Only a Promise by Mary Balogh Page B

the affection she had tried to give him. He had shared his feelings with his fellow Survivors.
    “I had nothing to offer her, George,” he said. “I would have made her life a misery. I was too fond of her to encourage her to attach herself to me.”
    George said nothing. He sipped from his glass and leaned back, crossing one leg over the other and draping his free arm along the arm of his chair. He was the picture of elegant relaxation. His eyes rested upon Ralph without in any way staring at him. It was his gift, that pose, that silence, that attention. Waiting. Inviting. Not in any way threatening or judging.
    Ralph set down his own glass, rested his elbows on the arms of his chair, and steepled his fingers beneath his chin. He settled his gaze on the fire.
    “I will make any woman’s life a misery,” he said. “I can choose a lady and marry her, George. I can give herall the security of my name and wealth and prospects. I can bed her and impregnate her. That is all, though. And it is not enough.”
    “Many women would call it paradise,” George said gently.
    “I think not,” Ralph said.
    “No,” George agreed softly after the silence had stretched awhile. “It is not.”
    Ralph’s eyes moved to his. George agreed that a marriage devoid of all feeling, even affection, would be hell on earth. He had never talked of his own marriage, which had begun at a very young age and ended when his wife committed suicide after the death of their son in the Peninsula.
    “There are all those young ladies out there,” Ralph said, “eager to find husbands at the great marriage mart. Eligible husbands. I am as eligible as anyone could possibly be. Any one of them would be ecstatic to net me, even if I
do
look like this.” He freed one hand in order to gesture toward his scarred cheek.
    “Some say the scar makes you more dashing,” George said.
    “I have to marry one of those girls,” Ralph said harshly. “Soon. And then I will shatter her dreams and ruin her life.”
    “And yet,” George said, “the very fact that you know it and pity the young lady you will choose demonstrates that you care. You
do
care. You just have not fully understood that yet.”
    Ralph gazed broodingly at him.
    “I should hate you,” he said.
    George raised his eyebrows.
    “For saving my life,” Ralph told him. “More than once.”
    It was something they had not spoken of for a long time—those occasions when Ralph had tried to take his own life, the further occasions when he had wanted to do it but had talked about it instead until he had been persuaded out of it.
    “And do you?” George asked. “Hate me?”
    Ralph did not answer him. He transferred his gaze back to the fire.
    “There is one woman,” he said, and stopped.
    He did not want to
think
about that one woman.
    George was silent again.
    “Did you ever meet Lady Angela Allandale last year?” Ralph asked.
    “The Incomparable?” George asked. “She had an army of young bucks and a few older ones dangling after her, but would settle for none of them. Is she back this year? Is
she
this one woman?”
    “And did you hear,” Ralph asked, “any scandal about a young lady who looked exactly like her and was almost certainly a by-blow of the Marquess of Hitching?”
    “I did, yes,” George said, “and thought how unfortunate it was that the poor lady had inherited his very distinctive coloring and looked so exactly like his legitimate daughter that she was almost bound to arouse gossip. She was not strictly illegitimate though, if I remember correctly. She was the acknowledged daughter of some baronet. Hmm. Muirhead, I believe?”
    “Yes,” Ralph said.
    “Is
she
the one woman?” George asked.
    “She is staying with my grandmother at Manville Court,” Ralph explained. “Her mother, now deceased, was Her Grace’s goddaughter. Miss Muirhead is there, I believe, because she feels uncomfortable at home with her father, who insists that the gossip is so much nonsense