Free Only a Promise by Mary Balogh Page A

appeared intelligent and had had some conversation—as far as one could judge in the distracting setting of a ballroom. All were eminently eligible. Only one had looked noticeably repelled by his facial scar.
    As soon as the final set drew to a close, he had gone home to bed. How had his fellow Survivors done it—Hugo and Vincent first, and then Ben and Flavian? How had they been able to give up everything to take on a lifetime commitment that might well bring them nothing but misery, and, equally important if not more so, that might bring misery to their wives? How could they
know
? Or did they not? Did they merely hope for happiness and gamble the rest of their lives on a risky possibility?
    None of them, as far as Ralph knew, had been forced into marrying out of any sense of duty. Well, Vincent had,perhaps. But none of them had stood in a ballroom, knowing that within its walls he must find his lifetime partner.
    There had not been much of the night remaining after he returned home from the ball. He had spent it staring upward at the intricately ruched satin canopy over his bed thinking, not about any of the very real candidates for his hand that he had met in the course of the evening, but about the very ineligible Miss Muirhead.
    Ineligible by her own admission. She was not technically illegitimate, of course, even if the rumors were true, since Sir Kevin Muirhead must have acknowledged her as his own at her birth, but she had the misfortune to have the distinctive coloring shared by Hitching and his legitimate daughter, which fact made it difficult
not
to believe what the gossips had said last year. And there was the other baggage she carried about too. Her sister, at the age of seventeen, had eloped with Freddie Nelson while his wife still lived, and then Graham Muirhead had got himself embroiled in a farce of a duel. Her father, instead of disowning his wayward daughter, had taken her back and then presumably paid the newly widowed Nelson a fortune to marry her before her child was born. Miss Muirhead meanwhile had been publicly humiliated and jilted and equally publicly denied admittance to Almack’s.
    To call her ineligible was to understate the case. Ralph’s duty was to marry. And since he expected no personal satisfaction from marriage and therefore did not much care
whom
he married, it behooved him to please his grandparents and his mother by choosing a young lady who was both eligible and accomplished, someone whowould adjust smoothly to her future role, someone over whose name not a whisper of scandal breathed.
    He had met at least half a dozen perfect candidates at the ball. Yet he had lain awake thinking of Miss Muirhead and her absurd, impertinent suggestion that they agree to . . . What had she called it? A bargain.
    Some bargain.
    He had called on his mother the following day. Obviously she
had
spoken to Lady Livermere, though she had not been at the ball herself. She had heard of his triumph, of the buzz of interest and excitement he had caused, of the partners with whom he had danced. She had drawn up a select list of young ladies with whom it would be unexceptionable for him to strike up an acquaintance, soon to become a courtship. There was a neat dozen. He had danced last evening with four of them. She would invite four more, with their mamas, to tea one afternoon soon, along with some other ladies so that her purpose would not be vulgarly obvious, and Ralph would happen to call in upon her on that particular afternoon. The remaining four . . .
    Ralph had stopped listening.
    Four days after leaving Manville Court, he had found himself on his way back there to seek out Miss Muirhead. Suddenly her so-called bargain had looked like the best of his options. At least neither of them would be hurt by it. How could one suffer disappointment when there were no expectations? She wanted a husband and a home and family, a perfectly understandable ambition for any woman. He needed a wife and family.