I do not suppose you will receive this letter with any great joy, but I beg you to consider it very seriously. My offer, clumsy as it is, may well prove a lifeline for us both. I know you always preferred the word with no bark upon it, so I have not attempted to honey any part of my damnably awkward situation – or, for that matter, yours. Give me at least some credit for not making protestations of love that you would treat with the contempt that they deserved.
With continuing esteem, and warm recollections of our earlier acquaintance,
I remain yours,
Richard Armstrong, Baron Ventris
Emily, mild eyes sparkling with unaccustomed anger, agreed instantly that the letter was a grave insult, and one that should be rejected in the coldest terms, if indeed it merited a reply at all. But Viola, once she had overcome her initial impulse to have a fire lit in the breakfast room purely in order to throw the paper into it and watch it burn to ashes, was not so sure.
Damn him to hell along with his mad aunt, he was quite right when he said that her growing boys would benefit from the presence of a father figure. How could they not? Especially when one of them had succeeded far too early to the dignities, titles and looming responsibilities of the dukedom, and the other had not. What a burden to place on a young boy, and what a cruel division to make between him and his twin brother.
Ventris also pierced right to the heart of her reasons for not considering the suit of any other man she had met in the years of her widowhood. She hadn’t spent very much time with her sisters and her mother in London society since she put off her black, being fully occupied with her children and the estate. But she had attended local assemblies and private parties often enough with Emily, and had been left in no doubt at all that if she wished to remarry tomorrow, she could find many candidates for her hand. It wasn’t necessarily a flattering thought. No doubt the prospect of living at Winterflood as its master, at least till Ned came of age, which was more than ten years off, added to any attractions her person might hold. And her own widow’s portion was respectable enough by itself. Not to mention her damnedproverbial fecundity,and the salacious rumours about her bedroom skills that had plagued her in her youth.
It wasn’t true to say that any of the men who had swarmed about her had wooed her – she had not let them go so far, having instead made it very clear that she had not the least interest in courtship nor any kind of flirtation. If she were ever to marry again – and a little voice inside her said,After all,I am still only nine and twenty! –it could only be to a man whom she could trust to care for the boys with genuine affection. Trust utterly, for she too might die and leave them in his sole care. And Ventris – damn him again – was the only man now living in the world in whom she could place unequivocal faith in that manner. She didn’t have to like him or trust him in any other respect to admit the truth of that.
The quickest way to put herself at the risk of death, she thought with mordant humour as she sat gazing into the fire now and Miss Naismith watched her anxiously, was to engage, as Ventris had put it, in the chancy business of attempting to give birth again. It was no small thing he asked of her, and despite his flippancy, he knew it.
He was also right in saying that she appreciated honesty and disdained idle flattery, so, however shocked Emily was, however shocked she too had been at first, she could not judge him for his bluntness. She knew shehadbeen a byword among the members of the haut ton for producing twin boys when her husband, quite five and forty when he wed her, had been married twice before and neither of his previous wives had, as far as anyone knew, ever even been in a delicate condition. His first ill-suited duchess had deserted him to run off with another man after five years of marriage and he had been obliged to divorce her, with great expense and scandal; his second, with whom he had shared a much happier and longer union, had died childless in an epidemic of some infectious disease that swept through London in 1800.
A year after that lady’s death, fresh out of mourning and still grief-stricken, he had married Viola, who had been only seventeen and just out. Considerably less than two years later, she’d given birth to the twins. So she and Edward had indeed been the subject of a great deal of most prurient gossip; she knew this because her oldest sister had kindly told her so, in excessive detail. Sabrina, who in private loved a salty tale, had been most entertained at the wilder speculation over what, precisely, the nubile Viola must have done to stimulate Winterflood’s previously sluggish masculine ardour to the point where she conceived; the Duchess herself had not been nearly so amused to know herself discussed in such a humiliating manner. Would the Duke have hated it too? Surely any man would, and especially him, but it didn’t matter one jot now.
Viola refused to dwell on such unpleasant matters. She and Edward had been happy enough in a fashion, at least once the boys were born. Not passionately in love, on either part, but contented in their mutual love for their little sons, who were, as he had often told her, the greatest gift any man had ever been given. She moved uneasily in her seat; this letter had brought back long-buried memories that she was generally extremely adept at suppressing.
Ventris had wisely made no direct reference to the intimacy that must inevitably take place between them if she accepted him. Emily thought his letter indelicate, and it was, but it could have been a great deal more so, in Viola’s opinion. There was an undertone to it, of course… Emily too had noticed that, she thought, but it was such a nebulous thing that she hadn’t found words to refer to it. And that was not a conversation the Duchess herself had any intention of initiating. If she were to be honest, that part of it wasn’t the problem, or not directly. Richard was an attractive man, had always been an attractive man even in his early twenties, and she’d been alone for a long time. Her bed was cold; she could not doubt that his presence would warm it.
And she would like another child. A daughter, perhaps, a baby in her arms again after so long. She didn’t really care, boy or girl. The idea made tears rise to her eyes, the deep-seated yearning suddenly so strong, it took her by surprise. That was a stark fact.
What was the problem, then? Setting aside her shock and fury, taking into account the pressing reasons for acceptance that he had not failed to list, and those he had not listed but only referred obliquely to – the boys’ safety not least among them – whatwasthe problem? He didn’t love her and made no bones about it; she really didn’t expect him to, and, as he’d said in his letter, wouldn’t have believed him if he’d said he did. Empty professions of love and devotion really would have been insulting.
Her concerns, then, should be her lost independence, won at such cost and too precious to give up lightly, and his appalling reputation. He was known as a rake who had engaged in scandalous relations with many ladies of the ton, as her friend had said, but that was not the whole of it. Many men were libertines; that would not make him in the least notable. But there were darker rumours that swirled about him; rumours that painted him as not merely dishonourable, but actually criminal. This was not a matter, as one might imagine, of cheating at cards or some such commonplace transgression of society’s codes; the gossips, even around Winterflood, spoke of actual theft, theft of money and incriminating private documents. Of blackmail, based upon those thefts. And that was not by any means all. She had once heard it whispered – but surely, surely it could not be true – that he had killed a man in Yorkshire and somehow got away with it; that he was a cold-blooded murderer.
2
Viola saw her dearest friend married, shed tears that mingled joy and loss, and then left for London early the next day, carrying along with her, like so much extra baggage on the roof of the coach, a complicated mixture of feelings. She wasn’t committing to anything by merely going to Town, she told herself. It would do her good to get away from the empty mansion full of memories and ghosts.
She had never travelled unaccompanied like this before, without husband, children, sister or friend, she realised as she gazed out of the carriage window at the unspectacular passing countryside, her maid Hannah Owen nodding sleepily at her side. She’d not made many journeys at all since Edward’s death, apart from visiting her sisters occasionally with Emily and the children.
Not that she was alone now, or sparsely attended – far from it. She had several liveried outriders – her steward had insisted that they were necessary, both as a tribute to her status as duchess and a safety measure for a woman travelling without a gentleman to accompany her – and they, along with the crested ducal coach in all its shining state, were enough to make anyone stare. As they slowed to pass through one of the small but bustling Hertfordshire towns on the run into London, she heard through the open window one passerby asking another if it was a procession, and if so, what was it in aid of?My enormous consequence, she thought drily.I am, like Ventris’s late aunt, very grand. And if I want to drive sixty miles on a whim, I can do so without consulting another soul, because I am independent, and need explain myself to no man. And not even to my own mother, for that matter, who is more intimidating than most men. Do I really want to give that freedom up, and to a man I cannot trust, at that?
The outriders performed their function, even if that was only deterrence, and they crossed Barnet and Finchley Commons unchecked by bold highwaymen or any other manner of delay. Late in the afternoon, the carriage rolled between the open gates of the big, old house on the edge of Hyde Park. The staff had been prepared for her arrival, naturally, and appeared to be very pleased to see her. She greeted them all, and ate her dinner in solitary state, sitting idle at table sipping wine for a while afterwards and then going up to yet another silent, silk-hung chamber with a large, empty bed in it. It wasn’t cold, because it had been carefully heated for her by a well-trained maid with a warming pan, but that wasn’t the sort of warmth she needed. She had thought she’d disciplined herself to overlook these persistent, nagging reminders of loneliness, but Ventris’s offer had made her freshly conscious of such things. It was having an alternative, however complicated, she supposed. So many things to balance against each other, and no choice to be made that did not involve some kind of risk and potential loss.
When she put her hands on her body in an attempt to relieve her tension so that she could gain some much-needed rest, it was Richard Armstrong’s face she saw behind her closed eyelids. His face as it had been when she had last seen it – ironical grey eyes, crisply curling black hair, beautifully sculpted mouth. His elegant hands on her instead of her own, his lips, pressing hot kisses onto hers, whispering endearments. She very much doubted if he was lying alone in his chamber dreaming of her; if his reputation was at all merited, he wouldn’t be in his bed for hours, and when he finally got there, it wouldn’t be empty or cold. She still found release despite that uncomfortable knowledge, but sleep was very slow to come, and when it came, her dreams were uneasy.
The next day she set off, with no outriders this time, to see her sister. One of them. Viola was one of six, the second-oldest child. Their father’s small estate had been entailed, and so their mother’s life had been ruled by a single, entirely rational obsession: that her many daughters should marry well and save the family from penury. Society might scoff at her for it, call her a shameless social climber, but she cared nothing for the opinion of others. Others, she was fond of saying, waspishly and in several languages for extra emphasis, were not facing destitution and homelessness because of their failure to produce a masculine child. God knows she had tried; her six daughters with their elaborate Italianate names were ample evidence of that.
Viola’s marriage had been her shining success, dukes being rare and, normally, hard to catch. The fact that Winterflood was a couple of years older than her own husband had been shrugged off by Mrs Constantine as a mere detail. He was a good man, she had said, and would give her daughter a good life. Viola herself had been sensible of the duty she owed to her family; she had accepted Edward without hesitation when he called on her to ask for her hand, having first sought her father’s (which was to say her mother’s) permission and unsurprisingly been given it with promptness.
The Duke had been diffident, shy almost, and despite her own fears and a lingering sense of regret, as if for a possible future vanished forever, she had felt sympathy for him. He’d lost the wife he’d adored, making no attempt to conceal his continuing pain. He was no great bargain, he had said humbly, and she would be doing him enormous honour if she agreed to take him on. He was still handsome, a little careworn, anxious, and not at all puffed up about his status and wealth. She had said yes immediately. She did not waste time now picking over whether she had regrets or not. Of course she did – she was an adult, not a green girl.
Viola’s oldest sister Sabrina had also married young and married well, given the regrettable scarcity of dukes, marquesses and even earls; her husband, Laurence Da Costa, had no title nor grand connections, but was wealthy, and also amiable and easy-going. He had loved her on sight, and Sabrina had grown to love him in return. As a pledge of her affection, she had obligingly presented him with a son nine months after their marriage, not long before Edward had offered for Viola’s hand.
Mr Da Costa’s substantial fortune had originated in trade, a generation or two back, but Mrs Constantine and her daughter were too sensible to care for that. The Da Costa pair now shared a contented, busy domestic life in a fine new London home, and a houseful of children. If Sabrina could be persuaded to sit down and listen for five minutes, she was the wise and steady one, much less impulsive than any of her younger sisters. And Viola desperately needed to talk to her.
Admitted to the untidy, comfortable sitting room, the Duchess checked swiftly that no children were in it, neither hiding behind the curtains nor under either of the sofas, and turned the key in the lock. ‘Goodness,’ said Sabrina placidly, ‘you must be desperate, and I collect not just to talk of Emily’s wedding. Locking the door doesn’t ever work when I do it – if we are here alone for long enough, they will start coming down the chimney if they can’t find another way in – so you had better tell me quickly what the matter is. Are the boys unhappy at school? Has Winterflood burned down and left you in the street in your shift?’
‘No,’ replied the Duchess, refusing to be diverted from her purpose. ‘Obviously, it has not, or I would not be here, and yes, they have written; they are well, and settling in. Sam Muncaster confirms this in his own letters home. I’ve come to see you because I have had an offer of marriage.’
Sabrina blinked. ‘You must have had others since Edward’s death, and never came rushing pell-mell sixty miles to tell me of them.’
