The day also brought word of posting inns for miles around filling up with persons of high rank come to attend tomorrow’s solemn rituals.
The afternoon brought more travelers. Lady Ormsby, who insisted that Chloe call her Great-Aunt Mary, spotted the carriage approaching along the drive and drew Ralph’s attention to it.
“There is a crest on the side panel,” she said. “I would recognize it in a moment if I were a quarter of a mile closer to it or if these eyes were fifty years younger. Lorgnettes are perfectly useless for anything more practical than intimidating the presumptuous. Whose carriage is it, Ralph?”
“The Duke of Stanbrook’s,” he said, after moving up beside her.
“I suppose,” his mother said, “he will expect to stay here. You must have him informed, Mother, that only family is to stay. Or I shall do it if you find it difficult. I have never warmed to the man.”
“I shall go down and meet him,” Ralph said, and he turned to Chloe with a curious light in his eyes. “Come with me?”
The Duke of Stanbrook, he explained briefly as they made their way down to the terrace, was the owner of Penderris Hall in Cornwall, where he had spent three years recovering from his wounds.
Chloe held back while Ralph strode across the terrace to open the carriage door himself and set down the steps. The duke was considerably older than her husband, tall and handsome in an austere sort of way, with dark hair silvering at the temples. He came quickly and wordlessly down the steps and caught Ralph up in a tight hug. She saw both their faces before they broke apart and was startled to see raw emotion in both.
Then they turned back to the carriage and Ralph held out a hand to help someone else alight—a lady. She was small and blond and very pretty, and she set her hands on his shoulders and stood on tiptoe to kiss him on his good cheek and murmur something Chloe could not hear.
Another person followed her down, a great giant of a man with close-cropped dark hair and a face that was all frowns and ferocity as he caught Ralph up in a hug even tighter than the duke’s.
“Ah, lad,” he said after a few silent moments, “we came with George as soon as we heard.”
Chloe found them even more intimidating than her in-laws for some inexplicable reason. For she sensed immediately that they were of a world shared by her husband, a world from which she was excluded. Ralph had been transformed before her. The deadness had gone from his eyes. And instantly, unreasonably, she resented these people. She was his wife, yet she had never until this moment glimpsed any of this . . . animation in him.
They all turned together, rather as his family had done yesterday, suddenly aware, it seemed, of her silent presence a short distance away. Ralph extended one arm toward her, his fingers slightly beckoning, putting her somehow in the wrong for not having approached of her own volition. His eyes held hers, and they were blank and unreadable again.
“Chloe,” he said, “let me present the Duke of Stanbrook and Lord and Lady Trentham. My wife, the Duchess of Worthingham.”
The two men regarded her gravely. The outsider, they seemed to be thinking. Lady Trentham smiled with unaffected warmth, however, and she came limping toward Chloe and took both of Chloe’s hands in hers.
“Duchess,” she said, “what a wretched honeymoon you are having, you poor thing. And how sad that we cannot celebrate your new marriage with you just yet. I am delighted for you both, nevertheless. All the Survivors are dearly fond of one another, as I am sure you know, but they have opened their close circle to welcome each of the newly acquired wives. Hugo and I have been married for not quite a year, and there have been four other marriages since, counting yours. I do hope you will be as happy as the rest of us once this very sad occasion is behind you.”
The survivors? But Chloe did not ask.
“Thank you,” she said, smiling back and then looking from one to the other of the men. “And welcome to Manville Court.”
The Duke of Stanbrook was holding out a hand for hers. “Duchess,” he said, taking it in both his own as he looked directly into her eyes, “I strongly suspected when Ralph left London a few days ago that I would be meeting you soon, though I did not suspect it would be under such sad circumstances. I am sorry about that. But I am glad Ralph has you to bring him some comfort.”
“Let me look at you, lass,” Lord Trentham said, his amiable voice at variance with the fierceness of his facial expression. He took her right hand in his large one. “Someone said you had the reddest hair of anyone else they had ever seen, and I can see they did not exaggerate. Ralph has found himself a rare beauty. Have I said something wrong, Gwendoline?”
But his wife merely shook her head slightly and laughed as she linked an arm through his.
Ralph gestured toward the steps and the main doors. “You will, of course, be staying here,” he said. “All the guest rooms have been prepared.”
“We would not dream of imposing,” the duke said. “We will stay in the village or wherever there is room for us.”
“But we would not dream of allowing you to stay anywhere else but here,” Chloe said. “You are my husband’s friends.”
And it was not so much resentment she felt against them, she realized, as jealousy pure and simple, for clearly they were his friends while she was not. She was merely his wife, to whom he had promised respect but never affection.
She led the way inside and paused to have a word with Mrs. Loftus before following them upstairs.