‘I know you will,’ Mrs Constantine said, her voice as close to unsteady as her daughter had ever heard it. ‘I have been luckier than I deserve, I think. As for the girls, Beatrice says she will never marry, that she has no interest in men, whether they be rich or poor – I do not know if this is true, but it is what she says at present, and Cecilia and Bianca are young yet. You and your sisters have bought them precious time, and I am aware that in your case at least, it was at no little cost to yourself.’
Viola made some incoherent noise of agreement, tears pricking at her eyes, and then, since so much unaccustomed emotion made them both uncomfortable, she turned the topic, and began to speak more lightly of her pregnancy, of life at Ventris with her sons, and Richard’s visit to the Regent, and the grand title he was to be honoured with. Mrs Constantine took the news that her new son-in-law had never been a criminal but instead a trusted government agent with equanimity, just as she had originally taken the tidings that Viola was to marry him despite his sullied reputation. She had the enviable facility of worrying little about matters that she had no power to change; Viola would have said before today that the experience of regret was entirely foreign to her, in which regard, she was scarcely human in her coolness, but she knew better now, and felt happier somehow for knowing it.
41
Richard was received by his grateful Regent in the Crimson Drawing Room at Carlton House one foggy winter afternoon. He did not consider himself a person easily impressed by gilded splendour or exalted persons, but afterwards, he was surprised how jumbled his reflections were, when he attempted to describe the interview to his wife in detail.
He’d known he would be kept waiting, perhaps for hours; one did not walk in off the common street and find oneself ushered straight into the presence of the country’s ruler. There was a certain etiquette to be observed. But his stay in the grand antechamber with its huge chandelier did not seem long, and other unlucky persons who had been in attendance before him were still there when his name was called, and watched him gloomily as he made his way across the ornate carpet. They must have been wondering why he was so favoured.
Viola had not been summoned to attend with him, and neither of them was sorry that she was so excluded. The Regent had been a notorious philanderer since his youth, and was known by all to favour more mature ladies with statuesque figures, a fact which was confirmed soon enough when he and Lord Ventris were left alone together by the laced and powdered flunkies who had shown the Baron in. Richard bowed deeply, and the magnificent royal head was inclined towards him with great affability. The Prince then gestured him to a seat, and took a thronelike chair opposite him. He found himself scrutinised intently by those famously prominent, pale-blue, Hanoverian eyes, and the first thing Prince George said was, ‘I hear you are just married, Ventris, and that your wife is a great beauty. A damn fine figure of a woman, everyone tells me. You must bring her to meet me, by God you must!’
This statement was made in what Richard could only describe later as an oily, insinuating tone, which underlined the tasteless nature of the remark. He could not doubt that if he had felt like describing his wife’s appearance and attributes in extraordinary and even indecent detail, which he emphatically did not, the Regent would have been very happy to hear it, and perhaps even forgotten the ostensible purpose of his visit. Instead, he murmured some banal response, and tried to turn the subject, which was no easy task.
He was very smartly dressed for his royal audience, in black, satin knee breeches and swallowtail coat, his dark locks brushed more neatly than was usual for him, and an old-fashioned bicorn hat, specially purchased for the occasion, under one arm. The boys had laughed at him when they had seen it, and clamoured to try the ridiculous thing on. But now he was sweating into his snowy white linen, and felt not the slightest inclination towards mirth. Apart from anything else, the apartment was hideously warm; he wondered if any of the windows in this palace had even been made to open.
The Prince was eager enough, when finally distracted from the contemplation of Viola’s charms, to hear of Richard’s unconventional career, on which he had obviously been briefed in advance. It was plain that he considered it all damnably exciting, especially the saltier aspects involving clandestine visits to ladies’ bedchambers, and would have been prepared to listen to details all day long, as many as Richard cared to provide.
This was a problem in itself, as his masters had not failed to point out to him with awful threats and menaces. Nobody suspected the Regent of disloyalty to his nation – the very idea was preposterous, naturally – but clearly, nobody suspected him of possessing a particle of discretion either. There was simply no knowing what he might do with any confidential information Richard carelessly let fall, or whom he might tell, in his cups or in his bed. Much as Britain’s spymasters might hope that they had rooted out all of Bonaparte’s agents by now, they could not be completely sure of it, even at the so-called highest levels of society. And in this crucial time, when Wellington’s army was about to cross the Pyrenees at last, and men would soon be fighting and dying on French territory, the need for intelligence was even more vital, on both sides. No wonder Richard perspired, and was obliged to use all his ingenuity to find things that he might safely say that would still satisfy his royal interrogator.
The man should have been ridiculous, even despicable, but somehow, he wasn’t. He was a good listener, which was a surprise – it was obvious now why Richard had been warned in no uncertain terms to be careful what he told him. He was even charming, and Lord Ventris began to detect in himself a tendency to like him, which he could only quash by remembering that this was the man who had taken friends of his – and fine friends they must have been – into his poor mad father’s chambers, to laugh at him and mock him, half-blind and confused as he was. That unpleasant thought did the trick, and kept him on his guard.
It was a curious interview from start to finish. He had understood already from those who knew the Regent that the Prince had the uncommon ability to absorb information about martial deeds and then genuinely convince himself that he had taken a prominent role in the events just described to him. In an ordinary man, you’d call it lying. He was known to be quite shameless in describing battles at which he was, naturally, not present, to people who were there, took part, and might be presumed to know about them much better than he. Richard now saw that this was all too true, as George – a man who had never known a moment’s real danger and been safe in his bed in England when the event took place – evoked the recent siege of Pamplona in such vivid terms that it was hard indeed to believe it all came second-hand.
One of the distinguished men who’d once controlled Richard’s fate had told him wryly the day before, ‘If we win this war, Ventris, as surely we will if we don’t bitch it up at this late stage, Prinny will be convinced in his own mind that he carried it all off himself. Wellington and all the other commanders will have had precious little to do with it. Let alone us poor bastards.’
Lord Ventris, recollecting this frank comment now, was hard put not to smile as he listened with feigned attentiveness to his Regent’s flights of fancy and wondered when he would be free to go home to his wife and his dinner. It was all very well to be honoured, and he was grateful for it after all these years of danger and anxiety, but it wouldn’t feel real till he had Viola in his arms again.
42
‘And to think you once tempted me to lecture you about patriotism,’ Viola said ruefully when she had heard all her husband could think of to tell her. She had been worried by his unexpectedly long absence, and greatly relieved to see him back, albeit exhausted and hungry.
‘But you refused to be drawn,’ he replied with a smile. ‘You said with some truth that there is little to choose between one side and another. I was grateful for your cynical attitude at the time, of course, since you thought me a French spy and were still prepared to take me as your husband.’
Viola had been musing on this subject, and was glad to have an opportunity to discuss it. ‘You don’t believe that, though, Richard – that the French and the Allies are as bad as each other. I can’t credit that you think so, even if others do. You’ve given your youth to your side, and it’s not even as though you were a soldier and were paid to do it, and received honour and praise and a fine gold-laced uniform. Nobody’s been throwing flowers at you in the streets, or giving you parades and prizes. Indeed, you’ve had nothing but scorn and opprobrium from almost everyone till now. You must have had strong private reasons for your actions, though you have never told me them. Can you really say that the Regent is more worthy of respect than Bonaparte? You’ve just described him as a buffoon, a man without shame or conscience, hanging on the coat-tails of better men, and men who have risked their lives while he’s sat safe at home, bankrupting with his extravagance a country in which poor people are still going hungry.’
‘It’s perfectly true, my love. His private life bears no examination, he has let down everyone who has ever trusted him, has treated his wives and parents abominably, and is a spendthrift on a hideous scale, with no thought for the sufferings of others. I fully admit that he is a fool and worse, but he’s not a tyrant. His father, when he was in his right mind, was a good man and a conscientious king, and both of them, for all their varying faults, are checked in their behaviour by Parliament, our true rulers. Rulers who can be replaced, at the will of the people.’
What he said was true – as far as it went. ‘Yes, in theory, but Parliament is not fairly elected, since most men – and all women – have no say in the matter. You could not vote, could you, before you inherited your aunt’s estate? And so you had no voice at all in how the country is run, just as I don’t, just as almost no one does. The will of the people counts for very little, you must allow.’
‘I do allow it, though with pain. We must hope that change is coming, as I believe it is. I am no advocate of our current corrupt way of managing things, and I will work for reform in the new situation I have been given.’
He broke off, as if searching for words to explain what he believed.
‘Viola, Bonaparte has ravaged a whole continent in pursuit of his own deranged personal ambition. It is impossible even to begin to count the millions who have died directly because of him. I know many people of my age have grown up with revolutionary sympathies – but ifheever held them, which I doubt, he betrayed them years ago, and thinks only of his own advantage, and that of his damn bloodsucking family. Slavery was outlawed – he brought it back. Women gained some freedom, which they themselves had fought and died for – he took it away.’
Richard smiled rather wryly. ‘The last person I debated such matters with was Lesmire. The man was a pure fanatic. He would have sacrificed his own wife and children without blinking for his idol – clamoured to do it, lit a fire at their feet and thrown kindling onto it with enthusiasm, crying, “Vive l’empereur”all the while. Such people are dangerous, and those who encourage them for their own profit are more dangerous still. George is a perfumed, coddled booby, no doubt, but we have some freedom to say so. Nobody is trying to make a god of him. Nobody will worship him when he is dead, and use him to justify yet more unspeakable crimes.’
She was astonished to see him so passionate. ‘Well, I’m not disagreeing with you. I daresay Julius Caesar was a monster too, in much the same mould, and yet he is still revered and emulated, as you say. It is also true that war is a dirty business, and unleashes the worst in men on both sides, and it will always be the innocent and the weak who suffer for it. I had no idea that you felt so strongly, though I should have realised that something powerful motivated you to make the choices you have made. I see now that I have married a politician and a philosopher.’
He took her in his arms. ‘I cannot make such grand claims. I was a rootless boy with no prospects and I found myself in humble employment in order to live – but then after a little while, I was approached to engage in clandestine work, in America at first and then France later, and undertook it for the excitement as much as anything else. I found I was good at it, and any hopes I might have had for another sort of life were lost when I lost you. My convictions, if they are convictions, were developed later, when I saw with my own eyes the ruin that the glorious French empire has brought with it. And sometimes, I wonder if my hopes will stand up to scrutiny when we see what victory looks like, and when thousands and thousands of hardened fighting men are told we have no use for their services any more, but no jobs to give them either, and they must steal or starve. But that is a worry for the future.’
She looked up at him, frowning, and he said, with his usual quick understanding of what she was thinking even though she hadn’t spoken of it, ‘Don’t be worrying that I am sacrificing my principles for you and for the boys because I went to see the old fool and listened to his ramblings with patience. I am not. I am done with my previous manner of existence, and need a new one. It’s true that my new life would be meaningless if it did not have you in it, but I would be doing this even without you. Our system is bad, and its figurehead a disgrace, but others I have seen are worse. I will sit in the House of Lords and do what good I can there – and for that to happen to any purpose, for me to make allies as I must, my reputation has to be restored.’
He pulled her down onto the sofa and kissed her till she was breathless. But after a while, he lay back and said teasingly, ‘Kissing is all very well, of course, but I shall require you – and the boys, rascals that they are – to treat me with a great deal of respect and deference now that I am a duke, you know.’
‘You can’t be a duke yet,’ she replied, beginning to unfasten his cravat and unwind it from about his neck. ‘The Regent can’t just have said, “You’re a duke now, Ventris, what d’you think of that, eh?” and so you are. There must be some sort of ceremony, which I note you have not mentioned.’
‘I don’t know – there wasn’t when I became Baron Ventris, but then that was by inheritance, which I suppose is different. I was half-expecting him to get out some great sword of state and invest me with it on the spot, and likely cut off my head in the process, since he can hardly be used to wielding weapons.’
