Only a Promise

by Mary Balogh

  She said no more. Great-Aunt Mary had swung her lorgnette her way.

  Gwen, Sarah, and Agnes remained with Chloe while the repairs were being made. Miss Bunker had left earlier, and the older ladies went down for their breakfast, taking Lucy with them. She actually looked rather gratified when Great-Aunt Mary took her arm and informed her that since she was young and strong she might as well make herself useful.

  Gwen’s maid looked critically at Chloe’s hair and ran her fingers through it after she had been told that she had carte blanche to do with it what she thought best, provided it ended up looking better than it did now. Not that that would be a difficult task. Then she set to work with her scissors while the other ladies watched.

  “Lady Darleigh has red hair too,” Agnes said, “though not as red as yours, Chloe. Hers is more auburn. She cut it off too, long ago when she was a girl. She has grown it back since she married Lord Darleigh last year. She was a thin, shorn little waif when I first met her shortly after their wedding. She is pretty and dainty now. They are very happy, I believe. No—I know.”

  “She has a new baby?” Chloe said.

  “Thomas,” Gwen said. “The first Survivor baby. I think mine will be the second.” Her cheeks turned suddenly rosy as both Chloe and Sarah looked involuntarily in the direction of her stomach and Agnes smiled at her.

  “How lovely for you!” Sarah said.

  “Hugo did not want me to come here with him,” Gwen said. “I have only just stopped feeling horribly bilious in the mornings. But I hate being apart from him, even for a few days, and I know he hates being away from me. I lost a child to a miscarriage once, a long time ago, during my first marriage. I am . . . ecstatic to be given another chance. And terrified. But not as frightened as Hugo is, poor thing.”

  “I am very happy for you, Gwen.” Chloe smiled at her. “You do not resent them? The Survivors?”

  “Resent them?” Gwen tipped her head to one side and looked rather curiously at her. “I met them all at once. I had trespassed unknowingly upon Penderris property. I was walking on the beach below the house and tried to climb to the top over a steep fall of loose stones. I slipped and sprained my bad ankle and Hugo found me and carried me up to the house. Meeting them all was a bit daunting, I must confess, especially as local gossip would have it that the Duke of Stanbrook had pushed his wife over a cliff, when in reality she jumped to her death. But they were all very kind to me and very courteous. I had to stay there for a few days until my brother came to fetch me. No, I do not resent them.”

  “They share an extraordinary bond with one another,” Agnes added. “But they live their own separate lives too. And love is not a finite thing. They love one another, but they have plenty of love left over for their wives and families—or for a husband in Imogen’s case, if she ever remarries. Did you know that one of the Survivors is a woman?”

  Chloe nodded and then remembered that she must keep her head still.

  “My mother and sisters,” Sarah said, “have always been of the opinion that the three years Ralph spent in Cornwall did him more harm than good.”

  “The Duke of Worthingham,” Gwen said, “was very badly hurt physically, but his wounds went far deeper than the worst of the saber cuts. And sometimes, Hugo has told me, the invisible wounds of war are far more deadly than the visible ones. Indeed, Hugo was not physically wounded at all. There is not a scratch upon his person. Yet he was brought home from the Peninsula in a straitjacket and spent three years in Cornwall with the others. He still suffers occasionally.”

  “I remember Ralph as he used to be,” Sarah said with a sigh. “Perhaps he will be himself again now that he has married you, Chloe. Though that is an absurd thing to say. He will never be the same. None of us can be the same as we once were. Our lives and our very selves constantly change. But perhaps he will be happy again. Oh, yes!”

  That final exclamation was for Chloe’s hair. Gwen’s maid had finished cutting and crimping it and had stood back so that everyone could view the finished effect. She handed Chloe a round mirror with a handle so that she could see too.

  “Brilliant!” Sarah exclaimed, and she came hurrying across the room to hug her sister-in-law. “It looks lovely. It looks . . . dashing. You look lovely and dashing. Oh, you will be all the rage, Chloe. Wait and see.”

  Chloe looked critically at her image. Her hair had been cut in short layers. It hugged her head in shiny, bouncy waves and made her face look heart shaped and her eyes look bigger. She scarcely recognized herself.

  “It is very often assumed,” Gwen said, “that all women look best with long hair. It is not so. I had mine cut many years ago and have never regretted it. You look more striking with short hair, Chloe. I would not have believed it, however, if I had not seen you both ways. And now you will surely have the courage to venture beyond your own room.”

  Chloe laughed and turned to thank the maid and commend her on her skill. She found her purse and pressed a generous vail into her hand.

  “It is breakfast time,” Sarah said. “Indeed, it is well past time, and I am ravenous even if no one else is.”

  “You do look pretty, Chloe,” Agnes assured her, and she linked her arm through Chloe’s as they all left the room.

  * * *

  “A minor crisis,” Ralph explained to his mother and two of his sisters at breakfast. “Chloe decided to cut her hair last night and did not like the results. The matter has been taken to committee and will be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction, I have no doubt.”

  He found himself having to repress a grin. It was not amusing for poor Chloe, especially when one considered why she had done it. But the memory of the rather large female delegation outside his bedchamber door and of Chloe inside it, her chopped hair standing out from the sides of her face and the back of her head, the cross look on her face turned to one of dismay, was worthy of any farce. He could not remember a time when he had been better entertained.

  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 bedcham
ber 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 besi
de 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.