Only a Promise

by Mary Balogh

  The duchess was a knitter. She made blankets and bonnets and booties and mittens for the babies born on the vast ducal estates scattered about England. She loved doing the actual knitting, she had once explained to Chloe. She found it soothing. But she hated the accompanying tasks of rolling the skeins of wool into balls before she started and sewing together the little garments when she was finished.

  Chloe, of course, had immediately volunteered to perform both tasks.

  After they had all drunk tea in the drawing room following dinner, the duke as usual got to his feet to bid the ladies good night and withdraw to the book room, his own domain. He invited his grandson to accompany him, but the earl glanced at the duchess, whose head was bent over her knitting, and professed his intention of remaining to keep her company for a while longer.

  As though she had no one else to do that.

  The duke made his way from the room with the aid of his cane while his grandson held the door open for him. Chloe moved away from the fireplace, where the coals had been piled high against the chill of the evening, so that she could use the conveniently spaced knobs of the sideboard cupboards over which to stretch a skein of the pale blue wool the duchess was currently using while she rolled it over her fingers into a soft ball. She sat down to the task, her back to the room, thankful that she had something to do while Her Grace settled into a conversation with the earl.

  “You will have noticed a difference in your grandfather since Christmas,” the duchess said after the door was closed.

  “He seems to be doing well enough,” the Earl of Berwick said.

  “That is because he has put on a good show for you today,” she told him, “as he does for everyone when he is outside his book room and his private apartments.”

  “And when he is not?” the earl asked.

  “Your grandfather’s heart is weakening,” she told him. “Dr. Gregg says so. But of course he will not give up either his pipe or his port.”

  “They are indulgences that give him pleasure,” the earl said. “Being deprived of them would perhaps make him miserable and neither improve his health nor prolong his life.”

  “That is exactly what Dr. Gregg says.” The duchess sighed. “It would not surprise me at all, Ralph, if Worthingham does not survive another winter. He had a chill after Christmas and was a long time recovering from it, if he has recovered fully, that is. I doubt he could fight off another.”

  “Perhaps, Grandmama,” the earl said, “you are being overpessimistic.”

  “And perhaps,” she said, sharply, “I am not. The fact is, Ralph, that at some time in the not-too-distant future you are going to be the Duke of Worthingham yourself with all the duties that go along with the title.”

  Chloe heard the slow intake of the earl’s breath. The ticking of the clock on the mantel seemed louder than usual.

  “I shall be ready when the time comes, Grandmama,” he said. “But I do not want the time to come. I want Grandpapa to live forever.”

  “Forever is not granted to any of us,” the duchess said. “Even tomorrow is not granted as by right. Any of us can go at any moment.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I know.”

  There was a whole universe of bleakness in his voice. Chloe’s hands stilled as she turned her head to look at him. He was standing to one side of the fire, his elbow propped on the mantelpiece. There was a stillness about him that chilled her. Yes, he must know as well as anyone how quickly and suddenly life could be snuffed out. She wondered why he had been allowed to purchase a military commission when he was heir to a dukedom and had no brothers to provide spares in case of his demise.

  She shivered slightly and wished she had brought her shawl over here with her instead of leaving it draped over the arm of the chair on which she had been sitting earlier. But she would not get up now to fetch it and draw attention to herself. She resumed her self-appointed task.

  “Even you,” Her Grace added unnecessarily.

  “Yes, I know.”

  Chloe wound the wool more slowly during the silence that ensued. She was halfway through this particular skein and did not want to finish it too soon. She would have to return to her chair or else sit here idle, staring at the sideboard cupboards. Either way she would risk drawing attention to herself. She wished now she had made some excuse and left the room with the duke.

  “It is time you married, Ralph,” the duchess said bluntly into the silence.

  “Yes, I know.”

  “You knew at Christmastime when we spoke on the same subject,” she said. “Yet I have not heard that you are courting any particular lady, Ralph, despite the fact that I have my sources of information. Tell me that you do have someone in mind—someone young and eligible, someone both ready and willing to do her duty.”

  “I do not, I must confess,” he said. “I have met no one with whom I can imagine spending the rest of my life. I know I must marry, but I do not want to marry, you see. I have nothing to offer. I am fully aware, however, that must will have to take precedence over want. I shall start looking, Grandmama, as soon as I return to London. I shall start looking in earnest. I shall make my choice before the end of the Season—well before. There. It is a promise. Are you reassured?”

  “You have nothing to offer?” the duchess said, her tone incredulous. “Nothing to offer, Ralph? I doubt there is a more eligible bachelor in England.”

  “Nothing of myself to offer, I meant,” he told her, his voice quieter than it had been so that Chloe had to still her hands again in order to concentrate upon hearing him. “There is nothing, Grandmama. Nothing in here.”

  Presumably he was tapping his chest.

  “Nonsense,” she said briskly. “You had a nasty time of it during the wars, Ralph, as did thousands of other men who fought that monster Bonaparte. You were one of the fortunate ones, however. You lived. You have all your limbs as well as the use of them, and you have both eyes and a sound mind. Why you had to spend all of three years in Cornwall I do not understand, but your prolonged stay there seems to have done you more harm than good. It prevented you from returning to your rightful place in society and to yourself as you were. It made you despondent and self-pitying, an attitude that does not become you. It is time you shook it off. You have everything in the world to offer some very fortunate young lady. Choose someone fresh from the schoolroom, someone who can be molded to the role she must play. But someone of impeccably good birth and breeding. Enlist your mother’s help. The countess has a good head upon her shoulders despite our differences.”

  The Earl of Berwick chuckled, a sound so devoid of amusement that it could hardly be categorized as a chuckle at all.

  “You are right, Grandmama,” he said. “I am not likely to be rejected by anyone upon whom I fix my interest, am I? Poor girl, whoever she turns out to be. I shall not consult Mama. She will have a list longer than both my arms within a day, and all of the candidates will be trotted out for my inspection within a week. It will come to a matter of closing my eyes and sticking a pin in the list. I would prefer to choose for myself. And I will choose. I have promised. Shall I go back to town tomorrow?”

  “His Grace will be disappointed,” she said. “He was disappointed tonight when you chose to stay with me rather than go down to drink port with him in the book room.”

  “Shall I go down now?” he asked.

  “He will be snoring in his chair by now,” she told him. “Leave it until tomorrow. But return to town within the week, Ralph. It is already May and soon all the very brightest matrimonial prospects will have been laid claim to by men who have far less to offer than you do.”

  “It will be done,” he said. “And the sooner the better. Life in town becomes tedious. When I have a wife, I will go home to Elmwood with her and stay there. Perhaps life in the country will suit me better. Perhaps I will settle down at last.”

  He sounded almost wist
ful.

  “That would be a relief to everyone who loves you,” she said. “Oh, dear, I have come to the end of my ball of wool and have no other ready to go.”

  Chloe, who had just wound the last strand onto the ball, got to her feet.

  “I have one here ready for you, Your Grace,” she said, crossing the room with it held out in the palm of her hand.

  “Oh, how very thoughtful of you, dear,” Her Grace said. “And you have been sitting far from the fire to wind it, have you? Come closer and have another cup of tea to warm you up. Though I fear what is left in the pot must be cold. I wish it were not. I would not mind another cup myself.”

  “I shall ring for a fresh pot,” Chloe offered, moving toward the bell rope and having to pass very close to the earl on her way there.

  He was looking at her, she saw when she raised her eyes briefly to his. He appeared slightly surprised, as though he were only just realizing that he was not alone in the drawing room with his grandmother.

  Just thus must all ladies’ companions, paid and unpaid and unacknowledged, waft through their lives, she thought ruefully—unnoticed, invisible for all intents and purposes. But she was not going to sink into the dismals again over that sad fact.

  And if she did not like her life as it was, she had thought this afternoon, then she must simply change it.

  Ha! Simply.

  Her life had seemed impossible to change this afternoon. It still did this evening.

  But nothing, surely, was impossible.

  Apart from all the things that were.

  * * *

  The sun was showing its face from behind a receding bank of clouds the next morning when Ralph’s valet drew back the curtains from the window of his bedchamber before disappearing into his dressing room. Two fine days in a row and this one perhaps even sunny? Though it was early yet. It might still rain.

  Before it could or did, though, he shaved and dressed and went downstairs. There was no sign of either of his grandparents. He had not expected there would be. He was not hungry. He would wait for them. In the meanwhile, he wandered into the morning room, which was flooded with sunshine, facing east as it was. He found the French windows already unlocked and ajar, a fact that ought to have alerted him. He pulled one of them open, stepped through onto the terrace, and stood looking across the freshly scythed expanse of the east lawn to the river in the distance. He drew in a deep breath of fresh air and released it slowly.

  He had not slept well. He had kept waking himself up from dreams that were not exactly nightmares but were bizarre nonetheless. He could remember only one of them, one of the more coherent. He had been in a ballroom he did not recognize, a room so long that even with a telescope he doubted he would have been able to see the far end of it. Along its full length, stretching to infinity, was a line of young ladies, all dressed in ballroom finery, and all of them plying a fan, though they were otherwise motionless. And he was marching with slow deliberation along the line, clad in his scarlet, gold-faced officer’s dress uniform, inspecting them, his mother on one side, Graham Muirhead in full clerical robes on the other. It was not one of those dreams that defied interpretation, though why Muirhead of all people should have popped into it he could not imagine.

  Ah. And then he could.

  He became suddenly aware of a flutter of movement off to his right and turned his head sharply to see Miss Muirhead standing a short distance away, bonnetless and clutching the corners of a shawl to her bosom, presumably to prevent it from blowing away in the nonexistent wind. He felt instant irritation. She had overheard that very personal conversation he had had with his grandmother last evening and had not had the decency either to clear her throat to remind them of her presence or to leave the room. He had been quite unaware of her, as one tended to be unaware of servants. Though she was not a servant, was she? She was a guest of his grandmother’s—one who ran and fetched for her and effaced herself in a most unguestlike manner. A woman seemingly without character or personality or conversation.

  Was she related to Graham Muirhead by any chance? It was not a common name—Muirhead. His irritation only increased at the possibility that there was a connection.

  “My lord,” she murmured.

  “Good morning.” He inclined his head curtly to her and stepped off the terrace in order to stroll out across the lawn where he could be alone again.

  What he must do now, he decided as he approached an old oak tree and set a hand upon its sturdy, familiar trunk, was spend as much of today as he could with his grandfather and then return to town tomorrow. He could make the excuse of a pressing engagement, and he would not be lying. He had an urgent appointment with his own destiny. And there must be at least one ball and half a dozen other parties of varying sorts to choose among for tomorrow evening, and of course he had been invited to all of them. There were always myriad entertainments every evening during the Season. He must simply find his invitations, make his choice, and go.

  He was quite resigned to what his immediate future had in store for him. He had had enough time to think about it, after all. His grandmother had talked openly about it at Christmastime. His mother had been hinting for at least the past year. He had been procrastinating. That must stop.

  He would persuade his grandfather to talk about his boyhood and young manhood today. Grandpapa enjoyed telling the old, oft-repeated stories, and who knew if Ralph would be hearing them for the last time? Was his grandfather ailing? Or could he go on as he was now for another ten years or so? The answer to that question, impossible to know, did not affect the central issue, though, did it? The duke had an heir, but that heir himself did not. And life, as Ralph’s grandmother had observed last evening, was always uncertain, even for the young. He could die at any moment.

  Indeed, there had been times when he had wanted to die and had even tried to help the process along . . . But he would not be drawn into remembering those dark days. Now was the time to think of life. Though what sensible man would wish to be responsible for bringing yet another human life into this world?

  He shook his head. Such thinking must not be pursued.

  “How old do you think it is?” a voice asked from behind him, and he turned in amazement to discover that Miss Muirhead had followed him across the lawn and was standing just a short distance away. “The oak, I mean.”

  He gazed at her without smiling. Had he asked for company? Did he look like the sort of man who would feel lonely and pathetic if left to stroll alone? But he looked at the trunk beneath his hand and up into the spreading branches when perhaps he ought to have ignored her question and her entirely.

  “Several hundred years,” he said. “Perhaps even more than a thousand. The second duke, who had the house built more than a century ago, had the good sense to leave the oak standing and to build farther back from the river.”

  “It looks like a child’s paradise,” she said. “Did you climb it as a boy?”

  “It is too visible from the house,” he said. “My grandmother had me spanked after she caught me up there one day when I was five or six. Even then she must have been afraid that I would fall and kill myself and my father would beget no more sons.”

  “And did she have you spanked when you chose to become a military officer?” she asked. “You did choose to be one, I suppose?”

  He looked back at her, all amazement again, and had to remind himself that she was not a servant. She was standing out in the sunshine, and the sunlight was gleaming off her hair and making it appear even more startlingly red than it had looked yesterday. With her pale complexion and freckles, she must have to be very careful about exposure to the sun. Her skin would surely burn horribly. Yet she was wearing no bonnet.

  He was surprised to notice now that he was looking fully at her that she was rather good looking, even beautiful in a unique sort of way. Her eyes were large and decidedly green. Her nose was straight and the
perfect length to fit her oval face. Her cheekbones were well defined, her lips full and well shaped, her mouth on the wide side. With her hair down . . .

  But she had asked him a question—an impertinent, intrusively personal question. He answered it nevertheless.

  “I begged and pleaded with my father to no avail,” he told her, “and my mother was firmly and tearfully on his side. My grandmother threatened to have me whipped—horsewhipped, to use her exact words. I suppose she thought I had outgrown spankings. But my grandfather surprised us all and incensed everyone but me. It had been his boyhood dream, it seemed, to be a military officer, a general no less, but of course it had not been allowed because he was a duke’s heir and had no brothers. His own son had been a disappointment to him—yes, he said it in the hearing of my father, who was the epitome of the dutiful heir. Let the boy have his way, then, he said of me. Let him follow his dream of glory. I was eighteen years old and just getting finished with school. I was as innocent and as ignorant as a newborn babe. But the word of the Duke of Worthingham was law to his family. And so he purchased my commission in the very best regiment as well as all the finest trappings money could buy.”

  “But your dream was soon shattered,” she said softly.

  What did she know about it? He looked stonily at her before turning his head away sharply. Should he stride off toward the river and trust she would not come trotting after him to offer her company and her conversation again? Or should he stride back to the house and rely upon outpacing her?

  He hesitated a moment too long.

  “I could not help but overhear your conversation with Her Grace last evening,” she said. “I was not deliberately eavesdropping.”

  His eyes returned to hers. He removed his hand from the trunk and leaned his shoulder against it. She must think a gale was blowing. She had a death grip on the corners of her shawl.