Butterflies were all very pretty in a meadow. They were altogether less comfortable in her stomach. She wished suddenly, with a great stabbing of longing, that her father was here. Or Lucy or Graham. Or Aunt Julia. Oh, she wished they were all here. She had never expected to be so all alone on her wedding day. But then she had never expected a wedding day at all, had she? Not in the past six years anyway. And certainly not since last year.
Someone tapped on the bedchamber door behind her and opened it without waiting to be summoned—the duchess. She was dressed in royal blue and wore a large, old-fashioned bonnet with tall plumes.
“Bunker was quite right,” she said. “You look very fine, Chloe, considering the fact that we have not had time to shop for bride clothes. Forgive me, my dear, for backing up Ralph’s wish to marry today by persuading His Grace that it was his suggestion. I regretted being obliged to do so, for it is not what any bride dreams of. Ralph, of course, decided that the time had come when he must marry and therefore, to him, the logical thing to do is simply to marry. He probably gave not a single thought to all the trappings of a wedding that his bride and both families and the whole of the fashionable would both want and expect. As for Worthingham—well, he has been spoiled all his life and does not have the imagination to understand that when some grand event happens, it does not simply materialize out of thin air without causing endless work and great anxiety and discomfort to all sorts of people. Even so, we could have—”
“I understand perfectly, Your Grace,” Chloe assured her.
“Do you?” The duchess sat down on the edge of the bed and looked a little lost suddenly. “Yes, I believe you do. I suspected the truth even before Dr. Gregg confirmed it yesterday, of course. Worthingham had a slight heart attack, though I do not know quite what can be slight about it. It seems something of a contradiction in terms to me. He should be fine as long as he takes things easy and does not eat or drink to excess. At least, that is what Dr. Gregg assured His Grace and me. What he said to Ralph afterward when they went into the village together I do not know. I have been afraid to ask. But I feared the results of protracted wedding plans and drawn-out celebrations. It seemed best to dispense with both. I was very selfish.”
“Perhaps,” Chloe said, “we ought to have waited, Your Grace. Perhaps we still could. Perhaps—”
But the duchess interrupted her.
“Oh, you must not misunderstand me, my dear,” she said. “I want to see Ralph married, and the sooner the better. And the more I think of it, the better pleased I am with his choice. You are older and more experienced than any of the young girls he would have met in the ballrooms of London. And you have a great deal of good sense. He is a troubled man, Chloe. If you had known him as he used to be, you would understand. And I do not mean just his appearance. He left something behind on that battlefield, and he has not found it again since. But at least he is no longer suicidal. All he could seem to say when he was first brought back was that he wanted to die, that he wanted to put an end to it all. He even tried it once, or once that I heard of. His medication had been left within his reach—not just the next dose, but all of it. He almost . . . Well, never mind. It did not happen. But it was what decided my son, his father, who was still alive at the time, to send him with the Duke of Stanbrook to Cornwall, where there was a physician who dealt with cases like Ralph’s. Head cases, that is. He stayed there for three years until we wondered if he would ever come home. But why am I talking like this on your wedding day when we should be in a festive mood and making our way to the chapel?”
Chloe felt chilled. He had wanted to die? He had actually tried to kill himself? And he had spent three years in Cornwall before he was deemed well enough to return home? With empty eyes and empty soul and the inability to love?
Head cases, that is.
What was she doing?
But it was too late now to do anything but what had been set in motion yesterday. The vicar had been engaged to marry them in half an hour’s time. They were not going to the village church. He was coming to the chapel behind the house, nestled among the trees not far from the riverbank where it began to slope downward over the rapids toward the falls. The chapel was used for family christenings, Chloe knew, and for other private family occasions. It had never before, though, been the scene of a wedding.
She offered her arm for the duchess to lean upon.
* * *
They made their slow way out to the chapel, the four of them, past the herb garden, between the vegetable patch on the one side and the neat rows of the flower garden on the other. And on out toward the trees.
The vicar would be awaiting them.
There would be no other guests.
Ralph was quite sure that neither of his grandparents was entirely happy about this wedding with its absence of pomp and noble guests. Even his mother and sisters were not here. Neither was his bride’s father or brother and sister. But the wedding was important to them nonetheless. His grandfather, Ralph suspected, had been more shaken by yesterday’s mild heart attack than he cared to admit. Though he did not speak much about the succession, Ralph believed he would be easier in his mind if he could see his grandson and only immediate heir married. His grandmother too was worried, even though Ralph had not told her what Dr. Gregg said yesterday as the two of them made their way into the village. A heart attack of the sort His Grace had suffered, though mild, he had warned, could be merely the first in a series of such attacks. Any one of them, or a culmination of a series of them, could prove fatal.