“We are close to London,” she observed to Mavis, who pressed her face close to the window and looked eagerly for her first glimpse of a tower or church spire.
Chloe thought back to her own excitement as she approached London for the first time six years ago. Her long-ago self would not have been at all surprised to discover that the streets really were paved with gold.
* * *
His life had changed far more drastically than he had realized during the past two weeks, Ralph soon came to understand—and it was not just his marriage and his acquisition of the title and all the duties and responsibilities it had brought with it. It was . . .
Well, yes, actually it was just those things.
Getting himself from Manville Court to London was no longer a simple matter of mounting his horse or climbing up to the seat of his curricle and conveying himself along the king’s highway at whatever pace he chose. Now there was a duchess to convey there with him, and somehow the duchess was a larger entity than just Chloe. She was a grand, precious, fragile commodity and had to be borne from one place to another in pomp and luxury and safety. Or so the servants decreed, and servants, Ralph was also discovering, could be quite tyrannical when it came to doing what they perceived to be their duty to ducal employers, for their own sense of consequence was at stake.
How Chloe enjoyed the very public procession through the countryside he did not ask. Though he almost did when it rained and he was half tempted to join her in the carriage. He was feeling amused despite the discomfort of the rain, and amusement was something that had been so rare with him for a long time that he had felt the urge to share it. He imagined them enjoying a good laugh together inside the carriage over the spectacle they were presenting as they moved across the countryside with minimum speed and maximum visibility.
He did not join her, however. He remembered just in time that whenever they had drawn closer to each other in the past two weeks than they had agreed upon, he had ended up feeling an inexplicable sort of panic and had taken a hasty step back. It would be best not to share his amusement with her. Besides, she had her new maid with her.
The rain soon blew over anyway, and he was glad he had remained out in the fresh air.
The fact that his life had changed almost beyond recognition was even more apparent after he had ridden into Portman Square and the ducal carriage and all its outriders as well as the laden baggage coach had come clattering and rumbling in behind him. Ralph would have been willing to wager a significant sum that windows about the square were suddenly bristling with spectators gathered to watch the show. He did not look to see if he was right.
Stockwood House had been basically his for a number of years now. He had come and gone as he pleased, always well served by the staff, but never obtrusively. Now the double doors were thrown back—both of them—and the butler stood in the doorway, stiff and stately in what was surely a new uniform. And behind him, if Ralph was not very much mistaken, the whole of the staff was lined up in formal rows. It was going to be his wedding day all over again, he thought, wincing inwardly.
He was not usually particularly observant when it came to servants, but he would have had to be blind not to see that every member of staff was also clad in a new uniform and that the hallway in which they were being paraded was positively gleaming with polish. If there was one speck of dust in the whole sizable entry hall, Ralph would be surprised.
He heard so many mutterings of “Your Grace” over the next few minutes that his head fairly buzzed. He could only imagine how Chloe must be feeling as he took her hand upon his sleeve and led her up the steps and through the doors. If she did not flee back to Manville without stopping to remove her bonnet, he would be a fortunate man.
But she surprised him. Instead of simply nodding graciously to left and right and continuing on her way up to the relative privacy of the drawing room or even all the way up to her own apartments, she stopped and smiled and spent well over half an hour working her way along the lines. She carefully spoke to everyone, moving from one side to the other, repeating the names the housekeeper murmured to her and occasionally asking a question of a servant—and stopping long enough to listen to the answer.
“Thank you, Mrs. Perkins,” she said when they had come to the end of the line. “Would you have a tea tray sent up to the drawing room immediately, if you please? And perhaps you and I could meet in the morning and become better acquainted. I will wish to go down to the kitchen too to speak further with Mrs. Mitchell. How splendid everyone is looking. And everywhere too.”
Mrs. Mitchell, Ralph seemed to recall, was the cook.
“The house has always run perfectly smoothly without any effort on my part,” he told Chloe when they were alone in the drawing room a few minutes later and she was removing her bonnet and fluffing up her short curls with both hands. “You must not feel obliged to exert yourself to any great degree.”
She smiled at him, and there was something almost impish in her expression.
“Your grandparents have not been here for a number of years, have they?” she said. “And your mother has her own London home. There has been just you, then. Stockwood House has been a bachelor establishment. I daresay the staff has enjoyed fussing over you as though you were a child incapable of looking after himself. They would look less indulgently upon your wife, however, I do assure you, if it seemed that she was incapable of looking after herself and—more importantly—you.”
Good God—as though you were a child incapable of looking after himself. There could not possibly be any truth in her words, could there? He clasped his hands behind his back and frowned.