threaded through her short curls, holding her head still.

And he allowed himself the full luxury of desire. Except, he realized after a while, that it was more than just a physical thing he was allowing. His yearning for something unnamable had just been multiplied tenfold until he was afraid—yet again—that if he lifted his head away from hers he would be sobbing.

He gentled the kiss, explored her lips and the inside of her mouth more lazily with his tongue, wondered if he was offending her, guessed he was not. For her arms were about him too, and she was leaning into him, and her mouth was open to welcome the invasion of his tongue.

Perhaps . . .

He raised his head and gazed into her face. Her lips were moist and slightly swollen. Her cheeks looked flushed in the semidarkness. Her eyes were both bright and heavy lidded.

His insides lurched uncomfortably.

“Sex,” he said. “It is just sex, Chloe.”

“Just?” Her voice was a whisper of sound that he felt against his lips. “That word suggests that it is a slight thing. I think it must be more than that.”

He was amused despite himself. “It is,” he agreed, opening his eyes. “But it is still
just
sex. It is not love. Or happiness.”

“I understand that,” she said. “But it always feels good anyway. Is it not meant to?”

For a long time after his return from the Peninsula he had refused to allow himself to feel any pleasure at all, for there were men who were dead and would never feel anything ever again. There were families who would never quite recover from their grief. He had worked through that particular phase, which had included the compulsion to end his life, with the help of the physician at Penderris and with the sympathetic understanding of his fellow Survivors. There was nothing to be gained by punishing himself forever, he had come to understand and accept. It was a kind of selfishness. Those men were beyond pain. He lived on. Those families could not be comforted by his suffering. Perhaps there was a reason he had not been killed too. Who was he to deny the unexpected, unwanted gift of life and a future?

But he had never returned fully, or even
nearly
fully, to his old self. He had instinctively shied away from pleasure, laughter, anything bordering upon happiness, illogical as he knew it was.

He was not alone in this marriage, however—the very reason for his reluctance to marry. He
did
owe his wife something despite the chilling terms of their bargain, to
which she had agreed—which, in fact, she had suggested. She wanted happiness, though she would not demand that he provide it. She enjoyed sex, it seemed, as a momentary means to pleasure. Or perhaps it was just kisses she enjoyed. Perhaps she equated them with sex. Or perhaps it was the night and morning brief ritual of their joining.