by Mary Balogh
Now he had something else to think about other than their simple reaction to his betrothal. For his grandfather certainly looked unwell. There was a suggestion of grayness about his mouth and the creases on either side of his nose. And his grandmother was agitated and deeply concerned about him. For one moment Ralph had thought of answering her question a different way and putting off the announcement until later. But he had made the split-second decision to answer with the truth.
An immediate reaction proved impossible, for Bentley was hurrying back into the study, a glass of brandy in one hand, while Weller hovered just outside the door, his usual impassive demeanor replaced by very obvious anxiety.
Bentley tried to hold the glass to the duke’s lips, got bellowed and rumbled at for his pains, and relinquished it into the hands of his employer, who took two generous sips before lowering it.
“You will shut the door behind you on the way out, Bentley,” he said. “Your Friday face and Weller’s are enough to make me feel ill.”
The rest of them had been standing in a silent tableau and continued to do so until the door clicked shut.
The duchess was the first to speak.
“Chloe?” she said, sounding more puzzled than outraged. “You are going to marry Chloe, Ralph?”
Chloe. The funny thing was that it was the first time he remembered hearing her given name. She was still standing just inside the door, her hands clasped at her waist, looking like someone’s governess.
“I am,” he said. “My interest was aroused when I was here a few days ago. I returned today to make her an offer, having realized in the meanwhile that I had already met the lady I wished to marry and did not need or desire to look in the ballrooms of London.”
The duke had taken another sip of brandy and was already looking more himself.
“You are considering marriage, then, are you, Berwick?” he said. “At the age of what? Twenty-five?”
“Twenty-six,” Ralph said. “And yes, sir. With Father gone and no brothers, I have considered marrying the responsible thing to do.”
“Helped along by a little encouragement from your mother and your grandmother, no doubt,” the duke said. “I suppose that is why you came here a few days ago and stayed only long enough to blink. You were read a lecture on my extreme old age and sent on your way to do your duty, were you?”
“It so happens, sir,” Ralph said, “that my duty has also become my pleasure.”
His grandfather harrumphed.
“Chloe,” his grandmother said again, a note of wonder in her voice. “My dearest Clementine’s granddaughter and my grandson. Why on earth did I not think of it for myself? Oh that Clemmie had lived to see this day with me.”
Ralph raised his eyebrows. Miss Muirhead turned her head sharply in his grandmother’s direction.
“Chloe, my dear,” the duchess said, spreading her arms wide. “Come and give me a hug.”
“You are not . . . angry with me, Your Grace?” Miss Muirhead asked as she moved toward her.
“Oh, perhaps I ought to be,” the duchess said as she hugged the younger lady and then held her at arm’s length to look at her. “Certainly the countess, Ralph’s mother, will expect me to be furious, as will all the highest sticklers of the ton, stuffy lot as they all are. But why should I be swayed by vulgar gossip? Or by the naughtiness of your sister? You have the look of Clementine, your grandmother, you know, even though your coloring is quite different. She had hair of the darkest, most lustrous brown and blue eyes and a rose-petal complexion. She was the most dazzling beauty of our day and I would have hated her with a passion if I had not loved her so dearly. Does not Chloe look like Clemmie, Worthingham?”
“How would I know?” the duke asked with deliberate meekness as he prepared to drink the last drop of his brandy. “You forbade me to look at her ever again when you and she were both eighteen and I complimented her on the beauty patch she had placed so artfully next to her mouth. I never did look again after that.”
Her Grace clucked her tongue and tossed her glance at the ceiling.
“Now tell me, Chloe,” she said, “do you love this rogue of a grandson of mine? He claims that all his ability to love was left behind on the battlefield when he almost lost his life too, but I say that is so much nonsense and all he needed was to meet the right woman.”
“I am deeply honored by Lord Berwick’s offer, Your Grace,” Miss Muirhead said. “I shall do my very best to make him comfortable and . . . and h-happy.”
The duchess patted her hand, which she had taken in both her own.
“Of course you are honored,” she said. “What girl would not be when a future duchess’s title is dangled before her? I can remember how I felt. I would have had to be very averse to His Grace’s person to have found the courage to say no. Fortunately I was not averse at all. Quite the contrary. You are right, though, to avoid answering my question about loving Ralph. That is a private admission to be made when the two of you are alone together.”
The duke harrumphed again. “I think the occasion calls for champagne,” he said. “Have Weller send some up to the drawing room, Berwick. And have him send Bentley to help me up there. No, forget that. You can give me your arm since I daresay your betrothed can get herself up the stairs without needing to lean upon you. And tell Weller that if that quack should come within the hour, he can wait and kick his heels in the hall.”
“Yes, champagne in the drawing room,” the duchess agreed. “We have a betrothal to celebrate and a wedding to discuss. Give me your arm, Chloe, if you please. And Ralph, tell Weller that he is to come and inform me the very minute Dr. Gregg arrives.”
No, Ralph thought, he had not made a mistake. His announcement had distracted his grandmother in a positive way. And it had taken some of the focus of attention away from his grandfather, who had rallied, though he still looked far from well.
6
The first fence had been cleared without mishap. Ralph was less hopeful about the second. Weller had brought the champagne to the drawing room and poured them each a glass before withdrawing. Ralph broached the subject of the wedding before his grandfather could propose a toast.
“I think it best that we marry as soon as possible and with no fuss,” he said. “I have brought a special license with me.”
“A special license?” The duke was clearly outraged. His bushy white eyebrows met above the bridge of his nose. “You are suggesting a havey-cavey wedding for the Earl of Berwick, boy? It is out of the question. The eldest male of the line has always had the grandest of grand weddings in London at St. George’s, Hanover Square, with the whole of the ton in attendance. Even some of the royals usually put in an appearance.”
“And a grand wedding breakfast always follows at Stockwood House,” the duchess added. “It is what we had, and it is what your mother and father had, Ralph. However . . .”
Miss Muirhead’s pale complexion had turned paler, Ralph saw when he glanced at her. His grandmother’s eyes were resting upon His Grace, and she looked troubled again.
“It would take a month for the banns to be called,” she continued. “It would mean a move to London and endless visits to dressmakers and tailors. It would mean dinners and parties and the prewedding ball we had and your father had, Ralph. And Stockwood House would be turned topsy-turvy for the ball and then for the wedding breakfast. I am not sure I would be able to summon the energy to do it all.”
As though, Ralph thought, she would be the one called upon to do the planning and the hosting, not to mention the scrubbing and polishing and cooking. As though she and His Grace could not simply arrive in London the day before the wedding and leave again the day after. But he understood what she was up to and held his peace. Miss Muirhead was holding the sides of her dress. The folds of her skirt failed to disguise the fact that two fingers on each hand were crossed for luck.
“Eh?” his gra
ndfather said inelegantly. “A ball? And a wedding breakfast? Both at Stockwood House?”
“They always have been held there,” Her Grace said. “It would be expected of us. It would be considered not at all the thing if we broke with tradition.”
“Harrumph. I’ll not have you bothered with all that fuss and faradiddle,” His Grace said. “It is out of the question, Berwick. You will have to be married here.”
As though it were his own original idea.
“During the month of the banns,” Her Grace said, one finger tapping against her lips as she frowned in thought—and glanced once, sharply, at the duke—“there will be time to send out invitations to every relative and friend and acquaintance in England. Every guest room here will be filled and every room at every inn for miles around. There will be all those mouths to feed for several days and all those people to be entertained. And there will still be the expectation of a ball and a wedding breakfast.”
Ralph sat back in his chair and did not even try to contribute to the conversation. It seemed to him that his grandmother had it well in hand. He caught the eye of Miss Muirhead—Miss Chloe Muirhead. He did consider for a moment winking at her and was sorry he had not done so a moment later when she pursed her lips slightly and he realized that she understood too. Her hands had disappeared from sight and he could not tell if she had uncrossed her fingers.
He thought of her as she had looked on the bank of the river earlier while he had picked his way to the middle of it to find her a stone that would be a good bouncer—though, come to think of it, what the devil had possessed him to do something so impulsive? He would have felt like a prize ass if he had slipped and got a thorough dunking, especially if he had also gone sailing away over the falls. She had looked anxious and prunish. She had been almost vibrating with the urge to scold him. And he had found himself almost liking her.
And why, after all, should he not? He had no strong feelings for her and never would. But if she was to be his wife, if they were to spend the rest of their days, not to mention their nights, in almost constant proximity to each other, if they were to share children and their upbringing, then surely it would be better to like her than not.
“If Berwick has brought a special license with him,” the duke said, “why wait a whole month? Why wait a week? Why go to the bother of inviting a houseful of guests merely so that they can keep us awake at night with their dancing and carousing and eat us out of house and home? Why wait a day?”
“You think Ralph should speak to the Reverend Marlowe as soon as we have done with the toasts, then, Worthingham?” the duchess said. “I do think that is a very good idea. And Ralph can surely be persuaded or he would not have gone to the trouble of bringing a license. Chloe, my dear, what do you think? Perhaps a wedding outfit and bride clothes and parties and guests are important to you, and you, after all, are the bride.”
Ralph watched his betrothed close her eyes for a moment, the only sign that she was not fully composed. Her hands, all fingers uncrossed, had moved to her lap and looked perfectly relaxed.
“I have no wish for any of those things, Your Grace,” she said. “I will be perfectly happy to marry the Earl of Berwick tomorrow if it can be arranged.”
And her eyes came to rest upon him and widened slightly as though the reality of it all was only beginning to hit her.
As it was him.
Soon she was going to be almost as familiar to him as his own image in the glass. What was it going to feel like—not being alone? It was his essential aloneness that had been the worst of his afflictions after he had been brought home from the Peninsula, for he had not been alone since before he went off to school at the age of twelve, and even then there had been his sisters and his parents. Gradually over the years following his return, of course, he had formed the deep attachment to his six fellow Survivors. He loved and trusted them totally. But he had never made the mistake of believing that they could fill the emptiness at the core of his being.
He was alone and would forever be so. Somehow he had made a friend of his aloneness. Now marriage was going to threaten that. There was going to be a woman—this woman—always in his life, even in his bed. He did, as it happened, find her sexually appealing, but that might be small consolation for the loss of privacy he was going to have to endure.
The prospect was chilling.
And tomorrow it would begin.
His grandfather cleared his throat and raised his glass to propose a toast.
* * *
Chloe had one outfit that was both new and reasonably fashionable, since she had bought it just last year in London. She had never worn it. It was a walking dress of pale spring green with long, close-fitting sleeves, a deep ruff for a collar, a high waist, and a slightly flared skirt. There was a matching small-brimmed bonnet, which curved high at the back to accommodate the bulk of her hair. It was unadorned except for the dull gold satin ribbon that secured it beneath her chin. She had soft shoes and gloves to match the ribbon.
She had almost not brought the outfit with her to Manville Court, but she had reminded herself that she was going to be staying indefinitely with a duchess and might possibly find herself attending an event requiring a greater-than-usual formality of dress. She had not expected that event to be her wedding.
She was a bride, she thought as she checked her appearance in the long mirror in her room. She was satisfied with what she saw. The duchess had insisted upon sending her own maid to assist her, and Miss Bunker had created intricate curls at the back of her head before placing the bonnet just so over them. She had tied the ribbon in a soft bow close to Chloe’s left ear. The dress looked both pretty and elegant and surely showed off her slender figure to advantage.
All of which satisfactory facts did not still the butterflies that fluttered in her stomach. The next time she stood here, perhaps an hour or two from now, to remove her bonnet before luncheon, she would be a married lady. She would be Chloe Stockwood, Countess of Berwick—if something disastrous did not happen to stop the proceedings, that was. If someone did not dash into the chapel to declare an insurmountable impediment to their marriage during that dreaded pause in every wedding service after the clergyman had posed the question.
Butterflies were all very pretty in a meadow. They were altogether less comfortable in her stomach. She wished suddenly, with a great stabbing of longing, that her father was here. Or Lucy or Graham. Or Aunt Julia. Oh, she wished they were all here. She had never expected to be so all alone on her wedding day. But then she had never expected a wedding day at all, had she? Not in the past six years anyway. And certainly not since last year.
Someone tapped on the bedchamber door behind her and opened it without waiting to be summoned—the duchess. She was dressed in royal blue and wore a large, old-fashioned bonnet with tall plumes.
“Bunker was quite right,” she said. “You look very fine, Chloe, considering the fact that we have not had time to shop for bride clothes. Forgive me, my dear, for backing up Ralph’s wish to marry today by persuading His Grace that it was his suggestion. I regretted being obliged to do so, for it is not what any bride dreams of. Ralph, of course, decided that the time had come when he must marry and therefore, to him, the logical thing to do is simply to marry. He probably gave not a single thought to all the trappings of a wedding that his bride and both families and the whole of the fashionable would both want and expect. As for Worthingham—well, he has been spoiled all his life and does not have the imagination to understand that when some grand event happens, it does not simply materialize out of thin air without causing endless work and great anxiety and discomfort to all sorts of people. Even so, we could have—”
“I understand perfectly, Your Grace,” Chloe assured her.
“Do you?” The duchess sat down on the edge of the bed and looked a little lost suddenly. “Yes, I believe you do. I suspected the truth even before Dr. Gregg confirmed it yes
terday, of course. Worthingham had a slight heart attack, though I do not know quite what can be slight about it. It seems something of a contradiction in terms to me. He should be fine as long as he takes things easy and does not eat or drink to excess. At least, that is what Dr. Gregg assured His Grace and me. What he said to Ralph afterward when they went into the village together I do not know. I have been afraid to ask. But I feared the results of protracted wedding plans and drawn-out celebrations. It seemed best to dispense with both. I was very selfish.”
“Perhaps,” Chloe said, “we ought to have waited, Your Grace. Perhaps we still could. Perhaps—”
But the duchess interrupted her.
“Oh, you must not misunderstand me, my dear,” she said. “I want to see Ralph married, and the sooner the better. And the more I think of it, the better pleased I am with his choice. You are older and more experienced than any of the young girls he would have met in the ballrooms of London. And you have a great deal of good sense. He is a troubled man, Chloe. If you had known him as he used to be, you would understand. And I do not mean just his appearance. He left something behind on that battlefield, and he has not found it again since. But at least he is no longer suicidal. All he could seem to say when he was first brought back was that he wanted to die, that he wanted to put an end to it all. He even tried it once, or once that I heard of. His medication had been left within his reach—not just the next dose, but all of it. He almost . . . Well, never mind. It did not happen. But it was what decided my son, his father, who was still alive at the time, to send him with the Duke of Stanbrook to Cornwall, where there was a physician who dealt with cases like Ralph’s. Head cases, that is. He stayed there for three years until we wondered if he would ever come home. But why am I talking like this on your wedding day when we should be in a festive mood and making our way to the chapel?”