‘There was a time when you appreciated me for my enthralling conversation. But we don’t have to talk,’ he said.
‘Thank God for that.’ She’d been lying on her side as she looked at him, and his grey eyes were warmly appreciative as they ran over the full curves of her body once more.
‘I can’t get enough of you,’ he said lazily. ‘Wife.’
‘That’s because you’re determined always to be talking about it instead of doing.’ Again, she was being unjust, attempting deliberately to provoke him.
‘You see, talking is but a poor substitute for kissing, and I can’t do that,’ he said, ‘but very well. Not another word.’ He moved again, this time to roll her unresisting onto her other side and bring his body close to hers, behind her, skin to skin along the full length of their frames, his chest to her back. It seemed to her that despite his teasing words, he wasn’t cold at all.
They’d woken like this, his arms about her and his aroused member lying snugly between her thighs. She was pleasantly sore still from last night, another sensation that had been familiar once and now was strange. It would have been seductively easy to let the early-morning scene develop in the obvious manner, but she’d wriggled away into her own space instead, not liking the idea that he might choose to slip into her when he was half-asleep and she couldn’t be entirely confident he remembered who she was. Not given his reputation. He might have murmured a name; for that matter, so might she. She feared she’d have said his, and she had no desire at all to know what he might have whispered in drowsy satiation. Best not. But he’d seen her now, they’d spoken, so she had not the least objection. On the contrary.
Viola had come to realise, perhaps because this unexpected second marriage had shaken up her ordered, uneventful life of widowhood and made her reflect on what she wanted for herself, that she had previously spent an excessive amount of time making things easy for people. The boys, of course – that was motherhood, and inevitable. Nobody wanted a mother who was all over prickles, like a hedgehog – she should know, she had one exactly like that and it had often been an uncomfortable experience. But often, with her mother and Edward above all others, she had smoothed things over, she had smiled and agreed when perhaps she should not have done. She had forgiven things that were unforgiveable because she had never wanted life to be difficult and awkward, and almost always avoided confrontation. She’d resolved not to be like that with Ventris. She was older now, she’d tasted independence, and she would be bloody-minded if she felt like it. She anticipated feeling like it quite often. There was an intoxicating pleasure in not censoring what she thought and said for a change.
But not everything had to be difficult. It wasn’t a goal in itself, or shouldn’t be. Richard was kissing her neck, lifting her long hair and burying his face in it, and all the while his fingers stroked her breasts again, doing the things he’d learned she liked. She was taut and heavy in his cupped hands, and his erection was making itself felt to good effect. She snuggled back against him and let him lie between her lips, against her entrance. His right hand moved down across her belly, caressing its soft swell, tangling in her curls. She remembered Sabrina’s saucy comment – she didn’t have to look at him – and chuckled.
‘Since I’m not supposed to be talking, I won’t ask,’ he murmured in her ear, and nipped at her sensitive lobe, then drew it into his mouth and sucked on it. And then he was inside her, where she needed him to be, and there was no space for rational thought or for any sort of reply. She lost herself in pure sensation – their bodies moving in harmony, his hands and mouth on her, his ragged breathing, his knowledge – whether from instinct or experience – of how to please her. He held her hips tight when he spent himself inside her, and she pushed back against him and arched her back and maybe, this time, she cried aloud. But not his name, never that.
Afterwards, he handed her a pillow without speaking, and she repeated the ungainly exercise that supposedly would give her a better chance of conceiving. She wasn’t quite sure if she was doing it for herself or for him, and perhaps it didn’t matter. It would not help either of them if they – she would not say or even thinkshe, for that was wrong – failed. They’d still be tied together, as her mother had warned her.
He was quiet now, for once, and his face was shuttered. He pulled the covers over her, which was not easy in her current position, and eventually, he said, his voice more serious than she had heard it in the last hectic weeks, ‘I’m probably going to regret raising this, but I think it is time we talked about the past. Our past. We have grown very adept at avoiding it, I as well as you, but we cannot continue forever like this, ignoring everything that lies between us as though none of it had happened. The happiness, brief as it was, and the enduring pain of it. Everything.’
8
WINTER 1802
His cousin’s new wife was a remarkably attractive woman, Richard thought as he sat with Edward in the library, sharing what would once have been, but now no longer was, companionable silence, the fire crackling between them and masking their new lack of easy conversation. And then, hearing the echo of his own unspoken words in his head – he’d perhaps had too much of Winterflood’s fine old brandy, which was fatally smooth – he smiled wryly at his own pomposity. She was a lovely girl. Imagine how beautiful she’d be if she were happy.
Richard had been out of the country last summer, in America, when the Duke had married for the third time. He’d had a diffident letter from his cousin informing him of the fact, which only reached him months later because he was moving from place to place so much. It held a perceptible and rather affecting undertone of anxiety that he might disapprove of the match. He hadn’t; it was obvious why Winterflood was doing it, poor old fellow, and no doubt, he’d thought, with a youthful cynicism that he was a little ashamed of now, it was a fair enough bargain. Her body, whoever she was, and her youth, in exchange for the title of Duchess of Winterflood and all the wealth, status and security that brought with it. Security for life, which was much more than most people of any rank had, and something he struggled to imagine ever having for himself. It was the sort of unequal union that happened every day, and nobody questioned any part of it. On the contrary, he supposed that almost everyone believed the young woman in question, who would be considered a mere nobody without title or connections, was lucky to have snared herself such a rich prize, the richest. A duke!
Back in London, his dangerous mission done with, he’d written to tell Edward of his return – though not of his recent activities, of course – and to reiterate his congratulations in case his previous letter of reply had gone astray, as seemed quite likely, given where he’d been over the past few months. Winterflood had written back with alacrity, flatteringly glad to hear from him, and invited him to come and stay immediately, for as long as he liked. Richard had just endured a long and perilous winter sea voyage on top of months of hard overland travelling and bursts of acute physical danger, and was delighted to accept. A few relaxing weeks in the country, riding, shooting and talking idly with his cousin and good friend, always the most undemanding of company, were exactly what he needed. And now here he was, enjoying his cousin’s lavish hospitality and the much-needed opportunity to relax for a while.
Except he wasn’t enjoying it, and for this, the presence of the new Duchess was responsible. It wasn’t in any sense because she was a terrible hostess. Considering that she could have had no experience of overseeing a house of this size, things ran as smoothly as they ever had when her predecessor Elizabeth was alive. Perhaps it was the servants who knew exactly what they were about, and she had little to do with it; but even so, they seemed to defer to her and treat her with respect, as far as he could tell. And it wasn’t her personality – she wasn’t rude or standoffish, nor was she over-friendly, she was neither too loud nor too quiet for his taste, and her touching anxiety that he should be perfectly comfortable was not in any way overpowering. But hewasn’tcomfortable. He realised that now as he sat brooding by the fire and Edward nodded sleepily over a book opposite him, like a man of sixty.
It had been all very well to imagine, insofar as he had bothered to imagine it, his cousin marrying some faceless young woman who might just possibly give him the heir he so desperately needed at last. Richard had had no quarrel with that; he wanted the old fellow to be happy again, as he had not been since Elizabeth’s death, and he was entirely in agreement with him that his own older brother was the last man in England who should ever get his grubby hands on the power and influence a dukedom brought. Winterflood had always been a tranquil place, but it wouldn’t remain so for long if it fell into the grasp of a bully and spendthrift such as Tarquin Armstrong.
He’d recently encountered his brother by chance in a London tavern, and instead of greeting him with foul and unprovoked insults as he usually did, Tarquin had been almost friendly, for the first time that he could recall. Richard had soon realised that this novel behaviour did not reflect any welcome change in Tarquin’s character or feelings towards him. No, it had come about only because his sibling was so incensed still at the thought of Edward’s unexpected third marriage that he could not refrain from ranting about it to anybody within earshot, and all the better if the person forced to listen to his ravings actually knew the Duke. This vitriol seemed extraordinary, since Mr Armstrong had had many months to get used to the idea. But his fury, and his fear of being cut out when he’d thought himself secure, seemed to have grown stronger rather than waned. Clearly, he’d been brooding unhealthily on the subject; one might almost call it an obsession. He’d also been foxed, as usual, and after a while, Richard had tired of his drunken ramblings and – surely – idle threats towards Edward and his bride, and slipped away, with all kinds of slurs that encompassed the young Duchess’s character and Winterflood’s virility, or presumed lack of it, ringing unpleasantly in his ears.
And though five or six and forty wasn’t any great age, even from the perspective of one and twenty, Edward was looking worn and anxious these days, and much older than his years, as Tarquin had implied. He claimed to be well, but he didn’t look it. So the matter of an heir was sufficiently urgent, Richard could see that.
But the new Duchess wasn’t a faceless young woman any longer – a mere cipher. She was an individual: Viola Constantine. She didn’t smile very often, but when she did, it was like the sun breaking suddenly through a cloud and lighting up the scene. She was just eighteen, had been seventeen when she’d married Edward last year. Looked at objectively, that was surely wrong, the age gap verging on the grotesque, he thought now. His insufficiently considered views about the whole matter – about many matters – had undergone a radical shift since he had met her.
He’d heard fragments of gossip about the ill-assorted match in London, where people were still tittering cruelly and crudely over Winterflood’s fresh burst of desperation to get himself a son after so many fruitless years. Remarks Viola had let fall in conversation had confirmed what he’d heard about her background: her family was not a wealthy one, she had five sisters and no brothers, her father was in poor health, and his modest estate was entailed. Her older sister had been married for a couple of years to a wealthy man of no particular standing, and had given him a boy already, with another child on the way by now. If Edward felt he must throw the dice one last time and wasn’t overly concerned with the social status of his bride, no better candidate could be imagined for his purposes. Of fertile stock, poor, and therefore likely to be grateful and compliant.Compliant– Jesus. He winced now when he thought of his earlier careless, heartless reaction.
Richard would not have found his conscience so suddenly tender if she’d turned out to be an obvious fortune-hunter, happy to sell herself for the highest rank any debutante could aspire to. If the bargain such a person entered into turned out not to be the one she had expected, if the reality of a husband old enough to be her father did not in the end please her, one could only shrug and be a little sorry for the way the world was ordered. But she was not in the least like that. She did not appear to take any great pleasure in hearing herself called Duchess, nor was she revelling in spending Edward’s money on herself, or on anything, as far as he could see. Her gowns were simple, and she seemed happiest when riding out across the estate or playing with the dogs; if she was pining for London, it was her close family she missed – she’d admitted as much in an unguarded moment. Her new responsibilities seemed to cause her nothing more than anxiety, and what caused her the most distress, though she tried to conceal it, was Edward himself, and the uncaring way he treated her.
No doubt it was healthy and natural that his last duchess should not be entirely forgotten. They’d been married for fifteen years or so and loved each other deeply, so that her sudden death had been a terrible blow, and one from which Edward had obviously not yet recovered. But Richard thought that the vast portrait of the young Elizabeth by Thomas Gainsborough might tactfully have been removed from the dining room to some more obscure location, so that her replacement did not have the dead woman, more than life-size, looming pensive and misty-eyed over her shoulder every time she sat down to eat her dinner. Edward’s gaze sometimes wandered to the enormous canvas during conversation; Richard had noticed it more than once since he had arrived, and he did not think that Viola, who appeared to be sufficiently quick in perception, could have failed to observe it either. The Duke also spoke of the lost Elizabeth quite frequently in front of his new wife, and Richard had never come so close as to becoming irritated by his cousin as when ‘Elizabeth used to say…’ had been mentioned more often than seemed necessary or considerate. The man had a history and his new wife knew it, but there was such a thing as tact.
He neglected his bride, too, and this was a surprise, given why he’d married her. Richard had no means of knowing how often Edward visited her at night – God knows he had no desire at all to be made party to such uncomfortably intimate knowledge – but in the daytime, he seemed preoccupied with the cares of his estate, much more than he’d ever been on previous occasions when he’d visited. It was clear that the Duchess was struggling to fill the long hours of her day, with very little help from her husband, and Richard had not been at Winterflood long when he began to suspect that he had been invited at least partly to entertain her. He was happy to do it, if that was his responsibility as the only guest, but it seemed odd.
They went out on horseback together every day, with Edward’s entire approval and encouragement. Viola had been taught to ride in her youth, she told him, but she’d always lived in Town and did not have the easy familiarity with horses that a countrywoman would have developed in childhood. She was only now discovering that she loved them and had a natural feel for them; Richard wondered a little that his cousin had not thought to spend time with her in this, his own favourite pursuit. It could have been something they shared, something that helped build a much-needed bond between them, but instead Richard found himself showing Viola around the furthest reaches of the vast estate that was now her home.
One icy morning, they were heading back towards the house after their ride and paused to look down on it from a rise that offered the best view of the great pile. They had not gone fast or hard; the horses were not chilled, and though they shifted a little, they seemed content enough to stand for a while at their riders’ command, nuzzling each other affectionately and blowing out great clouds of steaming breath. A couple of Edward’s spaniels had accompanied them, but they were off snuffling about in the dead leaves under the trees.
The mansion was impressive, even intimidating – the vast frontage and the reflecting pond that ran towards it, the huge Renaissance fountain frozen in the centre, mantled in long icicles, and the stables and other outbuildings stretching back like a village in themselves. Smoke rose straight up from many chimneys into the still air, the only movement in the wintry scene.
His companion made a sudden sound that seemed like distress, and he turned to look at her in concern. She was dressed in a habit of rich, deep-blue velvet, with a jaunty little cap set on her lustrous, dark curls, trimmed with a matching feather. Her cheeks were rosy from the cold and the exercise, and she made an enchanting picture, he could not help but think. He also thought that there were tears in her eyes, and though he felt awkward to see such unconcealed emotion, he could not do anything but ask, ‘What’s the matter, your grace? I hope you are not unwell.’
She smiled at him, but it was a poor effort. ‘I am quite well, thank you, sir. It’s just that it takes me by surprise sometimes, the size of it.’ She waved her gloved hand at one of the finest and largest baroque mansions in England. ‘The responsibility.’
