Ralph came back into the room as she was blowing her nose. His eyes met Chloe’s and he came toward them and went down on his haunches before his grandmother’s chair. He held out his hands to her as she tucked away her handkerchief.
“Grandmama,” he said when she took them. “I will send you up to your room now and have Bunker summoned. Chloe will accompany you and then go to her room. You must both lie down and try to sleep.”
His voice was quiet, even gentle, but there was a thread of implacable will in it, and Chloe guessed that he might be somehow transformed by his new role, that he would take his responsibilities very seriously. Perhaps, she thought, they would even be his salvation, though she did not know quite what she meant by that.
He drew his grandmother to her feet and Chloe stood too and offered her arm.
“But perhaps you would be more comfortable in one of the guest rooms, Grandmama,” Ralph suggested.
“Because only our dressing rooms stand between my room and your grandfather’s, do you mean?” she asked. “But I am not afraid. He would never have harmed a hair on my head while he lived. Why would he harm me now that he is dead? Besides, he is no longer there, you know. No one is.”
He looked bleakly at her as she took Chloe’s arm and they went upstairs together. Chloe was back down no more than five minutes later, however. He was still in the drawing room, gazing into the fire, one arm propped on the mantel above his shoulder. He turned his head and raised his eyebrows at sight of her.
“What are you going to do?” she asked him.
“No one knows anything of what has happened here in the last twenty-four hours,” he said. “No one knows of our marriage. No one knows of the duke’s passing. It is a dizzying thought, is it not? There were no guests at our wedding. We chose not to wait. Now, for the next big event, we must wait, for there are all sorts of people who will want to be here for the funeral. He was the Duke of Worthingham. There are family members to inform—about both events—and friends and his closest associates as well as some dignitaries to inform of my grandfather’s passing. There must be no delay if they are to have the chance to travel here in time. Notices must be put in the papers. And there are all sorts of other details to attend to, some of which I have probably not even thought of yet. I have summoned my grandfather’s secretary to meet me in the study. He is my own secretary now, I suppose. He is probably waiting for me there already.”
Something inside Chloe turned cold and still.
. . . for there are all sorts of people who will want to be here for the funeral.
Of course. Oh, of course.
There would be no setting out today or tomorrow for Hampshire and then, after a visit with Papa, for Elmwood Manor and home. There would be no setting out until after the funeral, which would be attended by all sorts of people. There are family members to inform and friends and his closest associates as well as some dignitaries. And perhaps—even probably—there would be no setting out even then. For surely Elmwood would no longer be their principal home. Manville Court would be.
She felt a moment’s dizziness and shook it off. This was not a time to think of herself.
“There will be letters to write, then,” she said briskly. “Many of them and not all of them identical. And the notices to the papers will need to be composed and copied several times. That is a great deal for two men to do with so little time. I shall come with you.”
He turned fully away from the fire and frowned at her.
“You need not concern yourself,” he said, his tone almost chilly. “You have been up half the night, and you have been busy. Go and rest.”
“You have been up just as long,” she pointed out. “There is a great deal to do, and I shall help you do it.”
He looked as if he was going to argue or perhaps issue orders. He appeared suddenly haughty and autocratic. And then an expression almost like a smile flitted across his face before it was gone.
“I am reminded,” he said, “that I really do not know you at all, Chloe. You intend to be more than just the mother of my children, do you?”
“What I agreed to be,” she told him, “and what I promised to be yesterday in church, was your wife. Having your children is just one of my obligations.”
“Obligations,” he said softly.
“They are not always negative things.” She smiled at him suddenly. “I like writing letters.”
But she felt as though something cold was clutching her heart. She had not been expecting any of this. How foolish of her. Despite all the signs and warnings that had stared her in the face since she arrived at Manville Court, she had not even thought of this happening in the near future. And now the future had become the present.
“Come, then.” He strode past her to the door and then stopped and looked back at her, still frowning. “I suppose trotting along at my heels is another obligation, is it? Take my arm.”
* * *
Arthur Lloyd, the late duke’s secretary, already had lists drawn up of people he considered needed to be informed and things that had to be done. Chloe sat down beside him and Ralph looked over their shoulders, though the secretary had tried to relinquish his own chair to His Grace. And together they completed the lists and divided up the tasks.
Chloe had made it clear that she was not going to simply go away. She undertook to write to her brother and sister and aunt and uncle—Lord and Lady Easterly. She also wrote a letter to her father to be included with the more formal note Ralph composed. She made several copies in an elegant sloping hand of the wedding announcement and the death notice that Lloyd had drafted and Ralph had approved after Chloe had suggested a few minor adjustments to the wording. Ralph wrote to his mother and sisters and his six fellow Survivors, while Chloe and Lloyd dealt with the formidable number of more formal notes that needed to be sent to various other people of importance for whom the announcement in the papers would not be sufficient.