Only a Promise (25 page)

“How do you do, ma’am,” Chloe said. “I do assure you that I intend you no harm or embarrassment. Quite the contrary, in fact. I have a family of whose members I am dearly fond and have no intention of making any claim on another. My only wish is that we can all agree to meet in public without stirring the gossip mill again. It is what we must
all
wish.”

Ralph did not release her elbow. They were not offered seats, for which fact he was relieved.

“I will
never
be able to meet this woman in public, Mama,” Lady Angela said, not taking her eyes off Chloe.
“How could she dare set foot in this house? Why would any servant admit her? And how could Papa bring her up here?”

Lady Hitching ignored her daughter.

“How do you do, Duchess, Duke?” she said with awful civility. “I am quite sure I will always treat any member of polite society I may meet outside my own home with the good manners expected of a well-bred lady. And within my own home too when such persons are presented to me by my husband. I have raised my daughter to do likewise. You will forgive her, I trust, for the uncharacteristic outburst occasioned by your unexpected appearance in such a private apartment of our home. As for my sons, the younger two as well as Gilly have been raised by their father to behave as gentlemen under all circumstances.”

She was, Ralph thought with not a little admiration, a formidable lady. This must be a dreadful moment for her, but she had somehow taken command of it with a great deal of dignity.

Viscount Gilly, with little choice but to live up to her description, inclined his head stiffly and let his glass fall on its ribbon.

“Perhaps, my dear,” the marquess suggested to his wife, “you would ring for a tea tray? Perhaps our guests—”

“Oh. No. Thank you,” Chloe said hastily.

“We will bid you a good morning, then,” the marchioness said. “Duke? Duchess?”

The marquess led the way back downstairs. He nodded to the footman who had admitted them earlier, and the man opened the front doors. The marquess
accompanied them down the steps to their waiting carriage and touched Chloe for the first time. He took her right hand in his and raised it to his lips.

“He has been good to you?” he asked her. “Muirhead? Your papa?”

She stared at him until he released her hand and smiled ruefully.

“But of course he has,” he said. “I remember him from all those years ago as a decent sort. I am sorry you inherited my coloring, Chloe. It would have been better for you if you had never known the truth. Better for me too, perhaps. Now that I have met you, I wish I might know you better. But it will not happen, will it? I wish you well. I will
always
wish you well.”

She nodded briefly and turned toward Ralph. He handed her into the carriage, turned impulsively to shake Hitching by the hand, and followed her up the steps. He took her hand in his as the coachman shut the door and climbed back to his box.

“I hoped that I would dislike him quite intensely,” she said as the carriage moved forward—she did not look toward the window, though Hitching raised a hand in farewell.

“But you did not?” he asked her.

She shook her head. “Perhaps I ought to be glad,” she said. “I was not, I think, the result of a . . . sordid encounter.”

“No,” he agreed.

She did not say any more, for which fact he was glad. He kept hold of her hand, but he moved a little away from her and settled his shoulders across the corner of the seat. She had been incredibly courageous and
dignified. Going upstairs to meet a family that surely hated and despised her must have been particularly difficult, but she had acquitted herself admirably. And she had made it possible for them all to meet socially without unpleasantness or undue embarrassment.

Part of him wanted to gather her into his arms. Another part of him wished there were not this carriage ride to be made together before they were home and he could be alone. She had stirred him to the very root of his being. He had not wanted to be stirred. He still did not. He wanted his life to be as it had been for the past seven years.

Safe.

Almost
safe.

Unstirred.

He wanted desperately to be alone.

She had spoken words to him last night that he could not shift from his mind today.
But
you
will not do it. You will not go to call upon Viscount and Lady Harding.
And when he had protested that that situation was entirely different from hers, she had said,
Is it? How?

The difference was that she had not done anything to shatter Hitching’s life. The difference was that she was not responsible for the death of any of his children, let alone his only child. The difference was that she was not so loaded down with guilt that sometimes even the mythical Atlas was enviable because he had had only the earthly globe to support on his shoulders. The difference was . . .

The difference was that she had the courage to do what she found almost impossible to do, and to do it all alone. Although he had come with her for moral support
and support of a more physical sort too if she had needed it, she had
not
needed him for either. How she had done it, he did not know.

She put him to shame. And he almost disliked her for it. Certainly he resented her. For there
was
a difference. And if there was not, what business was it of hers?

You are content, then, to live out the rest of your life in hell?

She had said that to him too. What did it matter to her how he chose to live? Heaven was out of his reach anyway.

And such a wave of longing washed over him that involuntarily his hand closed more tightly about hers and he set his head back against the cushions and closed his eyes.

“Ralph,” she said, “thank you for coming with me. I could not have done it without you—or without your encouraging me to do it. But it
was
the right thing, was it not? I am glad I have met him, and I think he was glad to have met me. His family did not like my going there, and I cannot blame them, but I still think it was necessary and that they will think so too once they have recovered from the shock of seeing me. Thank you.”

He opened his eyes. Her face was turned his way and she was looking directly at him with a glow of happiness. Or perhaps it was only relief. But—could this possibly be the same woman he had dismissed just a few weeks ago as a sort of nondescript unpaid servant of his grandmother’s? She was incredibly, vividly beautiful.

“You belittle yourself,” he said. “You did it all alone without any help from me.”

“But you were there with me,” she said, “and I kept remembering what you said last night.”

He looked blankly at her.

“My arms are here for you,”
she reminded him.

He had spouted more such nonsense too, he remembered. He wished he had not.

“Did you mean it?” she asked him.

“Of course,” he said. “I am your husband.”

Her eyes searched his before she turned her head away and her face was hidden behind the brim of her bonnet. He stared at it in silence until they arrived home.

He would go to White’s for luncheon. He could hardly wait to get away.

T
he following couple of weeks were in many ways happy ones for Chloe. They were certainly busy ones. Scarcely an evening passed when she and Ralph did not attend some evening function—a concert or dinner or soiree or the theater or opera. They avoided balls as perhaps a little too frivolous so soon after the death of Ralph’s grandfather, though they would host their own soon enough at Stockwood House.

No one gave Chloe the cut direct. Of course no one did—she was the Duchess of Worthingham. It was a great relief, though, to find that she was not being shunned in company or excluded from any of the more glittering events of the Season. Indeed, she and Ralph had to decline far more invitations than they could possibly accept.

They saw the Marquess of Hitching’s family for the first time at Mrs. Chandler’s crowded soiree. Guests filled the drawing room and the music room beside it and the salon beyond that where refreshments had been laid out. The marchioness was entering the music room from the drawing room at the same moment as Chloe
was coming into it from the salon with Gwen and the Countess of Kilbourne. It was the marchioness who chose to approach Chloe, while the general volume of conversation decreased quite noticeably.

“Ah, Lady Kilbourne, Lady Trentham, Duchess,” she said, deliberately not lowering her voice—or so it seemed to Chloe. “Good to see you. A pleasant entertainment, is it not? Elsie Chandler can always be depended upon to attract the very best company to her soirees.”

“Lady Hitching,” the countess said while Gwen smiled. “How do you do? Yes indeed, and we look forward to the pianoforte recital later.”

“Good evening, ma’am,” Chloe said. “How delightful. I hoped when we met a few days ago that I would see you again soon.”

“Ah, Duchess.” The voice came from beyond the marchioness. The marquess had followed her into the room. He came closer, took Chloe’s hand in his, and raised it to his lips. “You look quite charming in blue. Ladies?” He bowed to the other two as he released Chloe’s hand and then offered his arm to his wife. “Shall we find you that lemonade, my dear?”

And that was all, apart from a distant bow from Viscount Gilly and a frosty stare and a slight inclination of the head from Lady Angela Allandale across the room during the music recital later.

It was all, but Chloe was more grateful to the Marchioness of Hitching than she could say. She was in no doubt that the woman detested her, but she had obviously made the decision to squash gossip by observing the strictest of civilities toward the daughter her husband
had fathered only a very short while before he married her. And she had clearly imposed her will upon her eldest son and her daughter, who, if they could not be quite polite, were at least civil.

The onlookers had no doubt been fascinated by the exchange yet were probably frustrated by it too. Had it or had it not settled the burning question of whether the new Duchess of Worthingham was or was not the natural daughter of the Marquess of Hitching?

Even at those evening entertainments, Chloe did not spend much time with Ralph. It was not good etiquette, of course, for husbands and wives to cling to each other’s company when there were so many other people with whom to mingle, but Chloe sometimes found his almost constant absence from her side a little depressing. She tried not to do so. Theirs was not a marriage that had promised any closeness, after all. Perhaps it would have been better, though, if there had never been any at all. But there had been some—or so it had seemed at the time. Perhaps she had just misunderstood. Even those most cherished words of his were capable of a different interpretation from the one she had given them at the time.

I am your husband. When you feel lonely or afraid or unhappy, it is to me you must come, Chloe. My arms are here for you, and my strength too for whatever it is worth. You will never be a burden to me.

She could still feel what seemed like a lump in her throat when she remembered those words. They had sounded so very tender. They had seemed almost like a declaration of love or at least of deep caring. But perhaps all they had expressed was duty. He was her
husband. He would care for her needs as any husband ought. He would not consider her a burden because he had made vows to her.

She must not care that he did
not
care. He
did
support her emotionally as well as materially. He had accompanied her to the Marquess of Hitching’s house and had seemed like a rock of dependability. But in the carriage on the way home, when there was no more need to bolster her confidence, he had withdrawn. She had felt it. It had been more than just the fact that he had moved his position, sitting across the corner of the carriage seat, as far from her as he could get.

She must not feel depressed.

Their days were spent almost totally apart except for the time they spent in the study together with Mr. Lloyd, going through the pile of invitations each morning’s post brought and working on the plans for their own ball. They stayed home one morning writing invitations. And they did go together one afternoon to call upon his grandmother and Great-Aunt Mary and stayed all of two hours. But those instances were the exception to the general rule.

Chloe was not idle—or alone. She went shopping with Sarah and to a garden party in Richmond with Nora and her mother-in-law. She went with her father to the library and to a church bazaar in which Graham was involved. She went driving in Hyde Park with the Duke of Stanbrook and walking there with Gwen and her young sister-in-law. She went to Gunter’s for ices with Lucy and the children one afternoon. She went walking with them in the park too.

In fact, that was just what she was doing on one
particularly bright morning when the sunshine seemed to have brought out half the fashionable world to stroll or ride close to the Serpentine. Several children played beside the water, including Lucy’s two. Jasper Nelson was sailing the wooden boat his father had made for him, pulling it along parallel to the bank by the attached string. He was pretending to be Lord Nelson and was fiercely resisting his sister Sukie’s attempt to seat her doll in the vessel. There were no females on the
Victory,
he told her crossly. Did she not know
anything
? And no, not even Mrs. Lord Nelson.

“
Lady
Nelson,” Sukie cried scornfully. “There is no such thing as a
Mrs.
Lord So-and-So. Is there, Mama?”

Thus appealed to, Lucy stepped forward to settle the dispute and stop Sukie from capsizing the boat and Jasper from drowning the doll. Chloe stayed back on the footpath, a smile on her face. Sometimes there were definite advantages to not being a parent, especially when the children’s nurse had a cold and had been persuaded to remain at home in bed. She rested the handle of her parasol against one shoulder and twirled it above her head.

She would not be a parent herself just yet. Not within the next nine months, anyway. The discovery had been a terrible disappointment, but . . . Well, perhaps next month . . .

“Ah.” The clopping of horses’ hooves close behind her stopped. The voice was male and sounded bored. “The delectable duchess. And the scandalous sister.”

“Never tell me, Corny,” another voice said as Chloe spun about, wide-eyed. “It is there in the old memory box somewhere. Eton. English class. Boredom supreme.
Alliteration.
Yes, that’s it. Alliteration. Hadn’t thought of
the word in years. Well done, old chap. Aspiring to be a poet, are you?”

Lord Cornell, handsome and elegantly dressed for riding, looked down upon Chloe from horseback. A second gentleman, who bore a distinct resemblance to his horse, rode beside him.

“You may observe, Cedric,” Lord Cornell said, “that when two ladies are sufficiently lovely and sufficiently determined, they may steal husbands and flout scandal and even decency to win their way to the very top. Though a prince would have been a more brilliant catch than a duke, I daresay.
Close
to the very top, then. But what can one expect when one considers the mother? And one wonders if the delectable duchess won her duke in the same way as the mother tried to win a marquess and the scandalous sister won her—ah, playwright.”

Chloe stared up at him in disbelief. She had not realized that Lucy had turned away from the water and her children until she spoke.

“
One
of them,” Lucy said, “was fortunate enough to escape the clutches of a cad and a villain. But what can one expect when one considers that the man is not a gentleman?”

The horsy gentleman guffawed.

“Hoisted with your own petard, Corny,” he said. “I remember that from English class too. The Bard himself, if I am not mistaken. I had no idea I had paid that much attention.”

Lord Cornell grinned appreciatively at Lucy, touched the brim of his hat with his whip, and looked Chloe over from head to toe before riding onward along the path.

“You were quite right, Lucy,” Chloe said. Her voice
was shaking, she could hear. And her knees felt decidedly unsteady. “He
is
a cad and a villain. And no gentleman.”

“Freddie said so even before I ran off with him,” Lucy told her. “But I could not tell you at the time, Chlow. You would have wanted to know who had told
me
. Besides, you would not have believed me. You were terribly enamored of him.”

She turned back toward the lake to keep an eye on the children.

“Chlow,” she said after a few moments, “what did he mean about Mama? Do some people still believe those rumors?”

Chloe closed her eyes briefly and gathered together her scattered thoughts. It was all very well to know with her rational mind that the purely uncalled-for spite of her former beau was not worth getting upset over. It was another thing to convince her emotions. And now here came another crisis. She had hoped Lucy might never have to know the truth. Presumably, so did Papa and Graham. But Lucy had a right to know.

“They are true, Luce,” she said. And she told her sister about their father’s confession and about her visit to the Marquess of Hitching’s home.

Lucy was openmouthed and wide-eyed by the time she had finished.

“You are my
half
sister, Lucy,” Chloe said, “just as Lady Angela Allandale is. Graham is my half brother, just as Viscount Gilly and his two brothers are. I have not met those two. I do not believe they are in London.”

Lucy flung herself into Chloe’s arms, drawing a few curious glances from the people around them.

“Oh, no,” she cried. “There is all the difference in the
world, Chlow. He may be your father, and his children may be your half sister and half brothers, but Papa is your
papa,
and Gray and I are your
brother
and your
sister
. And do not ask me to hate Mama, Chlow. It cannot be done. I did exactly what she did but even worse, for Freddie was still married at the time, and Jasper would have been a ba— He would not have had a proper father if Freddie’s wife had not been obliging enough to die. Though that sounds callous, does it not? I am sorry, but I cannot feel really sorry for her. She
despised
him, you know. She did not understand him at all or appreciate his great talent. And she did not love him.”

The children were squabbling again. The doll lay forgotten on the grass while Sukie tried to wrest the string of the boat from her brother’s grasp, loudly admonishing him for refusing to
share
. Lucy hurried off to adjudicate.

It was only later, as they were walking home, the children ahead of them, that Lucy referred again to the incident on the path.

“That
man,
” she said, “ought not to be allowed to get away with insulting you so, Chlow. Will you tell His Grace?”

“Oh,” Chloe said. “No, such silliness is best forgotten, Lucy. No, I will not say anything.”

She and Ralph did not say a great deal to each other. Oh, no, that was not quite correct. They conversed at the dinner table each evening and at the breakfast table when they took the meal together. They spoke to each other on the way to and from the various evening functions they attended. There was rarely silence between them.

But they rarely if ever
talked
. Not since her visit to the
Marquess of Hitching, anyway. And his eyes, if not quite empty again, had become inscrutable. Chloe remembered her first impression of him as a man who was unknown and unknowable. He had become that man again. But she could not complain. It was that man she had married, after all, quite deliberately.

And he was never cold with her or unkind or neglectful.

She tried to be happy with what she had. It was not
his
fault that she loved him.

*   *   *

Ralph could not seem to move ten yards from his own front door without feeling the compulsion to look over his shoulder. But any hope he had entertained after that evening at the theater that Viscount Harding and his wife had been making a brief stay in town was soon dashed. He saw them from the carriage window on the afternoon he went with Chloe to visit his grandmother. They were walking arm in arm along Oxford Street. They did not see him.

He had liked them, just as he had liked Max’s parents and Rowland’s. But these two in particular, because they had liked him. Lady Harding had laughed at all his silly boy’s jokes as though they were really amusing and had commiserated with him whenever he complained about having three sisters to plague him but no brothers to offer companionship. Viscount Harding had listened patiently to all his impassioned ideas upon any and all topics that had captured his boy’s imagination and had told him that he would be a great leader one day. They had liked Max and Rowland too, of course. It was not that they had singled
him
out as their favorite. And Tom,
their own son, was obviously the apple of their eye, the light of their very existence.

Ralph said nothing to Chloe about having seen them.

He said nothing at all of any significance to Chloe, in fact, during the few weeks following their visit to Hitching. They conversed—there were never awkward or strained silences between them. But they talked to each other more like polite strangers than anything else.