“What?” She looked up at him with startled, incredulous eyes. Her face had turned even paler, if that was possible.
“At least all the eyes of the ton would not be upon you there,” he said. “The inevitable meeting would come at a time and place of your own choosing. You would have some control over it.”
“But it would be utter madness.” Her eyes were wide and fixed upon his. “To walk up to the door of his home, Ralph? To ask for him by name? To come face to face with him? To speak to him? To speak the truth openly? It would be madness.”
“I would come with you,” he said.
She was shaking her head from side to side.
“No,” she said. “I will face them all in public. I will be civil, as I daresay they will be too. They will be as anxious as I not to initiate any closer contact than that. But go deliberately to call upon him? No, Ralph. Do not ask it of me.”
“I do not,” he assured her. “I merely made the suggestion. Did you not tell me of a sermon Graham once gave about confronting your worst fear, walking into it and through it, and thus conquering it? Or something to that effect?”
“But you will not do it,” she said.
He froze.
“You will not go to call upon Viscount and Lady Harding,” she said.
“That is altogether different,” he told her.
“Is it?” She was gripping the edges of her chair arms. “How?”
“Forget that I made the suggestion.” He wished to God he had not. “It probably was madness. And Graham was right and you were right, nothing really has changed. And there is no reason why you on the one hand and the Marquess of Hitching and his family on the other cannot coexist with civility during the times when you are in the same place at the same time. The ton will tire of speculating. Forget that I spoke.”
Her fingers were playing the edges of her chair arms like a pianoforte. Her face was still pale. She was gazing fixedly at the carpet between them. After a minute or two of silence, during which he tried to think of something to say that would distract her and relieve the tension, she looked up at him.
“You will come with me?” she asked.
Not would come, but will come.
“Yes.” He nodded.
Ah, Chloe.
She said no more for a while but returned her gaze to the floor. Then abruptly she got to her feet and came hurrying toward him. He got up quickly from his chair and opened his arms just before she collided with him and wrapped her arms about his waist and burrowed her head into the hollow between his neck and his shoulder. His arms closed about her and held her tight.
“How many sons are there?” she asked after a while, her voice muffled against his shoulder.
It took him a moment to understand what she was talking about. Hitching’s sons. Her half brothers.
“Two or three. I am not quite sure,” he told her. The eldest is Gilly—Viscount Gilly. He is my age, I believe, or perhaps a little younger.”
“And just the one daughter?” she asked.
“I believe so.”
He really did not know the family. Until last year they had never been in town when he was there, and last year he had avoided them. Or at least he had avoided Lady Angela Allandale for fear someone would try a bit of matchmaking.
She pressed even more tightly against him.
“I have you close,” he told her.
“Have you?” He heard her inhale slowly and release the breath again on a sigh. “You cannot know how I longed to have someone to hold me close last year and again at Christmastime. Forgive me for clinging. I thought I could be brave.”
“Pardon me,” he said, raising one hand to cup the back of her head and turning his own to murmur the words into her ear, “but I think you are being brave. Do you or do you not intend to call upon the Marquess of Hitching in his own home?”
“I do.” She laughed softly, though he did not believe she was amused.
You cannot know how I have longed to have someone to hold me close . . .
A wave of the familiar yearning swept over him as he held her through a lengthy silence.
She drew back her head to look into his face.
“You must not fear,” she said, “that I will make a habit of leaning heavily upon you. I beg your pardon for doing so now. It is silly really. I knew, after all. And the Marquess of Hitching is just a man. After tomorrow I can cheerfully meet him anywhere and nod courteously in his direction when we cannot avoid being in the same place. I will not burden you, Ralph. I promised I would not, and I will keep my promise.”
She smiled at him.
He should have been relieved. He wanted no emotional involvement after all. Except that . . . Well, it was already too late.
“You misconstrued my silence,” he told her. “I am your husband. When you feel lonely or afraid or unhappy, it is to me you must come, Chloe. My arms are here for you, and my strength too for whatever it is worth. You will never be a burden to me.”
Her teeth were biting down on her bottom lip. And then her eyes warmed with a smile and what looked to be genuine amusement.
“I will remind you of that,” she said, “the next time we quarrel.”
“Will we?” he said. “And will you?”
“Yes and yes,” she told him.
He took her face between his hands and wondered when the walls about his heart had been breached. For they had been.
He kissed her.
20
It was a mad idea. Chloe had thought so last night when Ralph suggested it, and she thought so now as Mavis put the finishing touches to her hair and then fitted one of her new bonnets carefully over it so as not to disorder the curls she had created.