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Authors: Mary Balogh

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It was they, though, his fellow Survivors, who had caused the worse-than-usual restlessness bordering on depression he was feeling this spring. He almost welcomed his grandmother’s letter, then. It suggested, in that way his grandmother had of making an order sound like a request, that he present himself at Manville Court without delay. He had not been there since Christmas, though he wrote dutifully every two weeks, as he did to his other grandmother. His grandfather had not been actively unwell over the holiday, but it had been apparent to Ralph that he had crossed an invisible line between elderliness and frail old age.

He guessed what the summons was all about, of course, even if his grandfather was not actually ill. The duke had no brothers, only one deceased son, and only one live grandson. Short of tracking back a few generations and searching along another, more fruitful branch of the family tree, there was a remarkable dearth of heirs to the dukedom. Ralph was it, in fact. And he had no sons of his own. No daughters either.

And no wife.

His grandmother had no doubt sent for him in order to remind him of that last fact. He could not get sons—not legitimate heirs anyway—if he did not first get a young and fertile wife and then do his duty with her. Her Grace had delivered herself of a speech along those lines over Christmas, and he had promised to begin looking about him for a suitable candidate.

He had not yet got around to keeping that promise. He could use as an excuse, of course, the fact that the
Season had only just begun in earnest and that he had had no real opportunity to meet this year’s crop of marriageable young ladies. He had already attended one ball, however, since the hostess was a friend of his mother’s. He had danced with two ladies, one of them married, one not, though the announcement of her betrothal to a gentleman of Ralph’s acquaintance was expected daily. Then, his obligation to his mother fulfilled, he had withdrawn to the card room for the rest of the evening.

The duchess would want to know what progress he was making in his search. She would expect that by now he would at the very least have compiled some sort of list. And making such a list would not be difficult, he had to admit, if he just set his mind to the task, for he was eminently eligible, despite his ruined looks. It was not a thought designed to lift Ralph’s spirits. Duty, however, must be done sooner rather than later, and his grandmother had clearly decided that he needed reminding before the Season advanced any further.

The memory of the precious three weeks he had recently spent with his fellow Survivors at Middlebury Park in Gloucestershire, home of Vincent Hunt, Viscount Darleigh, only added to Ralph’s sense of gloom. All seven of them had been both single and unattached just a little over a year ago during their last annual reunion at Penderris Hall. Without giving the matter any conscious thought, Ralph had assumed they would remain that way forever. As if
anything
remained the same forever. If he had learned one thing in his twenty-six years, surely it was that everything changed, not always or even usually for the better.

Hugo, Baron Trentham, had been the first to succumb
while they were still at Penderris, after he had carried Lady Muir up from the beach, where she had sprained an already lame ankle. They had promptly fallen in love and married a scant few months later. Then Vincent, the youngest of their number, the blind one, had fled one bride chosen by his family and then had narrowly missed being snared by another. He had been prompted by gallantry to offer for the girl who had come to his rescue that second time when she had thwarted the schemer, but ended up being chucked out of her home as a result. They had married a few days after Hugo and in the same church in London. Meanwhile Ben—Sir Benedict Harper—had been staying with his sister in the north of England when he met a widow who was being treated shabbily by her in-laws. He had chivalrously accompanied her when she fled to Wales and had ended up marrying her as well as running her grandfather’s Welsh coal mines and ironworks. Bizarre, that! And now this year, during their reunion in Gloucestershire, Flavian, Viscount Ponsonby, had suddenly and unexpectedly married the widowed sister of the village music teacher and borne her off to London to meet his family.

Four of them married in little more than a year.

Ralph did not resent any of the marriages. He liked all four of the wives and thought it probable that each marriage would turn out well. Although in truth, he knew he must reserve judgment upon Flavian’s, since it had happened so recently and so abruptly, and Flave was a bit unstable at the best of times, having suffered head injuries and memory loss during battle.

What Ralph did resent was change—a foolish resentment, but one he could not seem to help. He certainly
did not resent his friends’ happiness. Quite the contrary. What he did resent, perhaps—though
resentment
might be the wrong word—was that he had been left behind. Not that he wanted to be married. And not that he believed in happiness, marital or otherwise. Not for himself, anyway. But he had been left behind. Four of the others had found their way forward. Soon
he
would be married too—there was going to be no escaping that fate. It was his duty to marry and produce heirs. But he could not expect the happiness or even the contentment his friends had found.

He was incapable of love—of feeling it or giving it or wanting it.

Whenever he said as much to the Survivors, one or another of them would remind him quite emphatically that he loved
them,
and it was true, much as he shied away from using that exact word. He loved his family too. But the word
love
had so many meanings that it was in fact virtually meaningless. He had deep attachments to certain people, but he knew he was incapable of
love
, that something special that held together a good marriage and sometimes even made it a happy one.

There were a few social commitments he was forced to break after his grandmother’s letter arrived, though none that caused him any deep regret. He sent his apologies to the relevant people, wrote a brief letter to his mother, who was in town and might expect him to call, and set out for Sussex and Manville Court in his curricle despite the fact that it was a brisk day in early May and there was even the threat of rain. He never traveled by closed carriage when he could help it. His baggage followed in a coach with his valet, though he doubted he
would have much need of either. His grandmother would be too eager to say her piece and quickly send him back to London with all its parties and balls and eligible brides.

Unless Grandpapa really was ill, that was.

Ralph felt an uncomfortable lurching of the stomach at the thought. The duke was a very old man, and everyone must die at some time, but he could not face the prospect of losing his grandfather. Not yet. He did not want to be the head of his family, with no one above him and no one below. There was a horrible premonition of loneliness in the thought.

As if life was not an inherently lonely business.

He arrived in the middle of the afternoon, having stopped only once to change horses and partake of refreshments, and having been fortunate enough not to get held up at any toll booths or to get behind any slow-moving vehicles on narrow stretches of road. The front doors of Manville stood open despite the fact that the afternoon was not much warmer than the morning had been. Obviously he was expected, and there was Weller, his grandfather’s elderly butler, standing in the doorway and bowing from the waist when Ralph glanced up at him. He was not looking particularly anxious—not that Weller ever displayed extreme emotions. But surely he would have done if Grandpapa were at his last gasp.

And then his grandfather himself appeared behind Weller’s shoulder and the butler stepped smartly aside.

“Harrumph,” the duke said—a characteristic sound that fell somewhere between a word and throat clearing—as Ralph relinquished the ribbons to a groom and took the steps up to the doors two at a time. “Making a filial
visit just as the London Season is swinging into action, are you, Berwick? Because you could not go another day without a sight of Her Grace’s face, I daresay?”

“Good to see you, sir.” Ralph grinned at him and took the duke’s bony, arthritic hand in his own. “How are you?”

“I suppose Her Grace wrote to tell you I was at death’s door,” the old man said. “I daresay I am, but I have not knocked upon it or set a toe over the doorsill yet, Berwick. Just a bit of a cough and a bit of gout, both the results of good living. Well, if you were sent for, you will be expected upstairs. We had better not keep the duchess waiting.”

He led the way up to the drawing room. The butler was already stationed outside the double doors when they got there, and he flung them open so that the two men could enter together.

The duchess, who looked more like a little bird—a fierce little bird—every time Ralph saw her, was seated beside the fire. She nodded graciously as Ralph strode across the room to bend over her and kiss her offered cheek.

“Grandmama,” he said. “I trust you are well?”

She glanced at the duke. “This is a pleasant surprise, Ralph,” she said.

“Quite so,” he agreed. “I thought I would run down for a day or two to see how you did. And Grandpapa too, of course.”

“I must have the tea tray brought up,” she said, looking vaguely about her as though expecting it to materialize from thin air.

“Allow me to ring the bell, Your Grace,” a lady who
was sitting farther back from the fire said, getting to her feet and moving toward the bell rope.

“Oh, thank you, my dear,” the duchess said. “You are always most thoughtful. This is my grandson, the Earl of Berwick. Miss Muirhead, Ralph. She is staying with me for a while, and very thankful I am for her company.”

It was said graciously, and for one startled moment Ralph thought that perhaps he had been brought here to consider the guest as his prospective bride. But he could see that she was no young girl. She might even be older than he. She was not dressed in the first stare of fashion either. She was tall and on the slender side with a pale complexion and what looked like a dusting of freckles across her nose. She might have looked like a faded thing, or at least a fading thing, if it had not been for her hair, which was thick and plentiful and as bright a red as Ralph had ever seen on a human head.

“My lord.” She curtsied without either looking at him or smiling, and he bowed and murmured her name.

His grandmother did not actually ignore her. Neither did she draw her any more to Ralph’s attention, however, and he relaxed. Obviously she was of no particular account. Some sort of companion, he supposed, an aging, impecunious spinster upon whom Her Grace had taken pity.

“Now, tell me, Ralph,” his grandmother said, patting the seat of the chair beside her, “who is in town this year for the Season? And who is new?”

Ralph sat and prepared to be interrogated.

2

T
he Earl of Berwick was really quite different from what Chloe had expected.

There were his looks, for one thing. He was not the handsome boy she had always imagined, frozen in time, arrogant and magnetically attractive, riding roughshod over the feelings of others. Well, of course he was no longer that boy. It had been eight years since he and Graham left school, and during those years he had been to war, lost his three friends, been desperately wounded himself, and made a slow recovery—perhaps. Perhaps he had recovered, that was. She had never really wondered what war did to a man apart from killing him or wounding him or allowing him to return home when it was over, mercifully unscathed. She had considered only the physical effects, in fact.

Lord Berwick fell into the second category—wounded and recovered. That should have been the end of it. He had been left with scars, however. One of them was horribly visible on his face, a nasty cut that slashed from his left temple, past the outer corner of his eye, across his cheek and the corner of his mouth to his jaw, and pulled
both eye and mouth slightly out of shape. It must have been a very deep cut. Bone deep. The old scar was slightly ridged and dark in color and made Chloe wince at the thought of what his face must have looked like when it was first incurred. That it had missed taking out his eye was nothing short of a miracle. There must have been some permanent nerve damage, though. That side of his face was not as mobile as the other when he talked.

And if there was that one visible scar, there were surely others hidden beneath his clothes.

It was not just his scarred face, though, and the possibly scarred body that made him very different from the person she had expected and made her wonder more than she had before about what war did to a man. There were his eyes and his whole demeanor. There was something about his eyes, attractively blue though they were in a face that was somehow handsome despite the scar. Something . . . dead. Oh, no, not quite that. She could not explain to herself quite what she saw in their depths, unless it was that she saw no depths. They were chilly, empty eyes. And his manner, though perfectly correct and courteous, even affectionate toward his grandparents, seemed somehow . . . detached. As though his words and his behavior were a veneer behind which lived a man who was not feeling anything at all.

Chloe had gained this chilly impression of her brother’s former schoolmate at their first meeting and realized how foolish she had been to expect him to be exactly as Graham had described him all those years ago. He was not that boy any longer, and had probably never been exactly as she had imagined him anyway. She had only ever seen him, after all, through the biased eyes of her
brother, who was very different from him and had always both envied and resented him.

Chloe found this man, this stranger, disturbing, a cold, brooding, detached, controlled man it would surely be impossible to know. And a man who seemed largely unaware of her existence despite the fact that they had been introduced. Although he did not pointedly ignore her during dinner, neither did he initiate any conversation with her or show any particular interest in anything she had to say, though truth to tell she did not say a great deal. She was just a little bit intimidated by him.

She wished he were the man she had expected him to be. She could have felt open scorn at his arrogant assumption that he was God’s gift to the human race instead of allowing him to make her feel somehow . . . diminished. Oh, dear,
did
she feel diminished? Again? If she allowed herself to feel any more so, she would surely disappear altogether and become just an easily forgotten memory to those who had known her. She almost chuckled aloud at the thought.

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 wistful.

“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.

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