Only a Promise by Mary Balogh Page A

mad—or just desperate—to expect that he would marry her simply to save himself the bother of courting someone else. His grandmother had received her as a guest into her home, it was true, despite her notoriety, but she would surely have forty fits of the vapors if he should suddenly announce his intention of marrying the woman. And he could only imagine the reaction of his mother and sisters.
    He shook off the thought of Miss Muirhead. He had other, more pressing and even more dreary things to consider.
    He ought to have begun his campaign that evening. He had even found an invitation to a ball that would be attended by all the cream of the
ton
and its daughters. He went instead, after dining alone at home, to Stanbrook House on Grosvenor Square, to call upon George, Duke of Stanbrook, if by some chance he was at home.
    George was both friend and father figure, having opened his home all those years ago to wounded soldiers and given them the time and space in which to heal. And healing, George had recognized, as so few people did, did not consist just in a mending of broken bones and a knitting together of cuts and gashes, but in a restoration of peace and sanity to troubled, shattered minds. True healing was a slow business, perhaps a lifelong one. George had always had the gift of making each of the six of them who had stayed the longest feel that he or she was special to him.
    Ralph had often wondered if any of them had lavished nearly as much attention upon George, who had been as deeply wounded as any of them by war even though he had not been on any of the Napoleonic battlefields.
    He
was
at home, and by some miracle had no plans to go out. Ralph found him sitting by the fire in his drawing room, a glass of port at his elbow, an open book in his hand. He closed the latter and set it aside with a welcoming smile, and for the first time it occurred to Ralph that perhaps it had been selfish of him to come thus, unannounced. Perhaps George had been looking forward to a quiet evening at home.
    “Ralph.” He got to his feet and stretched out a hand. “Come and warm yourself by the fire while I pour you a drink.”
    They talked about inconsequential matters for a few minutes, and Ralph felt himself begin to relax.
    “I have just come up from Sussex,” he said at last. “I was summoned there by my grandmother. But I was not kept. I was sent scurrying back to choose a bride, soon if not sooner. And to get her with child on our wedding night unless I want to incur Her Grace’s undying wrath.”
    George regarded him with quiet sympathy.
    “Your grandfather is poorly?” he asked.
    “He is well into his eighties,” Ralph said by way of explanation.
    “You are not regretting,” George asked, “that you let Miss Courtney go?”
    Ralph winced and looked down into the contents of his glass while he twirled it slowly. Miss Courtney was the younger sister of Max Courtney, one of his best friends—one of his
dead
best friends. Ralph had known her since he was a boy and she was just a child. He had used to tease her whenever he went to stay with Max during a school holiday and, when they were a bit older, flirt just a little with her. After his return to town fromhis three years in Cornwall, he had run into her more than once at a social entertainment, and she had glowed with happiness and explained that being with him brought her closer again to her beloved brother. She had started to write to him, indiscreet as it was for a single lady to communicate privately with a single gentleman. Ralph had feared that she was developing a tendre for him. He had avoided her whenever he could, and had ignored a few of her letters and written only brief, dispassionate replies to the others. While he was at Middlebury Park this spring, she had written to inform him that she was about to marry a clergyman from the north of England. He had felt guilty then about having offered her so little consolation after Max’s death, about ignoring