Only a Promise (29 page)

And he took her hand, set it half across his silken cuff, half across the back of his hand, and led her onto the floor to join the other dancers. Lucy, bright eyed and chattering, was gazing up at a lazy-eyed, half-smiling Freddie Nelson, who was giving her his undivided attention. Gwen, one hand on Lord Trentham’s shoulder, the other in his, was laughing at something he was saying. And she managed to
dance,
Chloe had noticed all evening, despite her heavy limp. Viscountess Ravensberg, her husband’s hand already at her waist, was saying something to the Earl of Kilbourne, who had his countess on his arm—the first wife and the jilted bride and the bridegroom all together on the dance floor, clearly comfortable in one another’s company. Lady Angela Allandale had taken to the floor with the most handsome of the considerable court of admirers who had clustered about her all evening.

And then the orchestra struck a chord and the music began.

Chloe had felt consciously happy earlier in the evening. She recaptured that mood again as Ralph twirled her into the dance and she followed his lead as though they had always been meant to waltz together. Except that it was not just happiness she felt now. This was . . . oh, this was the happiest moment of her life. Nothing could or would ever be more perfect than this.

Nothing could ever be more perfect than perfect.

She smiled at the thought as she listened to the music, to the slight thumping of feet and swish of silks, as she watched the colors of gowns swirl past and the glitter of jewels and the sparkle of candles. The smell of flowers and greenery was heavy on the air. There was a welcome suggestion of coolness from the French windows as they danced past.

No, not quite past.

He danced her out through one set of doors and halfway along the blessed coolness of the deserted balcony. And he stopped and stood looking down into her upturned face without releasing his hold on her.

“I was a debater at school,” he said. “A good one. A persuasive one. I could always find the right words.”

She smiled up at him a little uncertainly. What . . . ?

“I always spoke from the heart rather than from a script as the other boys did,” he said. “It worked for me. I spoke with passion.”

She raised her eyebrows. Was she supposed to know . . . ?

“I cannot think of a blessed word to say,” he said.

And she understood. Oh, yes, in a great upsurge of joy, she understood.

“Except
I love you,
” he said. “Ridiculous, meaningless words. Clichéd. Inadequate. Embarrassing. The trouble is, Chloe—”

She raised one hand and set her fingertips over his lips.

“But they are the most beautiful words in the English language when strung together,” she said. “Listen to them. I love you. I love you, Ralph.”

He frowned. “If you think I was angling—”

She replaced her fingers.

“I do not,” she said. “You perhaps think I am still clinging to the terms of our bargain—no emotional bond, or something like that. I was an idiot. So were you. I love you. And now you have to say it to me or I will dash off into the darkness in my embarrassment and never reemerge. Oh, don’t stand there staring at me as though I had grown an extra head. Now I feel
such
a prize—mmmm.”

His mouth had stopped her.

And then he was gazing down at her again in the near darkness.

“You are the most precious thing that has ever happened to me,” he said.

She feathered her fingers lightly along his facial scar and smiled.

“I think,” she said, “we had better return to our guests. Besides, I have longed all evening to waltz with you. I would hate now to waste the chance.”

He looked boyish and handsome and altogether gorgeous when he smiled full on. She would never tire of that expression, she thought, as he kissed her swiftly once more and twirled her along the rest of the balcony
and through the other set of French windows to join their family and friends and peers.

She would never tire of
him
. Of
this
. Of this marriage and this life and this love that by some miracle they shared.

He was still smiling at her as though there were no one else but her in the ballroom.

“I will waltz with you all my life, Chloe,” he said. “I promise.”

“A foolish admission.” Chloe laughed. “I shall hold you to
it.”

Read on for a look at the next book in the Survivors’ Club series by Mary Balogh,

ONLY A KISS

Available from Signet in September 2015.

I
mogen Hayes, Lady Barclay, was on her way home to Hardford Hall from the village of Porthdare two miles away. Usually she rode the distance or drove herself in the gig, but today she had decided she needed exercise. She had walked down to the village along the side of the road, but she had chosen to take the cliff path on the return. It would add an extra half mile or so to the distance, and the climb up from the river valley in which the village was situated was considerably steeper than the more gradual slope of the road. But she actually enjoyed the pull on her leg muscles and the unobstructed views out over the sea to her right and back behind her to the lower village with its fishermen’s cottages clustered about the estuary and the boats bobbing on its waters.

She enjoyed the mournful cry of the seagulls, which weaved and dipped both above and below her. She loved the wildness of the gorse bushes that grew in profusion all around her. The wind was cold and cut into her even though it was at her back, but she loved the wild sound and the salt smell of it and the deepened sense of
solitude it brought. She held on to the edges of her winter cloak with gloved hands. Her nose and her cheeks were probably scarlet and shining like beacons.

She had been visiting her friend Tilly Wenzel, whom she had not seen since before Christmas, which she had spent along with January at her brother’s house, her childhood home, twenty miles to the northeast. There had been a new niece to admire as well as three nephews to fuss over. She had enjoyed those weeks, but she was unaccustomed to noise and bustle and the incessant obligation to be sociable. She was used to living alone, though she had never allowed herself to be a hermit.

Mr. Wenzel, Tilly’s brother, had offered to convey her home, pointing out that the return journey was all uphill and rather steeply uphill in parts. She had declined, using as an excuse that she really ought to call in upon elderly Mrs. Park, who was confined to her house since she had recently fallen and badly bruised her hip. Making that call, of course, had meant sitting for all of forty minutes, listening to every grisly detail of the mishap. But elderly people were sometimes lonely, Imogen understood, and forty minutes of her time was not any really great sacrifice. And if she had allowed Mr. Wenzel to drive her home, he would have reminisced as he always did about his boyhood days with Dicky, Imogen’s late husband, and then he would have edged his way into the usual awkward gallantries to her.

Imogen stopped to catch her breath when she was above the valley and the cliff path leveled off a bit along the plateau above it, though it still sloped gradually upward in the direction of the stone wall that surrounded the park about Hardford Hall on three sides—the cliffs
and the sea formed the fourth side. She turned to look downward while the wind whipped at the brim of her bonnet and fairly snatched her breath away. Her fingers tingled inside her gloves. Gray sky stretched overhead, and the gray foam-flecked sea stretched below. Gray rocky cliffs fell steeply from just beyond the edge of the path. Grayness was everywhere. Even her cloak was gray.

For a moment her mood threatened to follow suit. But she shook her head firmly and continued on her way. She would not give in to depression. It was a battle she often fought, and she had not lost yet.

Besides, there was the annual visit to Penderris Hall, thirty-five miles away on the eastern side of Cornwall, to look forward to next month, really quite soon now. It was owned by George Crabbe, Duke of Stanbrook, a second cousin of her mother’s and one of her dearest friends in this world—one of six such friends. Together, the seven of them formed the self-styled Survivors’ Club. They had once spent three years together at Penderris, all of them suffering the effects of various wounds sustained during the Napoleonic Wars, though not all those wounds had been physical. Her own had not been. Her husband had been killed while in captivity and under torture in Portugal, and she had been there and witnessed his suffering. She had been released from captivity after his death, actually returned to the regiment with full pomp and courtesy by a French colonel under a flag of truce. But she had not been spared.

After the three years at Penderris, they had gone their separate ways, the seven of them, except George, of course, who had already been at home. But they had agreed to gather again each year for three weeks in the
early spring. Last year they had gone to Middlebury Park in Gloucestershire, which was Vincent, Viscount Darleigh’s home, because his wife had just delivered their first child and he was unwilling to leave either of them. This year, for the fifth such reunion, they were going back to Penderris. But those weeks, wherever they were spent, were by far Imogen’s favorite of the whole year. She always hated to leave, though she never showed the others quite how much. She loved them totally and unconditionally, those six men. There was no sexual component to her love, attractive as they all were, without exception. She had met them at a time when the idea of such attraction was out of the question. So instead she had grown to adore them. They were her friends, her comrades, her brothers, her very heart and soul.

She brushed a tear from one cheek with an impatient hand as she walked on. Just a few more weeks to wait . . .

She climbed over the stile that separated the public path from its private continuation within the park. There it forked into two branches and by sheer habit she took the one to the right, the one that led to her house rather than to the main hall. It was the dower house in the southwest corner of the park, close to the cliffs but in a dip of land and sheltered from the worst of the winds by high, jutting rocks that more than half surrounded it, like a horseshoe. She had asked if she might live there after she came back from those three years at Penderris. She had been fond of Dicky’s father, the Earl of Hardford, indolent though he was, and very fond of Aunt Lavinia, his spinster sister, who had lived at Hardford all her life. But Imogen had been unable to face the prospect of living in the hall with them.

Her father-in-law had not been at all happy with her request. The dower house had been neglected for a long time, he had protested, and was barely habitable. But there was nothing wrong with it as far as Imogen could see that a good scrub and airing would not put right, though even then the roof had not been at its best. It was only after the earl was all out of excuses and gave in to her pleadings that Imogen learned the true reason for his reluctance. The cellar at the dower house had been in regular use as a storage place for smuggled goods. The earl was partial to his French brandy and presumably was kept well supplied at a very low cost, or perhaps no cost at all, by a gang of smugglers grateful to him for allowing their operations in the area.

It had been upsetting to discover that her father-in-law was still involved in that clandestine, sometimes vicious business, just as he had been when Dicky was still at home. His involvement had been a bone of serious contention between father and son and a large factor in her husband’s decision to join the military rather than stay and wage war against his own father.

The earl had agreed to empty out the cellar of any remaining contraband and to have the door leading into it from the outside sealed up. He had had the lock on the front door changed and all the keys to the new one given to Imogen. He had even voluntarily assured her that he would put an end to the smuggling trade on the particular stretch of the coast that bordered the Hardford estate, though Imogen had never put much faith in his word. She had never made any mention of smuggling to anyone afterward, on the theory that what she did not know would not hurt her. It was a bit of a morally weak
attitude to have, but . . . Well, she did not think much about it.

She had moved into the dower house and had been happy there ever since, or as happy as she ever could be, anyway.

She stopped now at the garden gate and looked upward. But no, no miracle had happened since yesterday. The house was still roofless.

The roof had been leaking as long as Imogen had lived in the house, but last year so many pails had had to be set out to catch the drips when it rained that moving about upstairs had begun to resemble an obstacle course. Clearly, sporadic patching would no longer suffice. The whole roof needed to be replaced, and she had fully intended to have the job done in the spring. During one particularly dreadful storm in December, however, a large portion of the roof had been ripped off despite the sheltered position of the house, and she had had no choice but to make arrangements to have the job done at the very worst time of the year. Fortunately there was a roofer in the village of Meirion, eight miles upriver. He had promised to have the new roof in place before she returned from her brother’s, and the weather had cooperated. January had been unusually dry.

When she had returned just a week ago, however, it was to the discovery that the work had not even begun. The roofer, when confronted, had explained that he had been waiting for her to come back so that he would know exactly what she wanted—apparently a new roof had not been clear enough. His workers were supposed to be here this week, but so far they had been conspicuous in their absence. She was going to have to send one of the grooms with another letter of complaint.

It was very frustrating, for she had been forced to move into Hardford Hall until the job was done. It was no particular hardship, she kept telling herself. At least she had somewhere to go. And she had always loved Aunt Lavinia. During the first year following her brother’s death, however, it had occurred to Aunt Lavinia that for sheer gentility’s sake she ought to have a female companion. The lady she had chosen was Mrs. Ferby, Cousin Adelaide, an elderly widow, who was fond of explaining in her deep, penetrating voice to anyone who had no choice but to listen that she had been married for seven months when she was seventeen, had been widowed before she turned eighteen and thus made a fortunate escape from the slavery of matrimony.

For years after her bereavement Cousin Adelaide had paid supposedly short visits to her hapless relatives since she had been left poorly provided for, and she had stayed until someone else in the family could be prevailed upon to invite her to pay a short visit elsewhere. Aunt Lavinia had voluntarily invited her to come and live indefinitely at Hardford, and Cousin Adelaide had arrived promptly and settled in. Aunt Lavinia had collected one more stray. She collected them as other people might collect seashells or snuffboxes.

No, it was no great hardship to be forced to stay at the main house, Imogen told herself with a sigh as she turned away from the depressing sight of her roofless house. Except that now, soon, being there was going to become a lot worse, for the Earl of Hardford was coming to Hardford Hall.

That roofer deserved to be horsewhipped.

The new earl was coming for an indeterminate length
of time. His title was really not so very new, though. He had been in possession of it since the death of Imogen’s father-in-law two years ago, but he had neither written at the time nor put in an appearance since nor shown any other interest in his inheritance. There had been no letter of condolence to Aunt Lavinia, no anything. It had been easy to forget all about him, in fact, to pretend he did not exist, to hope that he had forgotten all about them.

They knew nothing about him, strange as it seemed. He might be any age from ten to ninety, though ninety seemed unlikely and so did ten since the letter that had been delivered to Hardford’s steward this morning had apparently been written by the earl himself. Imogen had seen it. It had been scrawled in a rather untidy, though unmistakably adult, hand, and it had been brief. It had informed Mr. Ratchett that his lordship intended to wander down to the tip of Cornwall since he had nothing much else to do for the moment and that he would be obliged if he could find Hardford Hall in reasonably habitable condition. And in possession of a broom.

It was an extraordinary letter. Imogen suspected that the man who had penned it, presumably the earl himself since it bore his signature in the same hand as the letter itself, was drunk when he wrote it.

It was not a reassuring prospect.

In possession of a broom?

They did not know if he was married or single, if he was coming alone or with a wife and ten children, if he would be willing to share the hall with three female relatives or would expect them to take themselves off to the dower house, roof or no roof. They did not know if
he was amiable or crotchety, fat or thin, handsome or ugly. Or a drunkard. But he was coming. Wandering suggested a slow progress. They almost certainly had a week to prepare for his arrival, probably longer.

Wandering down to the tip of Cornwall, indeed. In February.

Nothing much else to do for the moment, indeed.

Whatever sort of man was he?

And what did a broom have to do with anything?

Imogen made her way toward the main house with lagging steps despite the cold. Poor Aunt Lavinia had been in a flutter when Imogen left earlier. So had Mrs. Attlee, the housekeeper, and Mrs. Evans, the cook. Cousin Adelaide, quite unruffled and firmly ensconced in her usual chair by the drawing room fire, had been firmly declaring that hell would freeze over before she would get excited about the impending arrival of a mere man. Though that man was unwittingly providing her with a home at that very moment. Imogen had decided it was a good time to walk to the village to pay a call upon Tilly.

But she could delay her return no longer. Oh, how she longed for the solitude of the dower house.

One of the grooms was leading a horse in the direction of the stables, she could see as she approached across the lawn. It was an unfamiliar horse, a magnificent chestnut that she would certainly have recognized if it had belonged to any of their neighbors.

Who . . . ?

Perhaps . . .

But no, it was far too soon. Perhaps it was another messenger he had sent on ahead. But . . . on that splendid mount? She approached the front doors with a sense
of foreboding. She opened one of them and stepped inside.