Only a Promise

by Mary Balogh

Chloe could feel any vestige of resentment melt away. She liked these men, her husband’s dearest friends, along with the Duke of Stanbrook and the other two who were not here.

  “Even so, Vince,” Ralph said as he came out from the study, “let Hugo and Flave keep an eye on you, will you? For my sake? The path beside the rapids and the falls is a rough one.”

  “What do you think, Ralph?” his sister asked, making the same flourishing gesture toward Chloe that Gwen had made a few moments before.

  He stopped in his tracks and took his time about answering.

  “It was an inspired decision of yours to cut it off, Chloe,” he said at last. “It is perfect, and you look perfectly beautiful.”

  He had an audience, of course. He could hardly say she would have been better advised to cut her head off as well as her hair. But Chloe bit her lower lip and felt warmed through to the very heart. She blinked back tears.

  How very idiotic of her!

  . . . you look perfectly beautiful.

  And then her heart—the very one that had just been warmed by his compliment—turned a complete somersault in her bosom, even if only figuratively.

  For he smiled.

  Right into her eyes.

  13

  Later in the afternoon Chloe found her brother out on the terrace with Mr. Nelson and her brothers-in-law, Sir Wendell Harrison and Viscount Keilly. She slid her hand through his arm and listened to the conversation for a while.

  “Shall we stroll down to the river?” she suggested for his ears only after a few minutes. She did not want them all to come. She wanted him to herself for an hour or so.

  She was dearly fond of Graham. He was a man of principle and integrity, both rare qualities among the gentlemen she knew. There were those who despised his lack of ambition or merely dismissed him as a failure and surely a disappointment to his family. There were those who accused him of being less than manly. He was never swayed by what others said of him. He would not allow hurt feelings to influence his actions, though he certainly did have feelings and could suffer hurt.

  “Will you be happy, Chloe?” he asked her when they had walked beyond earshot of the other men. “As a duchess? With this grand place as your home? With Stockwood as your husband—Worthingham, that is? I really am happy that you are married at last, of course. I know you have longed for marriage and motherhood. I always thought, though, that you would thrive upon quiet domesticity with a husband of modest fortune with whom you enjoyed a mutual affection. I felt your pain when Lucy ruined the Season for which you had waited with such patience and your chance to find both love and an eligible mate. Last year I was hopeful that you might be given another chance. You were still young and still beautiful and you had Aunt Julia’s influence behind you. That was most unfortunate. But there is no point in going back over that. Will you be happy? Can you be?”

  “No one held a shotgun to my head,” she told him. “Or to Ralph’s. We married because we wanted to do so. We did not expect our lives to be turned so topsy-turvy within twenty-four hours of the wedding, it is true. But Ralph’s grandfather was elderly and not in the best of health, and it was to be expected that sooner or later we would be facing all this. I do not regret our impulsiveness, though. I have passed the age of expecting that love and romance, marriage and happily-ever-after are all synonymous terms. I have marriage and I hope I will have motherhood. I expect a life of more or less quiet domesticity in the country. It is what Ralph has promised me.”

  Graham was frowning.

  “But a spell in London will come first, surely,” he said. “Everyone was agreed at luncheon that you must make an appearance there despite the fact that the old duke died so recently. Noble families, like royal families, are not allowed much time to be alone with their grief. How do you feel about going back to town, Chloe? I know you found all that foolish gossip rather distressing last year. And there were the events of six years ago.”

  The dowager countess, Ralph’s mother, had brought up the subject at luncheon. It was Ralph’s duty, now that the funeral was over, she had said, to present himself in London without delay, to make his bow at court and take his seat in the House of Lords as soon as he received his writ of summons. And it was no less his duty, having married hastily just before his grandfather’s passing, to present his duchess to the ton at all the best social entertainments of the Season. She would help Chloe clothe herself suitably—not in mourning, but not in bright, flamboyant colors either. Her eyes had touched upon Chloe’s hair, and she had looked slightly pained.

  “Green,” Great-Aunt Mary had said. “She should wear green. I never could wear it myself. It always made me look bilious. I always envied girls who could carry it off.”

  “There must be a grand reception at Stockwood House,” the dowager duchess had added. “Perhaps even a ball, Chloe. I do not believe it would be considered disrespectful to my dear Worthingham’s memory. Life must go on.”

  “Oh, will Freddie and I be invited?” Lucy had asked, looking wistful.

  Ralph had let them all talk without responding, and Chloe had followed his lead. They would not go, of course. He had promised her. It must happen at some time in the future, she supposed. Next year, perhaps, or the year after.

  “We will be staying here,” she told Graham now as they came to the river and stepped onto the stone bridge. “Ralph has said so. He does not allow himself to be ruled by his mother and sisters, and he is tired of London.”

  She stopped halfway across the bridge in order to gaze off into the shade of the trees, where she had walked with Ralph just a little over a week ago. It seemed far longer ago than that. What had impelled him to risk a dunking or worse by wading across the rapids to find her a perfect stone? And she would swear he had enjoyed those moments of boyish impulse. The stone was in the top left-hand drawer of her dressing table, on top of her handkerchiefs.

  “Graham,” she asked “how has he changed? How is he different from the way he was at school? What was he like there?”

  She had heard stories about him at the time, of course, so many, in fact, that she had formed a decided and strongly negative opinion of Ralph Stockwood without ever having met him. But she had not known then that one day he would be her husband. She might have listened more attentively and questioned her brother more closely if she had known.

  He rested his elbows on the parapet of the bridge as he squinted ahead.

  “They are not easy questions to answer,” he said. “Eight years have passed since we left school. It seems a lifetime. We were boys then and are men now. There are bound to be some pretty significant changes—in both of us. But really fundamental ones? I am not so sure there are any. He was . . . charismatic, Chloe. Quite remarkably so. He was good looking, an early developer physically. He was athletic, intelligent, good in most academic subjects, a reader and a thinker, a natural leader with strong convictions. But many of the same things could be said of other boys, including his three closest friends. One might have expected with those four that there would have been no real leader, that they would have been equal in stature and influence. But it was not so. The other three admired and deferred to him just as much as everyone else did. I would say they were dominated by him except that the word would not be quite accurate. He did not dominate anyone. He was never either a tyrant or a bully. He just . . . He had an energy, an enthusiasm that was infectious and quite irresistible to most people. He . . . sparkled. Ah, the English language is a woefully imperfect instrument for the expression of some ideas. Suffice it to say that I have never encountered anyone quite like Ralph Stockwood as he was at school.”

  “He has changed, then.” Chloe turned away from the water and continued on her way over the bridge, and Graham followed and caught up with her. They walked into the longish grass of the meadow and were soon surrounded by clover and buttercups and daisies. It was sad to think that once her husband had sparkled with
an enthusiasm and a fervor for life. She wished she had known the boy he had been.

  “I am not sure he has changed all that much,” Graham said. “I still sense a sort of leashed energy in him, though he is admittedly more subdued than he was. Perhaps a natural maturity will do that to any man, though. Perhaps grief is a part of it too. He was very close to his grandfather, was he?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I think more than he was to his father. And Graham, he blames himself for the deaths of those three friends of his.”

  “Does he?” He was silent for a few moments while Chloe bent to pick some daisies and weave them into the beginnings of a chain. “His passions swept all before him when he felt strongly about something. During our last year at school he had a fascination with Napoleon Bonaparte. At first he admired the man enormously, but the more he learned about him, the more he changed his mind, until he was obsessed by the idea that the man must be stopped if the world was to be saved from tyranny. He could never be content with passionate ideas, though. If Bonaparte must be stopped, then it was not enough to expect others to do the stopping. One must be prepared to do it oneself, or at least to do one’s part. He could talk of nothing else for weeks on end. It was his duty to take up arms and an officer’s commission as soon as school ended and to go off to fight in the wars. It was everyone’s duty, even men, like himself, who had more reason to stay at home than to face the dangers of war. And if one’s family was opposed to the idea, for whatever reason, then its members must be convinced of one’s greater duty to save the world for freedom. Any reluctance those three might have felt at the start was quickly swept aside and they became as passionately eager as he was to ride into the glory of battle in a righteous cause.”

  “And you were accused of cowardice because you would not go too?” she asked him.

  He turned his head to smile at her.

  “I am not sure he ever pointed a finger directly at me and singled me out for the comment,” he said. “But when I voiced opposing arguments, and eventually I seemed to be the only one who did, then he remarked that anyone who was unwilling to fight for the freedom of his own family and countrymen against a ruthless dictator like Bonaparte was a sniveling, lily-livered coward—or words to that effect. And maybe he was right. If Bonaparte had succeeded in conquering the whole of Europe, as he came perilously close to doing, then he would without a doubt have turned his attention to the invasion of Britain. Would I have held to my pacifist ideals if I had actually witnessed foreign soldiers committing atrocities against women and children, perhaps people I knew personally? It was all very well to hold those beliefs when the English Channel stood safely between me and the reality of ruthless aggression. But if the Channel had been breached? I am not sure, Chloe. I am still a pacifist by principle, but my convictions have never been put to the test. At least Stockwood put his to the test.”

  She gathered a few more daisies for her chain.

  “Life seems so simple when one is very young, does it not?” she said. “Good and evil, black and white—they seem to be polar opposites with no shady areas between. But as one grows older, everything seems to be variously shaded. How can we know what is good and what is evil, Graham, and what is right and what is wrong? Your job must be very difficult. How do you do it?”

  “I try not to make judgments,” he said. “What is your good may be my evil. I try just to love—a simple enough concept, though even loving is not simple. Perhaps it merely means accepting people for who they are and respecting their choices and sympathizing with their pain.”

  “He is in pain, Graham,” she said. And she knew it was true. He was not empty of emotion as she had thought at first. The emptiness sat upon a seething well of suffering and pain, mainly the agony of guilt.

  “I know.” He stopped walking and turned to gaze back toward the house. He spoke softly without looking at her. “So are you, Chloe.”

  Her mind denied it. She had been lonely and unhappy and insecure, that was all. Now she was married and she was happy. Well, contented, anyway.

  “And you?” she asked.

  “It is the human condition,” he said. “No one who lives into adulthood can escape it. Even children cannot. It is what we do with the pain, though, how we allow it to shape our character and actions and relationships that matters. But life is not unalloyed gloom. One must absolutely not allow pessimism or cynicism to send one into a deep depression. There is much joy too. Much joy. Can you be happy with him, Chloe? Will you be?”

  “We have come full circle.” She laughed and completed her daisy chain before throwing it over his head—it was just long enough to clear the brim of his hat. “Can I be happy? Yes, of course. Will I be? Who knows? But if I am not, it will not be for lack of opportunity, or for lack of trying.”

  He held out one hand, and after looking at it for a moment, she set her own in it and they began the walk back to the house.

  “Have you confronted Papa?” he asked her.

  “Yes. At Christmas. Before I left home.” She drew a slow breath.

  “And?”

  “He swore there was no truth in the rumors,” she said.

  “You believed him?”

  They had crossed the bridge again before she answered.

  “Maybe it does not matter what I believe,” she said. “The past cannot be changed, whatever it was. He has always been Papa. If I had not gone to London last year, I would probably never have been given reason to suspect that perhaps he is not also my father. Perhaps the knowing or not knowing is of no importance whatsoever.”

  “Perhaps,” he agreed. “Papa has always loved you, you know, Chloe, every bit as much as he has loved Lucy and me. And I have always loved you as dearly as I love Lucy.”

  “I know.” She squeezed his hand.

  Several people were gathered on the eastern terrace, Chloe could see, it being a pleasantly warm afternoon. It looked as if tea was being carried out. She had stolen enough time to be alone with her brother. It was time to take up her duties as hostess again.

  Ralph was watching her approach, and unconsciously her footsteps quickened. Was it unnatural and a bit unkind of her to be looking forward to everyone’s departure tomorrow so that they could be alone together at last? So that they could settle into the marriage they had agreed upon? Even his grandmother was leaving. She was going to London for an indefinite stay with Great-Aunt Mary.

  * * *

  It seemed unnaturally quiet in the drawing room on the evening of the following day despite the crackling of the fire. There were just the two of them, Chloe on one side of the hearth, seated in the chair that had always been Ralph’s grandmother’s, he on the other side, seated in his grandfather’s chair. It all felt . . . uncomfortable.

  Her head was bent over a small embroidery frame. She looked elegant in her black dress. Pretty. Her short wavy hair seemed to have stripped several years off her age. And, heaven help him, she was his wife. Until death did them part.

  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 h
e 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.