Not that she had ever met him in person to judge for herself, it was true. But she did know him by reputation. He and her brother, Graham, had been at school together. Ralph Stockwood, who had since assumed his father’s courtesy title of Earl of Berwick, had been a charismatic leader there. He had been liked and admired and emulated by almost all the other boys, even though he had also been one of a close-knit group of four handsome, athletic, clever boys. Graham had spoken critically and disapprovingly of Ralph Stockwood, though Chloe had always suspected that he envied that favored inner circle.
After school, the four friends all took up commissions in the same prestigious cavalry regiment and went off to the Peninsula to fight the forces of Napoleon Bonaparte, while Graham went to Oxford to study theology and become a clergyman. He had arrived home from the final term at school upset because Ralph Stockwood had called him a sniveling prig and lily-livered coward. Chloe did not know the context in which the insult had been hurled, but she had not felt kindly disposed toward Graham’s erstwhile schoolmate ever since. And she never had liked the sound of him. She did not like boys, or men, who lorded it arrogantly over others and accepted their homage as a right.
Not many months after they had embarked for the Peninsula, Lieutenant Stockwood’s three friends had been killed in the same battle, and he had been carried off the field and then home to England so severely wounded that he had not been expected to survive.
Chloe had felt sorry for him at the time, but her sympathies had soon been alienated again. Graham, in his capacity as a clergyman, had called upon him in London a day or two after he had been brought home from Portugal. Graham had been admitted to the sickroom, but the wounded man had sworn foully at him and ordered him to get out and never come back.
Chloe did not expect to like the Earl of Berwick, then, even if he was the Duke of Worthingham’s heir and the duchess’s beloved only grandson. She had not forgiven his description of her brother as a lily-livered coward. Graham was a pacifist. That did not make him a coward. Indeed, it took a great deal of courage to stand up for peace against men who were in love with war. And she had not forgiven the earl for cursing Graham after he had been injured without even listening to what Graham had come to say. The fact that he had undoubtedly been in great pain at the time did not excuse such rudeness to an old school friend. She had decided long ago that the earl was brash, arrogant, self-centered, even heartless.
And he was on his way to Manville Court. He was coming at the duchess’s behest, it must be added, not because he had chosen of his own free will to visit the grandparents who doted on him. Chloe suspected that the summons had something to do with the duke’s health, which had been causing Her Grace some concern for the past couple of months. She fancied that he was coughing more than usual and that his habit of covering his heart with one hand when he did so was a bad sign. He did not complain of feeling unwell—not, at least, in Chloe’s hearing—and he saw his physician only when the duchess insisted. Afterward he called the doctor an old quack who knew no better than to prescribe pills and potions that served only to make the duke feel ill.
Chloe did not know what the true state of the duke’s health was, but she did know that he had celebrated his eighty-fifth birthday last autumn, and eighty-five was an awfully advanced age to be.
However it was, the Earl of Berwick had been summoned and he was expected today. Chloe did not want to meet him. She knew she would not like him. More important, perhaps, she admitted reluctantly to herself, she did not want him to meet her, a sort of charity guest of his grandmother’s, an aging, twenty-seven-year-old spinster with a doubtful reputation and no prospects. A pathetic creature, in fact.
But the thought finally triggered laughter—at her own expense. She had whipped herself into a thoroughly cross and disagreeable mood, and it just would not do. She got determinedly to her feet. She must go up to her room without delay and change her dress and make sure her hair was tidy. She might be a poor aging spinster with no prospects, but there was no point in being an abject one who was worthy only of pity or scorn. That would be too excruciatingly humiliating.
She hurried on her way upstairs, shaking herself free of the self-pity in which she had languished for too long. Goodness, if she hated her life so much, then it was high time she did something about it. The only question was what? Was there anything she could do? A woman had so few options. Sometimes, indeed, it seemed she had none at all, especially when she had a past, even if she was in no way to blame for any of it.
* * *
When he found his grandmother’s letter beside his plate at breakfast one morning along with a small pile of invitations, Ralph Stockwood, Earl of Berwick, had only recently returned to London from a three-week stay in the country.
He had come to town because at least it offered the promise of some diversion for body and mind, even if he did not expect to be vastly entertained. He would no doubt lounge about at his usual haunts in his usual aimless way for the duration of the spring Season. The whole of the beau monde had moved here too for the parliamentary session and for the frenzy of social entertainments with which it amused itself with unrelenting vigor for those few months. Ralph did not have a seat in the House of Lords, his title being a mere courtesy one, while procuring a seat in the House of Commons had never held any real appeal for him. But he always came anyway and attended as many parties and balls and concerts and the like as would alleviate the boredom of his evenings. He whiled away his days at White’s Club and frequented Tattersall’s to look over the horses and Jackson’s boxing saloon to exercise his body and Manton’s shooting gallery to maintain the steadiness of eye and hand. He spent as many hours with his tailor and his boot maker and hatmaker as were necessary to keep himself well turned out, though he had never aspired to the dandy set. He did whatever he needed to do to keep himself busy.