He stared at her bent head in silence as she drank her tea and kept her eyes lowered. He had thought of Chloe as an essentially placid woman who wanted only the seemingly simple things in life in order to be happy—marriage, home, motherhood. She had suffered disappointments and real pain in her life and had finally settled for a bloodless bargain that had nevertheless brought her the rudiments of contentment—until his announcement a few days ago, anyway. Now he was not so sure about her. She was beginning to seem to be very much more than the woman he had taken her for. And the more fool he for believing that anyone could be simply a few things and nothing else.
He had not expected to like her—really to like her. He had expected—and hoped—to be indifferent to her.
He opened his mouth to speak, but she spoke first as she set down her empty cup and saucer.
“I will be ready to go to London with you,” she said. “The day after tomorrow, is it?”
“Yes.”
He wanted to say more. He wanted to . . . apologize to her? For what? For the fact that his grandfather had died so soon? He wanted to . . . comfort her? But how? He wanted to . . .
He wanted. Always that longing, that nameless yearning.
“Thank you,” he said. His voice sounded abrupt, even cold.
15
Chloe sat in an opulent carriage emblazoned with the ducal coat of arms and drawn by four magnificent black horses. It was driven by a stout coachman with a large footman at his side. Four hefty outriders rode beside it, two on each side. All six men were resplendent in the ducal livery. Everyone they passed on the road to London stopped in awe and stared, the men doffing hats and pulling on forelocks, the women dipping into curtsies. Ralph was out there riding too, most of the time well ahead of the carriage, just occasionally alongside it, perhaps to make sure Chloe had not taken fright and jumped out. He looked less conspicuously gorgeous than any of his servants. When he rode far enough ahead, he probably escaped any particular attention.
It seemed absurd to Chloe that as a result of that hurried wedding in the tiny chapel two weeks ago she was now a duchess and therefore worthy of all this pomp and excessive security—not to mention the services of a maid. Mavis, Mrs. Loftus’s niece, was sitting inside the carriage with her new mistress, her back to the horses, and was looking fair to bursting with pride. Chloe had gone virtually unnoticed and unguarded and unattended on her journey to Manville Court just a few months ago.
Whenever they stopped at an inn for a change of horses, she was bowed and curtsied and flattered into the finest private parlor and plied with all the best refreshments the house had to offer, even though she suffered slightly from motion sickness and was never very hungry. Ralph remained outside in the inn yard each time to oversee the grooming of his horses. Even the fresh, new ones were his, sent ahead from the ducal stables so that the magnificent blacks would not have to be exchanged for inferior horseflesh. Sometimes Chloe wondered if anyone realized that he was the duke who owned the carriage and the horses and employed the servants and was married to the duchess then partaking of refreshments in the best parlor.
He never rode inside the carriage with her, even when it rained for a whole hour. And it was not just Mavis’s presence that deterred him, Chloe believed. He never traveled inside any closed conveyance when it could be avoided, he had explained to her back at Manville when she had realized he intended to ride his horse the whole way. She wondered if it had anything to do with the time when he had been wounded and had been transported long distances in the close confines of various coaches. Or if it had something to do with her.
And she wondered if the whole of their married life would mirror the first two weeks. Occasionally they had talked, really talked, and she had felt they were drawing closer to each other, perhaps even becoming friends. And there had been that one night . . . But even at the time she had known it was only about sex—his word—and not in any way about love or even affection. Even so, it had been pleasant—strange understatement—and it had seemed to bring them closer until it had been brought to an abrupt end by their quarrel in the middle of the night.
Most of the time he was withdrawn and treated her with a remote though courteous reserve of manner. His eyes were empty of any depth. He was, in fact, as he had been from the beginning of her acquaintance with him. Despite their marriage and the necessary intimacies of the marriage bed, despite the occasional conversation, the occasional kiss, the half a night of sex—to use his word again—nothing was different. And how could she complain? Their marriage was progressing much as they had agreed it would.
She could not even be angry with him any longer for the fact that they were on the way to London. He had said they would live quietly in the country after their marriage, but he could not have foreseen the change in their circumstances coming quite as soon as it had. And he was right about duty—both his and hers. Duty summoned them to London, where he must make appearances at court and in Parliament and where both of them must mingle socially with their peers.
And so here she was on the road to town in opulent splendor, with homage being paid to her as though she were someone of great importance, which, she gathered, she was. Would she ever grow accustomed to it all? She might have found some humor in the situation if she had not been so consumed with dread at the prospect of facing the beau monde yet again.
But face it she must. And face it she would.
And then at last through the window on one side of the carriage she could see water in the distance, a large body of it. The River Thames.