“What do you think, Ralph?” his sister asked, making the same flourishing gesture toward Chloe that Gwen had made a few moments before.
He stopped in his tracks and took his time about answering.
“It was an inspired decision of yours to cut it off, Chloe,” he said at last. “It is perfect, and you look perfectly beautiful.”
He had an audience, of course. He could hardly say she would have been better advised to cut her head off as well as her hair. But Chloe bit her lower lip and felt warmed through to the very heart. She blinked back tears.
How very idiotic of her!
. . . you look perfectly beautiful.
And then her heart—the very one that had just been warmed by his compliment—turned a complete somersault in her bosom, even if only figuratively.
For he smiled.
Right into her eyes.
13
Later in the afternoon Chloe found her brother out on the terrace with Mr. Nelson and her brothers-in-law, Sir Wendell Harrison and Viscount Keilly. She slid her hand through his arm and listened to the conversation for a while.
“Shall we stroll down to the river?” she suggested for his ears only after a few minutes. She did not want them all to come. She wanted him to herself for an hour or so.
She was dearly fond of Graham. He was a man of principle and integrity, both rare qualities among the gentlemen she knew. There were those who despised his lack of ambition or merely dismissed him as a failure and surely a disappointment to his family. There were those who accused him of being less than manly. He was never swayed by what others said of him. He would not allow hurt feelings to influence his actions, though he certainly did have feelings and could suffer hurt.
“Will you be happy, Chloe?” he asked her when they had walked beyond earshot of the other men. “As a duchess? With this grand place as your home? With Stockwood as your husband—Worthingham, that is? I really am happy that you are married at last, of course. I know you have longed for marriage and motherhood. I always thought, though, that you would thrive upon quiet domesticity with a husband of modest fortune with whom you enjoyed a mutual affection. I felt your pain when Lucy ruined the Season for which you had waited with such patience and your chance to find both love and an eligible mate. Last year I was hopeful that you might be given another chance. You were still young and still beautiful and you had Aunt Julia’s influence behind you. That was most unfortunate. But there is no point in going back over that. Will you be happy? Can you be?”
“No one held a shotgun to my head,” she told him. “Or to Ralph’s. We married because we wanted to do so. We did not expect our lives to be turned so topsy-turvy within twenty-four hours of the wedding, it is true. But Ralph’s grandfather was elderly and not in the best of health, and it was to be expected that sooner or later we would be facing all this. I do not regret our impulsiveness, though. I have passed the age of expecting that love and romance, marriage and happily-ever-after are all synonymous terms. I have marriage and I hope I will have motherhood. I expect a life of more or less quiet domesticity in the country. It is what Ralph has promised me.”
Graham was frowning.
“But a spell in London will come first, surely,” he said. “Everyone was agreed at luncheon that you must make an appearance there despite the fact that the old duke died so recently. Noble families, like royal families, are not allowed much time to be alone with their grief. How do you feel about going back to town, Chloe? I know you found all that foolish gossip rather distressing last year. And there were the events of six years ago.”
The dowager countess, Ralph’s mother, had brought up the subject at luncheon. It was Ralph’s duty, now that the funeral was over, she had said, to present himself in London without delay, to make his bow at court and take his seat in the House of Lords as soon as he received his writ of summons. And it was no less his duty, having married hastily just before his grandfather’s passing, to present his duchess to the ton at all the best social entertainments of the Season. She would help Chloe clothe herself suitably—not in mourning, but not in bright, flamboyant colors either. Her eyes had touched upon Chloe’s hair, and she had looked slightly pained.
“Green,” Great-Aunt Mary had said. “She should wear green. I never could wear it myself. It always made me look bilious. I always envied girls who could carry it off.”
“There must be a grand reception at Stockwood House,” the dowager duchess had added. “Perhaps even a ball, Chloe. I do not believe it would be considered disrespectful to my dear Worthingham’s memory. Life must go on.”
“Oh, will Freddie and I be invited?” Lucy had asked, looking wistful.
Ralph had let them all talk without responding, and Chloe had followed his lead. They would not go, of course. He had promised her. It must happen at some time in the future, she supposed. Next year, perhaps, or the year after.
“We will be staying here,” she told Graham now as they came to the river and stepped onto the stone bridge. “Ralph has said so. He does not allow himself to be ruled by his mother and sisters, and he is tired of London.”
She stopped halfway across the bridge in order to gaze off into the shade of the trees, where she had walked with Ralph just a little over a week ago. It seemed far longer ago than that. What had impelled him to risk a dunking or worse by wading across the rapids to find her a perfect stone? And she would swear he had enjoyed those moments of boyish impulse. The stone was in the top left-hand drawer of her dressing table, on top of her handkerchiefs.