“Mama,” Ralph said. “Nora and Keilly, may I have the pleasure of presenting my wife? My mother, my sister, and my brother-in-law, Chloe.”
At least he had not called her his duchess.
The dowager countess was a handsome lady and looked much younger than Chloe had expected. Her daughter was a younger version of her. Ralph resembled them both.
The dowager looked at her with colder eyes even than her son’s and inclined her head with almost exaggerated graciousness. Viscount Keilly made her a graceful bow, and Lady Keilly looked her over from head to foot before raising her eyebrows and looking away.
Chloe was the only one of them to curtsy, and she was left with the feeling that she had somehow committed a social blunder. Of course, she did outrank them all, a thought that caused her an inward grimace. And she could not think of a thing to say. How could she welcome them to her home, after all, when they must know it so well as the home of the late duke and the dowager duchess? How could they not see her as the most obnoxious of gold diggers and intruders, especially at this time of family sorrow?
“Ah, there is the housekeeper,” her mother-in-law said, glancing up to the open doors of the house and reaching out a hand to take Ralph’s arm. “You may show us to our rooms, Mrs. Loftus. The usual ones, it is to be hoped? And Weller will see to it that our bags are brought up. We will join you shortly for tea in the drawing room, Mother.”
The dowager duchess had taken Lady Keilly’s offered arm.
“I am quite sure dear Chloe will have made all the arrangements to everyone’s satisfaction,” Her Grace said. “I absolutely do not know how either Ralph or I would have coped with the trials of the past few days without her.”
Lord Keilly was following his wife up the steps into the house, his hands clasped at his back.
Chloe trailed along in their wake. Asserting herself with the servants had been the easy part of her new role, she realized. They had made it easy. This was not an auspicious start to her acquaintance with her in-laws. But at least it had begun. Sometimes waiting and imagining were far worse than actually doing.
The situation improved with the next arrival a mere half hour later.
Lady Ormsby, Her Grace’s widowed sister, came in a carriage so old and so ornate that it would not have looked out of place in a museum. It was so hedged about with servants—a maid, liveried footmen, stout outriders, an ancient coachman—and so loaded down with baggage that Chloe fully expected six persons to emerge from the interior, not one.
“Emily,” the lady said after looking sharply about the terrace, and she folded Her Grace to her ample bosom. “Emily, my sweet one. And so ends one of the great love stories of the century—this century and the last. I cannot begin to imagine what your life will be like without Edward. How did he die? Peacefully, I hope, which is more than I can say for my poor Hubert. You must ply me with tea, which Ralph will lace with a drop of brandy, and tell me all about it. There, there. I suppose you have not had a good weep. You never were a watering pot, unlike Caroline, God rest her soul, who used to drown us as well as Mama and Papa with floods of tears at the merest provocation. Even the sight of a dead field mouse would set her off. Do you remember that mouse and the burial she insisted upon arranging for it? You look very somber and very delicious in black, I must say, Ralph. And quite like a pirate with that scar. And what is this about your marrying without inviting a soul? I would be as cross as a bear with you if your poor grandpapa had not turned up his toes the very next day and ensured that all my sensibilities must be devoted to my poor dear sister. Is this the bride?”
And she raised a long-handled lorgnette to her eyes and turned them, hugely magnified, upon Chloe.
“Great-aunt Mary,” Ralph said, making her a bow, “may I present my wife? Lady Ormsby, Chloe, Grandmama’s elder sister.”
“My lady.” Chloe decided to curtsy again, whether it was the correct thing to do or not, and the lorgnette remained trained upon her for a few moments before being snapped downward.
“Your grandmama was Clementine West,” Lady Ormsby told her, “or at least she was after her marriage. I cannot remember who she was before that. She was Emmy’s bosom bow, however. She was a great beauty, a fact I would have resented to the point of tantrums if I had not already been married to Ormsby. But her beauty did not outdo yours, girl, though where you got your coloring from the Lord only knows unless the gossips have the right of it, which they very rarely do. You may thumb your nose at the lot of them now, however. No one is going to give the cut direct to a duchess with fiery red hair, especially when she looks so dramatic in black and has married a pirate. You may kiss my cheek, but be careful not to smear my rouge or my maid will sulk for a week.”
She declined the offer to be shown to her room. She linked her arm through her sister’s instead and led the way to the drawing room, instructing the housekeeper as she passed to send up a large pot of tea without delay.
“If you will pardon me for the familiarity, Duchess,” she threw over her shoulder at Chloe.
Ralph looked sidelong at Chloe as they followed behind.
“Most families seem to have at least one eccentric among their number,” he murmured. “Usually someone’s aunt.”
Chloe smiled. It was the closest he had come to joking with her.
* * *
The next morning brought some neighbors, as the previous days had done, come to pay their respects. Chloe welcomed each one, for though all regarded her with open curiosity, none appeared hostile. And of course they had not come primarily to meet her. They had, after all, seen her in church with the duchess on a number of occasions. They had come to commiserate with Ralph’s grandmother and with her daughter-in-law and grandchildren.