by Mary Balogh
“A little milk and one sugar,” she said, setting his cup and saucer down at his elbow.
Exactly right. He was almost irritated by the fact. He did not have any idea how she liked her tea even though he had watched her pour it and drink it numerous times.
He had the uncomfortable feeling that Chloe really was going to make him comfortable.
“It will not be long before it is widely known that we are in town,” he said as she seated herself and picked up her cup and saucer. “Invitations will start arriving in droves. People will be curious to see me in my new role and you in yours. And us as a married couple. We will need to decide which invitations to accept.”
He expected her to make some sort of protest or at least to beg for time.
“Yes,” she said.
“And we must start thinking about the grand reception or ball we will have here,” he said. “It will be expected of us.”
“Yes,” she said again.
“Lloyd will help,” he said. “And my mother.”
She set her cup down in her saucer. “Help us, yes,” she said. “But we will do the main work, Ralph.”
Face your worst fears and walk into them and through them, she remembered Graham saying in one of his sermons. She had run from her fears twice, she had just told him. He could see that she was not going to do that again.
“Yes,” he said, “we will do it.”
Slowly, inexorably, he realized, he was being drawn back into life. So was she.
* * *
If Chloe had hoped to bury herself in domestic contentment at Stockwood House, she was soon to be disillusioned. Not that she really had expected any such thing, of course. She spent a busy, thoroughly happy morning discussing household matters and menus with the housekeeper and the cook. The morning also brought a note from her sister-in-law Sarah, who had persuaded Mr. Toucher to spend a few weeks in town before returning home, offering to take Chloe up in her carriage at four o’clock on her way to visit her grandmother and great-aunt. Chloe sent a note of acceptance, since Ralph had gone out halfway through the morning and had not said when he would return. But even before four o’ clock the quietness of the afternoon was dashed a number of times by the sound of the door knocker and the arrival of visitors.
The Dowager Countess of Berwick, her mother-in-law, came with Nora, Lady Keilly, to inform her that they would take her with them the following afternoon to call upon a number of ladies with whom it was imperative she be on the best of terms. Those ladies were all, Chloe guessed, the very highest sticklers.
Her father came with Lucy just after the two ladies had left. Lucy suggested that Chloe join her for a walk in Hyde Park the morning after next with the children and their nurse—weather permitting, of course.
“The park is never as crowded in the morning as it is during the fashionable hour of the afternoon,” she said, “but one sees a tolerable number of fashionable people anyway, and some of them, both ladies and gentlemen, are obliging enough to stop to converse. More people will stop if you are with me, Chloe, for your name is on everyone’s lips. How gratified you must be.”
It was the last thing Chloe needed to hear, but it was inevitable, she knew. And there was no point in cowering at home. She had come to London because she had decided not to cower.
“I’ll be delighted, Lucy,” she said, and was warmed by her sister’s bright and happy smile.
Lady Trentham called while Papa and Lucy were still with Chloe, bringing her young sister-in-law, Miss Emes, with her. She had come to ask if she might have the pleasure of introducing Chloe to a few of her lady relatives and friends one afternoon.
“They are curious about you and eager to meet you,” she explained before laughing. “Oh, do not look so stricken, Chloe. They are very willing to like you and would be willing, I am sure, even if they did not know that you are my friend and married to one of Hugo’s friends. Not everyone is swayed by all the wild and vicious gossip from last year.”
“Thank you,” Chloe said.
“That is very kind of you, Lady Trentham,” her father added.
“You certainly will not need to run away this year, will you, Your Grace?” Miss Emes said. “You are the Duchess of Worthingham. And Gwen and Hugo’s friend.”
“Oh, I will not run,” Chloe assured her.
And then, just before four, when Chloe had already donned her bonnet and gloves in anticipation of Sarah’s arrival, Lady Easterly, Aunt Julia, arrived to offer to take Chloe shopping in the morning.
“For I daresay you will need some new and fashionable clothes, Chloe,” she said. “I do not believe they will need to be black. What does Worthingham say? He will wish to wear a black armband for a while, I daresay, but he will probably not demand that you remain in mourning.”
“My mama-in-law believes I may wear colors, provided they are not too flamboyant,” Chloe told her. “And yes, I will need clothes, Aunt Julia. Plenty of them, I believe.”
“I do not think we would persuade you into anything flamboyant even for a masquerade,” her aunt said. “I am so glad you have come to London, Chloe. You ought not to have left in such haste last year. Gossip inevitably dies down when there is nothing to feed it. Had you carried on with the activities we had planned without showing any concern for the foolish things that were being hinted at, everyone would soon have lost interest. Well, now you are a duchess, and you have Worthingham to protect your name. I would not envy anyone who chose to cross him. He looks like a very formidable gentleman. There is something about his eyes. Or perhaps it is his facial scar.”
“I will not run again,” Chloe assured her. “And it is not just because I have Ralph to protect me, Aunt Julia. I am a lady, and I belong here.”
Her aunt laughed and hugged her.
Sarah arrived on time to take Chloe to tea with Great-Aunt Mary and Ralph’s grandmother. It was lovely to see the dowager duchess again, to hug her, to know that in a sense the old lady was now her grandmother too. And it was amusing to listen to Great-Aunt Mary’s conversation. Both the older ladies were happy that Ralph and Chloe had come to London. Both were happy to see that neither she nor Sarah was wearing black.
“If we were all to wear black for a prolonged period for every relative who passes,” Great-Aunt Mary said, “there would be no one left to wear colors.”
“You must wear emerald green to the ball at Stockwood House,” the dowager duchess said. “There will be one, Chloe?”
“There will,” Chloe told her. “And I will wear emerald green, Grandmama.”
Chloe arrived home just minutes before Ralph. They went upstairs together to change for dinner, and she was able to assure him that his grandmother was in tolerably good spirits though she still looked a bit lost. And he was able to inform her that their first appearance before the ton together as husband and wife would be that very evening. The Duke of Stanbrook had invited them to join him and a few other guests in his box at the theater.
Chloe had been rather pleased with her day and was looking forward to her dinner. But suddenly her appetite was gone despite all her words of bravado to several people.
“It will be a way,” Ralph was explaining, “of being seen by the ton without having to mingle a great deal with its members, Chloe. And it is not as though you have never done it before, is it?”
“You could not have waited to tell me,” she asked him, “until after dinner?”
He stopped outside her dressing room and raised her hand to his lips before opening the door for her and proceeding on his way to his own room.
“Just remember, Chloe,” he said, “that you are the Duchess of Worthingham.”
“That,” she said, “is supposed to give me my appetite back?”
There was a suggestion of a smile about his lips as he turned away.
16
“Who are the Duke of Stanbrook’s other
guests?” Chloe asked as she sat beside Ralph in the carriage later, telling herself how silly it was to be nervous, as though she were about to be exposed to society for the first time. The very fact that it was not the first time was a large part of the problem, of course.
“Lady Trentham and Hugo,” he told her. “The Earl and Countess of Kilbourne, Lady Trentham’s brother and sister-in-law. And the Dowager Viscountess Lyngate, a widow of George’s acquaintance. I have not met the lady, but George tells me she was born and raised in Greece, came to England when her father was an ambassador here, and stayed to marry an Englishman. I have met Kilbourne and his wife a time or two and have always found them amiable. They were married in the Peninsula and ambushed by the French the very next day. He was badly wounded and brought home, and she was assumed dead. A long time later he was about to marry someone else when his long-lost wife suddenly appeared to stop the wedding. And I do mean wedding. They were in the church with half the ton in attendance.”
“Really?” she said. “She arrived only just in the nick of time? But how wonderfully romantic.”
“Provided,” he said, “he had not forgotten her and was not hopelessly in love with the other lady.”
“Oh. Had he? And was he?” She turned her head to look at him, though she could not see his face clearly in the darkness.
“Apparently not, on both counts,” he said.
“Then it was romantic,” she said. “But was the other lady in love with him? Was she left brokenhearted?”
He clucked his tongue. “There is no satisfying hopelessly romantic sensibilities, is there?”
“But was she?” she asked again.
“I have never asked her, Chloe,” he said. “It would seem presumptuous since she is virtually a stranger. Perhaps you might ask Kilbourne or his wife. But the lady concerned is now the Viscountess Ravensberg and does not look like a mere shadow of her former self. Not that I knew her former self, it is true.”
She stared at his darkened profile and realized he was talking more and in a lighter vein than usual as a deliberate ruse to distract her. And he had succeeded.
“Ralph,” she said, “never try your hand at writing a love story. You would leave your female audience howling with frustration and fury. A good love story needs a good ending, not just a well-they-look-happy-enough sort of ending.”
“There go my aspirations to compete in the literary world with your brother-in-law,” he said.
She stared at his profile in silence. Was this Ralph? She could not see his facial expression, but she would swear there was a smile in his voice.
“You would be doomed to disappointment if you tried,” she said. “No one can outdo Lucy’s Freddie.”
The carriage slowed and she could see that they had arrived at the theater. The light from a number of torches revealed an area crowded with carriages and people on foot. Chloe had always enjoyed going to the theater. She was determined to enjoy it this evening too. No one, surely, had ever been driven from town three times.
* * *
The Duke of Stanbrook was an attentive host with flawless manners. He was outside the theater awaiting their arrival. He opened the carriage door and set down the steps himself instead of waiting for the coachman to descend from the box. He handed Chloe down and introduced both her and Ralph to the Dowager Viscountess Lyngate, a handsome older lady. The duke offered his arm to Chloe and escorted her upstairs to his box, talking to her the whole way while Ralph came behind with Lady Lyngate. Both the foyer and the stairs were crowded with people, to several of whom the duke nodded graciously without stopping.
It was all very smoothly and very deliberately done for her comfort, Chloe thought. Though really she was not feeling very uncomfortable. The ton would not frighten her away this year. And its members would not openly snub the Duchess of Worthingham, she kept reminding herself.
The other four guests were already in the Duke of Stanbrook’s box, and Lord Trentham stepped forward, hand outstretched, as soon as they appeared in the doorway. His large frame almost completely hid the tiered galleries beyond the box and the people who filled them. Chloe did not feel as much on display as she had expected. Again she felt that it had been a deliberate move on Lord Trentham’s part to lessen her ordeal. Ralph’s friends were very kind even if unnecessarily protective. Her fleeing last year had clearly given the impression that she was a fragile weakling.
Gwen greeted her with a warm hug after her husband had wrung her hand and turned to clap Ralph on the shoulder.
“I did not realize when I called on you this afternoon,” Gwen said, “that I would be seeing you again this evening and that I would have the chance to introduce you to my other sister-in-law.”
Chloe looked at the other couple with interest and curiosity as Gwen introduced them. The Earl of Kilbourne was a blond and handsome man, though coincidentally his face too was scarred, presumably from an old battle wound. His countess was small and pretty, with a face that looked as if it habitually smiled. Chloe decided almost immediately that they were a happy couple, though she had no acquaintance with them upon which to base her opinion. Perhaps it was just the romantic in her that wanted it to be true. But she did wonder about poor Viscountess Ravensberg, the lady Lord Kilbourne had been forced to abandon at the altar. She hoped there had been enough happy endings to go around.
Her eyes met Ralph’s, and she was given the distinct impression that he could read her thoughts. There was surely a smile lurking in his eyes and at the corners of his lips, even if it was just a mocking smile.
The Duke of Stanbrook directed Chloe to a plushly cushioned chair next to the balcony rail, and she took her seat—and felt suddenly as though she were in a fish bowl with a large crowd of spectators staring in at her. For the moment she found it impossible to look out, but with her peripheral vision she was aware of the lavishly draped tiers of boxes and galleries, of the myriad colors of silk and satin gowns, of waving fans and jewels glittering in the light of the chandeliers. And she knew without looking that the floor below would be crowded, mostly with men, most of them young and fashionable gentlemen, gossiping among themselves and perusing the occupants of the boxes above them through their quizzing glasses. Ogling the ladies. She remembered them well from six years ago. She remembered the mingled pleasure and indignation of being ogled herself.
Ralph was seated beside her, close enough that she could feel the reassurance of his body heat. She turned her head to smile at him. Soon she was going to have to find the courage to look beyond the box. How would she be able to watch the play otherwise?
“Attending the theater was my very favorite activity when I came to London for the first time,” she told him.
“Not the balls?” he asked her. “Or the soirees and Venetian breakfasts? Or the picnics and evenings at Vauxhall Gardens? Or the masquerades and—”
She laughed and opened her fan. “Oh, all of it,” she said. “I loved it all. I had waited twenty-one years, the last few of them in conscious, impatient anticipation, for my moment to come. And it all far exceeded my expectations and was wonderful beyond words.”
“But the theater was especially wonderful.”
She laughed again. “Everything was especially wonderful. Those were the days of my innocence, and may no one scoff at innocence.”
She closed her fan without having used it and rested it on her lap.
“Do you realize,” the Countess of Kilbourne said, turning her head to address Chloe and Ralph and Gwen and Lord Trentham beyond them, “that we enjoy double the value of the admission price whenever we come to the theater in that we get to view both the play and the rest of the audience? I sometimes think the audience provides more entertainment than the play.”
“It certainly provides most of the food for drawing room conversations the day after,” Gwen agreed. “One does not hear many people discussing the play itself, but the people who a
ttended the play are a different matter.”
“But without the play, Gwen,” Lord Kilbourne said, “the ton would have to find another excuse to gather merely for the pleasure of observing one another and garnering fresh topics for gossip and speculation.”
“Ah, but there is also the daily promenade in Hyde Park,” Lady Lyngate said. “One could hardly say that the beau monde goes there for the mere benefit of riding or walking and taking the air.”
“I see I have invited a party of cynics to share my box,” the Duke of Stanbrook observed.
“I have come to watch the play even if no one else has, George,” Lord Trentham assured him. “I never thought Shakespeare was worth all the fuss people—mostly teachers—make over him, until I saw one of his plays performed a few years ago. Not that I have ever warmed to the tragedies. There is too much gloom in the world as it is without having to watch actors deliver themselves of impassioned laments before stabbing themselves to the heart with their wooden daggers.”
“Cynics and a philistine,” the duke said with a sigh.
“When I attended my first play during my come-out Season six years ago,” Chloe said, “I thought I had died and gone to heaven, though I was far too sophisticated at the time to say so aloud. I probably maintained an expression of bored ennui. And it was a comedy, Lord Trentham. I agree with you on that.”
“It is marvelous, is it not,” the Earl of Kilbourne said, “how one so often loses sophistication as one grows older? Just as one loses the conviction that one knows everything.”
Chloe laughed and fanned her cheeks—and finally summoned up enough courage to turn her head to look out over the theater. The sight that met her eyes fairly took her breath away, as it always did. There was surely not an empty seat left in the whole of the theater—though even as she thought it she spotted one empty box across from their own though slightly farther back from the stage. At first it seemed that every single person in attendance was looking in the direction of their box and specifically at her. It was not so, of course. A more direct look on her part revealed that in fact everyone was scrutinizing everyone else. She remembered that the ton was particularly good at that. Some people were indeed looking toward their box. Many more, though, were not.