Only a Promise by Mary Balogh Page A

done with the toasts, then, Worthingham?” the duchess said. “I do think that is a very good idea. And Ralph can surely be persuaded or he would not have gone to the trouble of bringing a license. Chloe, my dear, what do
you
think? Perhaps a wedding outfit and bride clothes and parties and guests are important to you, and you, after all, are the bride.”
    Ralph watched his betrothed close her eyes for a moment, the only sign that she was not fully composed. Her hands, all fingers uncrossed, had moved to her lap and looked perfectly relaxed.
    “I have no wish for any of those things, Your Grace,” she said. “I will be perfectly happy to marry the Earl of Berwick tomorrow if it can be arranged.”
    And her eyes came to rest upon him and widened slightly as though the reality of it all was only beginning to hit her.
    As it was him.
    Soon she was going to be almost as familiar to him as his own image in the glass. What was it going to feel like—not being alone? It was his essential aloneness that had been the worst of his afflictions after he had been brought home from the Peninsula, for he had not beenalone since before he went off to school at the age of twelve, and even then there had been his sisters and his parents. Gradually over the years following his return, of course, he had formed the deep attachment to his six fellow Survivors. He loved and trusted them totally. But he had never made the mistake of believing that they could fill the emptiness at the core of his being.
    He was alone and would forever be so. Somehow he had made a friend of his aloneness. Now marriage was going to threaten that. There was going to be a woman—
this
woman—always in his life, even in his bed. He did, as it happened, find her sexually appealing, but that might be small consolation for the loss of privacy he was going to have to endure.
    The prospect was chilling.
    And tomorrow it would begin.
    His grandfather cleared his throat and raised his glass to propose a toast.
    *   *   *
    Chloe had one outfit that was both new and reasonably fashionable, since she had bought it just last year in London. She had never worn it. It was a walking dress of pale spring green with long, close-fitting sleeves, a deep ruff for a collar, a high waist, and a slightly flared skirt. There was a matching small-brimmed bonnet, which curved high at the back to accommodate the bulk of her hair. It was unadorned except for the dull gold satin ribbon that secured it beneath her chin. She had soft shoes and gloves to match the ribbon.
    She had almost not brought the outfit with her to Manville Court, but she had reminded herself that she was going to be staying indefinitely with a duchess andmight possibly find herself attending an event requiring a greater-than-usual formality of dress. She had not expected that event to be her wedding.
    She was a bride, she thought as she checked her appearance in the long mirror in her room. She was satisfied with what she saw. The duchess had insisted upon sending her own maid to assist her, and Miss Bunker had created intricate curls at the back of her head before placing the bonnet just so over them. She had tied the ribbon in a soft bow close to Chloe’s left ear. The dress looked both pretty and elegant and surely showed off her slender figure to advantage.
    All of which satisfactory facts did not still the butterflies that fluttered in her stomach. The next time she stood here, perhaps an hour or two from now, to remove her bonnet before luncheon, she would be a married lady. She would be Chloe Stockwood, Countess of Berwick—if something disastrous did not happen to stop the proceedings, that was. If someone did not dash into the chapel to declare an insurmountable impediment to their marriage during that dreaded pause in every wedding service after the clergyman had posed the question.
    Butterflies were all very pretty in a meadow. They were altogether less comfortable in her stomach. She wished suddenly,