Chloe had even shed tears over his grandmother this morning.
“But it is her home,” she protested. “I have been sitting here feeling like a usurper although I know I am not. I miss her already—and your grandpapa.”
“Your father is going to be staying in London too for a while,” he said. “Did he say anything before he left?”
Chloe and her father had strolled out to the old oak tree together while the carriage was being loaded with baggage and Freddie Nelson was delivering himself of a bombastic speech to Hugo on the topic of his newest unfinished play.
“Only that he hopes we will be happy,” she said.
Ah. He had not told her, then.
Ralph looked at the work she was doing. She was embroidering an exquisitely fancy W across one corner of a large handkerchief of fine linen. W for Worthingham?
“For me?” he asked her.
“Yes.”
He felt immediate shame for his irritation with her.
“Thank you,” he said, and briefly he squeezed her shoulder.
He wondered if he would ever feel perfectly at ease in her company—or she in his. Her hand, he noticed, was trembling ever so slightly as she tried to find the right place for her needle. He was making her self-conscious. He dropped his hand and made his way back to his chair. She had followed him with her eyes, he noticed after he sat down, her needle suspended above her work.
He sighed out loud.
“Tell me about you, Chloe,” he said. Though he did not know why he had asked. He did not want to know any more about her than she had told him two nights ago. He did not want a relationship. But now the question had been asked—in the vaguest of vague terms and not even phrased quite as a question. “Tell me about your childhood. About your mother.”
He both felt and heard her draw a slow breath. And he watched as she threaded her needle through the edge of the handkerchief and set her work down on top of a pile of colored silks in her workbag.
“Papa always told me he loved me,” she said. “Always. And I never doubted him. He used to take me riding and fishing even when Graham and Lucy did not want to go. He taught me how to bounce stones across water—yes, with a special flick of the wrist. I used to think sometimes that I was his favorite, though it was a wicked thought because he loved us all equally.”
It was interesting that she had chosen to begin with her father.
“And your mother?”
“She loved us too.” Her eyes were directed downward to her fingers, which were pleating the fabric of her dress. “But I always worried—or irritated—her more than the other two did. Lucy was always perfect. I grew far too quickly and was thin and awkward among other things. I think Mama despaired of my ever looking even halfway pretty. I was not sunny-natured or sociable either and would always prefer to disappear into the barn to play with the baby animals when there were some or merely to read in the hayloft than to play with the neighborhood children who were sometimes brought to visit. When I did converse, I wanted to talk about fascinating things I had read in my books even though Mama kept drumming into my head that girls must never appear intelligent in company, especially male company. She was so beautiful herself, so vibrant, so sociable, so easy to love. I was a severe trial to her. She was, I know, afraid for my future. She so hoped to see me settled during that one Season I spent in London. Half a Season.”
Ralph had tipped back his head and stretched out his legs to the fire. He gazed across at her through half-closed eyelids and imagined her as she must have been as a girl—gawky and awkward and showing little promise of the beauty to come, while her mother and sister were both exquisite dark beauties. And riding and fishing with her father rather than playing with other girls. Bouncing stones. A bit unhappy, aware that she was a disappointment to her mother, that she could not compete with her younger sister in looks or charm. Playing with the farm animals. Reading. Losing herself in her own imaginative world. Being called a carrot top and even a rabbit and carrot all in one by the neighborhood children who ought to have been her friends.
And all this he did not want to know.
He did not need to know. For in the knowing he felt a sadness for that lonely girl and for the man who gave her a father’s unconditional love despite the fact that she was not his own. And he felt a sharp anger against the dead woman who had not loved her firstborn as she ought, perhaps because that child reminded her of her own shame and embarrassment.
“Oh, she did love me,” Chloe was saying as though she could read his thoughts—or perhaps merely to reassure herself. “I hope I have not suggested that she did not. She took me to London for a come-out Season when really she ought to have remained at home. She had been very ill, and she was ill again after we returned. I daresay she forced herself out of sheer willpower to appear healthy when we were there. And then she died. She wanted to see me well settled first. Married. She wanted to see me happy. It is all Papa has ever wanted for me too—that I be happy.”
“What did you tell him earlier,” he asked, “when he said just that—that he hoped you would be happy?”
She sank her teeth into her bottom lip for a moment, and her cheeks colored.
“I told him he must not worry,” she said. “I told him I was happy.”
“And are you?” he asked. It was a very unfair question. It was, moreover, another question he did not want answered. But it was too late now to recall it.
She was smoothing out the creases she had just made in her skirt.