‘Ventris lives in lodgings in London, Mama. Wherever we choose to marry, we will be obliged afterwards to go and live either at Winterflood or Armstrong House, at least for a while. And I would prefer to be in the country. I mean to find a tutor and take the boys out of school after Christmas, perhaps sooner, and it will be better for them to be at home rather than in the dirt and smoke of London. There will be memories of Edward at both houses, if that’s what concerns you. There is no difference.’ Why was she talking so much?
Mrs Constantine said nothing more on the subject, perhaps seeing with her usual ruthless practicality that it was pointless to argue any further. ‘Do you think they will mind?’
Viola shook her head. ‘I honestly don’t know. They adored Edward, and they’ve never met Ventris. It will be strange for them, to have someone new standing in the relation of a father. But I think it will be good for them in the long run, once they have accustomed themselves. Don’t you?’
Her mother shrugged, reluctant to commit herself. ‘It will be strange for you, too, and more than that, if he tries to exert fatherly authority over them when you have been their sole parent these past few years.’
There was no denying the truth of this. ‘I expect we shall fight over that, and other things. I’m sure we shall, in fact. He is a provoking sort of a person, not calm like Edward or Father or Laurence. And you know I have a hot temper much like yours, so I do not suppose it will be a tranquil existence. I am prepared for that. I’m not suffering under any illusions that it will always be easy.’
‘You’re talking about passion.’
God, her mother was sharp. ‘I don’t know how you can tell that, but yes, I am. It seems we have that connection. But it’s not why I’m marrying him.’ She would not even allow herself to think further on that, not in her mother’s presence. The woman was extraordinarily quick, and terrifyingly frank, and quite capable of plucking her most private thoughts from the air.
‘Then I must wish you happy. Perhaps there is already a little Ventris on the way.’
‘Mother! There is not.’
‘That’s a pity. You realise of course that if you do not give him a child in time, you will be saddled with him and his tumbledown castle for life, all for the sake of getting the boys a father and warming your own bed. Would it not be much easier to take a lover?’
Mrs Constantine’s motherly advice was not always of a conventional nature, so Viola was not as taken aback as she might have been. ‘I could do that, of course, but then my famous fertility would be a cause of anxiety rather than an advantage, would it not?’
Her mother agreed that it would, unless of course her lover was a woman, and after that, there seemed little more to be said. Few people would have believed that her mama’s advice upon hearing she was to marry again had been that she should instead find a woman to take to her bed and keep her satisfied and happy; only members of the Constantine family would not have been surprised in the least.
The Duchess, eager to change the subject, enquired about her sisters and their suitors – there would surely be suitors – and after that, took her leave. The fact that her mama had merely questioned her with her habitual incisiveness, and had not expressed her inevitable disapproval anywhere nearly as forcefully as she might have done, had not made the interview anything close to pleasant. But at least she had not been obliged to share her own vague suspicions of Tarquin Armstrong. Mrs Constantine had no time for vagueness.
After the meeting with Ventris and the lawyers, which went smoothly enough from her point of view, she set off in her carriage to the school. She’d written to the headmaster and explained that she had some important news for her boys that she must deliver in person; mindful of Mr Muncaster’s warning, she had arranged for them to be brought to meet her at a respectable local inn rather than appearing on the premises. This was apparently quite a usual sort of thing to do – at any rate, if one was a duchess.
It was a slow and rather anxious journey across London’s bustling centre and out the other side, but eventually, she arrived, and sent one of her attendants to the school, which was just around the corner from the substantial old half-timbered inn that had been recommended to her. A little while later, her sons were ushered into the spacious private parlour she had reserved for the afternoon.
It had hardly been more than two weeks since she had seen them, and already it seemed to her that they had grown. She rushed across the room to embrace them, and this time, they suffered it with good grace, and clung to her for a precious moment. It seemed they secretly wanted that contact too. They might even have missed her, a little.
Once she had reassured them that she had no bad news for them – that no person nor animal they cared for was ill – they fell hungrily on the substantial meal she had had sent up for them from the inn kitchens. An inexperienced person might have assumed that the school was starving them, but Viola knew better. She also knew it was useless to attempt to ask them anything or tell them anything and expect them to pay heed to it until they had satisfied their hunger. While they ate prodigious quantities of meat pie and potatoes, followed by great slabs of fruitcake, they told her, indistinctly, fragments of detail of their new life, their new companions, and, as an afterthought, their lessons and those strange creatures, their masters. It seemed they liked school well enough – Robin more than Ned, perhaps, since he had always been more easy-going.
She listened intently, watching them, looking out for changes and for things they did not say. Though they were twins, they weren’t identical; far from it. They were both dark, as all the Armstrongs were and as she was herself, but Ned was smaller and slighter, his face less symmetrical, habitually serious until it was lit up by one of his swift, beguiling smiles. Robin was bigger, more solid, more of an athlete, less of a worrier. They complemented each other in their skills and qualities, and were a formidable force for mischief when combined. They asked politely after Miss Naismith – now Mrs Muncaster – and about how things went at Winterflood. It was plain that they missed their dogs and horses above almost everything else.
At last, their rate of consumption slowed, and she said resolutely, ‘I am very happy to see you, my loves, but I would not have come and taken you away from your studies and your friends if I had not had something important to tell you.’ She paused for a moment. There was only one way to say it – straight out. ‘A gentleman has offered for me, and I have accepted. I have come to tell you that I am to be married.’
They looked quickly at each other, but said nothing.
‘He is Lord Ventris,’ she told them. ‘You do not know the name, because he has only recently inherited the title, but he is your father’s cousin, Richard Armstrong, whom perhaps you have heard spoken of. He was very close to your father when he was younger.’
‘We’ve never met him,’ Ned said. ‘Or I don’t remember if we have.’ He was understandably wary.
‘He saw you when you were very small, but you could not possibly recall it. He has not visited Winterflood recently; his business has taken him abroad a great deal.’
‘If Papa liked him, I am sure we will too,’ said Robin stoutly.
‘Doyoulike him, Mama?’ That was, inevitably, Ned.
‘I do,’ she said, not even sure if she was lying. Her feelings towards Richard Armstrong were far too complicated to explain to a child, especially since she wasn’t positive that she fully understood them herself. ‘And I know that your father would be happy, not least because he would trust Lord Ventris to have every care for you.’
‘I suppose that is good,’ Robin said. ‘Though we don’t need care all that much. We are notbabies.He could take us shooting, perhaps. Or teach us how to drive a bang-up pair in a high-perch phaeton, if he’s a whip. That would be good.’
‘Fishing,’ said Ned absently. ‘Papa was going to teach me fishing.’ His brow was furrowed. ‘You aren’t marrying him just for our sakes, are you, Mama? Because you know that other fellows have fathers and we do not?’
‘No,’ she told him, blinking away a fugitive tear. ‘No, of course not. I could have remarried long before this if that was all I cared for. But it is not so easy to find a good man – not every gentleman would want to have another man’s children around, perhaps, when newly married. I promise you that Ventris will never make you feel unwanted. You will notbeunwanted, not for a second. He will love you for your father’s sake, and for your own. That is important, I think.’
‘Is he very old?’ Edward would have been close on sixty if he had lived, as old as many boys’ grandparents; it was a natural question.
