Leontina looked her second daughter up and down and said, ‘You are pale, which is bad. I am positive your foolish husband has been keeping you wrapped in swansdown and not letting you walk more than a few paces at a time. And what is the result? You have no energy and no appetite! Yes, yes, I am sure you feel sick – of course you do; one does. But you need fresh air and some exercise. Only then can you thrive, and the child with you.’
The Duke was heard to murmur mildly that it had been excessively cold for exercise, to which Mrs Constantine retorted unanswerably that it was not cold now. They went inside, and for the first time since Richard had left, the young Duchess was smiling.
Viola knew it was possible that the Duke had harboured a suspicion regarding her family: once the Constantines moved in, they might – like mice, or clothes moths – never leave. That was very likely one of the reasons he had been reluctant to invite them to stay previously. As the weeks passed and then the months, his fears might be considered justified. Mrs Constantine went back to London for a brief time, to be with Sabrina when she gave birth to her second child, but left her younger daughters and their governess behind at Winterflood in her absence and soon returned when it was plain that all was well with Mrs da Costa and her hearty infant son. Edward, of course, had been visibly delighted at the news that his sister-in-law had presented her husband with another boy. His own hopes were written sufficiently clearly on his face; Viola could scarcely bear to look at him.
Since the family’s presence made Viola happy, and a happy Viola was one who seemed likeliest to bring a healthy baby – a son, an heir – to term, which she knew was really all he cared about, Edward swallowed any distress he might feel, and stayed out of their way, at least in the daytime. He wasn’t spending any more time with his duchess than he’d done previously – but at least she wasn’t alone day in, day out as she’d been before.
He had not visited his wife’s bed since Richard’s departure. One day, when they were alone, Leontina asked her daughter bluntly if he did, and was given an equally blunt answer: ‘No. He married me to get a child, and he will do nothing at all that might put that child in jeopardy. God knows I don’t want him to.’ That was an ambiguous statement, and she didn’t really care if her mother interpreted it correctly.
It was June by now, and Viola was beginning to show, though the current high-waisted fashions concealed a great deal. She’d had no word from Richard, and had expected none. He could not write to her and display honest feeling in case his words were seen by others, and what was the point of letters full of empty platitudes? She didn’t even know if he had been told that she was in a delicate condition, and if he had written to his cousin at all – which seemed unlikely – she was not in a position to ask. Edward never mentioned him. He might be abroad; now that a peace treaty had been signed, the opportunities for international trade such as he was engaged in were surely much greater than before, and she knew he spoke French fluently. His absence was a secret pain that did not seem to lessen over time. But she could mourn it with nobody.
‘He is… displeasing to you?’ Mrs Constantine asked with rare delicacy. She meant Winterflood, of course. It was important to be alert, when speaking with her, not drift off into daydreams of Richard and answer all at hazard.
‘There is nothing to dislike about Edward’s embraces. But I do not miss them either. They neither please nor displease me, except in the most obvious physical, animal sense, which, Mama, we are really not going to talk about.’
Leontina shook her dark head. ‘Pleasing or not, if your child is a daughter, you will need to welcome him back into your bed after a time. If you cannot keep him away for long enough to ensure your health, or fear you cannot, I will speak to him, never doubt it, and make sure he heeds me and has some patience.’ This was an alarming prospect, but it was a sign of caring on her mother’s part, and Viola could only welcome it, knowing it was lovingly meant. Other mothers might perhaps show their maternal affection in soft words and embraces; Leontina had a fiercer and more practical way about her.
‘That is a bridge that I will cross when I come to it, and not before,’ she said shortly. ‘Worrying about that now will make no difference to the outcome. If one could have a healthy boy child by willing it, we’d not be having this conversation, would we?’
‘And you would have a brother, or more than one. Indeed. What will be will be, I suppose,’ said Mrs Constantine, apparently recognising that sometimes, even she could do nothing to alter the course of events. ‘And you are young, if he is not. There is time.’
Naturally, Viola was not in a position to be able to explain to her mother why this statement, so eminently reasonable on the surface, was untrue. She’d never had secrets from her mama before – but then, she’d never had secrets from anyone. She was in uncharted territory here, and she could not share her love for Richard and the shocking truth about her child’s parentage with anybody at Winterflood. If she told her mama that she had been unfaithful and conceived because of it, she’d be horrified, and probably angry at her recklessness; if she revealed the full circumstances, there was no knowing what would be unleashed upon Edward. Much as he might deserve chastisement, the consequences of an enraged and outraged Italian mother speaking her mind to him were too unpredictable to contemplate. So, silence was her only option, difficult as it was to have no one at all in whom she might confide. Emily – no. Emily was a dear friend, but she was very easily shocked and would not comprehend any part of this dreadful muddle, innocent as she was. Sabrina, perhaps, would be more understanding… but Sabrina was not here. This wasn’t the sort of news you could put in a letter, and probably it was best not to tell her at all, but to keep her secret safe from everyone.
They couldn’t stay forever. Even as mild-mannered a man as Mr Constantine required that his wife and family should eventually return to his side. Perhaps the unaccustomed peace and quiet had begun to make him nervous. In the end, it was agreed that Allegra would remain to keep Viola amused (and, as a bonus, learn more thoroughly how to go on in a grand house and in grand company, in preparation for her debut and a great match of her own) while the rest of the family and their governess returned home. It was several months yet before the happy event could be expected, and Leontina would be sure to come back in good time for it.
Viola had previously spent very little time alone with her next sister, who had just celebrated her sixteenth birthday here at Winterflood, and was a little ashamed to acknowledge that she barely knew her. She and Sabrina had always been a pair, whether they’d been fighting or sharing confidences, and their come-outs had been just a year apart. She realised now that she hadn’t always treated Allegra, whom in her youthful arrogance she’d always viewed as a very poor substitute for Sabrina, as kindly as she might have done. Though Allie was little more than two years her junior, the gulf between a fine young lady of seventeen who was out in society – and thought herself very grown-up even before she had been courted by a duke – and her jealous fourteen- or fifteen-year-old sister had not been easily bridged, all the more because Viola hadn’t cared enough in her self-absorption to bridge it. But now she didn’t feel grown-up at all, but making life up as she went along, and looked at her ignorant, confident younger self with a sort of pitying horror. It was hard not to see Allegra as the next potential victim – although of what, Viola would have struggled to say. Not of their mother – Leontina was only responding to the situation in which she found herself. Of the way the world had always worked, perhaps.
They were walking slowly together in the shade of the trees that lined the carriage drive late one August morning, and Viola, though she was in two minds about it still, thought she must speak seriously. This moment was as good as any, and certainly private enough. ‘You know, Allie,’ she said with elaborate casualness, ‘now that Sabrina and I are married and will be able to support you all if poor Papa were to die, which of course we all hope he will not for many years, there is no great urgency for you to rush into marriage when Mama brings you out, whether it is next year or the year after. You can afford to take a little time and look about you.’
None of Mrs Constantine’s daughters were stupid. ‘You almost talk as though you regret marrying Edward at the end of your first Season,’ Allegra replied, going straight to the heart of the matter in a manner that would have made her mother proud.
Her only Season. ‘I don’t think anyone should get married at seventeen,’ Viola countered evasively.
‘Especially not to a man of five and forty?’
She sighed, fanning herself in the growing heat and trying to remember where the nearest seat was. ‘I don’t criticise Mama’s choice for me. She would never let any of us marry someone whom she thought was unkind or unpleasant or unreliable, and she is a shrewd enough judge of people. But no, since you ask me, I don’t think a gap of almost thirty years between husband and wife is a good idea. I am reminding you – not Mama, but you – that your situation is different from mine, and you need not marry the first man who offers for you, nor the second or third, even if Mama is confident he is a good man. I am sure she will work her magic and find you someone unexceptionable – but it might also be possible to wait, and look about you, and one day, when you are ready, choose for yourself.’Maybe someone not unexceptionable but whom you love and who loves you, assuming you should be lucky enough to meet him before it is too late,she thought but did not say.
‘Do you regret it? You have… all this.’ Allegra gestured vaguely at the trees and placid sheep and the low wooded hills beyond them, everything that they could see being part of the extensive Winterflood estate. ‘But I have observed that you and Edward are not close.’
‘I’m not surprised you have noticed that; anyone might. He is still in love with his dead wife and probably always will be; he married me simply in order to have a child. All men do, I suppose, unless they are in love, or of course if they are marrying a woman for her money and connections. As to regrets… it’s complicated. I do not underestimate what I have when I know that many people have so little, but it’s hard, Allie, to spend weeks and months alone with someone with whom you have very little in common and who barely converses with you. I am very grateful that you have stayed with me this summer, or I might as well be alone. I am sorry if I have not told you so before.’
Her usually lively sister looked up at her, dark brows drawn together in a frown. ‘I’ve always been impatient to grow up – I expect it comes of having older sisters who thought I was a child, and younger sisters whoarejust little children. I’ve always longed to be out in the world as you are, and Sabrina, and have a house of my own and fine clothes and somespace,but I’m beginning to see that it’s not so simple. It’s beautiful here, but you never go anywhere else, do you? And before we came, you hardly had any visitors apart from Edward’s stuffy old friends and relations. I’d go screaming mad, I think.’
Viola shrugged. ‘Edward does not want to travel, and so we do not travel. It’s not as though he discusses it with me. Women have very little power, if they are married or if they are not – do not deceive yourself about that for a moment. If you are married to a man who loves you, as Laurence love Bree, he may choose to share everything with you; he may give you power. But you cannot take it for yourself if he does not. Most men are not like Laurence or like Papa. I once thought, as you did, that if I need not worry endlessly about money as Mama has always been obliged to, I would be happy. And perhaps I should be – perhaps it is some flaw in me – but I have not been. Maybe things will be different when my child is born. But don’t get married at seventeen, Allie, please. I thought I knew everything then, and I knew nothing.’
Allegra said tentatively, ‘Are you scared of having a baby? You’re only two years older than me, and I can’t imagine it for myself, not for ages.’
‘And that is an excellent reason not to be married for a good while yet,’ Viola said drily. ‘Yes, of course I am. Of childbirth, naturally, as everyone must be, and of being a mother – the responsibility of it. I will have a great deal of help, as most women do not, and it’s not as though I don’t have experience of babies – I have plenty, as do we all; they hold no mystery for me. But my own… that’s daunting, when I allow myself to think about it. And if I do not have a son…’
‘You will love your daughter as Mama and Papa love all of us,’ said her sister stoutly, and Viola, from the eminence of eighteen, was reminded of how young Allie truly was. She would love her daughter – of course she would, all the more fiercely because she was Richard’s. But would Edward? Would he love or even treat kindly a girl who was a profound disappointment to him by her very existence – and was not even his own child?
24
DECEMBER 1802
Richard rode round to the stables and left his exhausted, muddy horse with the surprised grooms there. He only had a small bag that he’d carried strapped to the saddle; he was used to travelling light, and he had no intention of spending the night here. He’d find an inn later, not too close to Winterflood so they wouldn’t recognise him as local innkeepers might. He’d been in France, often in perilous circumstances, for most of the past six months and he was dog-tired – so tired, in fact, that he had to consciously remind himself to speak English to the sleepy boy who took his mount and promised to look after it. The words of thanks felt awkward on his tongue after so long away. There was no danger here – or danger of a completely different kind from what he’d become accustomed to since the peace treaty had been signed.
He’d returned to his London lodging yesterday and found a letter from Edward waiting for him. Before this, they hadn’t had any communication at all since he’d left here in February. This wasn’t normal – they usually exchanged letters in a casual but frequent manner, despite the interruptions that inevitably came when he was abroad for long periods. He didn’t imagine for a moment that the Duke had taken offence at his abrupt departure; it seemed more likely that Winterflood had been reluctant to open a correspondence that might lead to Richard upbraiding him in frank terms for his appalling behaviour. It was so much safer for him to say nothing and see what happened. And then when it became apparent that Viola was with child, probably the Duke had forgotten about his young cousin altogether, all his attention focused on the extraordinary fact that he just might be about to get his precious heir at last. Both Richard and Viola were merely means to an end and nothing else.
