He wanted her with a ravenous hunger—on the morning of his grandfather’s funeral.
She opened her eyes. After a moment they focused upon him and she smiled.
“You slept,” she said.
“I did.”
He took her each morning before rising. It was necessary to do so, after all. He could see from the expression on her face that she expected it this morning too, that perhaps she would even welcome it. He set a hand on her shoulder, as he usually did, to turn her onto her back. But before she could move, his fingers tightened and then released her.
“It is going to be a busy day,” he said curtly. “Have another hour of sleep. I am going out for a ride.”
And he turned away from her and his own desire for her, swung his legs over the side of the bed, sat up, and reached down for his dressing gown.
He did not look back as he left her bedchamber.
* * *
The comforting thing about difficult days, Chloe had learned from experience, was that the sun rose at the start of them and set at the end just as it did on any other day. And there was always the assurance of better days ahead.
She faced the day of the late Duke of Worthingham’s funeral with a determined courage. For it was not about herself. She was not to be a central player even though she was the wife of the new duke and must welcome an unknown number of members of the ton into her home during the course of the day. It would not be an ordeal impossible to face. She had greeted Ralph’s mother and sisters and other members of his family during the last two days, after all, and in many ways that had been worse. She would get through today, and then everyone would go away again and she would be able to relax at last. She would begin her new life in earnest here at Manville Court.
A large number of outsiders did indeed attend the funeral in the village church during the morning and then followed the somber cortege on its slow procession to the family burial plot beside the chapel where Ralph and Chloe had married just the week before. Everyone then proceeded to the house to partake of refreshments and to express their sympathies.
Chloe did not have to face any of them directly until that last phase of the proceedings. She was introduced then to virtually everyone, including people with whom she had a previous acquaintance. Most nodded graciously but distantly to her. The occasion made that quite acceptable. Some regarded her with frosty, haughty stares and were only as civil as good manners dictated. But at least they were good mannered. A few—a small few—were amiable and even engaged her in conversation and congratulated her on her marriage. No one gave her the cut direct.
And there were, of course, those who had come purely for Chloe’s sake—her father and brother and sister, and also Lord Easterly with Aunt Julia, Papa’s sister. Her aunt and uncle hugged Chloe and congratulated her on her marriage and smiled at her with genuine warmth.
Sarah Toucher, Ralph’s middle sister, and her husband arrived at the church only just in time for the service and had no opportunity to talk to anyone before it was over. Sarah made a point of seeking out Chloe at the graveside after the burial, though, and hugged her briefly.
“Amelia and Nora both wrote long letters to tell me all about you,” she said. “I am so pleased Ralph had the good sense to marry you. I was very much afraid he would choose some insipid miss straight from the schoolroom, someone of whom my sisters would have approved with unqualified delight. If no one has yet told you, I am the rebel of the family and proved it when I rejected the very flattering offer of an earl three times my age during my first Season and married Andy instead. He was as rich as Croesus and I loved him to distraction, but to my family those details did not make up for the fact that he was a mere mister and that his maternal grandfather, the one from whom most of the money came, had been in trade.” With that she hugged Chloe briefly again and then turned to leave. “Now, I must go to poor Grandmama. She will be feeling more than desolate today. She and Grandpapa adored each other, you know. Oh, you probably do know. You were living here, were you not, when Ralph met you?”
And she was gone in a whirl of black crepe and dark facial veil. But it was touches like her unexpectedly friendly greeting that sustained Chloe through the day. She did not dwell upon her own discomfort at being surrounded once more by members of the ton, however. Much of her attention was focused upon the dowager duchess, who bore herself with stoic dignity throughout the long day, but who must be inwardly reeling from grief and exhaustion. And most of the rest of her attention was upon Ralph, who wore his new ducal mantle with dignity and looked like a marble statue.
She tried not to remember the early morning. What was it that had sent him away from her bed so abruptly? His abandonment had felt like a slap across the face. Yet his words had suggested kindness. It is going to be a busy day. Have another hour of sleep.
There had been a fleeting expression on his face before he turned away and got up from the bed, but she had not been able to explain to herself what it had been. Disgust? But it had not been that definite. Revulsion? No, that was basically the same thing as disgust. Disapproval? But he was the one who had unpinned her hair last night and made her look like a wanton.
There had been something in that expression, something to explain why he had avoided the usual morning intimacy. He had said last night that he desired her, but this morning he had turned away even from what he normally considered his duty.
Her hair?
She did not have any time during the day to dwell upon the disturbing shifts in their relationship that had happened through the night, but the puzzle of it was there in the back of her mind all day, like a dull, heavy ache. Something had shifted. She knew him better, yes, understood him more fully after listening to at least part of his story last night. She had heard enough to understand that the three years he had spent in Cornwall had not really healed him at all. His physical hurts had been dealt with and perhaps the worst of his suicidal tendencies. But the blackness weighing upon his soul was still there and perhaps always would be.