Ralph set down his own glass, rested his elbows on the arms of his chair, and steepled his fingers beneath his chin. He settled his gaze on the fire.
“I will make any woman’s life a misery,” he said. “I can choose a lady and marry her, George. I can give her all the security of my name and wealth and prospects. I can bed her and impregnate her. That is all, though. And it is not enough.”
“Many women would call it paradise,” George said gently.
“I think not,” Ralph said.
“No,” George agreed softly after the silence had stretched awhile. “It is not.”
Ralph’s eyes moved to his. George agreed that a marriage devoid of all feeling, even affection, would be hell on earth. He had never talked of his own marriage, which had begun at a very young age and ended when his wife committed suicide after the death of their son in the Peninsula.
“There are all those young ladies out there,” Ralph said, “eager to find husbands at the great marriage mart. Eligible husbands. I am as eligible as anyone could possibly be. Any one of them would be ecstatic to net me, even if I do look like this.” He freed one hand in order to gesture toward his scarred cheek.
“Some say the scar makes you more dashing,” George said.
“I have to marry one of those girls,” Ralph said harshly. “Soon. And then I will shatter her dreams and ruin her life.”
“And yet,” George said, “the very fact that you know it and pity the young lady you will choose demonstrates that you care. You do care. You just have not fully understood that yet.”
Ralph gazed broodingly at him.
“I should hate you,” he said.
George raised his eyebrows.
“For saving my life,” Ralph told him. “More than once.”
It was something they had not spoken of for a long time—those occasions when Ralph had tried to take his own life, the further occasions when he had wanted to do it but had talked about it instead until he had been persuaded out of it.
“And do you?” George asked. “Hate me?”
Ralph did not answer him. He transferred his gaze back to the fire.
“There is one woman,” he said, and stopped.
He did not want to think about that one woman.
George was silent again.
“Did you ever meet Lady Angela Allandale last year?” Ralph asked.
“The Incomparable?” George asked. “She had an army of young bucks and a few older ones dangling after her, but would settle for none of them. Is she back this year? Is she this one woman?”
“And did you hear,” Ralph asked, “any scandal about a young lady who looked exactly like her and was almost certainly a by-blow of the Marquess of Hitching?”
“I did, yes,” George said, “and thought how unfortunate it was that the poor lady had inherited his very distinctive coloring and looked so exactly like his legitimate daughter that she was almost bound to arouse gossip. She was not strictly illegitimate though, if I remember correctly. She was the acknowledged daughter of some baronet. Hmm. Muirhead, I believe?”
“Yes,” Ralph said.
“Is she the one woman?” George asked.
“She is staying with my grandmother at Manville Court,” Ralph explained. “Her mother, now deceased, was Her Grace’s goddaughter. Miss Muirhead is there, I believe, because she feels uncomfortable at home with her father, who insists that the gossip is so much nonsense yet almost came to public blows with someone who brought that gossip into his neighborhood. She suggested a mutually beneficial bargain to me yesterday. She wants a husband but no emotional tie. She knows that I need a wife but have no emotional tie to offer.”
“A match made in heaven, then,” George said softly.
“Perhaps,” Ralph agreed.
There was a lengthy, rather heavy silence during which a log shifted and crackled in the fire, sending a shower of sparks up the chimney.
“Tell me why you are considering making what would appear to be an unwise connection with this unfortunate lady,” George said. “Is it perhaps because you believe you will end up hurting her less than you would one of the innocents just out of the schoolroom? Be careful if that is so, Ralph. We can all be hurt. Even ladies who have become social pariahs. Even you. But tell me.”
Ralph gazed broodingly into the fire before he spoke again.
We can all be hurt.
4
It was her last chance, Chloe had thought yesterday when she made her proposition to the Earl of Berwick. Her last chance. Well, if that was what it had been, then it was gone today. Just as he was.
The excuse she had made for the rest of yesterday of feeling under the weather had hardly been a lie. The thought of having to face him again had made her stomach churn with threatened nausea. So had the thought of facing anyone else. Or even herself for that matter. She felt she had somehow abused the duchess’s hospitality. Her Grace would be horrified if she knew what Chloe had suggested to her precious grandson.
Chloe had sat cross-legged on her bed for hours on end staring straight ahead, the curtains pulled across her window, her shawl hugged about her shoulders and across her bosom. If she got to her feet, she had thought once or twice when she had been tempted, she might see herself in the dressing table mirror. And if she got to her feet, she would have to admit that life went on and that she had no choice but to go on with it, day after dreary day until the end, which doubtless would be far distant just to spite her. She would probably live to the age of ninety.