by Mary Balogh
There was a small coal fire burning in the fireplace. That was unusual. But then he saw she was seated in an armchair beside it, her arms wrapped about her legs, her bare heels resting on the edge of the seat. Her nightgown covered her to the ankles and to the wrists. Her nightcap allowed a mere glimpse of her hair. Even so, she looked more inviting than any courtesan he had ever encountered—a rather absurd thought, surely. Firelight flickered warmly off her person and off one side of her face when she turned it toward him.
He set his back against the door and crossed his arms over his chest. He had a strange, and strangely disturbing, sense of homecoming.
* * *
Chloe turned to look at him. She had not been sure he would come. She ought not to have waited up. But she had been unable to go to bed. If she had, she would not have slept.
“I thought you would be sleeping,” he said.
“No.”
“I am sorry,” he said, “that my mother and Nora and Amelia are still virtually ignoring you. They will come around if you are willing to give them time. It is just that my sudden marriage took them completely by surprise and they are quite unjustly punishing you. I should perhaps have told my mother about you before I left London.”
She had not expected his mother and sisters to welcome her with open arms. At least they had not been openly unkind. But she did not want to think about them tonight.
“At least Lucy has been unusually quiet,” she said. “She is awestruck, and long may she remain so. She is speechless with admiration of your great-aunt. Have you noticed how she seats herself as close to her as possible and takes note of her every word and gesture? I suspect she will be begging Mr. Nelson to buy her a lorgnette when they return to London.”
“She is fond of you,” he said. “So are your father and your brother.”
“Yes.”
She did not want to think of Papa either tonight.
“Come to bed?” he suggested, but she did not move.
“Tell me about the survivors,” she said. “It is a word Lady Trentham used this afternoon regarding your friends, and she sounded as though it ought perhaps to be written with a capital S. They were all with you in Cornwall? They were all wounded? I did not realize, you know, when you introduced Viscount Darleigh to me that he was blind. As soon as I spoke to him, he looked so directly at me that I assumed he could see me. I wondered why he had brought the dog, but then I suddenly understood when he did not take my outstretched hand. Were you all in Cornwall for three years? It is an awfully long time.”
She could almost sense him sighing inwardly as he uncrossed his arms and came closer. She ought not to have asked. They had agreed to show no real interest in each other’s lives, had they not? They had agreed to no emotional involvement. But surely they needed to know some things about each other?
He sat down on the low ottoman beside her chair.
“Penderris Hall in Cornwall is George’s home—the Duke of Stanbrook’s,” he told her. “He set it up as a hospital for wounded officers toward the end of the wars. He persuaded an excellent doctor of his acquaintance to work there and hired extra staff. A number of wounded men were there for a while and then left. A few died, one at Penderris and two after they had returned home. But there were six of us who stayed for all of three years. I suppose we were the ones whose wounds were not just physical, or in some cases not physical at all. We stayed to heal and then to convalesce, to put ourselves as well as our bodies back together. The doctor was very skilled at that former aspect of his work. He believed that war often wounds the soul as deeply as it does the body, sometimes more so. And we formed a deep bond, the six of us, seven counting George. He had not been to war himself, but his only son died in the Peninsula, and a few months later his wife threw herself to her death over the cliffs that border their estate.”
“Oh,” she said on a gasp of horror.
“He was as broken as the rest of us,” he said. “One day one of us—I believe it was Flavian, though it might have been me—called our group the Survivors’ Club as a sort of joke. And the name stuck. The two who are not here now are Ben—Sir Benedict Harper—who lives in West Wales with his wife, and Imogen, Lady Barclay, who lives in Cornwall. Ben’s legs were crushed in a cavalry charge and he has never recovered the full use of them despite Herculean efforts on his part. Imogen’s husband died under torture in the Peninsula, and she was made to watch some of it as well as his death. We all left Penderris at the same time four years ago. It was probably the hardest thing any of us has ever had to do, though it was absolutely necessary, of course. We could not live out our lives in an artificial bubble. Now we get together for three weeks each year in the early spring, usually at Penderris, though this year we went to Middlebury Park in Gloucestershire, Vincent’s home, instead. He did not want to leave his wife so soon after her confinement.”
“He speaks with great pride and affection of his son,” she said. “How sad it is that he cannot see the baby.”
“It would be a mistake to pity Vince,” he said. “He very rarely pities himself. He considers himself well blessed and happy.”
“They mean more to you than anyone else in the world,” she said, “your fellow Survivors.”
“Yes, in a way.” He looked up at her and reached for her hand. She wondered if he had intended to do so, but he did not release it. “It is a special bond that we share, but it does not preclude other bonds. Five of us have married, all within the past year, incredible as that sounds. Three of the wives came to Middlebury Park this year. Flavian married while we were there. And now I have had my turn. Marriage creates a different sort of bond, Chloe. It is not necessarily inferior to what I have with the Survivors. Indeed, it is not.”
He set one of his hands palm to palm against hers and spread his fingers along her own.
“Do you feel threatened by them?” he asked her.
“No.” She shook her head, not sure she spoke the truth. “I have seen evidence of your physical hurts, Ralph, and I realize they were dreadful indeed. What were your other hurts? Why were you at Penderris for three years?”
Why did you leave there so changed?
And with such lifeless eyes and empty soul?
And believing yourself incapable of love?
Chloe did not ask those questions out loud.
She was terribly aware of Ralph’s hand pressed to hers, large, long fingered, darker skinned than her own, very masculine. And of his head just below the level of her own, bent over their hands. In the firelight there appeared to be gold strands in his dark hair.
Despite her initial reaction, she liked his friends, his fellow Survivors—and yes, it was a word that would need a capital S if written. The rather austere bearing of the Duke of Stanbrook was explained by his history, by the loss of his only son in battle and the suicide of his wife shortly after. But instead of allowing those two deaths to embitter or destroy him, he had concentrated his resources upon bringing healing to others who had suffered.
There was no outer sign of the injuries Lord Trentham must have sustained. He was large and seemed powerfully strong, and his face beneath the close-cropped hair looked rather forbidding, as though frowns came more easily to him than smiles. Yet when he spoke he was kindly, and it was clear he loved the small, dainty Lady Trentham, and she him. Yet he had been damaged enough by the wars to have spent three years with the others at Penderris Hall.
Viscount Darleigh’s injuries were more obvious. He was a very young man even now, perhaps even younger than Ralph. How old must he have been when . . . ? It did not bear thinking of. He had a sweet, sunny-natured temperament. And Viscount Ponsonby stammered very slightly, but that might have nothing to do with what had happened to keep him at Penderris for so long a time. He was suave and charming and witty and seemed outwardly undamaged by war or life. He was obviously very much in love with his new wife.
She
liked Ralph’s friends, but . . . Ah, yes, she had felt threatened by them, for there was something quite extraordinary about the way the five men related to one another. She had even resented the fact that Lady Trentham and Lady Ponsonby did not seem to feel threatened.
Everyone now gathered at Manville Court, with the exception of her father and Lucy and Mr. Nelson, knew Ralph better than she did. Even Graham. She knew almost nothing. And so she had asked her questions even though it was late and she ought perhaps to have gone to bed instead of waiting up for him. And she ought to have allowed him to go to bed. Tomorrow was going to be both busy and emotionally draining.
He held his hand against hers and laced their fingers tightly. He kept his eyes on their hands.
Why were you at Penderris for three years? she had asked.
“I wanted to die,” he said, his voice without inflection. “It was why my father sent me to Penderris. I ranted and raved and talked of nothing else except putting an end to it all. I tried to swallow all my medication. I reached for anything that looked sharp enough to let blood. When my hands were tied to my bed with bandages, I fought like a demon to prevent my wounds from healing.”
“Your physician could give you nothing to control the pain?” she asked.
He had lowered their hands to the seat of the chair, their fingers still laced.
“I almost welcomed the physical pain,” he told her. “I lashed myself with it. I thought perhaps if it was bad enough I could atone with it.”
“Atone?” She felt a chill crawl along her spine.
“For causing death,” he said, “and untold suffering. For surviving.”
“But was it not your duty as an officer to lead your men into battle?” she asked him. “Were you not under orders yourself from superior officers? Do men not die in battle?”
He raised his eyes to hers. She expected them to be full of pain. Instead they were expressionless. Empty.
“I took three men to war with me,” he said. “They did not want to go. They would not even have thought of going for themselves. And none of them was designated by his family for a military career. Quite the contrary. Their families fought their determination to go with me. But my power and influence over them was greater than that of family. I convinced them and they came. And died.”
“Your three friends from school, do you mean?” she asked.
“Thomas Reynolds, son of Viscount Harding,” he said. “Maxwell Courtney, son of Sir Marvin Courtney, and Rowland Hickman, son of Baron Janes.”
She remembered their names from a long-ago past, though Graham had not talked about them as often as he had of Ralph Stockwood.
“But the decision was theirs,” she said.
He was still looking with chilling blankness into her eyes.
“It was,” he agreed. “That is what I learned to accept during those three years. What degree of blame must we share for the decisions and actions of others? All of it? Some? None? It is an interesting question, and everyone concerned would no doubt answer it in a different way depending upon the perspective each brought to bear on it. In three years I learned to change my answer from all to some. I never progressed to none. But I stopped trying to kill myself. I stopped boring everyone silly by talking about it ceaselessly and alarming them by threatening it. I was healed and I went home.”
She gazed at him, appalled.
“But did you stop wishing you were dead?” she asked and could have bitten out her tongue as soon as the words were out.
He half smiled, though it was perhaps more grimace than smile.
“Fate played a cruel joke on me,” he said. “Instead of killing me and assigning me to hell, where I no doubt belonged, it saved me and gave me hell on earth instead. But all things can be endured, given time. One adjusts to the circumstances in which one finds oneself—one’s own small revenge upon fate, perhaps. We all adjusted, the seven of us. We are all living our lives in a more or less productive manner. And I must apologize for speaking so depressingly and so self-pityingly. It will not happen again, I assure you.”
“Do their families blame you?” she asked.
He released her hand and stood up abruptly.
“I do not doubt it,” he said, extending a hand to help her to her feet. “You need not concern yourself.”
But she could not leave it alone. Not yet.
“Have you asked them?” She slid her hand free of his when she was on her feet.
He startled her by leaning forward and setting his mouth to hers. Hard. She had no time to decide if it was a kiss—or if it was merely a way of silencing her. She stared mute and wide-eyed at him when he lifted his head again.
If it had been a kiss, it was her first. How utterly absurd! She was twenty-seven years old and she had been married for almost a week. But she did not believe it had been a kiss. It had silenced her, though.
He was frowning. Then he raised both hands, removed her cap, and dropped it to the chair behind her.
“Have you always worn a nightcap?” he asked her.
“No.”
“Have you ever worn one before this past week?”
“No.”
“Why now, then?”
She could not think of any reason to give except the truth. “I did not want you to think I was trying to . . . to entice you.”
His eyes, which had been directed at her braid, were suddenly focused upon hers.
“You were hoping I would merely go away?” he asked her.
“Oh, not at all,” she said. “I would have hated that. But I did not want you to think . . .” How could she complete the sentence?
“That you are beautiful?” he said. “And desirable? But I had thought both and still do think them. Is your hair a dreadful trial to you?”
Baron Cornell, her beau during her first Season, had once laughingly told her that with her hair she could pass any day for the most luscious and flamboyant of courtesans, and the highest paid to boot. He had apologized when he realized that he had deeply shocked her, but she had never forgotten. And then, last year . . .
“Yes.”
It was the simplest answer she could think to give. Every woman wants to be thought beautiful, and she was no exception. But she did not want to be looked upon with . . . with lascivious hunger, as she had been looked upon too many times for comfort.
His hands were drawing out the pins that held the coils of her braid to her head. When it fell, like a heavy pendulum against her back, he reached behind her, removed the ribbon that bound the end, and unraveled the braid. He pushed his fingers through the hair and brought two locks of it over her shoulders.
“We made our bargain,” he said. “We each know what to expect of the other and what not to expect. We did not speak of desire, however. I hope I do not offend you by desiring you and by admiring your beauty and the glory of your hair. And indeed, I hope you desire me, that the marriage bed is not in any way repugnant to you.”
“It is not,” she assured him.
. . . the glory of your hair.
He drew a breath and let it out audibly.
“Why are we up so late?” he asked her. “Tomorrow is going to be busy, and you will be exhausted. May I weary you a little longer, though?”
A smile flitted across his face like a shadow and was gone.
She ached within, longing for him. “Yes,” she said.
11
Yes, she had said when he asked if he could weary her a little while longer. Yet when he set his mouth to hers, she did not kiss him back. And when he mounted her on the bed a few minutes later, she lay quiet beneath him, as she always did. The dutiful wife, upholding her end of their bargain. Wanting a child as much as he did, he supposed, if for different reasons. She would love any children they had. He did not doubt that—just as he did not doubt that she would keep her promise and never love him. Had
she spoken merely to reassure him, then?
He lay beside her on the bed, as he usually did after sex. But, not as usual, he had slid his arm beneath her shoulders as he moved off her and had brought her with him, so that she was on her side against him, his arm about her. Her nightgown was still bunched about her waist. Her legs, smooth and slim, were against his. Her head was resting on his shoulder, her hair over his arm and down his chest. He could not see its color in the darkness, but he could feel its silkiness and smell the faint fragrance of the soap she used to wash it. He did not think she was sleeping. Her breathing was too quiet.
Was this more than she had bargained for? Was he being unfair to her? Was this more than he had bargained for? But was a man not entitled to the comforts of the marriage bed?
He needed her tonight—ghastly admission. He needed the comfort of her in his arms. He was reminded of the times during the past four years when need had driven him to engage the services of a courtesan. Was this no different from that? But on those occasions it had been just physical need that had driven him—oh, and perhaps a touch of loneliness too. His need tonight was not just for sex and not just for a female companion. It was specifically for his wife. And it was not just sexual, though it was that too. It was not just loneliness either. How could he be lonely, surrounded as he was by his family and friends? It was . . .
It was grief.
Grief for his grandfather, who had been gone for almost a week, but to whom he would say a final goodbye tomorrow amid all the public pomp of a ducal funeral. Grief for his grandmother, who had become even more birdlike in the past days, brave and gracious and lost. Grief for Rowland and Max and Tom, all of them eighteen years old when they died in a shower of blood and dust and guts. And grief for their families, who had resisted their going to war. Grief for himself and all the wrongs it was too late to put right. Grief for the loss of innocence and dangerous idealism.