“But you did not?” he asked her.
She shook her head. “Perhaps I ought to be glad,” she said. “I was not, I think, the result of a . . . sordid encounter.”
“No,” he agreed.
She did not say any more, for which fact he was glad. He kept hold of her hand, but he moved a little away from her and settled his shoulders across the corner of the seat. She had been incredibly courageous and dignified. Going upstairs to meet a family that surely hated and despised her must have been particularly difficult, but she had acquitted herself admirably. And she had made it possible for them all to meet socially without unpleasantness or undue embarrassment.
Part of him wanted to gather her into his arms. Another part of him wished there were not this carriage ride to be made together before they were home and he could be alone. She had stirred him to the very root of his being. He had not wanted to be stirred. He still did not. He wanted his life to be as it had been for the past seven years.
Safe.
Almost safe.
Unstirred.
He wanted desperately to be alone.
She had spoken words to him last night that he could not shift from his mind today. But you will not do it. You will not go to call upon Viscount and Lady Harding. And when he had protested that that situation was entirely different from hers, she had said, Is it? How?
The difference was that she had not done anything to shatter Hitching’s life. The difference was that she was not responsible for the death of any of his children, let alone his only child. The difference was that she was not so loaded down with guilt that sometimes even the mythical Atlas was enviable because he had had only the earthly globe to support on his shoulders. The difference was . . .
The difference was that she had the courage to do what she found almost impossible to do, and to do it all alone. Although he had come with her for moral support and support of a more physical sort too if she had needed it, she had not needed him for either. How she had done it, he did not know.
She put him to shame. And he almost disliked her for it. Certainly he resented her. For there was a difference. And if there was not, what business was it of hers?
You are content, then, to live out the rest of your life in hell?
She had said that to him too. What did it matter to her how he chose to live? Heaven was out of his reach anyway.
And such a wave of longing washed over him that involuntarily his hand closed more tightly about hers and he set his head back against the cushions and closed his eyes.
“Ralph,” she said, “thank you for coming with me. I could not have done it without you—or without your encouraging me to do it. But it was the right thing, was it not? I am glad I have met him, and I think he was glad to have met me. His family did not like my going there, and I cannot blame them, but I still think it was necessary and that they will think so too once they have recovered from the shock of seeing me. Thank you.”
He opened his eyes. Her face was turned his way and she was looking directly at him with a glow of happiness. Or perhaps it was only relief. But—could this possibly be the same woman he had dismissed just a few weeks ago as a sort of nondescript unpaid servant of his grandmother’s? She was incredibly, vividly beautiful.
“You belittle yourself,” he said. “You did it all alone without any help from me.”
“But you were there with me,” she said, “and I kept remembering what you said last night.”
He looked blankly at her.
“My arms are here for you,” she reminded him.
He had spouted more such nonsense too, he remembered. He wished he had not.
“Did you mean it?” she asked him.
“Of course,” he said. “I am your husband.”
Her eyes searched his before she turned her head away and her face was hidden behind the brim of her bonnet. He stared at it in silence until they arrived home.
He would go to White’s for luncheon. He could hardly wait to get away.
21
The following couple of weeks were in many ways happy ones for Chloe. They were certainly busy ones. Scarcely an evening passed when she and Ralph did not attend some evening function—a concert or dinner or soiree or the theater or opera. They avoided balls as perhaps a little too frivolous so soon after the death of Ralph’s grandfather, though they would host their own soon enough at Stockwood House.
No one gave Chloe the cut direct. Of course no one did—she was the Duchess of Worthingham. It was a great relief, though, to find that she was not being shunned in company or excluded from any of the more glittering events of the Season. Indeed, she and Ralph had to decline far more invitations than they could possibly accept.
They saw the Marquess of Hitching’s family for the first time at Mrs. Chandler’s crowded soiree. Guests filled the drawing room and the music room beside it and the salon beyond that where refreshments had been laid out. The marchioness was entering the music room from the drawing room at the same moment as Chloe was coming into it from the salon with Gwen and the Countess of Kilbourne. It was the marchioness who chose to approach Chloe, while the general volume of conversation decreased quite noticeably.
“Ah, Lady Kilbourne, Lady Trentham, Duchess,” she said, deliberately not lowering her voice—or so it seemed to Chloe. “Good to see you. A pleasant entertainment, is it not? Elsie Chandler can always be depended upon to attract the very best company to her soirees.”
“Lady Hitching,” the countess said while Gwen smiled. “How do you do? Yes indeed, and we look forward to the pianoforte recital later.”