Only a Promise Read Online Free PDF Page B

a
guest
of his grandmother’s—one who ran and fetched for her and effaced herself in a most unguestlike manner. A woman seemingly without character or personality or conversation.
    Was she related to Graham Muirhead by any chance? It was not a common name—
Muirhead
. His irritation only increased at the possibility that there was a connection.
    “My lord,” she murmured.
    “Good morning.” He inclined his head curtly to her and stepped off the terrace in order to stroll out across the lawn where he could be alone again.
    What he must do now, he decided as he approached an old oak tree and set a hand upon its sturdy, familiar trunk, was spend as much of today as he could with his grandfather and then return to town tomorrow. He could make the excuse of a pressing engagement, and he would not be lying. He had an urgent appointment with his own destiny. And there must be at least one ball and half a dozen other parties of varying sorts to choose among for tomorrow evening, and of course he had been invited to all of them. There were always myriad entertainments every evening during the Season. He must simply find his invitations, make his choice, and go.
    He was quite resigned to what his immediate futurehad in store for him. He had had enough time to think about it, after all. His grandmother had talked openly about it at Christmastime. His mother had been hinting for at least the past year. He had been procrastinating. That must stop.
    He would persuade his grandfather to talk about his boyhood and young manhood today. Grandpapa enjoyed telling the old, oft-repeated stories, and who knew if Ralph would be hearing them for the last time?
Was
his grandfather ailing? Or could he go on as he was now for another ten years or so? The answer to that question, impossible to know, did not affect the central issue, though, did it? The duke had an heir, but that heir himself did not. And life, as Ralph’s grandmother had observed last evening, was always uncertain, even for the young. He could die at any moment.
    Indeed, there had been times when he had wanted to die and had even tried to help the process along . . . But he would not be drawn into remembering those dark days. Now was the time to think of life. Though what sensible man would wish to be responsible for bringing yet another human life into this world?
    He shook his head. Such thinking must not be pursued.
    “How old do you think it is?” a voice asked from behind him, and he turned in amazement to discover that Miss Muirhead had followed him across the lawn and was standing just a short distance away. “The oak, I mean.”
    He gazed at her without smiling. Had he
asked
for company? Did he look like the sort of man who wouldfeel lonely and pathetic if left to stroll alone? But he looked at the trunk beneath his hand and up into the spreading branches when perhaps he ought to have ignored her question and her entirely.
    “Several hundred years,” he said. “Perhaps even more than a thousand. The second duke, who had the house built more than a century ago, had the good sense to leave the oak standing and to build farther back from the river.”
    “It looks like a child’s paradise,” she said. “Did you climb it as a boy?”
    “It is too visible from the house,” he said. “My grandmother had me spanked after she caught me up there one day when I was five or six. Even then she must have been afraid that I would fall and kill myself and my father would beget no more sons.”
    “And did she have you spanked when you chose to become a military officer?” she asked. “You did
choose
to be one, I suppose?”
    He looked back at her, all amazement again, and had to remind himself that she was
not
a servant. She was standing out in the sunshine, and the sunlight was gleaming off her hair and making it appear even more startlingly red than it had looked yesterday. With her pale complexion and freckles, she must have to be very careful about exposure to the