“And you confronted your father?” Lord Berwick asked.
“No,” she admitted. “I told him a few weeks in London had been enough, that I had been bored and homesick. The gossip followed me eventually, however. Some people who were staying with our neighbors over Christmas recognized me at a local assembly, and the story spread like wildfire until it reached Papa’s ears. He was incensed. He . . . made a scene. He was stopped only just in time from challenging one of the visitors to a duel. We went home early, and then I asked him. He would not give me a direct answer. He told me he had loved my mother from the time he first set eyes upon her and that she had loved him. He told me he had always loved me, before my birth and every day after. I was his firstborn, his beloved elder daughter, he said. He told me there were some redheads among his ancestors. But he was vague about exactly when he had married Mama—I did not know the date, I realized—and I did not press the point or make any attempt to find out another way. I was born the February after that Season. I do not believe the gossip. But you ought to be aware of it, I suppose. If you are considering my proposed bargain, that is. Which I do not suppose you are.”
She moved at last, turning to face the house. She had really not thought this through carefully enough last night, had she? She had thought only of proposing her bargain in a lucid and dispassionate way. It had seemed a real possibility, a marriage that would be of equal benefit to them both. She had not really considered the personal baggage she brought with her, all of which would deter any sane man from wanting any connection whatsoever with her. And now she had spilled it all out, and she felt drained and humiliated. And appalled at her own temerity.
“I understand,” she said, “that marrying me would be no bargain at all for you, Lord Berwick, even if it would save you the bother of having to choose a bride in London. Please forget that I suggested it.”
“I do not believe I add a poor memory to my other shortcomings, Miss Muirhead,” he said. “And it would have to be very poor.”
Indeed.
Suddenly the sun seemed very hot even though it must still be quite early morning. Her cheeks were burning. He was not going to say anything more, she realized, and she had nothing further to say. If she could have stepped straight into oblivion at that moment, she would gladly have done it. As it was, the house seemed an impossible distance away.
She made her way toward it on legs that felt a bit like stilts without knee joints. She could almost feel his eyes—those cold, blank eyes—on her back.
* * *
Ralph had breakfast with his grandfather. Fortunately there was no one else in the breakfast parlor. It was Her Grace’s habit, he knew from past experience, to rise at eleven after partaking of a cup of chocolate in bed.
The two of them spent the rest of the morning in the duke’s study, talking on a variety of topics until the old gentleman nodded off over a cup of coffee. Ralph sat silently watching him and remembering the vigorous, half-fearsome figure of his grandfather as he had been years ago, full of barks and fury at any sign of misbehavior, but with eyes that twinkled incongruously. One of his waistcoat pockets had always slightly bulged out of shape with the sweetmeats he carried there.
Ralph went riding after luncheon. He went to see his grandfather’s physician and found him just returning from a distant farm, to which he had been summoned to set the broken arm of a laborer who had tumbled from a barn loft.
His Grace was not suffering from any particular malady, Dr. Gregg assured the Earl of Berwick. Except old age, of course. His heart was not as strong as it had once been, as was to be expected, and he had a tendency to fall victim to any chill that happened to be lurking in the neighborhood. He suffered from the rheumatics and a touch of gout and indigestion and many of the other ills age was prey to. He was frail when compared with a younger man. But he might outlive them all for anything the physician could say to the contrary.
Ralph thanked him, shook him by the hand, and took his leave.
His grandmother was unnecessarily fearful, then. Grandpapa was not at death’s door. However, no matter how close the duke was to his end, the fact remained that there was only the one heir. It was that heir’s clear duty to marry and produce sons of his own, preferably while his grandfather was still alive.
Ralph determinedly kept his mind off the peculiar events of the early morning. It was made easier by the fact that Miss Muirhead did not put in an appearance for the rest of the day, and when the duke remarked upon her absence during dinner, Her Grace explained that the poor young lady was feeling under the weather and was keeping to her own room for fear of infecting either of Their Graces.
“She really is kindness itself,” Her Grace remarked.
After that Ralph was more determined than ever to leave in the morning. He spent the evening with both grandparents and ended up reading aloud to them while his grandmother knitted and his grandfather rested his head against the chair back and closed his eyes. The duchess looked speakingly at Ralph when he began to snore softly. Ralph read on.
He took his leave the next morning and drove back to London in his curricle under heavy clouds that again threatened rain at every moment but did not actually shed any. The weather exactly matched Ralph’s mood. His future course had been set for him, and there was no longer any possibility of procrastinating. The days of his freedom—if he ever had been free—were effectively over. What if no one was ever free, though? What if everything was preordained? But only deeper depression could come from thinking thus, and he shrugged off those thoughts and turned to others.