Actually, it felt even madder this morning. Her stomach was churning and she was not sorry she had been unable to eat much breakfast.
She had had to send a note off to Lucy to postpone the proposed walk in the park until tomorrow. She hated having to do that. She had not seen her niece and nephew, Lucy’s children, since Christmas.
Had the Marquess of Hitching known of her existence before last year? The question had plagued Chloe half the night, as well as all the questions associated with it. He must have heard the rumors last year, of course. Did he believe them? Would he believe them when she called on him if he did not already? But he must have known of the possibility twenty-eight years ago when Papa warned him to leave London and never return. Did the marchioness know? Did Lady Angela? And her brothers? But how could they not?
“The duke is taking you somewhere this morning, is he, Your Grace?” Mavis asked. “Somewhere nice?”
“Visiting friends.” Chloe smiled at her in the mirror and wished desperately that she could switch places with Mavis. How tranquil and uncomplicated a maid’s life must be. Which was an absurdly foolish thought, of course. No one’s life was all unrelieved tranquility and ease.
How on earth was she going to be able to knock on the Marquess of Hitching’s door and announce that she had come to see him? She must tell Ralph before it was too late that she simply could not do it.
But it was precisely what she was doing half an hour later—or rather what Ralph was doing for her. Chloe had to use all her willpower not to take a step back and duck sideways so that she would be half hidden behind him when the great oak door opened. She thought yearningly of the carriage mere feet behind her.
“Inform the Marquess of Hitching that I would have a word with him if he is at home,” Ralph told the servant who opened the door.
The man looked from one to the other of them, glanced beyond them to the carriage with its ducal crest, briefly consulted the card Ralph had handed him, and stepped aside to admit them, bowing respectfully as he did so. He directed them to a salon that led off the hall and informed them that he would see if his lordship was at home.
“What if he is not?” Chloe said hopefully as the door closed quietly and she was left alone with Ralph. “What if—”
“He obviously is at home,” Ralph told her, “or his footman would not have gone looking to see if he is.”
Ah, the logic of polite society.
It was a visitors’ salon into which they had been shown, Chloe could see, a magnificent apartment with a high, coved ceiling painted with a scene from mythology, gilded friezes, and wine-colored brocaded walls hung with dark landscapes in heavy, ornate frames. Gilded, intricately carved chairs were arranged about the perimeter of the room. There was a wine-colored carpet underfoot and heavy curtains of a slightly lighter shade half drawn across the single window.
It was a room meant to reduce the visitor to size, to intimidate him. Or her. It was certainly having its effect upon Chloe, who came to a stop not far inside the door, her hands clasped tightly over the top of her reticule. Ralph had strolled over to the window and stood looking out.
Neither of them spoke again.
There was a nasty buzzing in Chloe’s ears. Her hands felt damp, even inside her gloves.
Perhaps they should assume the marquess was not at home and leave without further delay. She opened her mouth to suggest it, but she was too late. The door of the salon opened and a man stepped inside. An invisible someone closed the door silently behind him.
He was an older man of medium height and solid build. He was quietly, tastefully dressed. He had a pleasant, though not outstandingly handsome face and thinning hair that was turning to gray, though it must have been red in his youth. If Chloe had expected a towering, sneering monster on the one hand or a handsome, austere, thin-lipped aristocrat on the other, she was proved wrong on both counts. Not that she had tried to picture what he would look like. How did one picture in one’s mind the father one had never seen or even known about with any certainty until yesterday?
He ignored Ralph, who had turned from the window though he did not move away from it. He—presumably the marquis—stood looking at her, his lips pursed, a slight frown between his brows, his arms clasped behind his back. If he planned to feign ignorance, he was not making a good start.
It did not occur to Chloe to break the silence.
“Despite all that I have heard about you,” he said at last, “I expected that you would bear some resemblance to your mother. You do not. Not at first glance, anyway.”
“I wish I did,” she said. “Then I might have gone through life without ever learning the truth.”
“You did not know it?” He looked surprised. “You were not told?”
“Not until last evening,” she said.
“Last evening?” His eyebrows rose higher.
“My papa told me,” she said, laying slight emphasis on the one word.
“Yet last year’s gossip sent you scurrying home,” he said.
“The gossip was my first inkling,” she told him, “though I refused to believe it, and Papa denied it.”
He nodded his head slowly.
“I was sorry,” he said, “to hear last year of your mother’s passing—Chloe, is it not?”
“That happened more than three years ago,” she told him.
“For years I did not leave the north of England,” he said, shrugging apologetically. “I did not hear. I am sorry. I hope she did not suffer unduly.”